by Val Emmich
Using secret information you receive from another person, Nightshade, for the first time, posts a story.
Turns out self-proclaimed influencer Wendy Joyce Lee purchased ten thousand of her twelve thousand followers. Behold: the literal receipt.
Within a few short hours, your followers double. Then triple. Unlike Wendy Joyce Lee, you’ve earned your followers, every single one. Your story is reposted dozens of times. It’s all anyone is talking about: Nightshade.
What if you kept it going a little while longer? What if you refused to stay silent? Not only for you—for everyone messaging you. They feel silenced, too. You could be their voice. A conduit for all their pain—the jealousy, the bitterness, the rage.
More stories come.
That rumor everyone takes as gospel about “tough guy” Victor Trokic being in a gang? Victor started it himself so no one would mess with him.
Since when does Karen Lockhart run track? It could be this doctored photo is what got her that scholarship to Princeton.
The reason Ezra Rosen always has weed is because his uncle works for a Mexican drug cartel.
There’s an energy around you, around your account. You feel it in the halls, in class, on the bus. This buzz you’ve created. Ah, to be heard, finally. Is there anything better?
After twenty-four hours, the stories vanish into the ether, unless others repost them, which they often do. It’s no longer about how you feel. It’s about how they feel. You’re just a messenger.
It’s one of these messages from a stranger that puts you in the predicament you’re in now. You receive a video. You play it. In a busy restaurant, a middle-aged man is sprawled on the floor. A young guy in a tracksuit enters the frame. Along with the bartender, he helps the man to his feet. The man can barely stand, but he reaches for his drink on the bar and finishes it before stumbling off-screen. The video cuts off. You’re not sure what to make of it until you see the message it came with: Mac Durant at the Cheesecake Factory with his drunk dad.
The message is from a private account and an unfamiliar tag. It’s proof of what everyone’s been whispering about for years. A huge score for Nightshade. If you post it. But should you? This is Mac Durant you’re talking about. He’s like a mystical being, untouchable.
Untouchable. The word flips in your mind. From one exalted to one ignored. Untouchable is you. To all of them, including Mac Durant. He’s never once acknowledged your existence. Why should he be spared? Isn’t he the embodiment of elite and privileged?
You write a caption to go along with the video:
Yup, Mac Durant’s dad definitely has a drinking problem. I guess Mr. Perfect’s life isn’t so perfect after all.
You post it and move on.
11:27 PM
I’m sorry,” I say.
Mac stands, stretches his legs. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything.”
How wrong he is. I want to say it again and again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but saying it a thousand times won’t fix what I’ve done.
Nightshade is no longer active. It hasn’t been for weeks. I don’t post or comment anymore, and I never will again. Even so, it’s been impossible to put it behind me. The account still exists. Messages still come in. People still talk about it—obviously.
I feel sick. My stomach is a nauseated swirl of Oreos, vodka, and regret. The painful mix expands in my gut once it hits me that Nightshade is the reason Mac isn’t on a team anymore. I can’t even look at him, which I’m now realizing is not only insensitive after everything he’s told me but also a little suspicious.
“So that’s the story,” I say, peeking up at him, trying to appear normal.
He meets my eyes, staring hard. I’ve learned to live daily with the fear that my double life will be revealed. I’m always waiting and never ready.
“It’s a lot, I know,” Mac says.
He looks away, and I realize in his new shyness that my fears are just fears: He has no clue I was the one who posted the video. How could it have been? Why would it have been?
“It is a lot,” I say.
He turns and gazes at me. It feels unbearable, my secret.
But would it help him right now if he knew? Or would bringing it up only take the burden off me and drop it on Mac? He just went through a major event with his dad, and the last thing I want is to add more drama on top of that.
“But I’m glad,” I say. “That you told me.”
He exhales, shoulders sloping, face relaxing. A kind of relief sets in. For both of us.
I promised myself I’d go with it, and it’s time I got back on track with that plan. Our plan. Mac is here and so am I. The outside world is just noise. I’m ready for more vodka.
I stand up and realize that more vodka will not be necessary. It’s finally hitting me, all the shots I took. How many was it? Actually, I don’t feel half bad. Dare I say, I feel kind of hopeful.
Thankfully, Mac seems ready to move on from the subject of his dad. I want the playful Mac back. Enough of this heaviness. He’s fiddling with one of our hands-on exhibits. Patrons are actually encouraged to touch these gadgets. I point out one machine in particular.
“You want to see something cool?” I say.
I pull open a thin drawer and grab a scrap of paper. I twist the paper into a stick. The machine has a pencil-sharpener-looking mechanism, and when you turn it, a wire lights up. I press the paper to the wire while spinning the wheel.
“There’s a candle on the ledge,” I say. “Grab it.”
Mac springs into action and gets the candle.
“We’re going to set fire to this paper and then use it to light the candle.”
“You’re like that survival guy I was telling you about,” Mac says.
“The guy who made me terrified of cotton?”
“Yeah, that guy. Instead of rocks and sticks, you’ve got… whatever this is.”
