The Takedown(17)

“You’ll fix this, Kyle,” I murmured. “You’ll fix this.”

As if in reply, my room screen emitted a high-pitched laugh. The FaceAlert window was still black. I glanced at the contact. The number was blocked.

“Hello?” I enlarged the window. “Your FaceAlert’s not working. I can no puedo see you.”

There was a digital beep. It sounded like the recording video sound that most Docs made.

“Oh my gosh…”

Someone was filming me.

I tried to push back, out of sight of my screen’s camera. The wheel on my desk chair caught on my rug, and the whole thing tipped backwards. My arms pinwheeled. I righted myself, but just barely. As I tapped frantically at the disconnect button, whoever was watching me said in a joyously evil singsong, “Kisses.”

I couldn’t push air in or out fast enough. I closed out of FaceAlert. I shut down my room screen, then powered off my Doc entirely. I closed my blinds and checked the locks on my windows. I couldn’t have felt more exposed than if you’d shoved me into the middle of Union Square naked. And no matter how secure I made my room, I couldn’t stop hearing that voice. They must have used a voice changer, because no human vocal cords could reach that high a pitch.

Kisses.





It took three lathers and rinses to wash away the creepy ick. In future debates I’d argue that a hot shower could solve most non-life-threatening problems. As I shampooed my hair into a soapy tower for the fourth time, I tried to mute the high-pitched evil doll voice I kept hearing in my head. Kisses. Kisses. Kisses. I’d tried to call the blocked number back, but it was one of those single-use, untraceable, offshore e-mails that the US government was trying to shut down for exactly these reasons. I also tried to think about all the recent lies I’d told.

I mean, “any lies unmade,” right?

Here’s the problem. I could see people calling me BTCHY (partially true, especially when uncaffeinated), arrogant (lightly true), or entitled (definitely not true), but a liar?

A requirement of best-friending Audra meant I was on a first-name basis with brutal honesty.

After my shower, I popped the door and stayed in the steamy bathroom, unable to shake the chill I felt. I was twisting my hair into pin curls when a sudden knock made me jump.

Kisses.

Mom leaned against the door frame. If my dad crushed the coolest dad category, my mom hands down won coolest human. In her late twenties, she’d started StitchBtch, an online Brooklyn arts-and-crafts collective that now had brick-and-mortar stores in almost all fifty states. She still made most of her own clothes and was cofounder of the Sustainability Now local business movement. When I was growing up, even though she was in her forties, strangers regularly thought she was my babysitter.

Now I couldn’t help mentally airbrushing her: dyeing the white streak out of her copper-brown hair, erasing the wrinkles from around her gray eyes. It was only recently that I’d started this airbrushing thing. It was only recently that Mom had started looking old. Like everything else about us nowadays, I hated it.

“I’m going to school tomorrow, aren’t I?” I asked.

“Your dad and I think you’ll only look guiltier if you don’t. Not to mention, you can’t ruin your perfect attendance.”

Tranquila, I told myself. She meant it as a joke, even if it sounded like a criticism.

“Does Daddy hate me?”

“Kyle.” Mom gave me a look. “You know Daddy: he just needs to absorb this at his own speed. Let him dredge parenting forums for a while. He’ll find someone who’s encountered something like this and be ordering apology Mexican food before the night is over. Your brother ate all the soup, by the way. Four bowls. I swear he has a tapeworm.”

“Do you believe me?”

If anyone wasn’t going to, it would be my mom.

“Did you sleep with Mr. E.?” she asked carefully.

I stopped twisting my hair. “Ew, no. No way.”

“Okay, then I believe you.”

I was so stunned I almost asked her to repeat herself. Instead I kept pinning up my hair.

“I messaged Dr. Graff,” she said. “The earliest she can see us tomorrow is second period. If it’s terrible before that, you can always leave and come home with me. And then it’s only the half day on Friday and everyone will be too excited for Christmas on Saturday to talk about that video anyway. By Monday it’ll be completely forgotten.”

Not likely.

If this were a normal year, I wouldn’t even have to go to school on the twenty-fourth as one of Park Prep’s Senior Perks. Then with a full week off between Christmas and New Year’s, yes, maybe everyone would have forgotten all about this. But because of all the days we’d missed thanks to Hurricane Riley in September, and then the October blizzard, this year our winter break was literally nonexistent. And I actually mean literally. Christmas and New Year’s fell on Saturdays. We were back in classes on the following Mondays.

Prior to the video, I’d been fine with this schedule. It would be only the second Christmas we’d be spending without my n?inai, my grandma. None of the Chengs were much thrilled by the prospect. The last thing I needed was one more day sitting at home missing her.

Plus, all the way back in October, Audra had declared a moratorium on Christmas, saying there was no possible way she’d be able to deal this year. Seasons past, the days leading up to and after the holiday had resulted in more Audra meltdowns than any of us knew what to do with. Christmas might be all about the gifts, but it’s also still a little about family. And Audra’s was awful. Since I’d known her, Audra had shown up at one or another of our houses at some point on Christmas Day, usually drunk, her face a wreck, asking if she could borrow our family and yuletide cheer.