“Let the Crush Kyla’s Hater—subtheme Ninja Comfort—sleepover commence,” Fawn cheered two hours later, hoisting a wineglass of grapefruit juice and seltzer.
On my walk home from Audra’s, I’d txted my mom to get permission for the Monday night sleepover. She replied that it was fine, that she was too busy to run out and grab us snacks, and that tonight everyone in the Cheng family would be using the EatIn account to order food for themselves when they got hungry and that we were welcome to do the same. I think she was just as relieved as I was that the girls were coming over. It meant another night’s distance from our fight. Tomorrow, we’d go back to being in the same room. Day after that, we’d be back to having stilted conversations, and life would return to how it had been for the last three-plus years.
Now, white takeout bags littered my floor. Fawn, Audra, and I were lying shoulder to shoulder widthwise on my bed, all of us dressed in black-on-black pairings of pj’s and sweats. Audra was on her back in the middle; Fawn and I were on our bellies on either side with our ankles linked in the air. Sharma sat on the floor with her Doc on her lap. And Kyle sat in front of Fawn, looking like the time his raffle number was called at Kicks and he won a new pair of trainers. I didn’t normally beg Kyle to hang out with us when the girls were over, but right then I needed my family.
My blood was boiling.
Audra owned half the tech on the market and a GoFetch drive. Audra had been suspiciously averse to helping me figure out who made the video, when I’d once seen the old Audra go all lioness-protecting-her-cub on Charity Knowles for pointing out that my shirt was wrinkled. “The only thing wrinkled here is your [C-word], betch.” Never mind that Audra kept telling me I should be grateful for what was happening to me. Or that she suddenly had loads of money. Or that she’d taken a weird liking to Mac.
“You want the rest of my flautas, boy-Kyle?” Fawn said. “I can’t finish them.”
“Since when?” Audra snorted. “Or are you just hoping for a bite of boy-Kyle’s burrito?”
As Audra got an elbow in the ribs from both sides, Kyle grinned ear to ear. Fawn tickled the back of his neck with the string on her hoodie. I loved watching Fawn play with other guys, but this was my little bro and she was getting intense. Audra wasn’t the only one known to go into lioness mode.
Clearing my throat, and giving Fawn some seriously furrowed eyebrows, I said, “As Rory and I discussed at the café today—”
“‘As Rory and I discussed,’” Sharma mimicked under her breath, still annoyed that it was someone other than her who had provided all this new information.
“—our goal is to find the fake profile. We’ve already narrowed down the orginal forty matches between our accounts to these twenty users. We’ve flagged these CBers because they almost never post or log in and have very few Woofer pics linked to them. If we can find the fake profile from among these twenty, then Rory can use his CB access to get us the attached e-mail account and Doc digits—more than enough info to figure out the RL person behind all this.”
“How do you know any of these are fake?” Audra asked. “You’re assuming that your hater is one of these twenty people just because you and the other girls are all connected to them on CB?”
Without looking, she reached an arm off my mattress and groped around for food. She picked up a carne enchilada torta, then tossed it back and tried again. Sharma pushed a bag of suckers beneath her hand. Audra pulled one out, unwrapped it, and stuck it in her mouth.
“Yes—” I said, as Fawn grabbed Audra’s sucker and popped it in her own mouth.
“Gross,” Kyle said.
“—and because there isn’t any way someone could access all our Woofer footage otherwise.”
“Except for the fact that he’s a hacker and probably doesn’t need CB to access those videos. And what about AnyLies?”
Audra reached for another sucker. Sharma snatched it away before Audra could put it in her mouth.
“What about AnyLies?” I said a little too defensively.
“We’re supposed to believe that AnyLies travels around the country doing this to different people? Was he in—where’d you say one of those other girls was from?—Kansas City taking pics of her talking to her teacher?”
“Nooo, because those vids were forged too, remember?”
“Still, these feel like two different things. What if AnyLies only found the video and posted it. And the person who made the video is some armchair psychopath—”
“Don’t call her that.”
“—with a popularity complex. If you ask me, you’ve pinned too much on a coincidence. I think you’re way off base here.”
“And what information do you have that leads you to that conclusion?”
Audra scoffed. “Didn’t I just tell you?”
My bedroom was silent.
Kyle stood up. “Yeah, uh, thanks for the food. This room is getting too female for me.”
“Unacceptable descriptor,” Audra and I said even as we glared at each other.
“Whatever,” Kyle laughed. “I’m going to bed.”
“And I have to pee,” Fawn said.
“I’m not trying to be mean,” Audra sighed after Fawn and my brother escaped. “But, I mean, there’s got to be something else that connects you all IRL. Think.”
“I don’t know. You tell me, Audra Rhodes.”
“How should I know?” If we were in a video game, Audra’s blue eyes would have turned red with rage. “Sharma, tell me I’m right.”
We both stared at the back of Sharma’s head as my room screen stayed motionless. After a few beats, choosing her words more carefully than she’d chosen her latest Doc case, Sharma said, “You equal sign good points, Auds, but going about it this way can’t hurt. You are onto something, Kyle.”
Taking away my suspicions and the severity of her words, all Audra meant was that we couldn’t have been chosen at random. It wasn’t a terrible point. Or—my debater brain kicked in—she was only saying that she had nothing to do with the other five girls’ videos. I chose to follow the first line of reasoning. Why were we specifically chosen? I sat up.
“Oh my gosh, that’s it. Auds, how many posts has the Bra&Panties slut done of me?”
Confused, she said, “Three?”
“What if it’s her?” Audra rolled her eyes. “No, no, no, listen. It makes sense. The morning the video posts, I get those countdown-clock messages. The same day, the B&P slut launches her countdown clock. We know she lives somewhere in Brooklyn. And why did she pick up on my story so fast?”
“But what about the other girls?” Sharma asks. “What do they have to do with her?”