Drawing Amanda

by Stephanie Feuer

  Megaland: Hello again, Justagirl. How are you liking autumn in New York?

  Justagirl: The colors are pretty.

  Megaland: It’s my favorite season - harvest time. Time to enjoy all the fruits of your labor. My work is progressing. I would welcome your feedback on the next elements.

  Justagirl: The dressing up game?

  Megaland: Yes, that’s it. You have a wonderful memory.

  Justagirl: I was looking forward to it. I started to pay more attention to what everyone is wearing.

  Megaland: I’ll be most interested in what you think.

  The chat box minimized and the screen was filled by a giant closet. A model stepped to the front. Amanda recognized her—she’d inspired Amanda’s transformation. Now she was in a black derby, a double-breasted satin jacket and jeans. Her toes wiggled, which made Amanda laugh.

  The model pointed to the shoe rack in the closet. Amanda clicked on a pair of black patent pumps. The model’s head shook no. Amanda scanned the shoe rack and selected a pair of bronze booties. The model clapped and retreated to the closet. She returned in a flowered mini with a touch of lace at the hem. Amanda recognized this as the kind of thing Priya or Ellen would wear over black leggings. She knew what shoes they’d wear, and immediately clicked on the black ballet flats. The shoes moved from the rack and rested to the side of the model. But there was no applause.

  For a second Amanda was unsure what to do. The model’s toes wiggled.

  Amanda spotted a pair of black leather boots at the back of the closet. They were thigh-highs. When she clicked on them they moved to the front of the closet and sat on top of a pile of shoeboxes. She wasn’t sure what do, so she clicked on the box labeled size 8, her size. She thought she’d clicked on the wrong thing again, but the model applauded. The ballet flats returned to the rack and then disappeared off screen. A gift box appeared on the closet floor. Amanda waited for the model to return to open it. The text box enlarged.

  Megaland: Did you like that?

  Justagirl: It was fun. I’m still learning about fashion.

  Megaland: Would you like to have a closet like that and dress up?

  Justagirl: Totally. That would be cool.

  Megaland: Did you notice the gift on the closet floor? You missed the reward file once before. Maybe the placement is wrong. Or maybe the timing? What do you think?

  Justagirl: I think it’s ok. I’ll open it now. It’s just that after I play, it’s fun to chat. I like that my opinion matters.

  Megaland: Oh it does. Your feedback will make this more successful. In fact it’s time to move you into a higher testing level.

  Justagirl: wow.

  Megaland: If I were able to pay for user testing, what would you buy with the money you’d earn?

  Justagirl: IDK

  Megaland: Clothes? Shoes? Girls like shoes. Or makeup? Or how about those boots?

  Justagirl: The boots are fierce. But I’m saving to buy holiday presents.

  Megaland: We’re gearing up for a round of on-site user testing. We need to do it soon. I’ll let you know as soon as we can arrange it.

  Justagirl: cool

  Amanda clicked on the gift box that appeared on screen. The gift card said: “Well done. You’ve made it to another level. You’ll look like a goddess on your dream date.”

  This feels a little young, Amanda thought. But it was kind of fun to think about dating.

  A model emerged from the box. As it resolved, Amanda leaned in to the screen. The image was amazing—a beautiful girl dressed in a dark and light green gown. The skirt part looked like billowy triangles. Handkerchief style, Amanda thought it was called. She was meant to be a princess, or a goddess; there was a crown of leaves around the model’s forehead and a flower of broccoli in her hair.

  She looked again. The dress was totally unique. There was an unusual texture to the fabric.

  It had to be. She looked again. This was not a standard fairy tale princess. The dress, as she looked closer, was definitely made from lettuce leaves. What she first took for pearl earrings she now saw were peas.

  A vegetable princess. She gasped. The goddess of salad! She thought of Inky right away. Hadn’t he said he always loved to draw? And that first day, he wouldn’t let his friend Rungs write on a page from his sketchbook. She could see why. His work was amazing.

