Jackie held up her hands. “I’m just saying the scary shit was how Hailey went all Westboro Baptist on the girls they caught sucking face.”
Tino had calmed down a little, and Jaila had given him his knife back, which he was playing with. Opening and closing the blade, probably unaware he was doing it. “So what? Who gives a shit who’s banging who?”
“Whom,” Jaila said.
“What?”
“Who’s banging whom.”
Tino tensed. “I don’t need a fucking grammar lesson.”
Jaila shrugged.
“I’m not gay,” Georgia said in a quiet voice.
David piped up. “It’s cool if you are. I’m bi. This one time, my friends Ryan and Tony and I—”
“I’m not!” Georgia stood and stormed away from camp.
Cody moved to go after her, but Sunday waved him off. “Let me talk to her,” she said. He nodded, and Sunday moved off into the woods to find Georgia.
“You think that girl Hailey really died?” Jenna asked when Sunday was gone. She was looking at Cody, but her question was for everyone.
Jaila was using her pack as a pillow and was stretched out near enough to the fire to keep warm but far enough away not to roast. The days might have been warm, but it had started to cool rapidly once the sun had set, and all we had were our shitty, thin sleeping bags. “Probably not,” she said. “Sounds like Georgia wished Hailey had died, though.”
“Great,” Tino said. “So we’ve got a pyro, a liar or a thief—my money’s on liar—a closeted lesbian with mean-girl issues, and I don’t know what your problem is.”
“I don’t have one,” Jaila said. “But you might if you don’t shut your mouth.”
“If y’all are going to fight,” Jackie said, “I’ve got ten bucks on Jaila.”
“I’ll put twenty on that,” Lucinda added.
Jenna let out a groan. “How about no one fights? Can we do that? Maybe? If I’ve got to be stuck in the woods with you people—”
“?‘You people’?” Jackie said. “And what’s that supposed to mean? You think you’re better than us?”
“I think that’s exactly what she was implying,” I said, slipping my voice into the fight without drawing attention to myself.
“You don’t know anything about me,” Jackie kept going. “Oh no, you like to set fires because you’re just another entitled suburban girl who thinks she’s got problems. Your problems don’t mean shit out here.”
Jaila sat up on one elbow, staring at each of us like she was the only adult in a room full of bratty children. “Everyone just calm down, all right?”
“I’ve got a story,” David said. “A real ghost story, you know?”
Lucinda glared at him. “I swear to God if this is a sex story, I’m going to cut off your balls.”
David could barely resist looking at his crotch. “Uh . . . it’s a ghost story. Sort of. There’s also cake.”
“Quit telling you’re going to tell it,” Jackie said, “and just fucking tell it already.”
“You know, a recent study showed that eighty-six percent of people admitted that they masturbate regularly, and fourteen percent of people lied about not masturbating. Everyone masturbates. I think the more interesting question is why? Let’s see a show of hands, huh? How many of you masturbated this month? This week? Today? I’m the only one? Yeah, sure.”
Lucinda growled low. David cleared his throat and said, “It’s relevant! I swear.”
“Get to the ghosts,” Cody said.
“Yeah, okay,” David said. “But the story starts with a video.”
“BIG BROTHER, PART 1”
by E. C. Myers
YOU KNOW THAT “Invisible Hand” video that went viral a couple of years ago? Of course you do. Everyone’s seen it. As of last month, the last time I had Internet access, it had over two-and-a-half billion views—almost as much as “Gangnam Style.” I bet if it were shorter and had music, it would be number one. Missed opportunities. On the other hand, people have cut it down and remixed it with everything from the Ghostbusters theme (too obvious) to Hamilton’s “Satisfied” (strangely satisfying), and there’s just no beating the original. Pun intended.
Okay, so if you haven’t seen it, you’ve probably heard about it, unless you’ve been living under a rock, or living without Wi-Fi, which is the same thing. The original video’s really long, about six hours—six hours, seven minutes, forty-two seconds to be exact. Sure, most viewers only watch a certain seventeen minutes near the beginning, but the length of the video helps make the case for its authenticity.
You really haven’t seen it? Okay. The video shows a pretty average teenage girl’s bedroom and a pretty average teenage girl sleeping in bed. The light’s on, which, yeah, maybe seems weird. A lot of people have pointed to that as evidence that it’s a hoax, but there’s a reason for it, trust me. And she’s sleeping on top of the covers with gym shorts and a tank top. There’s a book next to her, but you can’t quite make out what it is. It’s The Martian Chronicles.
Yes, the book could explain why the light’s on, if she fell asleep while reading it. But that’s not knocking the book. I’ve read it; it’s a good book. Sometimes even a good book will make you fall asleep if you’re tired enough. If you’ve been staying up late, night after night. Trying to stay awake, night after night.
The picture quality’s embarrassingly low, like it’s been recorded through the webcam on a laptop. Exactly like that because it was.
You see her sleeping for a few minutes, and it’s around then that people start fast-forwarding, or they check out and switch to the latest episode of The Psychic Twins. Watching a random girl sleeping either makes you feel like an Edward Cullen–level creep or it turns you on, but if you wait for it—yeah, people have remixed it with that Hamilton song too—then you’ll see something start to happen.
She starts to move a little bit, kind of a shimmy, kind of a wiggle, and she smiles. Then she opens her mouth, and her breath hitches, she gasps, and— Do you want me to go on? Do you need a moment?
Okay. Then she arches her back a little, and she moans. Yeah, the way you think, all sexy-like, like she must be having the best. Dream. Ever. You wish you were having that dream. Maybe you wish she were dreaming about you. By the end of the video, she’s doing full-on When Harry Met Sally, and please don’t tell me you haven’t seen that classic film either. I don’t want to know.