She saved her screen. With a groan, she lowered herself to the floor next to me.
“That’s right around when Daddy and I started dating. Look at his hair! There was so much of it.” We sat in companionable silence, scrolling through the old pictures. After a few minutes she bumped her shoulder against mine. “So I’ve been thinking, a lot—a lot a lot—about our last few conversations.”
“Oh gosh.” I bit my lip. “Can we please forget this whole last week?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Because it finally dawned on me that you think I don’t like you, and I need to rectify the matter immediately.”
Instant tears, all down my cheeks. They were exactly the words I’d craved hearing my mom say for the better part of the last sixth of my life. She reached for the box of tissues on her desk and handed me one.
“I hardly think you’re evil, Kyla. And to be clear, I never liked Ailey more than you. When I said you changed after you met the girls and it was like the stuff from your old life wasn’t good enough anymore?” She took a deep breath, then quickly said, “I meant me.”
I let out a short, disbelieving laugh.
“It’s true. I felt like I got left behind or like I didn’t fit in anymore. And yes, maybe just a little, that reminded me of being back in high school.
“I’m probably not supposed to share these feelings with my kid. I’m probably supposed to suck it up and commiserate with Daddy. But you and boy-Kyle spoiled me. All my friends whined about how hard parenting was, but you two were a breeze. So when we started having problems, I didn’t know what to do. There are thousands of books out there, but when it actually comes to raising your kids, there isn’t a fail-safe manual.”
She put an arm around me. I rested my head against her shoulder.
“I can’t stop worrying that once you go off to school we’ll fall completely out of touch.” Now she reached for a tissue. “Then next year Kyle’s off too, and then the only person I’ll have to talk to around here is Daddy.”
Mimicking the inane voice that Kyle gave my avatar, the one that rose at the end of every word, I said, “And Daddy’s, like, the worst.”
Mom snorted and wrapped her other arm around me. She kissed me once, twice, three times on the top of my head.
“You will never understand how much I love you. I am so proud of what a smart, smart girl you are. And that is a fact. You are my favorite daughter.”
I dabbed at my eyes but still executed an expert eye roll. “Mom…”
“I’m not kidding. Even if I had more, you’d still be my favorite.”
“You’re playing favorites with me and your imaginary daughters? That’s not fair.”
“You’re also the funniest of my daughters.”
“I’m gonna tell them you said that.” Mom gave me another squeeze, then blew her nose. Before she could say she desperately needed to get back to work, I said, “Mama, will you tell me the story of us?”
“Now?” She glanced toward her desk but then started playing with my hair. “Seventeen years ago—”
I lifted my head off her shoulder. “That’s not how it starts.”
“Seventeen years ago,” she said firmly, “I lay exhausted in a hospital bed because a tiny being with an enormous head had just come out of me. And after they cleaned her up and put that little beast on my chest, I knew right away that I would love her even if she cried through the night every night until she was two, even if she threw tantrums in restaurants. I’d love her even if she grew up to be mean.
“I shouldn’t have worried. She never did become a single one of those things, but even if she had, I knew it wouldn’t matter. For the first time in my life, I was experiencing fierce, unwavering love. Friends come and go. Men do too—don’t tell Daddy I said that. But this little girl and I were going to be with one another my whole life.
“The next couple of years, your mommy went through a lot. And every time I felt like I couldn’t live in my own skin, because there was so much anxiety festering beneath it—”
“You felt like that?”
“Yup.” I felt her nod. “Almost twenty-four hours a day. And when it got really bad, you would come to me with your arms outstretched, smiling, and I knew no matter what happened with the stores, our finances, my marriage, I was blessed. Even during the roughest patches—”
“Like the day after Christmas?” I interjected.
“Exactly,” she laughed. “Even then, I loved you as fiercely as I did when you were that little girl who held her arms out to me when I felt like I was sinking.”
Now we each took a tissue and blotted at our eyes. Mom reached across to her room screen and untacked a tiny piece of paper. I unfolded it. It crackled with age. In my mom’s cool block printing, in faded red ink, it read:
WHAT WOULD KYLA DO?
“No matter what obstacles we face in the future, if we create them or if others do, you are my greatest strength and my greatest love. Don’t tell your brother I said that.” We laughed. She gave me one last squeeze. “And that is the story of us. To be continued.”
In January, a week after I took my video down—Wait, sorry, who took down her video? Oh, that’s right. This girl!—my parents and I went to the offices of Awareness for a Safe America, located in downtown Washington, DC. Our lawyer set up the meeting. Once we were inside, two forms of ID were needed to check in at reception. Everyone’s tech was remotely powered down by security. When we were deemed nonthreats, we met with the head of ASA’s public relations department, a Ms. Smythe—no joke, just like in a spy movie—who explained that, contrary to what our lawyer insinuated via e-mail, ASA wasn’t entrapping people.
“We’re a watchdog group,” she said. “A privately funded corporation that works in conjunction with Homeland Security. Since technology isn’t growing in a bubble, ASA’s job is to hold the criminals that grow with it accountable for the very traceable, very real, very evil—I don’t think I’m overselling it by using that word—footprints they leave on the stream.”
Cool. Ms. Smythe was one of those people who called the Internet the stream. I imagined her riding the building’s soundless elevator to a pod in the basement every night, attaching a giant hose to her back, and powering down.