The Takedown Page 6

  I tried to push back, out of sight of my screen’s camera. The wheel on my desk chair caught on my rug, and the whole thing tipped backwards. My arms pinwheeled. I righted myself, but just barely. As I tapped frantically at the disconnect button, whoever was watching me said in a joyously evil singsong, “Kisses.”

  I couldn’t push air in or out fast enough. I closed out of FaceAlert. I shut down my room screen, then powered off my Doc entirely. I closed my blinds and checked the locks on my windows. I couldn’t have felt more exposed than if you’d shoved me into the middle of Union Square naked. And no matter how secure I made my room, I couldn’t stop hearing that voice. They must have used a voice changer, because no human vocal cords could reach that high a pitch.

  Kisses.

  It took three lathers and rinses to wash away the creepy ick. In future debates I’d argue that a hot shower could solve most non-life-threatening problems. As I shampooed my hair into a soapy tower for the fourth time, I tried to mute the high-pitched evil doll voice I kept hearing in my head. Kisses. Kisses. Kisses. I’d tried to call the blocked number back, but it was one of those single-use, untraceable, offshore e-mails that the US government was trying to shut down for exactly these reasons. I also tried to think about all the recent lies I’d told.

  I mean, “any lies unmade,” right?

  Here’s the problem. I could see people calling me BTCHY (partially true, especially when uncaffeinated), arrogant (lightly true), or entitled (definitely not true), but a liar?

  A requirement of best-friending Audra meant I was on a first-name basis with brutal honesty.

  After my shower, I popped the door and stayed in the steamy bathroom, unable to shake the chill I felt. I was twisting my hair into pin curls when a sudden knock made me jump.

  Kisses.

  Mom leaned against the door frame. If my dad crushed the coolest dad category, my mom hands down won coolest human. In her late twenties, she’d started StitchBtch, an online Brooklyn arts-and-crafts collective that now had brick-and-mortar stores in almost all fifty states. She still made most of her own clothes and was cofounder of the Sustainability Now local business movement. When I was growing up, even though she was in her forties, strangers regularly thought she was my babysitter.

  Now I couldn’t help mentally airbrushing her: dyeing the white streak out of her copper-brown hair, erasing the wrinkles from around her gray eyes. It was only recently that I’d started this airbrushing thing. It was only recently that Mom had started looking old. Like everything else about us nowadays, I hated it.

  “I’m going to school tomorrow, aren’t I?” I asked.

  “Your dad and I think you’ll only look guiltier if you don’t. Not to mention, you can’t ruin your perfect attendance.”

  Tranquila, I told myself. She meant it as a joke, even if it sounded like a criticism.

  “Does Daddy hate me?”

  “Kyle.” Mom gave me a look. “You know Daddy: he just needs to absorb this at his own speed. Let him dredge parenting forums for a while. He’ll find someone who’s encountered something like this and be ordering apology Mexican food before the night is over. Your brother ate all the soup, by the way. Four bowls. I swear he has a tapeworm.”

  “Do you believe me?”

  If anyone wasn’t going to, it would be my mom.

  “Did you sleep with Mr. E.?” she asked carefully.

  I stopped twisting my hair. “Ew, no. No way.”

  “Okay, then I believe you.”

  I was so stunned I almost asked her to repeat herself. Instead I kept pinning up my hair.

  “I messaged Dr. Graff,” she said. “The earliest she can see us tomorrow is second period. If it’s terrible before that, you can always leave and come home with me. And then it’s only the half day on Friday and everyone will be too excited for Christmas on Saturday to talk about that video anyway. By Monday it’ll be completely forgotten.”

  Not likely.

  If this were a normal year, I wouldn’t even have to go to school on the twenty-fourth as one of Park Prep’s Senior Perks. Then with a full week off between Christmas and New Year’s, yes, maybe everyone would have forgotten all about this. But because of all the days we’d missed thanks to Hurricane Riley in September, and then the October blizzard, this year our winter break was literally nonexistent. And I actually mean literally. Christmas and New Year’s fell on Saturdays. We were back in classes on the following Mondays.

