Point B (a teleportation love story)

by Drew Magary

  Hands off, Cantaloupe.

  Anna logged all of Lara’s new locations in her Notes app while re-reading the Post-it Lara had left behind over and over. Roomie. Sometimes Lara would go for days without posting to WorldGram, hiding out in some undisclosed location. Anna wondered where she was. She pictured Lara all over: serenely wading through the Lily Beach shallows in a white one-piece, smoking dope with her legs dangling off the Cliffs of Moher, dancing with the street crowds in Rio. She pictured Lara visibly aching for the one person she wanted to dance with the most, and maybe marshaling a few rogue PortSys employees to gather up every last scrap of info about Sarah Huff? Anytime Anna tried to put Lara out of mind and focus on work, there she was again. She remained undaunted in seeing her once more. Impatient, too. In bed at night, she would whisper Lara’s name to herself as an invocation. Lara, Lara, Lara.

  But if Lara Kirsch was sad about being pulled out of Druskin, there was scant evidence of it on her WorldGram. She looked free. Alive. There was one photo of Lara in Barbados wearing a fedora with the caption, “These are waking dreams.” Another post was actually branded content, complete with a #ShareSpace hashtag. Anna had “Really, Lara?” typed out in the windowpane of the comments for that one, but never hit PORT. If Lara wanted to be corny, that was her right. Anna wished she could be that corny herself, frankly. To be corny, you needed to be happy, or at least pleasantly deluded with false hopes.

  Help me learn to be happy, Lara. Please cure me of this stupid brain.

  Yes, Lara Kirsch felt betrayed by Anna the last time they spoke, but that only helped fuel any number of redemption fantasies in Anna’s brain. Lara wanted to be wrong about Anna. Yes, that was it. And if she really does think you betrayed her and can’t get over it, then she really, really cares about you.

  Anna stared at the photos of Lara for minutes at a time before closing them. There was one photo of Lara at a cocktail party where she was wearing a short, fringed dress, like a flapper. Anna noted the black fringes gently brushing across Lara’s smooth, unblemished thighs. Whenever she saw fringes dangling from anything else after that, she’d think of Lara in that dress—a faint crease of muscle running down the outside of her legs—and that made Anna want to bite through a knuckle. Random men and women would propose to Lara in comments of her WorldGram and Anna vowed to hunt them all down.

  She had to ration the photos carefully, to keep from becoming obsessed and to wean herself from that seductive ache that came every time she glanced at her old roommate. It was addictive, that pain. The way it tortured Anna’s mind and whispered to her that Lara hungered for her equally.

  To distract herself, she’d go over to the GizPo comment section and do some shitposting: writing up opinions she knew would cause a fuss. “Actually, lemonade taste like shit,” etc. Anna was only seventeen but she already knew that people online were just stock characters: influencers, wingnuts, lecturers, dorks, trolls, etc. It never got old setting off digital bombs that sent all those stock characters into endless beefs.

  I trust my soul. Anna replayed the line over and over again in her head, then she’d look at Lara’s picture and the phrase would vibrate. It would swell and take on bright neon colors. That’s why she needed a hit of acid to balance the sweetness: either by lightly trolling the GizPo commenters or opening up a new tab and reading everything she possibly could about Emilia Kirsch and the corporate empire she lorded over alongside Jason Kirsch, Lara’s considerably older half-brother. Best to temper her fixations just a bit. This was all very healthy. Definitely.

  Finally, after nearly a month, Anna was freed from ‘stricts and allowed to roam the campus at night again. Bamert could hardly contain his excitement at the news. Before Nolan’s class, he jabbed an elbow into her side and declared, “We are celebrating tonight. At Kirkland! I’ll provide libations.”

  “I don’t drink,” Anna reminded him.

  “Again, that’s of no concern to me. You will be there at 9pm. Burton will join us and show you what we’ve been working on.”

  “Hey! I have tambourine tonight!” Burton said.

  “Not anymore,” Bamert told him. “Shake your little idiot drum another time. This is a goddamn rager, son.”

