The Takedown Read online

  Sharma was breathless with so many words. Whenever she spoke more than one sentence at a time, a little of her mom’s Indian inflection infused her words. When she was angry, it was her dad’s Jamaican accent that crept in. It was adorable.

  Fawn inched away from me on the couch and snuggled in next to Audra instead.

  “Meaning this video, which isn’t of me, has to be of me.”

  “Essentially, Y-E-S.”

  “Audy,” I said. “You know that’s not me, right?”

  Audra had been suspiciously silent since she’d helped kidnap me from school. Splayed out on the chaise section of Sharma’s huge wraparound couch, she was all-caps ABSORBED in her Doc, like she refused to even acknowledge the video. Now she gazed at me. And, completely un-Audra-style, she took a moment to consider her words.

  Finally, carefully, she said, “I know you’re not a liar. So if you say it’s not you, I guess I have to believe you. Which means, for the record, this isn’t like Boobgate, because I never denied that was me in those pics. But it doesn’t matter what I think. By now it’s been downloaded onto so many Docs and hubs, pads, pods, and personals it can live as long as it wants to. So I think what needs to happen, whether it’s you or not, is that you have to accept, embrace, and move on.”

  Embrace? How was I supposed to embrace something like this? And she guessed she had to believe me? Audra was my best friend. No matter what the evidence said, believing me ought to be a prereq.

  “And now,” she said, “can we please take that thing off the screen? I mean, why are we even still watching it when we have an unscheduled day off and Unicorn Wars has new episodes?”

  “No. Look,” Sharma said. “Audra, you’re wrong. You can’t download it. There’s only one true posting. Everything else is a link. It’s an unbreakable DRM.”

  We all watched as Sharma tried to copy the video to her Doc. An error message immediately popped up.

  “A DRM?” I asked. “Translate.”

  “Digital rights management,” Sharma replied.

  “Translate again,” Fawn said.

  “An anticopying system.” Sharma pulled up an Encyclo page on DRMs. “Lets you watch, stream, or link to a vid, but not copy it. So only the person who posted it benefits. Notice the ads.”

  A continuous barrage of ads kept popping up along the top of the video, blocking out Mr. E.’s pompadour, making him look oddly bald. Most were for different sexy apps, things like Get Girls Meeting Girls and Play Undress Her Now!!!! One popped up for an expensive shampoo, and I couldn’t decide if that meant my hair looked great or needed help. Annoyingly, one even flashed for the Bra&Panties chick. Something about a New Year’s Eve app.

  “So I only need to shut down this one video, right? That’s a good thing.”

  “No.” Audra sprawled across Fawn’s lap so Fawn would scratch her back. “A DRM means you need to physically delete the source material from the Doc of whoever ‘made’ this. Otherwise, if YurTube shuts it down, the same person who posted it will retitle it, and it will be back up a click later.”

  It was so quiet you could hear a page load.

  “What?” Audra’s lips were still a perfect bright red. On the second-worst day of my life, Audra kept reapplying her lipstick. “Sharma’s not the only one who knows this stuff. Can we please stop talking about this now? It’s done.”

  I massaged my temples. So I had to delete the video from the Doc of the person who made it. Then all these other links and tags would connect to nothing.

  Across the room, in the charging bay, my Doc spoke. It was my brother, Kyle. Yes, he was also called Kyle. It was my fault. His real name was Étienne. But when we were little, I was convinced he was part of me, just born ten months later. Kyla and Kyle. By the time we were four and five, we both went by Kyle. Everyone still called us the Kyles, even Mom and Dad.

  I’d txted him as soon as we got to Sharma’s. We went to different schools, but our online worlds synced up faster than a Doc to its home hub.

  moi Don’t worry. It’s FAKE.

  He promised he’d skip basketball practice so we could face Mom and Dad together. Every five minutes since, he’d been audio txting to make sure I was okay.

  “Aww, your bro is loaded nachos,” Fawn said, blowing my Doc a kiss.

