Their feet clattered on the tile, high-heeled wedges and short shorts; Bridget could see their long legs through the crack in the door. They weren’t supposed to wear things like that but only the teachers like Dale ever tried to enforce it.
The bell clanged, echoing in the cavernous bathroom, and the door slammed shut. Bridget waited a moment until she was certain she was alone and then left the stall. She had a sixth-period class, Lucia’s class, but stood in the empty hallway, uncertain of what she’d heard and what it meant. She couldn’t stop hearing Kelsey’s voice in her mind, you lit it up, right? What did Riana say? Nothing as far as Bridget could hear.
She stopped in the faculty lounge and found a one-sided flyer for this weekend’s battle of the bands and a pen. She scribbled some of the things she’d heard: streaming app? cat, scope, look here, and say it.
She folded the flyer into her palm, and rushed to class.
?????
After the eighth-period bell, she followed the kids out and rushed to the math wing. Dale was packing up his bag and she knocked a beat—shave and a haircut—on the doorjamb.
“Hey, can I ask you a question? I know you’re into tech.”
Dale gave her a weary look. A now you want to talk because you want something look. After a second, he shrugged, his pointed shoulders lifted up to elfin ears, a sullen gesture.
“What’s streaming?” Bridget felt stupid; she should know this by now. He made an incredulous face.
“Like for TV? Netflix, Amazon, YouTube?”
“No,” Bridget faltered, because she really didn’t know. It could be YouTube. “Like if you were going to stream something yourself?”
“Hmmm, YouTube is static content, mostly. You make a video, you upload it. There are streaming apps, is that what you mean? You can upload a live feed to the Net.”
“Yes, I think that’s it.”
“Okay, right now there’s Periscope, which is connected to Twitter and Meerkat.”
Cat or scope? Scope, I think.
“Bridget, why, what’s up?” Dale cocked his head, legitimately concerned.
“Nothing it’s just a conversation I overheard. Thanks, Dale.”
She waved and left, the back of her neck tingling. He called after her, wait Bridget! But she pretended not to hear him. She grabbed her coat from her classroom and bolted out the front door.
The spring sun beat down, relentlessly cheerful. Kids in the parking lot whooped and hollered, like it was the last day of school. The senioritis was setting in; every day had a jailbreak feel to it.
Bridget climbed into her car and let the heat bake her. She liked this feeling, the greenhouse of her Toyota, heating her from the inside out, warming her blood. She pulled her phone out of her purse and called Tripp.
“Hey, are you working?” She bit her pinkie nail. “Is Nate there?”
He seemed surprised to hear from her. “Uh, no I think he went to the gym. Why?”
“Can I come over?” Her cheeks warmed and she rushed on. “I have a reason, I mean. I think I heard something and I don’t know if it’s something or nothing.”
“You don’t really need a reason.” She could hear his smile.
“Okay.”
“Okay.” She studied the nail, jagged and ripped at the corner. “I’ll be over.”
When she hung up, she was smiling.
?????
Bridget parked in front of Tripp’s townhouse, the front plain and tan, all the way down the line. Some of them had bright flower pots outside, lining the three cement steps up. Window boxes. Welcome mats. Not Tripp’s. Aunt Nadine would have clicked her tongue and said it needed a woman’s touch. She rang the bell and Tripp answered the door in shorts and bare feet, his smile so wide and happy it caught her by surprise. His ankle was encircled by a black, swooping tribal tattoo, the hair on his legs tapering down to smoothness at midcalf. It felt too intimate, his nakedness, that she should know how the hair on his legs grows.
She followed him into the living room and sat on one end of the couch, while he sat on the other.
“What’s up now?” he asked after a moment, the silence thick like a fog.
She told him about the conversation in the bathroom, leaving out the most vulgar parts, because while she wasn’t a prude, saying the word jizz was a bit too fast of an advancement of their friendship.
“Dale said there’s an app called Periscope. Riana said, ‘Cat or scope?’ and Kelsey said ‘Scope.’ ” She pulled her phone out of her purse.
“There’s only one way to figure it out,” Tripp said, leaning close to look over her shoulder. She navigated to the app store and downloaded Periscope. She created an account and logged in. On the main page, hundreds of broadcasts streamed by and she realized too late that she had no way of finding what the girls were looking at. She clicked the friends icons and tried to look for Josh Tempest, Andrew Evans, but no luck.
“Oh,” she said dumbly. “I need their usernames.” They wouldn’t use their real names, most likely.
“Nate would know,” Tripp said as he sat back against the cushion, closer now, his knee on the couch almost touching hers.
She texted Nate, Do you know Josh or Andrew’s Twitter handles?
She waited for his reply and crossed and uncrossed her legs, her skirt suddenly feeling dowdy, its bright paisley marmish. She pulled at the gauzy sleeves of her peasant blouse.
“I’m out of my element at the school more and more each year,” Bridget said. “The technology, it’s so . . . invasive.”
Tripp ran a palm through his hair. “We had to take a class in it last year. A training on social media. It’s probably already out of date.”
“This Periscope, this is scary,” Bridget said. “I mean, with YouTube at least you have a second to think, is this a good idea, should I upload this? This is like, real time.” She remembered Dale’s words. “A live feed.”
Her phone binged in her hand: @TheKingEvans, @JTemp007.
The king? She almost laughed. They all thought of him that way, but to think of that yourself? Sitting in the middle of his crew, his arms out like Jesus at the last supper.
Bridget motioned Tripp over and she typed in @TheKingEvans into Periscope. It popped up with ten recent broadcasts. She clicked them and his profile opened. She scrolled through the list until she hit the second one from the bottom, close to three weeks ago: Temp’s party. She clicked it.
“It’s over thirty minutes long,” Tripp said, his shoulder touching hers.
“I’ll skip a lot of it. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but they said he was going to get in trouble.”
Say you want it, honey. Say yes.
A shaky, wobbling, pixelated stream of Josh’s house, the gourmet kitchen, the fifty-foot foyer, up the steps to the darkened hallway. A bedroom with a mahogany bed, thick carpeting, and clothing strewn everywhere. Still nicer than Bridget’s room at home, though. Wide, flat dresser, piled with soda bottles and notebooks.