  No one had ever done anything like this for her. No one had paid that much attention to her. She was not sure what to make of it, but she was definitely enticed by the thoughtful, complex boy behind this game.

  The cursor blinked. She’d been ignoring the text box while she took the image in.

  Megaland: Do you like it?

  Megaland: Is it too odd? Too green? Tell me what you think.

  Justagirl: I love it. It’s perfect. My very own Green Goddess.

  Chapter 21

  Conjecture and Proof

  INKY HADN’T SEEN HER COMING. The conversation lasted for only a moment, but he shuddered from the impact. Amanda, with a shy-girl flush on her cheeks, walked up to his table at the cafeteria, held up a piece of broccoli from her plate and said, “I’ll wear this on my date, along with green pea earrings. Like a Green Goddess.” Then she smiled and walked away.

  Inky watched her walk to the center of the cafeteria, his mouth open in disbelief. It was all so deliberate, so awkward, so rehearsed.

  He looked at Rungs. “WTF?”

  “WTG,” Rungs said slowly, pronouncing each letter. “I think she just asked you out. Way to go.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Heard it with my own ears. She broke free from her buddy, Hawk, and as good as asked you out.”

  “That’s not it,” Inky said.

  “I heard her say date.”

  “She did not say anything about a date with me,” Inky said to Rungs. “And it’s the other stuff that was really weird.”

  “That she’s planning her outfit?”

  “I don’t know a lot about fashion, but I’m pretty sure that wearing vegetables is not a thing this year. There is no magazine that’s showing that.” Inky banged the table. “The green pea earrings, the broccoli flower. She got that from one of my drawings.”

  “For real?”

  “Absolutely. Look.”

  Inky opened his notebook, thumbing through the pages so quickly he almost tore one. He stopped at some of the sketches he’d done for the Green Goddess drawing the previous week. Rungs stared at it for awhile.

  “OTH, dude, this is off the hook good. But the vegetable dress thing. What’s that about? The core project or something?”

  “Or something,” Inky said. “Someone, like Hawk, must’ve got hold of my drawing and shown Amanda. The question is how.”

  “Ask Amanda.”

  Inky shook his head no. “It’s probably some trap. Hawk put her up to it. And I’m not falling for it.”

  “She seems to like you. Ask her.”

  “I can’t,” Inky said, lowering his head so his chin was almost to his chest. Talking to girls, being with girls, talking with anyone, in fact, that was normal stuff. But not for him. The grief he felt had turned him to stone. He hated it, but accepted it. That was the way it was now. “I just can’t ask her, all right?”

  Rungs was quiet for a moment, then asked, “So how do you think she got the picture?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t do that kind of thing. I never even cheated on a math test. But I know that the only time I don’t have my sketchbook is gym.”

  “If Hawk cut gym, she coulda gotten into your locker and copied the picture for Amanda.”

  Inky nodded.

  “But,” Rungs said, “why would she bother?”

  “Hawk never forgave me for the cartoon I did of her in middle school. She was all into riding horses out in the Hamptons. I drew her like Lady Godiva, but with a crown and a whip. In a bank vault. It didn’t have her name on it, but everyone knew it was her.”

  “That’s ancient history. Plus, word was you made her l
ook hot. It’s gotta be something more than that,” Rungs said.

  True. There was always more with Hawk.

  He had known her forever, when she was still called Helen, before she practically swapped her feet for a skateboard and renamed herself in honor of her skateboard hero. Hawk, the daughter of a prominent international banker, the center of the popular group, always seemed to have everything.

  But Hawk had turned to him for the one thing she ever needed, and he’d turned her away.

  Her mother died a couple of months after his father’s accident. Hawk was making Inky pay for his coldness to her, even in the grief therapy group, was making everyone pay for her grief. But he had nothing to give, had no wisdom or understanding or coping strategies. She’d had plenty of time to be prepared during the two years her mother was sick. His father’s death was sudden and haunted him still. No, he had nothing for her, and now, he was sure, she was making him pay for his weakness.

  “Hawk has reason enough,” Inky said.

  “It’s just conjecture, dude. You need proof,” Rungs said.

