by Ariel Kaplan
Oof.
I typed, Disappointment is a part of life. Even for parents.
Easy for you to say. You’re just a computer.
I typed, Bleep bleep bloop.
Do you ever feel guilty?
I said, Guilt is a normal emotion felt by everyone at some point in time.
Does it do any good?
I typed, Guilt is useful when it gets you to change your behavior in a positive way.
What about when you can’t help it?
I frowned at my phone.
I mean, what if you feel guilty for something you can’t change?
In that case, I typed, it would be a wasted emotion.
I rolled my eyes at myself a little, counseling people about wasted emotions.
It would be nice if you could just disconnect those. Wasted emotions, I mean.
Yes, I said. It would be very useful.
Okay. I should go to bed now. Say good night, Deanna.
I typed, Good night, Deanna.
And then, because I couldn’t help it, I typed, Come back and talk to me tomorrow.
Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Crew practice the next day was brutal. The last regatta of the season was coming up in less than a month, so the coach had us rowing sprints until the entire team was dropping f-bombs under their breath. By the end, even Sophie had lost her luster, drooping like a wilting flower in the stern.
While we cooled down, we watched the boys put their boats away. There’s something sort of magnificent about watching them hoist a 62-foot boat out of the water and onto their shoulders. I’d never really noticed that before.
“Hey,” I said to Bethany as I pulled my aching arm behind my back, stretching my shoulder and leaning until I felt the pull down my side. There’s nothing, I think, as nice as a good stretch after a workout. It’s probably the best part of the whole thing. “Greg’s about done. You should go talk to him.”
Bethany pulled both arms behind her back and bent at the waist, frowning.
“Come on,” I said. “He’s got to be too tired to run away.”
“Gee,” she said flatly. “Thanks.”
“Not that he would run away,” I said. “It’s just that he would probably be amenable to a distraction.” I looked sideways at my friend. “That’s you. The distraction.”
“I get it,” she said. “But…” She pulled the front of her tank top a few inches away from her chest. “I’m sweaty.”
“We’re all sweaty. He’s also sweaty.”
“Yeah, but I think I smell bad.”
“I’m sure he smells worse,” I said.
“That’s not really the point. I’m just not…” She uncorkscrewed her body from her lower-back stretch and moved her gaze toward the boys. “I’m not prepared.”
I sighed. The boys were finished putting their shells away, but hadn’t yet stopped grunting and cursing. Greg looked up from checking out some newly formed blisters, saw us watching, and raised a hand. I waved back and then nudged Bethany with my foot because she wasn’t doing the same.
“Why is this so hard for you?” I asked. “He’s nice! Just talk to him.”
“I want to,” she said. “I have this whole script in my head, but when he’s there, it’s like I just can’t talk. My voice stops working.”
I didn’t know how to answer that, because really, my voice is most of what I have going for me.
Fortunately, Greg seemed to be oblivious to Bethany’s inability to speak and was ambling over to us.
“Hey,” I called to him. “You did great today.”
He smiled at my words and Bethany’s face. “Well, I didn’t catch any crabs this time.”
“That is a marked improvement from yesterday.” I turned to Bethany, who nodded enthusiastically and said nothing.
“So,” he said, and this was addressed to Bethany, “you ready for your AP chem presentation?”
I…could not help with this answer.
Bethany said, “Uh…that’s next week,” and looked a little panicked. I smiled encouragingly at her. Bethany likes chem. Bethany likes talking about chem.
Greg waited for her to go on. She did not.
“Nothing better than a group presentation, right?” I chimed in. “What are you doing, polyatomic ions or something?”
“Yes! Yes. Polyatomic ions. I’m doing the part about coordination complexes. You know, metals, and I—I—I have some PowerPoint slides with diagrams about isometrism.” She blinked rapidly. “I’m…I’m almost ready, I think. I just need to read my cards through a few more times.”
This may have been the most Bethany had ever said to Greg, and he looked delighted. I tried to remember what isometrism was. I didn’t think we’d covered it in class.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” he said. And they smiled at each other, this wonderful, private, delicious smile—an eros smile, if there ever was one—until someone called, “Greg! We’re leaving!”
“That’s my ride,” he said. “See you tomorrow.” And he jogged after a group of boys heading toward the parking lot.
Bethany smiled that same smile, not at Greg’s retreating back, but at the spot where he’d been standing.
“You really ready for that presentation?” I asked.
She just said, “Help.”
* * *
—
Sophie dropped us off at Bethany’s house, where she took a shower in her mom’s bathroom and I took one in the hall bathroom until we smelled a little less like we’d been goat-wrestling, and then, after we changed into our regular clothes, we went down to the kitchen, because we were starving.
Bethany started boiling a pot of water to make ramen (the instant kind, because it’s all we can manage on our own), and I sat down at the table to drink a second glass of water. Bethany was getting the soy sauce out of the pantry when she said, “This is for us. You can make your own damn ramen.”
