The Takedown(87)

Jonah couldn’t make eye contact worse than anyone I’d ever seen. It was like an invisible hand was pushing his head down and to the left. And it was horrible listening to him. He practically spoke in emotes. I was tempted to have Sharma give him subtitles. Wait. That was where I’d heard that name before.

“Safe America brought down that shady senator, right?” I asked. “They’re behind the Dubai scandal exposé.”

“Couldn’t say.” Jonah smirked. “The focus they assigned me was to stop-sign child molesters. It was all up to me to find the supporting vids and pics. It’s not hard. You find raunchy home vids, then use Woofer software, then write a diff program that cross-references against employment info, one that cross-references against age info. Found a doctor, a guitar instructor in Jersey—”

“And then, let me guess, you stopped finding people so you started forging the videos instead? That wasn’t me with my teacher.”

Jonah shrugged. “Well, it could have been. In the original vid the girl’s face was all blurred out, but the guy was clearly a teacher. That’s clearly sex in a classroom. I just connected A to B. I mean obv the guy’s got issues if he gets off on that kind of thing. Is that someone you want around impressionable sixteen-year-olds?”

“But it’s fake. And he got fired. You’re ruining lives.”

“I posted one vid on your school’s faculty message board after hours. It was taken down five minutes after it posted. Your life equaled ruined in five minutes? Please.”

“No, it was ruined the next morning when you reposted it to the Student Activities board.”

“I never reposted it. The only people I need to see it are the administrators. My job is done as soon as pervy gets caught.”

“What about those photos you took of me and Mr. E. by his apartment? What about that video you shot of me through FaceAlert? What about AnyLiesUnmade?”

“What’s that?”

“Your alias.”

“No it isn’t,” he laughed. “Trust me. Why waste all that effort when the vid is the clincher? The last time I touched anything having to do with your case was when I posted the vid to the faculty board, like, a week ago. Look, you saw all my aliases up there. ‘Any lies unmade’? That’s just dumb. ‘All lies unmade’ is more like it and better English.”

Said the guy who barely spoke the language. Yet it matched up to what Mr. E. had said about the video first posting the night before on Prep’s Faculty Activities board. Jonah’s whole life was exposed before us. Why would he lie?

Jonah snorted. “Sounds like I’m not the one who ruined your life after all.”





“So who did?”

“You figure it out.” Jonah took a huge bite of coffee cake and then coughed on the powdered sugar topping. “I’m sure you have frenemies abounding.”

I couldn’t believe it. We were back to square one. Mac stroked my thumb with his. It felt nice, but it was more of a…you know what? I needed to focus. We were back to square one. Sharma txted me a pic of a French bulldog that looked like it was bowed down in prayer. The caption said: Have Faith.

“How come you picked Kyle?” Mac asked.

“Like that equals rocket science? Found the vid of your teach on some wronged women’s dating site, then browsed your school’s online yearbook for a current student that mirror-pic’ed the girl in the vid. Two girls fit. You belonged to more extracurrics. It meant you had more Woofer vids to choose from. You and me became connected two weeks ago. Nothing personal.”

No, that couldn’t be it. “Nothing personal”? That was why this had all happened to me? Because Jonah had randomly selected the girl on the left instead of the girl on the right? I wondered who the other girl was, the girl whose life was almost ruined instead of mine.

“Lying,” Sharma said, without looking up from her Doc.

“My guess,” Rory said, “is you also picked Kyle because of her.”

A G-File for a girl named Ananda Stevens came up on-screen. Jonah shifted in his seat. He coughed and bits of cake flew onto the coffee table.

“What about her?” Sharma’s lips pursed.

A folder on Jonah’s desktop labeled Homework opened to reveal another folder, which led to another and then another. Suddenly there was the photo of the girl with all the retouched bruises marring her face. The thing about high school was it all felt so personal. Every slight felt specifically, solely crafted for you. And the only thing worse than your “unique” agony was the belief that no one else had to deal with anything as bad. So you wildly inflicted slights of your own. I saw how impossible it was. No one would ever escape high school unscathed.

“You’re sick,” Mac said.

Jonah reached across me and grabbed Sharma’s Doc. With her PHD in his hand, he looked capable of breath for the first time. Mac immediately launched himself at Jonah, like he’d only been waiting for a reason. As they tussled, Jonah swiped at Sharma’s Doc, then in a loud voice said, “Home hub, reboot. Enable backup pass code. Okay, okay, here.”

Mac let go. Jonah handed Sharma her Doc back. I gathered this meant Jonah had regained control of his house.

As the system rebooted, he said, “Our moms worked together. I was her first friend when she moved to Philly middle of sophomore year. She was so shy she barely spoke in school, so I built her worlds to roam. But then she ‘blossomed’ over the summer and made friends with some of the pretty girls and suddenly it was all about needing space. As soon as junior year came, she couldn’t wait to go off and play in more hi-def pastures. You aren’t supposed to just drop people like that.”