  Prior to the video, I’d been fine with this schedule. It would be only the second Christmas we’d be spending without my năinai, my grandma. None of the Chengs were much thrilled by the prospect. The last thing I needed was one more day sitting at home missing her.

  Plus, all the way back in October, Audra had declared a moratorium on Christmas, saying there was no possible way she’d be able to deal this year. Seasons past, the days leading up to and after the holiday had resulted in more Audra meltdowns than any of us knew what to do with. Christmas might be all about the gifts, but it’s also still a little about family. And Audra’s was awful. Since I’d known her, Audra had shown up at one or another of our houses at some point on Christmas Day, usually drunk, her face a wreck, asking if she could borrow our family and yuletide cheer.

  This year, when Audra declared she was ignoring the holiday entirely, we other three girls all immediately said it was fine by us. If it weren’t for the Community Club’s holiday party—the best day of my entire year three years running—I’d also prefer to ignore Christmas entirely.

  “Want me to do the back?” Mom asked.

  “Sure.”

  I handed her the comb and sat on the tub. For a minute we were quiet as she divided my hair into sections. Minus lots of laughter, this almost felt like old times.

  “So why would someone do this to you?”

  And this felt like new times. Now we were on our regular footing. Maybe Mom believed I hadn’t slept with Mr. E., but she sure as H-double-L believed I’d done something to deserve the attack.

  I often wondered who was more upset by the fact that Mom didn’t like me anymore. Me or Mom? I’d go with me.

  The thing is, back when Mom was in high school, she was essentially the same as me—driven, top of her class, and geeky about her extracurrics. The only difference was that Mom had glasses the size of hubcaps and she crocheted most of her clothes. Today, she’d have been (and was) an e-fashionista. But back then, she had no friends, spent lunch in the art room, and was ruthlessly picked on by the popular girls.

  Never mind that Mom turned out a thousand times more successful; I still caught her browsing her old nemeses’ profiles every so often, wine in hand. If we saw a group of attractive in-crowd kids on the train, her go-to reaction was an eye roll. She wouldn’t watch any shows with me if the lead teen character wasn’t a social moron. In a thousand little ways, my mom was prejudiced against popular.

  So imagine her horror when her own daughter escaped bad vision and turned out hot. (What? It’s okay for girls to say they think they’re ugly.) Imagine her double horror when her daughter shed her lifetime best friend and gained three gorgeous crazies instead. Never mind that the girls and I were nothing like those nasty losers who had abused Mom.

  My whole life we’d been close. Now we were this.

  I groaned. “Mom.”

  “Kyle, there must be some reason someone would do this to you.”

  “Clearly, because I’m an evil, awful person.”

  She wrapped a strand of my hair a little tighter than it needed to be.

  “What did Mac say about the video? I’m surprised he’s not glued to your hip tonight.”

  I forced myself to take a deep breath. Audra would be thrilled if her parents showed this much interest in her life.

  “He thinks it’s true.”

  Working to keep her expression blank, she reached around me and took another bobby pin off the sink ledge. Mom had been so grateful for her high school boyfriend that she’d dated him into her late tw
enties. I was barely out of the womb a decade later when she began telling me what a mistake that was.

  “Before I met Daddy I dated a lot of jerks,” Mom said.

  “We weren’t dating,” I clarified, again. “And Mac’s not a jerk.”

  “All I’m saying is there will be other boys.”

  Like Mac? I doubted it.

  But I didn’t say that; instead I went with “Duh, Mom. I’m seventeen. I know how upgrades work. Why settle for a Series Twenty-One when you can get a Series Twenty-Two Invisible?”

  It was Audra’s line, not mine. And it couldn’t be further from how I felt. I figured Mom would whap me in mock disgust and then we’d both laugh. Dad would have laughed. Mom would have too, a few years back. Now she scraped the last bobby pin along my scalp.

  “Ow.”

  “Oops. Sorry. Well, I’m glad you have it all figured out.”

  She thought I was serious. As if she couldn’t stand one more second of my presence, she sloppily made one last huge pin curl, then left with a “Don’t stay up too late.”

  Frowning into the mirror—because I refused to cry over this again—I separated the last giant curl into four normal ones.

