“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.
Oh, wait, that’s right. Mac wasn’t my boyfriend.
Thank you, self-sabotaging Kyle.
Anytime, trust-your-instincts Kyle.
When Mac saw me, he gave me his sexy lopsided playah grin, flashed me a peace sign, then hiked his jeans and walked in the other direction. Ailey shot me a What the…? look, then hurried to keep up with him. I could hear her voice chattering all the way down the hall. Wanting very much to scream, I instead wrapped Sharma in a tight hug.
“I’m sorry you traded your sword and lost the ability to be invisible and kill your enemies with one stroke. Sounds like a perfect weapon right about now.”
Sharma adjusted her glasses. “Don’t forget regenerate lost limbs.”
“Smile, Kylie-cat,” Audra sang through her teeth while holding her Doc up to mine, her eyes narrowed after Mac. “Everyone’s watching.”
I lowered my Doc before it tapped hers.
“Honestly, Audra, I could care less. F them and F my life.”
Audra’s brow furrowed. “Firstly, I would think that you had learned by now that you should always care who’s watching. And second, I don’t want to be that gal, except we all know I am, so I’m just going to say I warned you, didn’t I? If you wanted him, you should have lassoed that stallion while you had the chance.”
“Ailey has a boyfriend,” Fawn said.
“I’m not saying it’s Ailey she has to worry about. Just be ready for some competition. Now that people think you were with Mr. E., they’ll see a big old For Rent sign on Mac.” Then with seemingly complete indifference, Audra casually asked, “Is Mac for rent, B-T-W?”
“Why, Audy, you in the market?”
Her eyes narrowed with displeasure, but taking her own advice, she pouted her lips and fixed my necklace so it was lying flat against my sternum.
“Maybe. I mean, if you don’t want to experience his thumb magic, I don’t see why I shouldn’t partake.”
Her whole body shivered in anticipation.
“Auds, sometimes you can be such a…”
“Brat?”
She gestured to the word on her chest like she was an old-skool game-show girl. Then she cackled and sauntered off to class.
Actually, I would have said BTCH.
I really needed to get into her Doc.
“The shift to the digital rules we live by all started with SeaWorld.”
The law office was on the thirtysomethingth floor of a Gothic building on Lexington Avenue. Looking at it from the street, I imagined tiny, dark offices with low ceilings. Once inside, I saw I wasn’t far off. It was a little before one, but three floor lamps were turned on, along with the overheads, and it still felt dimly lit.
Rick Brenner was the lawyer. A few of the people on the parenting forum Dad found had raved about him. He specialized in social-media and entertainment-media law. As soon as we entered his office, I knew he’d be no help. His walls were hung with actual black-and-white photographs framed inside pristine white mats. We were getting media advice from someone who still shot with film.
“SeaWorld,” I said. “Terrific.”
Mom tensed next to me. She’d surprisingly said nothing about the word on my chest, though she had given me a tissue and some serious directional eyebrows in the elevator ride up. Dad let out a weak laugh. The lawyer gave them a reassuring smile.
“I also have a teenage daughter. And yes, SeaWorld. It was a live-animal theme park.”
I laughed. “I’m not that young. I know what SeaWorld was.”
I also knew it went under when I was, like, seven, after a tech company opened up a bunch of 3-D ocean holoparks. The holoparks were expensive to build, but a lot cheaper to maintain. The boycotts over animal cruelty and the massive sea-life deaths made it harder and harder for the live-animal parks to keep stock and draw tourists, despite the fact that they’d stopped breeding orcas. And who’d want to just look at animals swimming in water when you could be “in” the water with them?
My Doc buzzed with a txt from Mom.
mama Manners. NOW.