  “You sound like Wallingford,” Inky said of the science teacher.

  “Nah—it’ll take Wallingford another month to get to conjecture and proof at the rate he’s teaching.”

  “Unless …” said Inky. He stopped himself, considering his words. “I don’t see how it’s possible, but …”

  “What?” Rungs asked.

  “I sent that picture to Woody, the Megaland dude, for the game. But I don’t even know if he used it. I can’t imagine how she’d get a hold of it. ”

  Rungs was looking down at his minicomputer, which he held under the table, careful to hide it because of the “no devices in the school building” rule.

  “Are you with me?” Inky said.

  “Yup. Checking the student directory for Amanda’s address.”

  “What do you need that for?” Inky asked.

  “You want to see if she got the picture from the game developer? We need to know where she lives. Or at least where her computer lives.” He looked back down. “NG. No go on the address or phone number. Just her email. C’mon. Let’s go make a phone call.”

  Inky and Rungs went outside to the MDA parking lot. A group of senior girls sat against the back wall, texting in unison. Inky could tell from their expressions when they were texting each other.

  Rungs punched in a phone number. “Sa wha dee kharap,” he said into the phone. To Inky it sounded like Rungs said ‘so what the crap,’ an odd greeting, and oddly appropriate. He giggled a nervous giggle. An Indonesian boy smoked a clove cigarette. Inky moved so that he was out of his wind but still within earshot of Rungs, who was speaking in Thai.

  He smiled and nodded. “Khob khun na kharap,” he said. “Thank you so much.”

  “Who’d you call?” Inky asked when Rungs hung up.

  “My father’s secretary. Told her I went to school with the daughter of the Director of the World Assistance Agency and I promised I’d help her with her math homework—but I lost her address and phone number and I didn’t want her to think that I’m dumb.”

  Inky let out a whistle. “If it doesn’t work out with Apsara, you’re going to be some player.”

  “Whatever,” Rungs said, texting Amanda’s information to Inky. “We’ll check this out later.”

  *

  Inky and Rungs hustled across the intersection right before the light changed, practically running into the plaza adjacent to the sky-hued glass building bearing Amanda’s address. As he caught his breath, Inky recalled an abstract he’d done during the building’s construction, depicting the angular line of a crane hoisting the big blue window panes over the forest green scaffolding. The way the sun hit the finished building made him think about toning down the blue he’d used for the glass.

  “Perfect,” said Rungs, who’d installed himself on a bench and immediately started typing stuff into his device. His expression was serious, but Inky caught a sparkle in his eye as he scanned a list on his screen. Inky tried to shake off the sci fi feeling as his mind bounced from his recollection of his painting to the building before him.

  Rungs scrolled through the list of accessible wireless connections, creating 10-second novels about their owners. Inky thought that he’d never seen his friend so happy.

  “Catinthehat, the password must rhyme. Popsicletoes wears some sweet kicks. OB123, they deliver. 12B, Netgear77. EinBear, hide your honey. Here we go. Director. I’m betting on director. Her dad’s mighty proud of his position.”

  “Aren’t those connections all secure?” Inky asked.

  “No worries. Most routers have a quick setup that says to enter a password the whole family can remember. You’d be surprised how many people use a phone number. Which you happen to have.”

  Inky read the numbers off of Rungs’s text.

  “Most people don’t read the part about creating a strong password. No one reads manuals.”

  Inky saw the icon for a successful connection appear on Rungs’s toolbar. “Except you,” he said. “You got into her computer?” Inky asked.

  “That’s just step one,” Rungs said. “Tonight I’ll send her a trojan.”

  “Say what? Gross.”

  “Not that kind of Trojan. It’s like bugging a phone instead of listening at the door. You send a file that’ll attach to the other person’s computer—you’ve seen those spam messages that have something you’re supposed to click on.”

  “You know how to do that?” Inky asked with a mix of awe and suspicion.

  “I’ve never had a reason to try it,” Rungs said.

  Inky could tell his friend was happy to have that chance now.

