The Takedown Read online

  My Doc buzzed.

  audy I hate them. I hate them. I hate them.

  moi I know.

  This family did the impossible and left me at a loss for words. Audra’s tiny nostrils flared as she snorted. I hurriedly added,

  moi I don’t have the best relationship with my mom either, y’know. My life is officially far from perfect nowadays. At least when you and your mom fight, she sends you shopping to make up for it.

  Audra glared at me. “You think I care about shopping? Your life is perfect—still. You’re just too naïve to see it.”

  “Then enlighten me.”

  “For starters, your mother is an amazing woman.”

  “Insult noted, Audra,” the Mother intoned.

  “You two are going through a tough time,” Audra continued. “That is all. Meanwhile, a video drops of you and you’re instantly famous. People would kill for this much attention, and do a lot more to get it. Yet you can’t even see all the possibilities it presents.”

  “Possibilities?”

  “Yes, Kyle. You would be the perfect person to prove that being an intelligent female and a normal sexual being aren’t exclusive concepts. You can cast it as ‘For so long I struggled trying to fit into society’s good-girl stereotype. And then, bam! My secret was out. And look, I’m still the same intelligent, ambitious woman who rocks nice clothes.’ This could be hugely feminist. Yale would be tripping over itself to enroll you. I think you should be thanking whoever posted that video.”

  Ever since I met her, Audra had been trying to get me to come out of my proverbial prude shell. But why couldn’t she see that as much as some of us—her, Fawn, that B&P chick—were huge, flaunting sexual beings, some of us weren’t. Why wasn’t that okay too?

  “And don’t even get me started on Mac.”

  “No, go ahead,” I said. “You’re clearly on a roll.”

  Audra was practically standing now. “The primest papa at Prep trips over himself to see you smile, yet you hold him at arm’s length, Buddha only knows why—the best I can figure is because he’s acquired previous skills. Girls would kill to date Mac. Poor frickin’ you. Kylie, I would give anything—anything—to have your life even for one day.”

  In a normal household, the parents would have interceded by now. I could swear the Father was taking notes. Meanwhile, the Mother took a tiny sip of wine, then raised the volume on her EarRing.

  “For the last time, Audra Rhodes,” I said slowly and clearly, “I did not sleep with Mr. E.”

  “Stop lying to me!”

  Audra slammed down her silverware. She stared at her plate, her lower lip quivering. Then, composing her features, she said, “Looks like the grocery avatar forgot again that I’m pescatarian.”

  The Mother sighed. “You have been looking wan. I thought you needed iron. Thank you, Mother. You’re welcome, Audra.”

  The Mother didn’t cook, but she definitely knew how to add to cart from the local foo-foo prepared-foods market. Audra could easily change the settings. It was a matter of a few swipes. But this had been her complaint five weeks running, almost as if she liked that her mother kept proving her neglect.

  “I can’t eat this.”

  The Mother scrolled through files. The Father flicked through news stories. Audra looked between them, then violently shoved back from the table. Like she was on the catwalk, she whisked her plate into the kitchen. The drama of the garbage can lid slamming against the wall rang through the house.

  “I hope you put that in the compost bin,” the Mother called as I stared at Audra’s deserted Doc. “Teenage tantrums shouldn’t add unnecessary waste to landfills. Gregory, make sure your daughter put that in the compost.”

  “Hmm?” the Father asked.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I reached across the table and swiveled Audra’s screen toward me.

  “My Doc’s not getting a signal,” I explained.

  Neither Parent so much as blinked. Maybe it was that Audra thought I should be “grateful” for the video or that she would give anything to have my life, but as I swiped at her screen, I told myself that it wasn’t that I suspected Audra had made the video; it was that I didn’t want to suspect her. Those were two different things, right? But when I swiped at her Doc, the password prompt came up. She had it on fifteen-second mode? I drew Audra’s password. It was the shape of a broken heart.

  Incorrect password.

  No it wasn’t. I’d watched Audra make this password just two days ago.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  Audra stood in the kitchen doorway holding a premade macrobiotic veggie wrap.