  “Kisses.”

  I’d never felt so lonely in my life.

  I was in bed by nine. For maybe the first time in my life, I didn’t call out good night to my parents. I just shut my door and turned off my light. Then with the covers over my head and Teddy wedged beneath my chin, I hesitated only a click before whispering, “Call Mac.”

  Fine. Somewhere in the world a feminist was gagging on her coconut water because I was calling the boy who’d just about cursed me out on the street, but would it have been better if I’d waited for him to call me? Eighteenth-century was more like it. Sometimes need ruled out circumstance. And Mac danced with me anywhere, anywhere—subway, street, cafeteria—if he knew it’d make me smile. He took me for mystery bike rides that ended in tacos and chocolate–peanut butter ices. Mac thought I was a good person, just the way I was.

  Or at least he used to.

  Our origin story went like this: I’d crushed on Mackenzie Rodriguez since the first day I laid eyes on him our freshman year. Forget his perfect bone structure, that soccer body, and those curls; he was mysterious, aloof, and rumored to be some kind of mathematics savant. The entire school crushed on Mac our freshman year. Nobody launched a Bet on who he’d pair off with, but considering the interest, someone should have.

  And I’d have put every last credit on myself.

  There was little doubt Mac liked me back. Whenever we passed in the hall or bumped into each other outside my freshie math class, our eyes locked. Beats blaring from his headphones (this was before Dr. Graff threatened suspension if she had to tell him one more time…), he’d dance that eyebrow up and give me this adorable, sexy lopsided smile. Afterwards I’d have to lean against a cubby to catch my breath, Mac peeking back at me over his shoulder as he ambled away.

  Taylor Louise threw the first party that fall. Her parents went to Tulum for the weekend, leaving her in charge of their Prospect Heights brownstone. A mistake they only made once.

  In my honor, Audra picked our clothing theme even though it wasn’t her turn—Love ’Em and Keep ’Em. The girls had decided a full week beforehand that Taylor’s party would be the night Mac and I got together.

  It was my first high school party. We made our entrance, appropriately late. I still wonder if things would have worked out differently if we’d arrived on time. Fawn and Sharma went to scope out the kitchen, and Audra and I went in search of a bathroom. We found a line snaking through the second-floor hallway. Audy cut right to the front.

  “Tiny girl bladders out here.” She pounded on the door. “Hurry it up.”

  Silence. She pushed against the door. It popped open. And there was Mac. With his face plastered to Keisha Hutchinson’s.

  “Ew.” To her credit, Audra did not whiplash her head to catch my reaction; instead she reached for my hand and said, “At least have the courtesy to lock the door.”

  “Està roto,” Mac sang out, barely coming up for air. “Why do you think everyone else is waiting?”

  I never knew if he realized I was standing there or not. Regardless, ice cream, tears, and a sleepover at Sharma’s followed. I felt worse than when I saw the McClellans’ dog get hit by that cab. I quickly got used to the feeling.

  Just that fall alone, I witnessed Mac making out with Empire Quinn, Sukie Moon, and Trinity Henry. Over the next three years, almost every time I saw him outside school, and half the time in school, he was welded to a different female’s face. Girls who didn’t even go to Park Prep waited on the steps to walk him home after class. And don’t even txt me about the rumors. As if the RL version of Mac weren’t bad enough, tales of his conquests, spoken in hushed awe, circulated the grades.

  Did I know Rodriguez was dating two seniors at Bloomberg?

  Did I hear Rodriguez “did it” on the great lawn of Prospect Park—during the day?

  You can’t help who you’re attracted to? Baloney. Try harder. Luckily, our different focus tracks kept us on different floors of Park Prep. Yet for three years straight, Mac seemed to cross my path at least once a day up on three. And every time, he would tilt an imaginary hat or execute a tiny dance step for my amusement. And every time, I ignored him entirely.

  By that point, I’d gotten a rep of my own—one for not dating.

  Why would I? Never mind that growing up sharing the same search engine with a boy made the entire species lose much of its charm, but I mean, was Izel Kemp worth missing Model UN or not organizing the Walk for Paws benefit? President Malin didn’t have her first serious boyfriend until she was twenty-nine and had already won a congressional seat. President Malin didn’t get married until she was forty-two. I had loads of time to date.