  Unlike Mac, who hadn’t txted or FaceAlerted even once. I could still see the rage and heartbreak on his face. I bet now he saw the merit in the “just friends” stance I’d been taking for the last three and a half months. Imagine how much worse it would have been if we’d been together together when this thing dropped.

  “I can’t believe this is my life.”

  “No offense, Kylie,” Audra said, tossing her Doc aside, “but only because you’ve never had to deal with a problem before. This is life. On the bright side, at least now you won’t have to keep fending Mac off. What? I’m just saying what we’re all thinking. Or is everyone else also thinking about lunch? Pizza delivery? Or no, let’s go out. Mussels and frites, on me.”

  Fawn made apology face at me but proceeded to scratch Audra’s temples. Audra closed her eyes in contented bliss. And it was only then I realized that her Doc was lying next to me and that for once, shockingly, it wasn’t on private. The screen was still aglow with her latest search. I spun it toward me.

  Her eyes sprang open.

  “Wait.” She scrambled to sit up.

  Although she’d made it clear that my video drama bored her, a little part of me still hoped that she was tracking my online life as heavily as usual. Maybe scrolling message boards or chat forums looking for someone bragging about making the video. But no.

  “Really, Audy?”

  I pushed her Doc back over to her.

  Audra was stalking the Bra&Panties slut.

  For a moment she looked guilty, like she knew she’d been caught, but then she did her little so what? Audra head toggle and sniffed, “I can’t help it. She just announced she’s revealing it all—all, her face, girl parts, everything—on New Year’s Eve, and she’s made this countdown app—”

  “So my life might be over but at least we’ll all know who the B&P slut is. And here I was upset that you were doing something trivial over there. Wait, a countdown app? As in ‘T minus ten, nine…’”

  “Nooo. As in every morning you get a code to look at a close-up pic of one of her features. It’s groundbreaking marketing, actually. You have to see it.”

  She sat up and swiped into her Doc. Maybe she was instantly ready to move past my video, but I wasn’t.

  “Audra, for the last time, I don’t care about the stupid B&P slut.”

  Audra’s tiny doll hands balled into fists. “And I don’t particularly care that you lost your V online and are afraid to admit it, but I sat here and listened to you, didn’t I?”

  The room went silent. Sharma chewed on her lip. Fawn’s eyes filled for a good fourth cry. Audra inspected her nails.

  “At Prep you said you believed me.”

  “I believed you’d launch into rebuttal mode if I didn’t one hundred percent support your resolution. How else were we supposed to get your stubborn little butt out of there?”

  There it was, then. They didn’t believe me and there was no convincing them. It felt even worse than Mac calling me a slut.

  “I’m outta here.” I stood up. “Enjoy your lunch.”

  “Kylie,” Fawn protested.

  I didn’t need their help. I already had a pretty good idea who did this. With any luck, Kyle and I wouldn’t even need to talk to Mom and Dad. I could have the video offline before dinner. And then Mac, the girls, and all my classmates could kiss my ampersand, because I was never speaking to any of them ever again.

  Happy senior year.

  In debate we called it a takeout. It meant you decimated an opponent so thoroughly they couldn’t recover. Once when I’d recapped a win for Mac, enthusiastically detailing how absolute my takeout was, he’d raised that eyebrow of his and said, “Takeout? Aces. I’m starved. Tell me you o
rdered sweet and sour chicken.”

  Ever since, I’d thought the wrestling term was more fitting—a takedown. It essentially means the same thing without bringing to mind white cartons of lo mein. One minute you’re standing. Next you’re completely floored.

  Couldn’t the girls see? This was a takedown. Pure and simple.

  And I could only think of one person who might care enough to decimate me completely. The same person whose dad was some big-deal head honcho of development at Eden and had access to all the latest software. The same person who had been cozying up to my best friend for weeks now. As I sat in a café in Bed-Stuy, ordering one pastry at a time and waiting for Prep to let out, my profile told me she’d watched the video twenty-seven times. A few times for laughs, I could understand, but twenty-seven? That spelled guilt (only with entirely different letters).