“I like science.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize how cringeworthy they are. Also untrue. “I guess what I like, actually, are inventions.”
The paper starts to smoke. Mac readies the candle.
“There’s this fair coming up,” I say. “The inventors fair. They do it every year around Edison’s birthday, February eleventh. I’m sure you’ve never been.”
Mac reacts as if I’ve just slandered him. I guess I don’t realize how I sound sometimes, how much edge there is in my voice.
“I just mean you’re probably busy, that’s all,” I say.
The paper catches fire. I press it to the wick of the candle that Mac is holding, and soon the candle lights.
“Cool,” Mac says, moderately impressed.
I blow out the candle and return it to its spot. “Neel and I were thinking about submitting an invention for this year’s fair. I had an idea, and he’s been trying to work out the details. It’s pretty ambitious. That’s what Neel tells me. Apparently these competitions are mostly automatic dog feeders and stuff like that, you know. But my idea is kind of not that.” I pause for air. “You want to hear what it is?”
Mac stops spinning the pencil-sharpener wheel he’s been testing.
I hold out my right hand. “Can I see your phone?”
He removes it from his pocket and realizes that it’s not turning on. “Shit,” Mac says. “It’s dead.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I grab it and place my pointer finger on the screen. “Every time we put our fingers to the screen, we create electricity,” I say, repeating a fact I learned from Neel. “Our phones react in different ways depending on how we touch it. So the screen might shake or vibrate or click, whatever. It can give us the sensation that we’re actually pressing down on a real button. All this technology already exists.”
I return his phone and reach for my half-eaten licorice package on the floor. “Okay, now I have my phone here and you have yours there. Let’s say we each have our fingers on our screens.” Mac plays along, positioning his finger on his real phone, and I do the same on
my licorice phone. “So, here’s my idea. What if”—pausing for suspense—“when you press down on your screen, I feel it on mine? I actually feel you.”
I wait for his reaction.
“Why do we need the phones?” Mac says. “Why can’t we just touch for real?”
“We can’t. We’re not in the same place.”
“We’re not? I thought we were.”
“No, you’re at your house and I’m at mine. We’re living our own separate lives.”
“Oh. Okay,” Mac says.
He doesn’t get it. How could he? He doesn’t know how important a touch screen is for someone like me. He’s never struggled to work a bulky game controller or tried to clumsily peck at a traditional keyboard.
His lack of enthusiasm doesn’t get me down—too much. I’ve got vodka confidence. “Someone’s going to invent it,” I say, full of unusual faith. “It might not be me and Neel, but mark my words, one day it’ll be a reality. People touching each other without even touching.”
Mac crosses his arms and ponders. “What are your grades like?”
I snort—by accident. “Not great.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neel is the tech genius. I just had the idea.”
“I’m not talking about that. You’re obviously smart.”
This makes me blush.
I’ve been tested for ADD, dyscalculia, auditory processing disorder, you name it. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with me. One therapist I met with believed the reason I was having difficulty at school was obvious. But I wasn’t ready to talk about that.
“It’s hard for me to focus sometimes,” I say, which is true, but apparently not a medical concern—just a parental one. “Let me guess, you get straight As.”
He leans against the wall, head resting back. “Flattered, thanks, but no. More like solid Bs.”
That checks out, actually. He mentioned wanting to get his grades up for college.
“You remember in seventh grade, in our English class, when we got partnered up?” I say.
The funny look on his face means he doesn’t remember. How could I be so stupid to blurt that out?
“Vaguely,” Mac says.
“It’s fine,” I say, not wanting his pity. “Don’t say you remember if you don’t.”
“Well, can you be more specific?”
I inspect his face and find honest curiosity. I step, once more, out on a ledge. “We had to act out a scene together from The Outsiders.”
I thought I was going to die, being that close to him, having to speak words that actually made sense. Luckily, Mac had the bigger part and did most of the talking.
It’s clear from his extended silence that he has no recollection of this moment.
“I’m such an idiot,” I say.
“Stop it,” Mac says, laughing at what he feels is a silly matter.
“Let me ask you this. Were we both in Ms. Picerno’s class in fourth grade?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“Just answer.”
“Yes,” Mac says with certainty.
“No. You had Ms. Picerno and I had Ms. Katz.”
He’s loving this, laughing at my expense. “Oh, come on. I don’t remember stuff like that.”
I’m a little hurt. It’s all so clear in my mind. Our classrooms were next to each other, and everybody would pile into one room for holiday parties and the occasional movie. I remember Mac’s class had a pet bird, white with a splash of orange. I remember that Ms. Picerno once sent Eric Adamo from our class to the principal for calling her Miss Piss (not to her face, but not quietly, either). And of course I remember how a month into the year the girl with the purple glasses switched from Mac’s class to ours and the only available desk happened to be next to mine. Her name was Brooke and she told me she was a vegetarian. I thought that sounded pretty cool.