  That’s not to say I didn’t kiss a few other guys, or, like, flirt chat, but the only person I had any interest inserting an ounce of free time into was rumored to have inserted himself into just about everybody else.

  Sorry. That was gross. I couldn’t help myself.

  There was no way I was dating Mackenzie Rodriguez.

  Plus, he never asked.

  Until senior year.

  Calling Mac, my Doc screen read, because txting was too imprecise and FaceAlerting wasn’t my friend between ten p.m. and ten a.m. Calling Mac, because ever since September, we’d talked every night right before we went to bed. Even if only for a minute. Without exception. Calling Mac, because tonight I didn’t want to hear Mac’s avatar’s voice via audio txt; I wanted to hear his voice voice and the adorable way he rolled his r’s. I quickly got my wish.

  Este es Mackenzie Rodriguez. Hablame.

  He’d sent me to voice mail. My pic had shown up on his Doc and he’d swiped it away. I hung up. Why bother leaving a message?

  Mac’s silence pretty much said it all.

  A little after one in the morning, my Doc buzzed. Instantly awake (barely asleep to begin with), I snatched it off my bureau. It had to be Audra. It wasn’t entirely rare for us to get annoyed at each other—actually of late it was all too common—but the great thing about us was that we didn’t hold grudges and our mini disputes never lasted more than five minutes at a time.

  However, it had now been over thirteen hours since I’d heard from her. And every time I went to txt her, her avatar was red. For once her sleeplessness was working in my favor. Girlfriend insomniaced hard. If she wasn’t sleeping over and prodding me awake, she was doing it via txt. Rare was the night when I didn’t hear from her at all.

  But when I glanced at my screen, my skin reprickled with chills that hadn’t fully left. It was definitely not Audra.

  moi Why are you doing this to me?

  [ ] Isn’t it obvious? To hurt you.

  I’ll let you in on a little secret.

  The in kids know you’re watching.

  And just the way you could search Brittany Mulligan’s Woofer all day and not
find a single double-chinned pic of her, even though she swore she didn’t pay to have her face Pulled—what you see is a crafted image.

  Around you, the in kids smile brighter. Laugh louder. And it’s no accident that their every conversation sounds like an inside joke.

  It’s not that it’s fake. They are enjoying themselves, only more so when you’re around.

  This could work for you, too, you know. Nothing annoyed Audra more than Jacqueline Menendez and the uppity chem geeks. Liked. Hated. Popular. Unpopular. It’s all how you spin it.

  And it’s definitely all a ruse.

  So the next morning as I walked through Park Prep’s double doors and the first-floor hallway grew deadly quiet, I met that silence with a tiny smile. I knew it would be awful. Everyone else didn’t have to know that too.

  The video was at 250,000 views. I tossed my hair. I hadn’t heard from any of the girls since I left Sharma’s yesterday. Even our group thread had taken on a morose hush. I smirked and waved at Charity Knowles. What would I do when I got to Coffee Check and it was obvious I had no other Docs to clink against mine? No clue. I put extra sway in my walk.

  I was used to the head-angled-down, eyes-angled-up way that my age group viewed the world, but I’d never had an entire silent hallway give it to me. AnyLies could be any of them. I mean, when Oscar Hawley had asked me out last year, I’d laughed.

  Him?

  Or what about Mr. Huge Ego Ulee Ostrander, who I’d crushed in debate practice for two years running?

  Him?

  It was like a hallway of Justice League villains. Just beyond Ulee, Jessie Rosenthal and Ellie Cyr were again wedged together like two badly mismatched shirts on the same sales rack. As I passed, the girls stopped chatting and watched me with the grim silence of seeing a funeral pass.

  Them?

  I swiped at my Doc, pretended to laugh at something I saw there.

  And then a mountain of curls was beside me and a hand slapped my butt, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Fawn. My Fawn had come through, adorable in a black pantsuit. Then Sharma, in a long black sheath dress and arm bangles, was on my other side. And seconds after, Audra completed our line.