“Almost there,” Fawn said, her eyes glued to the screen.
Throughout the video the girl kept her head down. Now she lifted it up and shook her hair out of her face. It was like I could almost hear it. Like when you step on ice and it makes that satisfying crunch under your heel.
Except now it was my life cracking and splintering.
If you hadn’t already guessed, I was staring at myself.
The next two minutes weren’t flattering. I’ll spare you the details. The sudden drenching underarm sweat. The insane-person pacing. My insisting it had to be some kind of joke.
All you need to know is that it didn’t look like a joke. Or like a face-swapping filter. It looked like me in the video. And not just “like” me. It was me. For one click, I worried I’d experienced a massive brain reset and had actually slept with Mr. E. All my classmates knew I was completely obsessed with him thanks to the swooning Quips I posted daily. The last one from barely fifty minutes ago, sent while Audra was grilling me:
Almost time for Huck Finn in English. Me. Raft. Mr. E. Now that’s a story I want to get lost in.
Whose parents hadn’t warned them about the content they posted online? But I thought they meant, like, don’t post pics of your butt. Everyone superfanned over some guy, girl, or other. Right?
Or this was what I told myself as I tried to remain calm and watched Fawn cry. Good lord. It was like someone had told her she’d never eat butter again. I pulled her in for a hug, then wiped giant tears from her cheeks.
“Fawnie, you goof. Stop crying already, betch,” I said in my best Audra impersonation. “I’m sure this isn’t that big a deal. Ms. Sandoval in New World Borders just said that at one point or another every living person in modernized society will fall prey to some kind of online scam or identity takeover. So this is mine.”
Fawn nodded, not meeting my eyes. There was an urgent knock on the door; then Audra and Sharma slipped into the bathroom. Considering Audra must have been getting pinged like crazy, why hadn’t she immediately shown me this after English? Her Doc must have been off.
“Sharma got us off-grounds passes.” Audra handed me my coat.
“Been saving for an emergency.” Sharma shrugged as Fawn’s jaw dropped.
“Wait. We’re leaving?” And this was an emergency? My brain was having trouble keeping up. “You can’t tell me this is any worse than Boobgate. I mean, you guys, that’s not even me. You know that, right?”
Three pretty heads looked from one to another, then too readily bobbled up and down.
“Okay,” Audra said, albeit a little stiffly. Mentioning Boobgate still did that to her. “It’s not you.”
“Wait,” Fawn sniffed. “Come here.”
Only later, when I dissected every second of the previous and future twenty-four hours, would I appreciate what Fawn did next. She grabbed my bag, took out my compact, and dabbed at my face. Then she applied a light pink gloss to my lips. In the next eight minutes, 104 different pics would be snapped of me. Yev Baker would PhotoMix half of them into a video titled “Walk of Shame.” At least I didn’t look stunned and shiny in them.
“There. Now you look lovely.”
Audra linked her tiny arm protectively through mine. “Two hallways, two flights of stairs, and we’re there.”
“What is this?” I laughed. “Witness protection?”
“Yeah, kind of, Kylie,” Audra said, and tsked.
The girls all took a deep breath. Then Fawn opened the bathroom door. It was still between periods, and the halls were packed. Fawn took my other hand. Sharma trailed behind, her fingers a blur above her Doc, hopefully unleashing a world of doom on whoever had made the video. It was like the morning Walk all over again, except faster with no banter, and now there was a whole different reason we weren’t meeting anyone’s eyes.
Someone took my pic. Audra’s Doc dinged when I was tagged in it. Yulia Yap muttered something about “got him fired.” Her best friend, Heather Ru-Weinberg, shot me some serious eye daggers. I blew them both kisses.
“I don’t think that’s helping,” Audra said.
I needed to find Mac. He would make this better, either with a totally inappropriate comment or a really long hug.
We went down two flights of stairs in utter silence. At the new attendance and security sensor, our clunky tablets beeped. The sensor lit up green as it registered our passes. Mr. Watkins, the jovial guard the sensor had replaced, never would have let us leave this easy. For once, I didn’t miss him.
Outside, Park Slope had that hush that only a snowstorm could instill in the city. An interborough taxi navigated the unplowed street at half its normal speed. White Christmas lights twinkled mutely beneath the snow-encased potted pine trees that guarded the school. I took my first real breath since Fawn showed me the video. And then there he was, my Mac. I wondered if one of the girls had txted to tell him we were leaving. His tablet was flashing red. No off-grounds pass for this boy. Unless he went back inside quick, detention would ensue. For once, I couldn’t care less about Mac’s truancy record.
“Macky.”
He hadn’t heard me. Barely off school grounds, he’d already swapped out his EarRing for his headphones. They were supposed to keep sound in, yet I could hear his music twenty feet away. He was completely absorbed in his Doc, the way he only got when he was searching for exactly the right song. I broke into a trot. The girls called out, trying to stop me. Didn’t they know everything would be okay as soon as those arms were around me?
When Mac finally noticed me, he quick swiped at his eyes, then nonchalantly turned away and continued to tap at his Doc. Now that I was closer, I saw that he wasn’t searching for a song; he was scrolling through pics of us, deleting them.
I’d expected his hands cupping my face and a stream of affectionate Spanish. Not to be ignored and erased. I almost laughed from the shock and hurt. Like that time Mom yelled at me, “Stop it already, Kyle,” in the middle of GoodMart because I wouldn’t stop citing reasons why microalgae should immediately be incorporated into all our meals.
“Rodriguez.”
He looked awful. Like he’d come down with a sudden scorching fever. His face was flushed. His eyes were red and puffy. I could tell he debated ignoring me again, but seeing as I was only inches away, that wasn’t really feasible.
I put a hand on his arm. He immediately shook it off.
“Don’t touch me.” Maybe it was because his music was up so high, but he was kind of shouting. “I have nothing to say to you.”
“Mac.” I was like some useless bot only programmed to say his name. “Hold on. Can you please lower that so we can talk about this?”