by Drew Magary
Now, it was Anna’s turn to laugh. They already had a little code: a glossary of inside jokes they were compiling.
Lara went over and sat on the edge of Anna’s bed. “I remember before porting, when I was a kid. We had a nanny. Don’t judge me for having a nanny.”
“I won’t.”
“She was cool. Her name was Valeria and she would take me on the subway every day. Emilia would rather die than set foot in a subway station, but Valeria knew the subway and every part of the city. So she would have me a pick a different stop each weekend and we would just go exploring. We could sit on a train for ten minutes and walk up the stairs and BOOM! Whole new world. I mean, the subway may have been busted as shit, but it was like porting before porting. Anyway, my mom fired Valeria because she fires everyone. Then she started PortSys and the subways died. Then the neighborhoods died. I mean, people still port into Manhattan for work but by nightfall a lot of them are gone. You been lately?”
“Only at Christmas,” Anna confessed.
“That doesn’t count. You go any other night, walk away from the big spots in midtown, and it’s like walking through the end of the world. And so many PINE troops with guns. Gun after gun, like the whole agency is on a duck hunt or something. You know how many port immigrants I’ve seen shot? Those PINE assholes shoot them and leave them there. I port out every chance I get.”
“Where do you go?”
“Anywhere. Anywhere people are happy. People don’t get how punk happiness is. Sometimes I look at my mom and I can tell how much it pisses her off that I’m not pissed off.”
She opened up her jean vest, a vape pen discreetly poking out of the inside pocket. Anna got a peek at Lara’s bare shoulder. A smattering of freckles, one of them adorned with a miniature B tattoo. Anna wanted to connect the freckles with her finger, with that Point B as the final dot.
“It’s fun to know she can’t rattle me,” Lara said.
“I bet it is.”
“You want a hit?” Lara pulled the pen out and took a long, smooth hit. “It makes all the lights go soft.”
“I’d love to, but sometimes it messes with my head.”
“This is good stuff, though. One of the perks of having a mother worth thirteen figures. She can’t keep track of every dollar. And it’s a light pen, so you can port with it.”
One time, when she got a rare invite to a house party in Maryland, Anna took a puff off a joint—a legit, old-school joint—and coughed so hard that she threw up on the back deck in front of everyone, her vomit quickly leaking between the gaps in the Trex boards. She didn’t care to repeat the mistake with Lara.
“I’m cool for now. Maybe later.”
Lara put the pen away. “What about you? You got a favorite pin?”
“It’s boring,” Anna told her.
“No, come on. Tell it.”
“We used to port out to Lucerne, in Switzerland. To the top of Mt. Pilatus.”
Lara gasped. Might’ve been a fake gasp. Anna knew how skilled other girls were at acting surprised. “Oh my God, I love it there.”
“You do?”
“Yeah!”
“They have a gondola you can still ride up to the top,” Anna told her, “but that would make me shit my pants. So we’d cheat and skip that part.”
“Same here. Gotta watch your ears when you port right to the top, though. They pop like a motherfucker!”
That was the exact sensation Anna remembered having as well. Lara wasn’t faking that little gasp at all. They shared Lucerne now. Anna was ready to share more.
“So we’d port to the summit and stare out,” she told Lara. She could see the view from Pilatus in her mind: with Lake Lucerne resting calmly in the distance, surrounded by countryside that was predictably Swiss in its meticulousness. Everything sharp and clear and tranquil. Like the whole scene had been painted upon the landscape.
“You said ‘we’?” Lara asked.
Anna felt a quick jab of panic. It was Sarah who had showed her Lucerne. It was Sarah who always went there with her to take in the pastiche. In fact, Lucerne was the last place they had ported together.
Anna wasn’t ready to explain all that. “Just me and a few buds,” she told Lara.
“We can go there.”
“For real?”