  A tree in the plaza outside Amanda’s building cast a long shadow. The sun was beginning to go down. They waited for Amanda to sign on. Inky did his Spanish homework, then his math homework. He honestly felt like going home and working on his core presentation. Or just going home. He longed to be in his room or any place that was warm. But he couldn’t complain. Rungs was doing this for him.

  Chapter 22

  Justagirl in Trouble

  IT WAS THE SECOND AFTERNOON OF WAITING. Waiting, Inky noted, made him both bored and tense at the same time. He now knew more about SMTP and network protocols than he figured he’d ever need. To pass the time, Inky drew a mental picture of the encryption technique Rungs was explaining; onion routing with layers of secrecy would make a fine new abstract. Rungs continued with his mini-course in electronic espionage, describing how he’d built a RAT, a remote access Trojan, into a memo about a new rubric for the core project and sent it to Amanda. Inky pictured the beady eyes of a rubric rat, while Rungs explained how they’d now be able to see all of Amanda’s computer activities.

  But still there was the drudgery of waiting. At least they were using one of Rungs’s modified tablets. The 10-inch screen seemed gigantic compared to the handheld they’d been using the first day.

  “There’s got to be a better way. We could wait here forever. We don’t know when she logs on to her computer or the game. It could be late at night. What if her parents don’t let her on the Internet until she’s done with homework or something?”

  They waited some more. Inky zipped the worn caramel-brown bomber jacket that had been his father’s. He looked at the places the leather had cracked and thought of the barely paved road they’d traveled in Brazil. He wished everything didn’t remind him of the accident. He wished he wasn’t so haunted.

  “Here we go,” Rungs said, breaking the silence. It was getting dark, and even though Rungs had changed the type color on the screen to an electric orange against a black background, it was still hard to look at.

  Inky could just make out a series of numbers and symbols. It looked like the gibberish he’d see when an email message bounced. Then he saw the familiar type and the Megaland welcome screen. He smiled in spite of himself.

  “Whoa,” Inky said louder than he’d wanted. “WTF. That’s the game. That’s Megaland. Amanda ju
st signed on to Megaland.”

  “Keep it down,” Rungs hissed, pointing to the skaters at the far end of the plaza.

  Inky fixed his eyes on the screen. It seemed like there was some activity at the bottom of the screen. He saw a string of numbers and letters where the chat box would normally open up.

  “Dang,” said Rungs, who started typing furiously. Something that looked like Cyrillic came on screen. The box faded. Rungs typed some more. Inky noticed his friend was sweating, despite the cool fall air.

  Inky didn’t quite understand what was happening with the computer but he was anxious to have it resolved. Now that they’d seen Amanda sign on to Megaland, he wanted to know what was going on.

  “Gimme a minute,” Rungs said, sensing Inky’s tension.

  Inky looked over at the skateboarders in the park. Maybe this had nothing to do with Hawk.

  “Got it,” Rungs said, his upper lip curled in self-satisfaction. A maze appeared and Inky and Rungs could see how Amanda’s cursor sent a shiny black purse through the maze.

  “Go left,” Rungs said, giving instructions even though she couldn’t possibly hear.

  “You like this?” Inky asked. The purse jerked forward, flashing a bit of hardware as it got closer to the finish line. It was a weird feeling, like looking over someone’s shoulder at an arcade.

  Rungs shrugged. “Solving things works for me.”

  When the pocketbook made it through the maze, a giant gift box appeared on screen. Inky saw the arrow of Amanda’s mouse.

  Megaland: Click on the box this time.

  Inky felt sick to see the familiar chat box—like a friend had found someone new to hang out with. The “this time” bothered him most.

  All the other images faded, leaving the giant gift box. Its top came off in an animation sequence that was better than he would have expected. Virtual hot pink wrapping paper filled the screen. Then the box dissolved and a new scene appeared.

  It was a party scene, a collage like a celebrity page in one of Inky’s mom’s magazines. The couple at the center of the scene didn’t quite fit together, and the perspective was off. Inky felt smug—his work for the game was technically better than this, and more unique, too.