  So two hours, one really long walk, and five baked goods later, I pressed a doorbell I hadn’t rung in over three years. No matter who answered, they wouldn’t be happy to see me, but I prayed it wasn’t her mom. The last time I’d seen Mrs. Amundsen was at the school talent show. Her withering gaze burned worse than that home hair-removal machine Audra had once inflicted on my toes.

  The door opened.

  Did I have no good karma chips left?

  “Kyle.” Ailey’s mom took a graceful step back inside. Not to let me in. More like she might slam the door in my face. “What a surprise.”

  Ailey’s mom ran a Bronx-based modern dance company. A former ballerina, her posture was pin straight, her skin coal black, and her manner elegant. For as long as I could remember, she’d worn her salt-and-pepper hair cropped to her head.

  My voice cracked as I said, “Hi, Mrs. Amundsen. Is Ailey home?”

  I still thought about the exact day we stopped hanging out. It was the first week of freshman year, lunch. Audra came up to us and set a fresh-squeezed green juice in front of me. It perfectly matched the one she was holding.

  “There are four seats at my table,” Audra said without preamble. “Which means one’s empty.”

  I looked over at Fawn (who waved) and Sharma (who was glued to her Doc) and their two other identical juices, and I’d never wanted to be anywhere so badly in my life. I’d noticed the girls during freshie orientation. The ease between them was palpable, like only in each other’s company were they all whole. I guess that’s what being friends from birth got you. Their mothers were in the same Lamaze class, then after the babies were born it was weekly playdates, then shared babysitters and summer camps, and eventually aligned middle schools.

  “Can Ailey sit with us too?” I asked.

  Audra looked into the distance, twisting the swoop of her black flapper’s bob. She took a sip of her juice. “Like I said, there are four seats.”

  I shrugged at Ailey, like Audra’s answer was the most logical argument in the world, trying not to look as giddy as I felt. Ailey and I had been friends since kindergarten. But even though she knew everything about me, from the mole I’d had removed when I was six to my speech impediment with the letter R until I was eight, I would never have called her my missing piece. Maybe because when eighth grade hit and I got prettier and people were nicer to me, she began acting…what’s a word that means fake sugary, worried, and proprietary all in one? Anyway, she started acting that. When Audra walked up to me a year later because, as she later told me, I “wore cute shoes and a powerful aura,” all I felt was relief.

  Ignoring Ailey’s panicked expression, I went to sit with the girls. After all, they’d gotten me a juice and there were four seats. Never mind that it left Ailey at a table with three empty ones. At least I’d asked if she could join us.

  In a way, I’d been waiting for Ailey to take revenge for years. Part of me (a very minuscule part) even kind of thought, Good for her. But now it was time to make it stop.

  “I just came home myself,” Mrs. Amundsen said. “Let me see….Ailey might still be at the pool.”

  Before she went to check, Mrs. Amundsen closed the door. Mrs. A. used to call me her other kid. This same door that she had just shut against me would have been thrown open. She’d have chatted about this or that as she walked away, letting me lock up. I used to spend the first ten minutes at Ailey’s talking to her mom. Now she didn’t invite me into the vestibule.

  Five minutes passed. I clicked on Ailey’s CB profile. It said she’d shared the Mr. E. video with her entire peer contact group—over a thousand people. I was about to jab my thumb down on the doorbell when the door opened and there was Ailey. Study Glasses were pushed up on her head, partially holding back her curly bangs. Ailey had her mom’s willowy body and oval face, her dad’s Norwegian nose and cheekbones.

  She glanced around outside hopefully, like maybe the other girls were there too.

  “I’m alone.”

  “I see that,” she said.

  “Can I come in?”

  She hesitated, part in awe that I was on her steps, part fearful as to why. I figured that had to be a good sign.

  “Ailey, you can’t not let me into your house.”

  Sighing, she held the door open.

  Walking inside felt like how I imagined it would if I stepped into my house after it had been sold and strangers moved in. It was 100 percent familiar and foreign at exactly the same time. The dance prints on the walls, the African blankets piled in multiple baskets around the living room. Ailey’s father in the back doorway, glaring at me like the flu virus had just invaded his home.

  “Hey, Mr. A.,” I said mildly, waiting for it.