“Uh huh. I know where else we can go,” Lara said slyly. “My mom, she bought Lily Beach in the Maldives. The whole resort. When she and my brother aren’t there, it’s all mine. I have the run of the place. It has a ring of water villas sitting right out in the Indian Ocean. Each villa has its own infinity pool, its own hot tub, everything. I can port to the resort and chill in whichever one I want.”
“Holy shit.”
“That’s right. Holy shit. Most of the time, I like to get high and walk through the water from bungalow to bungalow. At night, the staff lines the walkways above the water with votive candles and I love to watch the flames soften. Then morning comes and I smoke up again. I get high in my fingers and my toes. I love being stoned in the heat. I love feeling the sun come off my skin. I want everyone to feel how good that feels.”
Lara sharpened her look at Anna, a look as intense as Emilia’s scowl but suffused with an innate warmth that the CEO of PortSys lacked. “I want you to feel that. You wanna to go there with me sometime? It’s got a good portwall. No one else gets to come to this place. Emilia doesn’t even let friends use it when she’s not around. It would just be us.”
No one, and certainly no one this cool, had ever offered Anna a chance to bypass every velvet curtain left in an otherwise open world; to see what wealthy porters were frantically try to keep cordoned off from everyone else; to bask in the tropical candlelight with her new roommate. Alone.
“I would,” Anna said. There wasn’t time for a more poetic reply. Managing the tone and speed of “I would” had proven tricky enough.
“Awesome,” said Lara. “I can’t wait. Maybe after that and after Lucerne I’ll take you to my absolute favorite place. My favorite-est place.”
“Where’s that?”
“I’m not high enough yet to give that one away,” Lara said.
“Take another hit off that pen, then.”
“You’re funny.”
“I like your bracelets,” Anna told her.
“You want one?”
“No no no! I wasn’t trying to have one.”
Lara giggled again. “They cost a buck each at Duane Reade. Here.” She took a rose pink bangle off and gently slipped it onto her Anna’s arm. Anna turned her wrist back and forth, watching the bracelet hula hoop around. You shouldn’t wear this all the time, because then you’ll look like a follower. And yet, somehow Lara had made that cheap-ass bracelet cool. Her coolness was contagious. It could spread to things, to people, to Anna Huff. She was suddenly feeling confident. Sweet Jesus, did it feel good to feel confident.
“It looks good on you,” Lara told Anna.
“Thank you so much for this.”
“What about you? You got a mom?”
“No, no mom. I was raised by apes.”
“Apes can be cute.”
“I have a real mom. Sandy’s fine.”
“Dad?”
“He left. I mean, sometimes he would come back. Then he didn’t.”
“God, that sucks.”
“It’s better he left, honestly. All he did was make things worse. My mom always said that if you give a man a chance to get out of something, he’ll always take it. You know your dad?”
“Only through the gossip feeds. You probably could have guessed this, but ol’ Emilia enjoys getting divorced a lot more than she enjoys getting married. Siblings?”
Anna had a rehearsed answer for this question, hewed down to a crisp block of text that did the job with maximum efficiency. But before she could deploy it, Emilia Kirsch ported in a second time.
“Well, they won’t move you,” Kirsch said to Lara, exasperated.
“Mom, it’s all right.”
“I
mbeciles. Just monstrously incompetent, these people.” She looked at Anna. “And you, Anna Huff.”
“Yes?” said Anna.
“I’ve done background on you, my dear. I know things about you now.” At this, Kirsch smiled for the first time. “It’s fun to know things, don’t you think?”
Anna stared down at the floor. Lara was right about Emilia. Kirsch’s hound dog eyes were on Anna and she could feel the woman undressing her psyche will malicious intent. What did she know? She probably knows all the basics, but God, the basics are awful enough, aren’t they?
Kirsch’s smile grew broader. “No tart comeback this time, eh? You may test well, Anna Huff. But that wit of yours will have to get quicker under duress.”
She got ready to port, but took a second to zero in on Anna’s new bracelet. She barked at Lara, “You gave her something?”
“Relax already! Jesus!” Lara said.
“Stop giving her things. Everybody wants things for free in this world. It’s disgusting.” Then Kirsch cast a withering stare at Anna’s worn-out mary janes.
