The Takedown Page 12

  “Are you going to get a medal?”

  Like Kyle, Dad always laughed at my jokes.

  “A lawyer. He deals with cases like ours.” Ours. “He’s rated five stars on LawLink. I told him it was urgent, so he squeezed us in at twelve thirty tomorrow. We’re his last appointment before he takes off for the holidays.”

  “Cool.”

  What I wanted to say was: Hey, Dad, ever win an argument and still feel like you lost?

  Dad patted my knee. “Not a great reaction on my part. Sorry, kiddo.”

  I shrugged. “It was mild in comparison to school.”

  “Ahh,” he said, like that made him feel worse. “When I was growing up, if I ever complained about anything, your năinai would say—well, first she would whap me across the back of my head, but then she’d say, ‘Jade doesn’t become a gem without some chiseling first.’ We’ll get through this. And we’ll be stronger and richer for it.”

  Năinai.

  Năinai would have told me I did the right thing with Mac. “Lots of time for boys,” she’d always said, then tapped her head—brains first. As if my năinai were sending me a message from the afterlife, my Doc emitted its horror movie–style shriek.

  Dad let out a mock mini wail. “Worst ring ever.”

  Are you having a good night, pookie?

  I chucked my Doc onto a chair across the room. Mac was the best person I knew. And I refused to go out with him. Audra came over to talk to my mom, apparently proving that my mother and my best friend had a better relationship than I had with either one. Before the video, I’d have said I had a few problems with a few people. Now all signs pointed to the fact that I was the problem.

  “You gonna be okay, Kylie?”

  “No worse off than I was before.” My voice caught. “I know I didn’t turn out like you guys were expecting. I’m sorry if I’ve been a disappointment.”

  Dad didn’t pretend not to know what I was talking about.

  “You’re not a disappointment; you’re a teenager. Mom knows that too. You two will find your level ground eventually. That’s the cool thing about family. We might have our ups and downs, but we’re kinda stuck together. There’s no question we love you, right?”

  He nudged me.

  “Sure,” I said.

  I put my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me. Not knowing what else to do, he clicked play on the hub. On-screen, a flying squirrel decapitated a blobby demon. Blood splattered everywhere. We laughed.

  moi My dad just told me my mom loves me because she’s stuck with me.

  Normally, I’d have sent the txt to Audra. I’d have whined about the latest turn in the Kyle-Mac saga. I’d have apologized for how weirdly we left dinner. But I just couldn’t get my fingers to cooperate with my brain.

  When AnyLies instantly responded, I found myself feeling happy. Which was admittedly weird. But lately every time I txted Audra, her avatar was red. Instant txt replies felt so refreshing.

  Why are you telling me this?

  Because after our conversation tonight, I thought it best that I give Mac a little Doc space for the evening. And because what Dad had said had got me thinking. When you were stuck with someone, you had to come to terms with them, no?

  moi I dunno where or when, but I think we got off on the wrong foot. So, hi! My name’s Kyla Cheng. My friends call me Kyle.

  What are you doing???

  If there was no way to technically take down the video—a fact I still didn’t accept—then this was my only play. Still, I hesitated. Fostering a relationship with my hater was clearly a bad idea. Yet worse things kept piling up. In the time between my bike ride to Mac’s house and my return home, two more families had canceled upcoming babysitting dates. And in the time it took to say good night to Dad and go to my room, I assumed that the file sweep programs caught on that the video had attached itself to all my volunteer organizations, because my G-File no longer said I volunteered for We Shelter, We Care, or the half dozen other organizations I belonged to, including Senator Cooper’s office. Additionally, all the photos I’d been tagged in at those places had been Pulled.

  Even if colleges looked past my unfinished apps, now my profile contained nothing except the Mr. E. video and a collection of assorted family and friend tags.

  I literally had nothing else to lose.

  moi I’m doing the impossible. I’m going to convince you not to hate me.

  The next morning, I groaned when my alarm went off. Nothing about my life made me want to get out of bed. It was Christmas Eve. In normal, non–devastated-city years, I would be sound asleep right now thanks to Park Prep Senior Perks. Instead I had a half day of school to get through and only eight more days until my college applications were due. Or, at least, were supposed to be due. I was pulling my pillow back over my head when there was a kick on my door.