  Kirkland was a house of fifteen rowdy boys located across from the gym down a relatively quiet stretch of Elliot Street. When Anna walked in after diving practice, there was a white greaseboard in the common room that had, “Tyler, your sister called. She’s pregnant” scrawled across it in green dry erase marker.

  The whole house smelled like feet. In the corner of the common room was a hamster cage with a single, malnourished rodent huddled in the corner, a big K shaved into its fur. Anna walked over to the cage and felt around for the little ball bearing inside the hamster’s water bottle. The ball had gotten stuck, so she poked at it until it came dislodged and the little hamster could finally get fresh water to drink.

  She went over to Coach Bergerini’s door and gave a knock. He opened the door in nothing but tighty whities.

  “Yeah?”

  Anna held out her permission slip. “I’m here to visit Bamert.”

  “Yeah yeah, go ahead.” He didn’t even bother to look at the slip before shutting the door.

  She climbed the stairs warily and passed a half-dozen doors blaring a half-dozen strains of obnoxious music. From behind Room 6, she heard a boy mashing buttons and screaming out “OH HO HO HO YOU JUST GOT FUCKING WRECKED!” Finally, she knocked on Room 12, even though the door was already cracked.

  “Entrée!”

  The foot smell was worse in Bamert’s room, like he was pickling his own in white vinegar. She nearly choked.

  “Bamert, this room smells awful.”

  “I can fix that.”

  He lit a cinnamon candle and now the room smelled like cinnamon and feet. He took out a tin of Kodiak and stuffed half of it into his cheek, then kicked back on a futon couch that sat half a foot above the floor. He was still in his suit: jet black with fire-breathing dragons all over. There was a giant wooden spool in the center of the room that served as a coffee table, with a bunch of cowboy boot-shaped shot glasses and a single Clemson football helmet resting on top. In Room 12, Bamert served Merle Haggard two ways: through his wireless speaker and on a poster that covered the entire back wall. He had also run a length of twine from one end of the ceiling to another and hung a full country ham from it: salted and preserved in a stockinette and already cultivating a sickly mold around its dark pink flesh. It was too much odor for too small of a space.

  “Should I leave the door cracked?” Anna asked. Druskin policy stated that girls could have visitations with boys and vice versa after 7pm so long as the door stayed ajar and three feet were kept on the floor at all times. The rumor around Sewell, which Anna read about in the Shit Memoirs, was that Jubilee circumvented the latter rule by having sex with her boyfriend in the closet.

  “You can close the door,” Bamert told her. “Bergerini doesn’t care. It’s the only perk of sharing a house with a hockey coach and half his Neanderthal roster.”

  “What if I need actual air to breathe?”

  “You can have air or you can have privacy, but you can’t have both.”

  She shut the door and then pointed to the floor below, whispering, “Bergerini answered the door in his underwear!”

  “Believe me, that’s outright formalwear for him. His girlfriend is still in college, you know.”

  “What?! But he’s, like, 40!”

  “Judging by the sounds they make down there, I don’t think the age discrepancy bothers them in the slightest.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “It’s legal, though. Funny what’s legal and what isn’t.”

  “There’s a hamster dying in your common room.”

  “Yeah. Technically it’s Moriarty’s, because he bought it and named it Fucko. But I’m the only one who bothers to feed the poor creature.”

  He pulled out a handle of spiced rum.

  “Whe
re on earth did you get that?” she asked.

  “The answer to that, dear Anna, is so obvious that you’ll want to smash your face in with a textbook.”

  “That’s how I feel all the time anyway.”

  “Want a drink?”

  “I just got off of ‘stricts, so no. Besides, I don’t wanna throw up and then have to report to diving practice with a hangover tomorrow.”

  “I don’t know how you do that diving business,” Bamert told her. “Too high over water for my comfort, yessir.”

  They heard the doorknob rattle and Anna grew horrified Bergerini would be on the other side, fully naked and angry. Instead, it was Burton, carrying a small black instrument case. The second Burton saw the handle of spiced rum, his shoulders slumped.

  “How are we gonna get anything done if you’re drinking that?” he asked Bamert.

  “We’re not.”