  “I was gonna watch this link Fawn sent on a bigger screen. You changed your password.”

  “Yup.” Audra primly sat back down.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?” I asked as I leaned back.

  “Maybe if you’re a real good girl…” Audra swiped into her Doc. Her mother laughed, though it was unclear if it was because of Audra or something from her EarRing. “Go ahead, what’s the link?”

  “I’ll txt it over.”

  Sometimes Audra and I hung after dinner, but not that night. I couldn’t stand being in that house one more click. I was outside moments after I put my fork down. Our good-bye was said via audio txt.

  She never did tell me her password.

  The year I was born, Mom’s company was still in the red. Dad had a solid job at the NYU libraries, but only a tiny paycheck to go with it. Every month, more money went out than came in. At the time, we were all crammed into the tiny garden apartment of our house on Carroll. Mom had moved there right after graduating from Brown. A few times a month, she and her landlady, Marie, met in the yard to drink wine and talk men and books. When Marie moved to Florida the year Kyle was born, she sold the house to my parents at half its value.

  “You have been a gift to me for two decades. This is my gift to you.”

  Even renting out the upper floors, my parents barely made the mortgage those first few years. There was no way they could afford day care as well. So every day until I was six, Mom took me and Kyle on the G train to meet my Grandma Cheng at the Court Square stop. Then we three would take the 7 train back to Queens, where we’d spend the entire day in the closet-sized Chinese-medicine store that my năinai owned.

  “This will all be worth it when we get to vacation in San Sebastián every summer,” I remember Mom saying when she zipped me into my coat in the mornings. “Or get a day off, period.”

  Sometimes the girls and I talked about how lucky we were. Because when you’re beautiful, your parents earn good incomes, and you live in the best city on the planet, that fact doesn’t escape you. But I didn’t want my good fortune to rest solely on luck. Volunteering at homeless shelters, I saw what bad luck did. And I knew it sounded trite coming from a girl who presently owned a two-thousand-dollar Doc, but I could remember teetering on the cusp of Not Okay like it was yesterday. My family had made it, but we easily could have failed.

  Audra was incessantly on me about this perfect-life nonsense.

  Didn’t she see? We all had stuff.

  On my walk home, Mrs. Gallagher audio txted. I babysat for the Gallagher boys at least once a week. Her message was brusque. There’d been a change of plans, and she wouldn’t need me on Monday. I hoped Milton and Ernie were both okay.

  I swiped into one of my prematurely sent college essays to see how terrible it was. Describe Yourself in Five Hundred Words or Less was the topic. I had a few different responses saved in Write on my Doc, but on the actual application screen I’d written: At 8 a.m.? Sleep deprived.

  Oh. Great.

  I txted Mom.

  moi Just left Shrink Castle.

  Any night I ate at Audra’s, this was our ritual. Knowing the Rhodes environment was too intense to eat in, Mom always had a plate waiting for me at home after I left Audra’s. She’d sit with me while I devoured it. It was our one or two moments of truce during the week. Naturally it involved laughing about
how awful my friend and her family were, but when it came to bonding with Mom, I’d take what I could get. She immediately txted a reply.

  mama Ohh, sorry, honey. Didn’t have time to cook or order yet.

  Fend for yourself tonight?

  Kyle’s at a friend’s. Daddy’s working late.

  I’m on deadline for Paris store.

  When I didn’t reply, she added,

  mama Can’t wait to hear about the rest of your day. Still steamed over our meeting with Graff.

  Dad never worked late. Clearly he was avoiding me. And fend for myself? More? I’d never felt more unloved and alone in my life. Awash with self-pity, I stopped on the crowded corner of Fifth Avenue and Third Street. Blocking hordes of last-minute Christmas shoppers carrying their expensive hand-stamped brown-paper shopping bags, I finally let myself cry.

  It wasn’t that there were now over seven hundred thousand views of the video. Or that taking it down was impossible. It was that ever since the video had come out, I’d felt filthy in my own skin. It was an awful mix of shame, embarrassment, and guilt, and it wouldn’t go away. Worse still, I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it.