  “Wallowing under a blanket of woe is me,” I called out.

  Three pink-clad bodies tumbled into my bedroom.

  “Well, throw it off.” Audra frowned. “We brought enormous coffees.”

  Telling by the circles under her eyes and the tiny cowlick of white-blond hair that was poking up at the back of her head, she clearly hadn’t had enough of hers. But it was early. This was the time we all normally woke up. Instead she was at my bedside in full makeup.

  “And egg sammy bagels,” Fawn said as Sharma tossed me a greasy brown bag. “Organic ones from the new place on Bergen.”

  “And an apology,” Sharma said.

  “AnyLiesUnmade?” Fawn cried. “And a stalker outside your house?”

  “I still can’t believe you were on the huge Eden screen.” Audra laughed. “Why didn’t you tell me yesterday in the Elite, you stinker? Or at dinner? I mean, there were a few seconds when I wasn’t being a self-righteous betch.”

  “Wait. How do you guys know about all this?”

  Answer: Mac. Apparently, he’d txted Audra last night, reamed her out, and updated her on everything. So what they had to say was that they now (finally) believed it wasn’t me in the video. If for no other reason than I would never prematurely send off my college applications.

  “And we’re so super-sorry we didn’t believe you from the start,” Fawn added.

  “Though, for the record, it is an excellent editing job,” Audra finished.

  Cue Audra falling onto my bed and tickling me in the ribs. Fawn pulling out her gross hanky to mop up her tears. Sharma looking like God creating Earth as she flicked between the seven holoscreens orbiting her Doc to show me all the videos I’d missed. And yes, part of me wanted to tell them they were too late. That I’d been handling things perfectly fine by myself, and that I’d continue handling them by myself. But then my Doc dinged with a message from a Will at Rise High Entertainment, congratulating me on my notoriety and asking if I was repped by anyone yet.

  Who was I kidding? I’d take just about any support the girls offered. So, silencing my Doc, I said, “Seriously? Pink?”

  “I know,” Fawn pouted. “I lobbied hard for red and green. I mean, it’s Christmas Eve.”

  Sharma made a gag me face. “Still my week. So yes, pink. Innocent yet in-your-face.”

  These weren’t accents of pink with hair clips and shoes. These equaled the-most-ridiculous-outfits-in-your-closet’s-arsenal pink. Sharma was wearing a pink sari that her mom must have lent her. Fawn was in tight hot-pink jeans and a flouncy pink blouse. Audra was in a full-on tutu, wearing pink ankle booties that were on all the fashion sites’ holiday wish lists. When InStitches had first suggested them to me, the comment I left was: For five hundred bucks you should at least get the whole boot.

  “I guess half a boot is good enough.” I nodded at her shoes.

  “Ever heard of a splurge, betch? You’re just mad they’re a size six.”

  “Truth,” I laughed. “You guys look like regurgitated Pepto-Bismol.”

  “It gets better.” Audra brightened as she undid the top two buttons on her blouse.

  Across
her chest, in bright pink lipstick, was the word BRAT.

  Fawn undid her blouse the same way. Across her chest it said SLUT.

  Sharma’s said NERD.

  Audra took a lipstick out of her purse, straddled me, and wrote INNOCENT boldly across my neckline.

  “I love my friends.” The words burbled out of me. “Group pic.”

  With Audra on top of me, I couldn’t reach my Doc, so I dug into my shoulder bag, grasping for my school tablet instead. When I pulled it out, a bunch of papers came with it.

  Fawn’s face paled. “Where did those come from?”

  At first I thought she simply meant because it was paper, and other than, like, Fawn’s mom and similar crunchy granola eaters, no one used paper anymore. But then I saw what made Fawn’s curls droop. There was something written on the papers. My name. Over and over and over again.

  Kyle. Kyle. Kyle. Kyle.

  Front and back. Written thousands of times in all different styles of handwriting.

  “I have no idea,” I said.

