The Takedown(13)

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

“It has,” I said, matching his cool inflection.

For as long as I’d known the Amundsens, Mr. A. had hated his job at Eden, but it paid him buckets of money and it meant Ailey always had the latest tech. In turn, Ailey was as addicted to her Doc as Sharma. Could Mr. A. get his hands on unreleased video-editing software? No doubt.

I waited, but that was it. That was the best he could do? A disdainful sniff and “It’s been a long time”?

“Later, Mr. A.”

“Leaving in twenty for that thing in the city,” Mrs. Amundsen called, as I jogged up the stairs after Ailey.

This was Ailey’s out, in case things went badly. The nostalgic comfort I’d felt walking into Ailey’s house dissolved. When we got to her room, Ailey left her bedroom door open a crack as if she might need to call for help.

If I had anything to say about it, she would.





Only Ailey didn’t give me the chance to say anything.

“So holy gosh, how are you even breathing right now?”

No sooner did I step into Ailey’s room than she was a blur of activity. Picking clothes up off her floor, her chair, her bed. She must have had one of those mornings where nothing looked right, because there were clothes all-caps EVERYWHERE. And as she flitted from one disaster area to another, her mouth ran just as quickly.

“That video is mega terrible. I watched it, like, a thousand times. Sorry, I swear I tap replay right before you see your face. It’s just Mr. E., you know? Having S-E-X. With you.”

The thought brought her to a standstill. With all the cleaning and the mile-a-minute talking, she was a little out of breath. A curl fell into her eyes. She blew it away and then laughed, as if she’d just caught sight of herself standing there with that enormous armload of clothes.

“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting company.” She nodded at me to sit on her desk chair, then dropped her clothes back on the floor and sat next to them. “And I’m just so surprised face you’re here. But I’m equaling totally rude. Are you okay? More important, do you have any idea of who posted it?”

“Posted it?” I stayed standing. “I’m here to figure out who made it.”

I expected her to stutter and apologize or to at least be caught off guard. Instead she shook her head like she had water in her ears.

“You mean it’s fake?” she said with incredulousness that was too doe-eyed to be anything but genuine. “Oh holy gosh, I didn’t even think about that possibility. It’s just so clearly you. Wow. H-A. H-A. Give me a minute here.”

As she processed, Ailey separated and then rebraided her hair. I’d forgotten how perfect Ailey and her hair were for each other. Bouncy, crazy, fun. Her nervous energy evaporated.

“Right. Sign me up. How can I help?”

And it’s weird, because in the face of the first nonfamilial support I’d had all day, even though I remembered a thousand things I liked about Ailey, I suddenly remembered the things I disliked more. How she reeked of insecurity and clinginess. How every decision was wracked with anxiety—Ummm, I can’t decide. Which burrito are you getting? And the worst, how fawning she was around the in crowd.

My mom still held my breakup with Ailey against me, but at the time, detaching from Ailey had felt like shrugging off a bad mood. I had refused to feel sorry about it.

Until now. Within two minutes Ailey had been more supportive than the girls had been since we left Prep. Other than being looped into our ongoing group thread—which continued to make my Doc hum with pics of food we needed to eat and funny animal vids—no one had individual txted me even once since I left Sharma’s. I sank down onto Ailey’s desk chair. Someone believed me. Suddenly having a friend who liked me too much didn’t seem like such a terrible thing.

But alongside my realization, Ailey had one of her own.

“Oh,” she said softly. “I just clicked replay. You said you came here to figure out who made it. You didn’t come for my help, did you? You came to blame me.”





“I think you should go.”

Ailey made a sad face. Not like the pantomime of an emote, but a genuinely sad expression, and I knew right then that she couldn’t be anything but innocent.

“Ailey…”

“No. That’s okay. I understand why you’d think it’d be me, I guess. But I still think you’d better go.”

I didn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Ailes.” The nickname erased her frown lines and brought her shoulders down an inch. “But logically speaking, if it’s not you, I couldn’t think of anyone else who might have it in for me. I mean, other than maybe Jessie Rosenthal…”

Ailey made a face. “Yuck. Jessie. Ellie, for some reason, adores her. I think she’s all-caps SO pretentious. And, just, so weird. I tell Ellie all the time that Jessie’s not right, but she won’t listen to me.”

“Not right?” I asked as I scrolled my contacts for Jessie’s info. “How do you mean?”

“Ellie told me Jessie keeps these ‘human projects’ on her Doc. They’re, like, collections and videos of these people that Jessie stalks around the city. Ellie said there was one of this man who always eats alone at the same diner every night. This woman who feeds the birds in the park. Jessie woofers them, so now she knows everything about them. ‘Human projects.’ It gives me the creeps. You don’t think…”