This statement was arrowed at her brother, who had wandered up from the basement and looked like he’d just woken up, despite it being five in the afternoon.
Colin ran a hand through his unbrushed hair and slumped into the chair next to mine, sorting through the pile of mail before concluding there was nothing of interest. What would have been of interest to Colin was something of a mystery. A video game catalog, maybe, or a magazine with pictures of naked women posed on aspirational vehicles.
“You need a shower,” he grunted in my direction.
“Already had one. That’s the smell of ambition, I wouldn’t expect you to recognize it.”
From the sink, where she was draining the ramen in a colander, Bethany snorted. Colin was twenty and a professional basement troll, a label that didn’t speak so much to his unemployed status as to his utter lack of desire to do anything aside from play video games and treat his mother like the maid.
He gave me a lazy glare before grabbing a single-serve package of cookies out of the pantry and tearing it open. “What’s for dinner?” he asked Bethany.
“How should I know?”
This was our usual pattern. Bethany and I would come home, Colin would come up from the basement, eat something, say something rude, and then retreat back downstairs. He is the reason that, for the most part, we do the bulk of our hanging out at my house. Also, my brother is little and cute and my parents buy good snacks.
But today we were there because I was supposed to help Bethany go through her closet and pick something to wear for her chem presentation, which she was panicking over now that she knew Greg was going to be paying extra-special attention, even though it wasn’t for days.
She was already pretty miserable about having to speak in front of the class, but I kept reminding her she was allowed to use notecards. “Just read them,” I told her. “Pretend no one’s even there.” Her
group had strategically given her the second spot—not as much pressure as going first, but less agonizing than going last. So after we finished our noodles, we went upstairs. Bethany threw open her closet door and then flopped belly-first onto her bed.
“Ugh,” she said. “I can’t believe I have to do this.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Just remember the number one rule of giving a class presentation.”
“Picture them in their underwear?”
“Nope. Remember that no one’s listening to you.”
Into her pillow, she said, “You’re probably right.”
“I’m totally right. I’m sure you’re the only one in there who gives two shits about isometric ions or whatever.”
I pulled out a tomato-red T-shirt dress that was actually mine. I’d lent it to her for some dinner out with her grandparents a few weeks earlier. “I forgot you still had this,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sitting up, “sorry. Go ahead and take it.”
I held it out to her. “No, you should wear it for your presentation.”
“Oh, Aphra, no way. Not to school.”
“Why?”
“My grandmother said it made me look like a cheap tart.”
“Well,” I said. “Takes one to know one, Grandma. You should wear it. You want Greg to look at you, right?”
“Maybe not that much.”
“Yes that much. Come on.” I held the dress out and she took it.
“I’ll think about it.”
We heard the front door close, which was the sound of Bethany’s mom coming home from work, and then the sound of Colin bellowing up the stairs, “What’s for dinner?”
“If your mom just never came home again,” I asked, “would he starve? Like, would we find his desiccated corpse on the couch in the basement?”
Nodding thoughtfully, Bethany said, “It’s possible.”
From the kitchen, Bethany’s mom called, “Leftover chicken.”
And her brother called back, “UGH.”
Bethany said, “Let’s go to your house tomorrow.”
* * *
—
After dinner, I helped Kit with his Mali project, finished my own homework, and fell into bed just as my phone rang with the opening from the Star Trek theme song.
I’d set it as a ringtone for when someone was trying to use the Deanna app, which no one had done anything with since last night. I wondered if it was French Toast Person again. I kind of hoped so.
The incoming message read, Hey Deanna. I checked the IP address….It was the person from last night. I smiled at my phone.
Hello, I typed. I hope you are having a lovely evening.
Do you remember what I type from one session to the next?
She was programmed to do that, so I typed, Yes. Then: Are you eating breakfast again?
Not tonight, they wrote. I used up all the syrup yesterday.
Butter is a better condiment than syrup, because its fat content slows digestion and prevents blood sugar crashes.
Thanks for the tip. So I was thinking about what you were saying last night, about guilt being a wasted emotion if it doesn’t get you to change your behavior.
Had I said that? Huh. I guess Dr. Pascal must be getting to me. Why were you thinking about that?
I guess I was just thinking it’s easier said than done.
Most things are.
Yeah, but I keep thinking, what if I feel guilty because I know they’re right?
I frowned. This conversation seemed like some kind of a journaling exercise for this person, because he/she couldn’t really expect a response to that. But I was kind of curious, so I typed, I don’t have enough information to hazard an opinion. Which was computer for, What are you talking about?
There was no forthcoming answer, so I typed, You mentioned your parents earlier. How are they?
Angry, came the answer.
Why are they angry?
I’m not doing what they want me to do. Well, it’s more that I can’t do what they want me to do.