“Young lady, if you want me to take you seriously, wear different shoes the next time I visit here. That pair is hideous.”
She ported out with an imperious boom. The clap was always louder when people ported indoors. This one shook the door of the room and danced along the walls, burrowing deep into Anna’s tender ears: Kirsch’s way of leaving her something to think about.
THE ACADEMY BUILDING
Anna cursed herself for being stuck on a video call with her mom as Lara rushed off for assembly without her. By the time she managed to disengage herself from Sandy and race to the Academy Building, the orchestra section of the assembly hall was already packed with new arrivals, with Lara sitting in the dead center and wreathed by girls who either wanted to be her friend or perhaps already were. Anna prowled along the rows of seats—all upholstered in deep maroon, the fabric as threadbare and scratchy as burlap—looking for an open spot and hoping to catch Lara’s eye. After a few awful seconds, Lara spotted her deserted roommate and smiled at her. Lara’s smile had a way of wiping away any trace of angst or misery. Seeing her was like arriving home after a long time away.
“Anna!”
Anna gave a weak wave, her new bracelet jangling around her arm, and silently mouthed a hey. Lara picked up her jean vest, which she had left next to her, and patted the open spot. But there were a good two dozen students in the row blocking the way: a gauntlet of turned heads and boys spreading their legs across hemispheres. Anna couldn’t find the courage to blaze a trail through all that, not on her first day. But God, she wanted to. Anna had known Lara for barely an hour and already the sight of her was making her body feed blood to other parts of her body.
Hey, you know what would be nice? If you could port to that seat.
“It’s okay,” she said to Lara.
Lara looked disappointed. “Really?”
Anna nodded and Lara gave her a fluttering wave before the row condensed and the saved seat disappeared, the entire orchestra section now full. Anna had lost this round of musical chairs. Lara had all the friends. Lara had everyone. She was the sun. What was that like? What was it like to be able to choose your friends? That had never been a luxury for Anna. She wasn’t a dork. She wasn’t an outcast. She just never registered with other kids. She had her small pursuits and she had diving and she had Sarah. Had her. But she lacked the motivation and the precious teenage confidence to venture much further beyond that. She took whatever friends life gave her, and life was stingy with them. Who knew how long Lara would treat her as a special friend, perhaps as more, before picking out a new muse from hundreds of willing candidates?
Anna stood in place in the filling assembly hall for nearly a minute, feeling like a hired usher. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around to see a boy who was easily 6’4”. He looked like he could scrape the ceiling. He was dressed in a yellow suit festooned with bluebirds and he had a wild, craggly beard. He smelled like meat. Anna was so stunned by the sight of him that she didn’t even think to recoil.
“The balcony,” he told her in a low drawl.
“What?”
“The balcony looks closed, because no one is sitting up there. But it’s not. Now isn’t that a little bit of sunshine on your doorstep? Everyone rushing in just so they can claim the worst seats.”
He walked through the entryway toward the grand staircase and beckoned to Anna.
“Well, come on now. Someone else’ll figure out the secret eventually.”
Anna followed the big yellow suit out of the entryway and up the stairs. He led her down to the front row overlooking the orchestra section. The perch was their domain exclusively. Everyone stared up at them. Well, at him. Anna spotted Lara. Lara winked at her and there went all that blood rushing everywhere again.
“You’re blushing,” said the boy.
“I’m hot,” Anna said. “There’s no air-conditioning in here.” The assembly hall had all the ventilation of a satin casket. Its ceiling went to the sky, but that did nothing for the air flow. The walls around the kids were lined with immense oil portraits of every dean in Druskin history: a succession of sour, humorless men and women. All frowning. All gazing upon the hall with stoic disapproval.
“Air conditioning is for the weak,” the very large boy said. He pointed to a name tag that read J. PAUL BAMERT and then extended his hand. “I’m sorry I never formally introduced myself. I’m Bamert.”
“It’s that what everyone calls you?”