  My Doc buzzed. Kyle! My sweet little bro’s sibling sixth sense must have picked up on my misery.

  boi-k Hey, sis, not to make you go more girl over this but it’s getting worse.

  mama That’s not an appropriate descriptor, Kyle.

  I hadn’t realized we were on group txt.

  boi-k Sorry, but the Times Online wrote about the video. It’s one swipe into the local section. Titled: Sex Scandal Rocks Prestigious Parkside Prep. The video’s views just exploded (more).

  Neither my mom nor I replied. Kyle kept going.

  boi-k Also, Mom FYI. The video’s attaching itself to us. On side: I have 10k new friends. On side: video comes up when you G-Search StitchBtch. It’s the second link after your website.

  My mom had been talking with her lawyers about going public. A new string of stores were set to open in France. She’d given this company her all since her twenties. And now I’d ruined everything because someone at school had it out for me. It was like I’d proved her right.

  There was a long pause where no one wrote anything. Then:

  mama This is what lawyers are for.

  Then her avatar went red. Do not disturb.

  When I got home, I didn’t bother going inside. The mini blizzard of two nights ago had shifted right into a warm front. The temp had steadily risen all day. At eight o’clock it was sixty degrees out. Sorry, Fawn, I guess no white Christmas after all. Fine by me. I needed fresh air and exercise stat. As I sloshed down the steps from the sidewalk to haul my bike out from under the stoop, a shadow separated from the tree next door.

  “Excuse me, miss?” It was a soft voice that belonged inside a white van with tinted windows. “Do you live here?”

  His Doc gave off a silver glimmer. I couldn’t tell if he was pointing it at me or simply holding it. I quick tried to think of how I’d describe the man to police. Tallish. Dark clothes. Light skin. Twenties? Thirties? Tell him you’re only the babysitter! Tell him it’s your friend’s house! my brain shouted. Don’t tell him you live here!

  “Yeah, this is my house,” I said.

  Why do we feel obligated to tell perfect strangers the truth? If I ever have kids, I’m encouraging them to be good liars.

  “Cute.” He paused, like I was supposed to fill in the uncomfortable silence. “I was hoping you could tell me what your Doc digits are. Just kidding. Which way is Seventh Avenue from here?”

  “Straight up the hill. Can’t miss it. Especially if you use your Doc.”

  He seemed surprised to find it in his hand.

  “I’m suffering through the Series Twenty-Three.” He laughed softly. “The map app gives you 3-D directions. It’s the most confusing thing. I think it gives me motion sickness.”

  I’d read that the Series 23 did that to people, but this guy didn’t look sick. He took a step forward, as if to show me the maps feature. I took a step back. He stopped.

  “Sure, I get it. Don’t talk to strangers, right?” Now a longer, weirder pause. “Anyway, happy holidays. Hope you’ve been a good girl and Santa brings you everything you asked for.”

  Two houses away, he looked back, stared at me, then waved. Part of me wanted to run inside. Part of me didn’t want to be anywhere near my house right now. That part won.

  There was only one place I could conceive of going. And even if he wasn’t home, or wouldn’t let me in, or I had to knock down Rupey to see him, being in the vicinity of Mac would be better than being anywhere else. I made it to his house in twenty minutes flat. A new record.

  I always teased Mac that he couldn’t do anything unless he had enough guys with him for a pickup soccer game. So I wasn’t surprised that he was outside on his stoop with a handful of his cousins when I rode up. Cans of beer and bags of chips took up the empty spaces on the steps between them.

  I skidded to a stop in front of his house and dropped my bike.

  “Kyla?” Mac made to stand up, but Rupey put a hand on his arm and he stayed seated. “What do you want?”

  I pulled a wadded-up tissue from my pocket and threw it at Rupey.

  “I came to tell your primo it’s rude to spit in public. That’s what tissues are for.”

  And then because I couldn’t take one more mean comment from me or anyone else, I put my face in my hands and sobbed. Again. I’d cried more in the last hour than I had in a decade. With a quick, annoyed glance at Rupey, Mac untangled himself from the stoop.

