The Takedown(53)

I’d asked AnyLies the exact same question right before I went to bed last night but hadn’t heard back.

“How do you know they’re related at all?” Fawn asked. “This video looks real. I know coitus face when I see it.”

As Kyle erupted in violent coughing, croaked that he needed water, and disappeared toward the kitchen, I shrugged. No way was I telling everyone that it was AnyLies who had led me to see the connection. Then I’d have to admit I was txting AnyLies, and I didn’t want to get chastised so early in the day.

“That is exactly what everyone thought about my video. Trina and I CB messaged all last night. She adamantly denies it’s her. Even now, two months after her video dropped. She said the footage was taken from some video of her that her friends shot at the gym.”

Sharma flicked more elements from her Doc at our home hub. On-screen, the gym video of Trina loaded next to the sex video. Trina was on one of those leg weight machines, pumping a SHT-ton of weight. The videos played simultaneously. Other than some high-quality masking, the footage was nearly identical.

“See, Fawnie? Workout face. Not sex face.”

“Oh yeah.” She squinted at the screen. “My bad.”

“So why us?” I asked.

Trina was suburban. Me, urban. She was a sports nut. I was a volunteer junkie. Trina’s guilty pleasure was the Colossus Sundae from someplace called Dirty Ice Cream. Mine was reading pop stars’ autobiographies.

Please never repeat that.

“You thinking Jessie again?” Sharma asked.

I nodded, and quickly filled my parents in on the “human projects” Ellie had seen on Jessie’s Doc. This was quite a project all right. What was it she’d titled that one vid? “How the mighty shall Fall”? Was I only one level of a much more complex game?

“Is it just me or does Trina kind of look like you?” Fawn asked.

“You’re right,” Kyle rushed to say. “I think so too.”

He was back, leaning in the doorway, crossing and then uncrossing his arms so his mini boy/man muscles bulged. Fawn glanced at him and hid her smile with a forkful of pancakes.

“Aren’t the Rosenthals in Turkey?” Kyle asked. With Herculean effort he pulled his eyes away from Fawn and swiped at his Doc. “I go to school with Joseph. Yeah, look.”

He flicked an image at our home hub and now we were all looking at three smiling Rosenthals (and one very unhappy one). They were out to dinner, sitting in a maroon leather corner booth with enough small plates in front of them to feed Fawn through the entirety of a My Friend, Ghost binge-watch. Joseph and his parents were leaning in for the photo, basking in the candlelit glow of their elegant dinner and clothes. Jessie sat on the outside, almost at the very edge, frowning at her Doc. Kyle put up another one. Three smiling Rosenthals were bundled up and posing in front of a mosque. Again Jessie was off to the side, arms wrapped around herself, cold, miserable, impatient.

“So what? They’re on vacation. Turkey has the Internet.”

“Yeah, but who stalks someone when they’re on vacation?”

“Clearly miserable her.” I flung a hand at Jessie.

I could practically see my profile on her screen.

“Nah,” Mac said. “This isn’t Jessie. Jessie’s messed up, but I mean, she’s not a bad girl.”

He said it like he held some deep understanding about the inner workings of the beast. I thought back. Wasn’t there a rumor that Mac and Jessie hooked up, when was it, sophomore year? At the Halloween dance? Oh, yuck. As if Mac could see me working through my memories, he quickly pushed on. All eyes flicked to him.

“Isn’t it obvious what the connection is?” As if he were on a job interview, he sat up straight and folded his hands in his lap. He cleared his throat. “I mean, running the odds alone…the similarity is the guys. Both are teachers, both are young, both were caught with students, and both are in situations where they had to be aware the videos were being filmed.”

“What are you getting at?” I said.

“Bonita, you’re too innocent for your own good.”

“I happen to like her that way,” my dad said, straight-faced.

“Me too.” Mac wiped his hands on his pants. I could see the sweat beading on his forehead from across the room. “All I meant was, Kyla, you keep assuming that because it’s not you in the video, it’s also not Mr. E. It isn’t like someone captured vid of Mr. E. shooting hoops and overlaid it on some porn star doing it. That’s him in the classroom with a girl. You’re spending all this time looking for who made the video, but you haven’t once considered that it could have been the person who participated in it.”

“Whoa,” Kyle said.

“I always did think Mr. E. had a crush on you.” Fawn nodded.

Mac continued, “Is there a way to find out if the other profess taught any extracurrics? I bet you anything he did video effects like Mr. E. Maybe they’re old college buddies that send each other vids of themselves with their hot students.”

“Mr. E. teaches video effects?” I asked. “How didn’t I know this?”

“B-slash-C the only electives you take lead to you in the Oval Office,” Sharma said, looking at me over the bridge of her glasses.

“But then who’s AnyLies?” Mom asked. “Mr. Ehrenreich couldn’t have wanted this out there. Whoever made the video has an issue with you.”