  Someone must have shoved them into my bag when I wasn’t looking. But when? When was the last time I looked in my bag? Last night after I got back from Mac’s? Yesterday afternoon when I left Ms. Tompkins in the library? I carried it everywhere but barely used it. At school it sat in my cubby all day. My wide-open, unlockable cubby.

  Fawn and Audra exchanged a look I couldn’t read; then Audra grabbed the papers out of my hand, crumpled them up, and tossed them in my trash can. I knew it was as creepy as it felt because Fawn set down her egg sandwich.

  “Someone’s just trying to scare you…” Audra said.

  “More,” Sharma added.

  “But who?” Fawn asked.

  That was the problem. I didn’t know.

  I txted my hater as the girls and I climbed the steps to school.

  moi Congratulations, the video just hit a million views. We’re famous.

  I refused to ask about the papers. As if I were dealing with a child, I didn’t think bad behavior should be rewarded with attention.

  Just in time for Christmas. And no. Only you’re famous. And maybe it’s time you stopped tracking the count.

  moi Can’t help it. Obsessive-compulsive like that.

  Or just self-obsessed.

  moi Touché.

  Though, look who was talking? I wasn’t the only one who was Kyle Cheng–obsessed. Who else would have made those sheets other than my hater? AnyLies sent me an emote of a devil face blowing a kiss. The last thing I wanted was to piss my hater off.

  “Earth to Kyle,” Audra said as we fell in line to commence the Walk. “So to make up for the whole we-think-you’re-a-big-fat—”

  Fawn loudly cleared her throat.

  “Sorry, Fawnie,” Audra said. “To make up for the whole we-think-you’re-a-big-plus-sized-liar thing, we’ve belatedly done a little work.”

  “First,” Fawn said, “you can thank Jessie Rosenthal for that flash mob in the hall yesterday morning. Ashe Yung told me @JessieRosenthal invited the entire school—minus the four best ones—to participate via Regrets Only. Then she filmed it and posted the whole thing on YurTube. The title is ‘How the mighty shall Fall.’ Capital F.”

  “Leave it to an art major to capitalize a season,” I said. Only Sharma snickered at my grammar joke. “Does that move Jessie to the top spot of AnyLies possibilities?”

  “Her fam def has the neces dollar signs for a techie hater campaign this big,” Sharma said in a display of staccato abbreviation that was impressive even for her.

  “And girl equals twisted,” Fawn said. “Did you see her junior spring show?”

  I did. They were paintings of beautiful girls in idyllic environments. Only problem was all the girls were dead. Some had been strangled. Others had track marks up their arms. Some had split wrists. Graff had made Jessie put up a parental-advisory notice at the entrance to the student gallery.

  “I liked it,” Audra said. “What? I did. It was dark. And kind of sad. But why would Jessie go through all this effort? I mean, she def has reason to despise you, Kyle, but you can’t tell me this is about valedic.”

  “‘Despise’ is a slightly strong word choice, don’t you think, Audy?” I asked.

  But she was right: with my razzing, I had given Jessie reason to dislike me. But was it enough motivation to turn me into one of her little projects Ailey told me about? AnyLies had thoroughly infiltrated my life. And yet ten seconds talking to Jessie and I wanted to punch myself in the face. Mom would love her, the girl absolutely spewed angst, and deepness, and significance. But as weird as it was to say, my hater didn’t seem annoying. My hater seemed like me. Granted, the most I’d heard Jessie actually speak was in the monotone voice-over she’d done for her video about the final extinction of the polar bears.

  Cleo Bradley coughed “slut” as we walked past, amid her friends’ laughter. Audra coughed back “ugly.” No laughter now.

  “Has anyone noticed Jessie’s been hanging out with Ellie Cyr lately?” Fawn asked. “Doesn’t that seem weird? What do those two have in common? Answer: nothing.”

  Sharma swiped at her Doc. “Either way, added subtle mustache to Jessie’s Quip pic. Also, a thought. Came to me yest when you were talking to Eden hacker. Kylie, you equal natural-caught tuna. You’re the real deal. It’s your face but not your chest in the vid. Might be a slim chance the vid doesn’t have anti-Woofer filter on it.”