  Burton snuffed out the noxiously sweet candle. Then he lit a bare match and the smell of the room grew nearly tolerable. He and Anna sat down on Bamert’s cot, which was piled high with canvas army blankets. Bamert mixed himself a rum and Coke in a single, dirty Solo cup. He raised his cocktail to Anna and Burton.

  “To Clemson. May they win the CFBCSA National Championship at the WallTech Seoul Bowl yet again.”

  “Why do you like Clemson so much?” Anna asked him.

  “Well, my granddaddy went there, and my daddy did too. One day I’ll go there.”

  “I thought you didn’t like your dad.”

  “Can’t stand the man.”

  “Then why do you like Clemson if he likes it?”

  “Beats me. Anyway, contraband,” Bamert declared triumphantly. “Tonight we celebrate your ever so slight liberation, dear Anna. But also, we can finally show you what Burton has been working on.” He nodded to Burton. “Show her.”

  “Show her what?” Burton asked.

  “The things!”

  “You didn’t say to bring them.”

  “I said we’d show her what we’d been working on. You came all this way from Gould House and you didn’t bring the damn things?”

  “I have a picture on my pNote of them,” Burton offered.

  “Oh god dammit. Where’s the drama in that, I ask you?”

  “What the hell are you two talking about?” Anna asked.

  Burton took out his Druskin-issued tablet and showed her a photo of half a dozen white transponder bracelets scattered on his desk.

  Anna gasped. “How did you get those?”

  This was Bamert’s cue. He stood up from the futon, hopped onto the wooden spool, which openly groaned at having to support his considerable mass, and sang out:

  “Dayyyyyyyyyyyyy stuuuuuuuudents!”

  “BAMBAM!” came a voice from the room next door, “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

  Bamert ignored the order. “Day students, Anna Huff! Day students. Kids whose folks live within twenty miles of campus. They walk through Druskin Gate in the morning, and they walk right back out at night. They’re not allowed to port directly onto campus every day, because security! Savor that irony, my dear. Baste it with its own juices. These day students, they’re like mules: beautiful, workmanlike mules.”

  “You know a day student?” Anna asked him.

  Bamert pointed at Burton. “Not me. Him.”

  “I may have met a girl,” Burton confessed, playing with the sleeves of his tweed jacket to distract himself.

  “You got a girlfriend?” Anna asked him.

  “You know, I wouldn’t consider her a ‘girlfriend’ necessarily.”

  “She’s smitten,” Bamert said. “She’ll ford raging rivers for him. I have no idea why, but girls fawn over this man. They find him mature.”

  “I am mature.”

  “Well, most grown adults I know are annoying, so yes, I could see someone accidentally conflating those two qualities. These girls see our boy complaining for nut milk in the dining hall and they think he’s cosmopolitan. It’s astounding, Anna Huff. Our little mule ported to Vancouver for Burton, hit up a pop-up market, and found a bunch of those little Blackheel anklets on sale for nothing at all.”

  “What about the rum?” Anna asked Bamert.

  “Oh, I just stole that out of Bergerini’s closet while he was at practice. He has cases of the shit.”

  “Will you sit back down already?” Burton asked. “You’re drunk.”

  “I don’t get drunk. And why should I get down?” Bamert asked. “Technically, there are still at least three feet on my floor!”

  “You’re making me nervous. You’re gonna fall and die, and then Anna will rat me out for it.”

  That was the wrong thing for Burton to say. Anna stood up in front of him and glowered, her skin knuckle-white all over.

  “What’d you say about me?”

  “I’m sorry,” Burton said. “That was in poor taste.”

  “Hoooooooo, Burton. She’s gonna fuck you up now, and with a quickness.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m a rat and I’m not,” Anna said. “I’ve had to walk the quad every day with people looking at me like I’m the scum of the earth, and so I really don’t appreciate it coming from either of you two.”

  “I said I’m sorry, all right? I get how much it sucks,” Burton said.

  “No, I don’t think you do. Not even close.”

  “All right, maybe I don’t,” he admitted. “But what exactly happened in that office, anyway?”