  He wanted to have a go at me? Let him. It would give me a better opening for what I had come to say. Ailey was already at the top of the stairs, probably secretly praying her father would say everything she’d never been able to. But debate was all about preparation. And though he’d had over three years to build his arguments, Mr. Amundsen now only had two minutes to put them together.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said.

  “It has,” I said, matching his cool inflection.

  For as long as I’d known the Amundsens, Mr. A. had hated his job at Eden, but it paid him buckets of money and it meant Ailey always had the latest tech. In turn, Ailey was as addicted to her Doc as Sharma. Could Mr. A. get his hands on unreleased video-editing software? No doubt.

  I waited, but that was it. That was the best he could do? A disdainful sniff and “It’s been a long time”?

  “Later, Mr. A.”

  “Leaving in twenty for that thing in the city,” Mrs. Amundsen called, as I jogged up the stairs after Ailey.

  This was Ailey’s out, in case things went badly. The nostalgic comfort I’d felt walking into Ailey’s house dissolved. When we got to her room, Ailey left her bedroom door open a crack as if she might need to call for help.

  If I had anything to say about it, she would.

  Only Ailey didn’t give me the chance to say anything.

  “So holy gosh, how are you even breathing right now?”

  No sooner did I step into Ailey’s room than she was a blur of activity. Picking clothes up off her floor, her chair, her bed. She must have had one of those mornings where nothing looked right, because there were clothes all-caps EVERYWHERE. And as she flitted from one disaster area to another, her mouth ran just as quickly.

  “That video is mega terrible. I watched it, like, a thousand times. Sorry, I swear I tap replay right before you see your face. It’s just Mr. E., you know? Having S-E-X. With you.”

  The thought brought her to a standstill. With all the cleaning and the mile-a-minute talking, she was a little out of breath. A curl fell into her eyes. She blew it away and then laughed, as if she’d just caught sight of herself standing there with that enormous armload of clothes.

  “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting company.” She nodded at me to sit on her desk chair, then dropped her clothes back on the floor and sat next to them. “And I’m just so surprised face you’re here. But I’m equaling totally rude. Are you okay? More important,
do you have any idea of who posted it?”

  “Posted it?” I stayed standing. “I’m here to figure out who made it.”

  I expected her to stutter and apologize or to at least be caught off guard. Instead she shook her head like she had water in her ears.

  “You mean it’s fake?” she said with incredulousness that was too doe-eyed to be anything but genuine. “Oh holy gosh, I didn’t even think about that possibility. It’s just so clearly you. Wow. H-A. H-A. Give me a minute here.”

  As she processed, Ailey separated and then rebraided her hair. I’d forgotten how perfect Ailey and her hair were for each other. Bouncy, crazy, fun. Her nervous energy evaporated.

  “Right. Sign me up. How can I help?”

  And it’s weird, because in the face of the first nonfamilial support I’d had all day, even though I remembered a thousand things I liked about Ailey, I suddenly remembered the things I disliked more. How she reeked of insecurity and clinginess. How every decision was wracked with anxiety—Ummm, I can’t decide. Which burrito are you getting? And the worst, how fawning she was around the in crowd.

  My mom still held my breakup with Ailey against me, but at the time, detaching from Ailey had felt like shrugging off a bad mood. I had refused to feel sorry about it.

  Until now. Within two minutes Ailey had been more supportive than the girls had been since we left Prep. Other than being looped into our ongoing group thread—which continued to make my Doc hum with pics of food we needed to eat and funny animal vids—no one had individual txted me even once since I left Sharma’s. I sank down onto Ailey’s desk chair. Someone believed me. Suddenly having a friend who liked me too much didn’t seem like such a terrible thing.

  But alongside my realization, Ailey had one of her own.

  “Oh,” she said softly. “I just clicked replay. You said you came here to figure out who made it. You didn’t come for my help, did you? You came to blame me.”

  “I think you should go.”

  Ailey made a sad face. Not like the pantomime of an emote, but a genuinely sad expression, and I knew right then that she couldn’t be anything but innocent.