  “How’d you know Ivy and I’d talked about lab tuna?” I asked.

  “Tech reply,” Sharma said. “Plus, didn’t think it was right, you meeting that hacker alone. So, well, you didn’t. My avat was signed in on your Doc.”

  “How is it everyone keeps hacking into my Doc?” I asked, feeling warmly violated and loved all at the same time.

  “You never change your password” came the same reply in three different voices.

  “And sorry,” Fawn said. “What’s an anti-Woofer filter?”

  Audra gave her a three-second-long sigh. “How do you think the B&P chick conceals her identity? Anti-Woofer filter, Curly Locks. Otherwise anyone could download a pic and run it through Woofer. Already had that thought, Sharmie. Unhappily, there is an anti-Woofer filter on the video.”

  “So the conclusion you’ve all come to is that everything continues to suck.”

  “All-caps B-U-T…” Sharma said.

  “Huge butts?” Fawn teased. “Sharmie, I like it.”

  Sharma’s eye roll said, Remind me why I form RL bonds. “B-U-T got the IP address the vid posted from. Traded the Sword of Light and Dark for one huge favor to speed things up.”

  Fawn flat-out stopped walking. Sharma had been talking about the Sword of Light and Dark since freshman year. She’d finally acquired it this summer after spending an all-nighter battling the same damn zombie in ESSO, the world’s longest-running MMO, which, as Sharma always liked to point out, had a larger economy than most countries.

  “Sharmie, that’s about the biggest sacrifice anyone has ever made for me,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “Excuse me, do you not recall how I’m the only one in this group that will still watch you eat chicken wings?” Audra said. “Talk about a huge sacrifice.”

  “It’s not my fault you guys are afraid of cartilage. I take after my grandma.” I gave Audra a light shove away from me. Laughing, she skipped back to rejoin us. “Speaking of my family, Audy, did you come over and hang out with my mom last night?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I stopped over to apologize. Thought maybe I’d crash with you. But you weren’t home. So we had a chat. Anyway, Sharmie, hope the trade was worth it.”

  “Consternation face,” Sharma said.

  It wasn’t. In Sharma-to-English translation, the video had been sent via a timed rerouter through a public computer at the main branch of the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street. Sharma said the hater went through an IP borrowing program called GoFetch, which meant AnyLies had used a public library computer to
log in to her GoFetch account, selected the video, and then set the clock. The video had been sent, whenever she’d designated, from the IP addy of the public computer. So it wasn’t as simple as seeing who’d logged on to that terminal. She could have posted the video a week or even a month ago.

  “Can we search all the GoFetch accounts that were logged in to from the Forty-Second Street library?” I asked.

  “If so, I don’t know how.”

  Sharma instantly equaled bad mood. She hated when tech failed her.

  I kept waiting for my Doc to buzz. It was two minutes past Mac time. A minute ago, unable to wait any longer, I’d txted:

  moi Our spot? Sí or no?

  Fine. We’d had a slightly intense conversation and we weren’t allowed to touch anymore, but that didn’t mean we weren’t still meeting in the mornings, right? I mean, we’d already missed yesterday. I told myself to relax. He’d probably overslept.

  “So never mind the library,” Fawn said. “Isn’t there a program to hack GoFetch?”

  “If you’re CIA, maybe. Whole point of GoFetch is it makes poster impossible to trace.”

  We’d reached the end of the hall. The girls held their Docs up to do halfhearted kisses. As I lifted mine, my stomach somersaulted. Mac hadn’t overslept. He was walking toward me, curls already nicely slicked back, smiling. And he wasn’t smiling because he was coming to get me. He was smiling because there was a girl walking next to him, practically glued to his arm.

  “Mac-ken-zieee. Explain it again, only this time in beginner mode so I’ll understand it.”

  Oh. My. Yuck.

  The girl was Ailey. Ailey would need to be in Cali not to feel my eyes on her just then. She waved goofily, then put her other hand on Mac’s arm—double the touching—so he’d notice me as well. Right, because even though Ailey was making big, round, innocent eyes at Mac, Ailey had a boyfriend. She wasn’t interested in mine.