“Not like you do now,” I said as I did a quick search.
I wasn’t sure how to word my question, but the Internet helped with that. There were enough results to make your mind spin, but none that seemed to match. I swiped further and further into the search. Then, as Kyle clicked next on the seventh episode in a row of Cloaked Games, twenty pages into my search, I found her—a Christmas miracle.
Her name was Trina Davis. And, thanks to my hater, she was about to help me figure out who my hater was.
The next day, when I woke, warm sunshine was filtering through my curtains. The house smelled of Sunday—organic bacon, chocolate chip pancakes, and coffee. I cheered when I swiped on my Doc. Christmas was finally over. Plus, I’d slept until eleven, which meant I was nearly late for my own party. After quickly responding to a string of CB messages that Trina had sent me after I went to sleep, I leapt out of bed.
Twenty-five minutes later, the groggy versions of Fawn, Sharma, and Mac were in my living room, all decked out in their lazy weekend attire. Late last night, I’d invited them all over for an All Brains on Deck meeting. Now Mom brought in a huge pile of pancakes. Boy-Kyle passed out plates and in an effort to save room for dim sum brunch in a few hours, incredibly didn’t keep one for himself. My dad yawned. There was only one empty seat.
Audra was a no-show.
I’d expected it would take her a few days to cool down after our Christmas Eve fight over the B&P slut, but I hadn’t heard from her even once yesterday. And that was huge considering she’d come to my grandmother’s funeral two years ago. She knew Christmas wasn’t only tough on her nowadays.
moi Urgent. You okay? Please confirm not dead in gutter.
Since there was no worse feeling than not being able to reach someone, our code was that if we added Urgent to any message and you still had fingers on your hand, you MUST, caps and italics, respond. I could feel her gauging just how grudgey she felt like being. It took her a full two minutes to write back.
audy Sorry can’t make your big show and tell. Busy. There in spirit.
moi Busy with what?
audy Schoolwork.
moi Schoolwork?
On the room screen, my Doc on share mode so it would sync with the hub, I pulled up the G-File account I’d discovered last night while searching student-teacher sex scandals. Unlike mine, which came up first, the one on-screen was 336 entries in. But that didn’t make it any less relevant.
“Meet Trina Davis,” I said.
No response. This was one sleepy audience. Kyle’s eyes flickered to Fawn. Poor guy. He was crushing hard on my Fawnie and she was years more experienced. Meanwhile, Fawn’s eyes were focused on the pancakes. Sharma was absorbed in her Doc. Mom sat on the arm of Dad’s chair and absently rubbed his neck. Across from them Mac put up the hood on his sweatshirt and yawned, “Who’s Trina Davis, amiga?”
Ignoring the amiga descriptor, I said, “A girl who had an identical fake sex video made about her.”
There. That woke everyone up.
“Trina lives in Chicago. She’s a solid A-minus student. And two months ago, someone posted a video on their school’s faculty page of her and her young calc teacher having sex. Should I play it?”
“No,” my dad said.
“Yes,” everyone else said.
Sharma was one step ahead. The file was already on our living room screen.
The video had been filmed inside a car. The teacher propped his Doc up on the dash. Except in the beginning, when he hit record, you mostly could only see his back. Occasionally, Trina’s face surfaced over his shoulder. It was pretty clear that the teacher hadn’t said he was filming this. He’d acted as if he was just putting his Doc somewhere safe.
“I called this All Brains on Deck meeting because I thought you guys could help spot the other similarities between me and Trina. Why were we targeted for these videos?”
I’d asked AnyLies the exact same question right before I went to bed last night but hadn’t heard back.
“How do you know they’re related at all?” Fawn asked. “This video looks real. I know coitus face when I see it.”
As Kyle erupted in violent coughing, croaked that he needed water, and disappeared toward the kitchen, I shrugged. No way was I telling everyone that it was AnyLies who had led me to see the connection. Then I’d have to admit I was txting AnyLies, and I didn’t want to get chastised so early in the day.
“That is exactly what everyone thought about my video. Trina and I CB messaged all last night. She adamantly denies it’s her. Even now, two months after her video dropped. She said the footage was taken from some video of her that her friends shot at the gym.”
Sharma flicked more elements from her Doc at our home hub. On-screen, the gym video of Trina loaded next to the sex video. Trina was on one of those leg weight machines, pumping a SHT-ton of weight. The videos played simultaneously. Other than some high-quality masking, the footage was nearly identical.
“See, Fawnie? Workout face. Not sex face.”
“Oh yeah.” She squinted at the screen. “My bad.”
“So why us?” I asked.
Trina was suburban. Me, urban. She was a sports nut. I was a volunteer junkie. Trina’s guilty pleasure was the Colossus Sundae from someplace called Dirty Ice Cream. Mine was reading pop stars’ autobiographies.
Please never repeat that.
“You thinking Jessie again?” Sharma asked.
I nodded, and quickly filled my parents in on the “human projects” Ellie had seen on Jessie’s Doc. This was quite a project all right. What was it she’d titled that one vid? “How the mighty shall Fall”? Was I only one level of a much more complex game?
“Is it just me or does Trina kind of look like you?” Fawn asked.
“You’re right,” Kyle rushed to say. “I think so too.”
He was back, leaning in the doorway, crossing and then uncrossing his arms so his mini boy/man muscles bulged. Fawn glanced at him and hid her smile with a forkful of pancakes.
“Aren’t the Rosenthals in Turkey?” Kyle asked. With Herculean effort he pulled his eyes away from Fawn and swiped at his Doc. “I go to school with Joseph. Yeah, look.”
He flicked an image at our home hub and now we were all looking at three smiling Rosenthals (and one very unhappy one). They were out to dinner, sitting in a maroon leather corner booth with enough small plates in front of them to feed Fawn through the entirety of a My Friend, Ghost binge-watch. Joseph and his parents were leaning in for the photo, basking in the candlelit glow of their elegant dinner and clothes. Jessie sat on the outside, almost at the very edge, frowning at her Doc. Kyle put up another one. Three smiling Rosenthals were bundled up and posing in front of a mosque. Again Jessie was off to the side, arms wrapped around herself, cold, miserable, impatient.
“So what? They’re on vacation. Turkey has the Internet.”
“Yeah, but who stalks someone when they’re on vacation?”