“You’re not the first person to tell me I don’t remember things,” Mac says, only the faintest hint of laughter remaining in his cheeks. “People seem to remember the past so well. I feel bad that I don’t. I don’t remember a lot of my childhood.”
He’s gone serious again, and it’s my fault. “You’re still a child, you know. Technically.”
He thinks about it. “Yeah,” he says, but with deep reluctance, as if he can’t stomach taking a win on a mere technicality. He’s a contradiction: He sees his childhood as distant and done, but so many of his strongest qualities are that of a child. His sense of wonder. His naïve confidence. His restless energy. His bottomless hunger. Earlier tonight, when he barged in unwelcomed, his childlike way irritated me. Now I can’t wait for it to reappear.
He steps closer to a photo on the wall.
“I was too in my own head. I’m still like that. I look at people, I talk to them, but I’m not actually looking at them. I’m not really talking. I’m not even there most of the time. It’s hard to actually be there.”
I guess he’s saying this so I don’t take it personally that I mean nothing to him. It’s not working as intended.
“You seem to remember some things,” I say, trying to make sense of the times tonight when he did recall noticing me, including that one very specific time at the assembly.
“Yeah,” Mac says. “It’s like I remember the things I want to forget and forget the things I wish I could remember.”
I repeat this in my mind and test it against my own life: It’s a perfect fit.
Mac massages his neck. He grimaces as he applies pressure. It seems we can laugh all we want, but there’s always a lingering pain below the surface that can’t be ignored.
I walk over and clap loudly in his face.
He leans back, startled. “What was that?”
“You’re being weird,” I say, even though I don’t know him well enough to know what’s weird and what’s not. I just don’t want to feel like I’m here alone, like he knows something I don’t (when really it’s the opposite). I sense my newfound courage slipping away. “You can leave anytime you want,” I say.
He shuts his eyes.
“I was thinking how nice it feels to have a space. Just somewhere to be, where I can take a moment.”
A peaceful grin forms on his face.
“I feel like this is our house or something,” Mac says. “Like we live here.”
His eyes open. A blast of his golden glow.
“So no,” Mac says. “I’m not ready to leave.”
12:12 AM
I scan the shelf that holds the museum’s music collection. “How about a cylinder?”
Mac’s eyebrows arch in suspicion, like I just offered him a trendy new narcotic. Nope. Vodka was plenty for me. A cylinder is neither illicit nor cutting edge.
“It’s what music was recorded on before discs,” I explain. “This one is from 1910.”
I switch on our cylinder player, and the black tube (made of actual beeswax) begins to spin. A hiss leaks out of the horn and soon the record plays. The music feels squeezed and small, but the instrumentation is lush and expansive.
“What’s this one called?” Mac asks.
“‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon.’” It’s the third song we’ve sampled so far.
I take a seat next to him along the wall. I keep landing a little closer to him every time I return from cueing up a new recording. At first, the proximity was accidental. At first.
“Of all his inventions, capturing sound has to be the coolest,” Mac says.
“And he was basically deaf.”
“Even cooler.”
“I’m not joking,” I say, because when I tell this to the average patron, they never believe I’m serious. “To hear the music his artists were recording, he’d lay his head against the horn and feel the vibrations.”
“That’s dedication.”
“Or arrogance. He was super controlling.”
“You don’t cut a dude a break, do you?”
“Don’t start with me again.”
He tries to subdu
e a smile.
The moment Mac described the museum as our house, I swear a physical door opened before me and I saw Mac standing there, waiting inside, and I stepped through the doorway into the house, took off Mac’s coat, finally, and here I am—home. I’ve always had that feeling about this place. In some ways, it feels more like home than home feels like home. And now Mac is with me and it’s as though he belongs here too.
He holds up the bottle that used to contain his energy drink but has since been refilled at the bathroom sink. “More water?”
Oh yeah, that. I’ve been drinking a lot of water. Mac’s suggestion. Maybe it’s an athlete thing? Anyway, sure, let’s be sensible and stay hydrated. “Yes, please.”
He tops me off.
The song, only ninety seconds long, ends before Mac has had a chance to fully appreciate it. He asks me to play it a second time. I sigh. I really don’t want to get up again.
“I’d do it myself but I’m afraid of getting yelled at,” Mac says.
Fair point. I get up and reset the cylinder. The music crackles to life.
“You want to know something else?” I say, sliding back onto the floor. “He loved milk.”
“Smart. Milk is delicious.”
“Strongly disagree. Edison was drinking an insane amount of it. Like, instead of eating meals, he’d just drink milk all day. This guy, this genius, quotation marks, you see what I’m doing there, he believed milk was a cure for major diseases. What is that?”
“I’m imagining Thomas Edison being alive today and you’re, like, sending him angry tweets.”
“No, I prefer to just vent to you.”
“Lucky me.”
He glances over.
The museum features a number of magnets, each on display to demonstrate the power of electric currents, but the one staring back at me now with its golden shimmer has more pull than all of them combined. I can’t resist. My neck extends, mouth opening, head floating, but it’s too far—I stop short, and I bite down on his shoulder.