“People have a lot of different names for me, most of them unkind.”
“Well, you do kinda stick out.”
“If you’re gonna stick out, don’t half-ass it. That’s what I say.” Bamert drew a pocket square from his jacket and mopped his brow. “And your name? I see you were too cool for a name tag.”
“I’m Anna Huff.”
He shook her hand. “And how are you today, Anna Huff?”
“Christ, I don’t know.”
Bamert laughed loud enough for everyone down below to crane their necks again. Anna was beginning to regret being within a ten-foot radius of him. It was like sitting next to a lit Roman candle.
“That sounds about accurate for here. What’s your dorm?” he asked her.
“Sewell.”
“Oh, Sewell is a true shithole.”
“A lot of stairs.”
“Well, that’s good. With stairs, every day is Leg Day.” He slapped his own beefy thigh. “I’m on only the second floor of Kirkland. It’ll do nothing for these quads.”
“Bamert?”
“Yes?”
“Are you always like this?”
“Only when I’m awake. Now, why was Lara Kirsch waving at you?”
“You know Lara Kirsch?” Anna asked him.
“Everyone knows Lara Kush,” he said, pantomiming a bong hit. “She’s the princess of porting. More intriguing is that she seems to know you.”
“She’s my roommate.”
“She’s your roommate? My goodness.”
“Shhhh!”
“She’s a dash of pepper, that one. She give you that bracelet? It’s a winning little accessory.”
Anna rubbed the bangle nervously. “Maybe.”
“Did Lara’s mom port into Sewer Hall, too? Did you meet Emilia Dearest?”
“Yeah! How did you know she could do that?”
Bamert snorted. “She built that wall. It stands to reason that she’s free to walk right through it.”
“I bet I could find out her password,” Anna said.
“She probably didn’t just write in on the inside of her palm, you know.”
“That’s true. But if the key exists, that means it can be found.”
“Aren’t you so bold, Anna Huff?”
“What’s your deal, Bamert? Why do you look like you’re 30?”
He stroked his whiskers. “I am gifted in the follicle department. Also, I’m a new senior.”
“As in senior citizen?”
He grinned. “Oh, isn’t that so fiendishly clever of you.”
“Are you a postgrad?”
Bamert howled with laughter. “I assure you: If I had already graduated from high school, this’d be the last place I’d hang. I’m just a regular senior. I’m also a physicist. Or at least, I will be. Normally I just apply what I know to the science of barbecue, but I do know a thing or two about porting.”
“You know exactly how it works?”
“Okay, I don’t know quite that much. PortSys keeps the recipe locked down tight. But you and I, Anna Huff, maybe we could collaborate. I am an open source gentleman, happy to tell you everything I know about this port life.”
“Will it take long to explain?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he deadpanned. “Were you going somewhere more important? Do you have an appointment at the Vatican?”
Anna smiled. “I don’t. I guess it’d be cool to work together.”
“This is a very promising development, Anna. Because once we know how Kirsch beats the Harkness Wall…”
Dean Vick stood up on stage and cleared his throat into the microphone. Bamert finished with a whisper that could still be heard from Ontario.
“Maybe we can figure how to beat it, too.” He opened his suit coat to reveal a pocket flask. “Until then, this is the only teleportation device that will work for us.”
“Am I the only person who didn’t smuggle booze and weed into this school?” she asked.
“Probably. You should have done your homework. Weed is legal everywhere now anyway.”
“Not here.”
“Well, nothing’s legal here. That’s the fun of it.”
Dean Vick shushed the kids into submission with a sharp, angry hiss. The man had wispy salt-and-pepper hair that ran halfway down the back of his neck, and he possessed a near-lipless mouth that went in a straight line. A strong hissing mouth. Vick was gonna fit right in on that wall of musty paintings one day. He took out a stack of notes and Anna groaned at the thickness of them.
“Okay,” said the dean. “So, welcome to the Druskin class of 2032.” He had a thin, reedy voice that was perfectly tailored for humorless bureaucracy.