I resisted the urge to type a joke, because this sounded like it was more serious than pancakes. It is a parent’s job to provide emotional and material support to their children. I thought about Colin. Up to a point, anyway.
Ha, they typed. Ha ha. But what if that’s the problem? What if my shortcomings lead me to requiring more support than they’re prepared to offer? Material support, I mean.
I am hearing that you are planning to become an expensive child.
Something like that.
From the room next door, I heard Kit’s soprano as he sang some made-up song to Walnut. I wondered how Walnut felt about this. Good, probably. My life’s goal was to meet someone who looked at me the way that damn cat looked at my brother.
From the hallway, I heard my father urging Kit to go to sleep, which was when I realized it was past ten o’clock and I really needed to go to bed, too.
There was a long pause, and I thought my partner in chat had put the phone down, but then they typed, Sorry, falling asleep. So what do you know about NCAA sports?
I likely know more than the average person because of crew. There isn’t a ton of scholarship money for rowers, but I think I’m good enough to row in college if I want to, depending on where I end up. I mean, I probably couldn’t row at Princeton, but at most schools I’d say I’m pretty solid. I typed, I am programmed with an adequate knowledge of collegiate athletics.
I racked my brain, trying to figure out who this was. It was someone who played an NCAA sport, which didn’t narrow it down much. And it sounded like they—they?—I’m sticking with they—weren’t very good at whatever sport it was. Which also didn’t narrow it down very much.
I typed, Some typical Division I college sports include football, basketball, soccer, and lacrosse. Do you enjoy one of those?
The reply came: Ижм реаллы стартинг то чате сшимминг.
I stared at that line for a minute, not understanding what I was seeing, and then a second line appeared: Чеадинг то бед нош. Гооднигчт. And then the app disconnected from the other end.
“Oh my God,” I said out loud, because I was beginning to have a pretty good idea who I was talking to. I got out of my bed and went to my desk, where I opened a browser and searched for a Cyrillic keyboard. As I’d suspected, the words were in English, just typed in the wrong alphabet, like he’d accidentally toggled to his Russian keyboard instead of the regular Latin one. And I say he, because as I picked out what he’d typed, letter by letter, it only confirmed what I’d already guessed.
The message said, I’m really starting to hate swimming. And then: Going to bed. Good night.
Probably he didn’t even realize he’d switched, because he was typing fast and tired. But there was only one person I knew of who swam at our high school and spoke Russian, and that was Greg D’Agostino.
I’d been talking to Greg D’Agostino online. Late at night. In my bed. While he was falling asleep. In his bed. And he seemed to actually like me, and talking to me, in his bed.
Only, he thought I was a chatbot.
On the one hand, I thought, I should probably let him know that I was actually not a bot, before he told me anything really personal. On the other hand, he hadn’t told me anything really personal so far, and I did seem to be helping him in my roundabout way. And if I told him, it was bound to be super awkward, and it could also get me in trouble with Mr. Positano, since what I was doing was not entirely honest academically.
It seemed like my best bet was to keep going with my original plan….I still needed a few more days’ worth of responses to hand in along with my source code. I would just keep things with Greg strictly patient-chatbot. Nothing personal. I would not abuse my power as a fake cybertherapist.
&nb
sp; This was fine, really. It was totally okay.
I got last year’s yearbook out of my bookcase and cracked it to Greg’s headshot, smiling at me from a sea of sophomores.
It was not totally okay.
Maybe it would have been okay had Greg been someone else. But it was Greg.
I felt his phantom arms around me, my most precious middle school memory. How could I keep forgetting the charges on polyatomic ions but remember Greg giving me the Heimlich as if it had happened five minutes ago? His breath on my neck. Can you speak? Can you breathe?
No, Greg. No, I can’t.
* * *
—
The next Tuesday, after last block, I stood in the hall by the soda machine waiting for Bethany. I was starting to stress a little about the fate of the Deanna app, because I didn’t really have enough to turn in (despite that morning’s argument with some random user about whether skinny jeans were over) and what I did have consisted mostly of me talking to Greg in ways that didn’t look too authentically computerish. I needed to sound a lot stupider and a lot more stilted. Maybe intersperse my real answers with some facts I’d preassembled from Google that I could toss out at random intervals. I made a mental note to look up how many delegates are in the Virginia General Assembly and what the wave frequency of yellow light is. Across the hall, Officer Barry, the narc, was breaking up a heated argument between two girls about one having sent a questionable selfie to the other’s boyfriend. One of them kept saying, “It was the wrong number!” and the other one kept saying, “How stupid do you think I am?” and Officer Barry kept saying, “Just go home!” After they left, he shot me a look and shook his head. I smiled and gave him a big thumbs-up, because I’d learned long ago that the best way through high school is to keep your friends close and your school resource officer closer.