  Anna went from white to red. There was Vick’s hateful face again, his snarl so permanent it may as well have been chiseled into rock. She hated that she knew that face so vividly. Sometimes she would see Vick’s face right before taking off from the springboard in diving practice and she would skip a rotation just so she could get into the water faster, to clean the image away. Then Willamy would ream her out for poor execution. Everywhere she turned, there was an angry face awaiting her.

  Tell them what happens in Vick’s basement. Tell them what a sick asshole he is.

  “I don’t wanna talk about it,” Anna finally told them. “I can’t even think about Vick without going into panic attacks, so please don’t ask.”

  Burton relented. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “No one ever means to.”

  “Okay,” Burton said, about to change the subject. “Why don’t we talk about the anklets, then? The problem remains that you’d have to sort out how to clone these anklets and have them transmitting our biodata to the narcs in Student Services while you’d be busy porting somewhere else. And then you have to figure out how to port.”

  “Can your new girlfriend sneak in a phone?” Anna asked Burton.

  “She’s NOT my girlfriend, and the answer to that is no. They still make you drop your phone into the day student bin.”

  “Can we visit your girl… your friend’s… house?”

  “Vick turns down those requests all the time. He hates day students in general anyway, because they don’t pay the full tuition. That’s why only, like, a dozen of them get admitted every year. He thinks their folks are all faking New Hampshire residency to get the deal.”

  “God, he’s such a bastard,” Anna said.

  “He’s no gentleman,” Bamert said. “He’s a craven, vile coward. We should steal his phone.”

  “What are you, suicidal?” Anna asked.

  “Occasionally.”

  “Actually,” said Burton. “There’s a germ of an idea there.”

  “It’s a stupid idea,” Anna said. “What, you steal his phone? Then he reports it stolen and it goes dead. What’s the point of that?”

  “Not the whole phone,” Burton said, “But the battery. I’ve seen his phone. He walks around with it on a clip because he’s such a big dork. He’s one of the only faculty members on campus who can keep a phone on his person whenever he wants, and he doesn’t have a PortPhone7 or an 8 like cool people do. He’s a cheapskate. He has a Worm 4e. It’s a piece of shit! You could crack it open and grab the battery out of it easily. That’s the only
part of a phone that would set off security at Druskin Gate.”

  Anna’s eyes widened. “So you could actually do it.”

  “In theory, yeah,” said Burton. “All you’d need is his battery. It’s compressed antihydrogen. You can’t trace it, and you sure as heck can’t deactivate it. You bring the other parts of a phone through the gate, put it all together, and then you have a working PortPhone. You’d need a data plan, though.”

  “I think I could get one,” Anna told him. “I would need a VPN to set up a dummy account for it, and I would need money.”

  “I HAVE MONEY!” Bamert screamed. “Old money is the best money. God, this plan is so perfect, and so naughty. Let’s dance right into it.” He took a big swig of his lukewarm mixed drink. “This could absolutely work, and even if it fails, it’ll be a complete blast. Now, when do we steal his phone?”

  “Oh I’m not gonna help steal it,” Burton said.

  The other two cried out WHAT?! loud enough to earn another “SHUT THE FUCK UP” from next door.

  “Shut the fuck up yourself, Dippy Dog!” Bamert shouted back. Then he fumed at Burton, “What do you mean, you’re not gonna help steal it? You had Cindy bring in the anklets!”

  “Her name is Alyssa, and what she did for me was perfectly legal. You’re suggesting that I help you steal Vick’s PortPhone, which is not.”

  “You just sat here with us and figured out how we’d do it!”

  “I never said anything about WE. I was explaining how you might do it. I have no interest in getting booted from here, Bamert.”

  Bamert held out his hands, each palm large enough to hold a watermelon. “You see these hands, do you not? You are enthusiastically pleading to catch these hands right now.”

  “Bamert, nothing you do to me could be worse than what my parents have already done.” Burton tugged at his shirt collar and there was a small, button-shaped scar protruding out, precisely the diameter of a cigarette. “I’m on a full ride here. I get booted, and then I go back to them, which means I run away and end up like all the other port runaways. Not all of us can afford your level of disdain, do you understand?”