  “What happened?” He walked me a few paces away from his cousins. Pulling my hands from my face, he brushed my bangs back from my forehead. This was the reaction I’d been expecting yesterday, when the video dropped. We hadn’t spoken in nearly a day and a half. I’d been afraid I’d never see this side of him again. “You’re shaking.”

  “I pedaled standing up the whole way here.”

  “How come? Qué pasa, chiquita? Tell me.”

  “There was a guy. Outside my house. I don’t know if he was one of the guys who have been messaging my CB with pics of their wieners or if he was AnyLies or if he was a total nobody and just lost, but he had a Doc so how could he be lost? And I didn’t know him, but he knew me. And, Macky, it was muy scary and I don’t know what to do. About any of this.”

  Mac pulled me into a hug. He smelled like beer, clean T-shirts, and cheesy tortilla chips. Just like that, all the bullshite of the previous thirty-six hours fell away.

  “Okay,” he said stroking my hair. “I got you. It’ll be okay.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Come sit down. What have I told you about not wearing your helmet? Muévense, pinches primos. We have a girl in distress here.”

  Normally he would have said “my girl’s in distress here.” Still, the primos begrudgingly cleared a space for me.

  Without exception, Mac scorned the boys at school. He called them kickback, cutback lobbyists in training. It was his primos who were his true clan. So it was kind of a big deal that none of them liked me. Granted, I’d only officially hung out with them once, for like, a half hour. Mac had brought me to his house and introduced me the second week of our not dating. His cousin Victor had appraised me in Spanish. My EarRing’s Translate had whispered that it meant something like “This must be the little [unrecognized word] who thinks she’s too good for you. She’s got small breasts, no?” (For the sake of accuracy, I’m pretty sure Victor had not said “breasts.”)

  Both Mac and I knew it hadn’t gone well. I was supposed to stay through dinner, but instead we grabbed banh mis and rode our bikes to the park to eat them. And, I mean, Mac called in sick anytime there was a new batch of tamales in the house. It was no small thing for him to opt out of his mom’s cooking.

  I hadn’t been around his cousins other than in passing since then.

  Mac quickly reintroduced everyone. And for the first time since AnyLies set their sights
on me, with these people who I knew despised me, I felt safe. Which is maybe why my tongue unspooled and then, like we’d all been BFFs for years, I told them everything.

  All of it. AnyLies’s txts. Our meeting with Graff that morning. Brittany and Community Club that afternoon. The girl on the train. The Eden hacker. The video on the big screen. The creep who kept clutching his belt. My guardian angel in the fake fur who’d played interference. How the video had attached itself to StitchBtch, and last but not least how there was a guy outside my house and he sure seemed like he was waiting for me.

  Strung together in one long run-on sentence, it sounded crazy paranoid. As the primos traded raised eyebrows (brow dexterity clearly ran in the family), it wasn’t hard to tell what they were thinking.

  Mac’s girl is small-chested and psychotic.

  I almost apologized, but stopped myself, hearing Audra say, “Why are girls always apologizing for talking? Is there some kind of word limit we have to abide by that boys don’t?” Instead I stayed quiet and waited for their verdict.

  “I’m calling the police,” Mac said.

  “And telling them what?” Victor asked. “A dude asked for directions outside her house thirty minutes ago?”

  “Right,” I said. “It had to be a weird coincidence. He couldn’t know I live there, right?”

  “Your parents own your property?” Alfie asked. When I nodded, he poked me in the arm. “Ding—there you go. You said your vid is linked to your mom now. Search your moms. Bam. Find the real-estate listing from when they bought your house. Boom. Address.”

  “Nah.” Caleb waved a hand at all of this. “It’s even easier than that. Anyone in her contacts can just WhereYouAt her. You guys ain’t heard? You don’t need your contact’s permission or anything. You just need their Doc digits and BAM! Current frickin’ GPS location. I mean, it’s expensive, like twenty-nine ninety-nine, but still.”

  “That is nonsense.” Rupey ran a hand over his face.