Capsule

by Mel Torrefranca

  “Of course, Dad.” Jay readjusted his laces. “Will do.”

  As Jackie slipped into the passenger seat of Jay’s Honda, all she noticed was how restless he was. Mrs. Mendoza had given him a haircut about two weeks ago, the almost-black hair on the sides of his head now shorter than the top, but he didn’t have it gelled to his left side like he usually did. Jay swiped open the mirror on the sun visor in front of him and ran his fingers through the scraggly mess. His skin was still tan, but as he wrapped his trembling hands around the steering wheel, his complexion dulled. A loss of saturation.

  This game—or whatever it was—was driving Jackie insane, and the last thing she needed was a mysterious brother to add to her list of questions. She hadn’t finished her homework last night and had accumulated a total of five missed voice calls from Eugene on Discord, most likely in concern over how she’d ended the game yesterday so abruptly.

  Jackie had stayed up until nearly 4:00 in the morning, stuck in an endless loop of research. She’d started by searching for Capsule in the App Store to find nothing but apps for contact management or in relation to pharmacies. From there she’d turned to Google, spiraling down articles of historic time capsules, medications packaged in gelatin pills, and even songs containing the word capsule in the lyrics, but none of the results mentioned the app she was looking for. It was almost like Capsule didn’t exist.

  But why me?

  Sure, the app appearing out of nowhere was strange, and the fact that Peter and Kat were mentioned in it was even stranger, but why had it been her phone? Why had Capsule chosen to haunt her, of all people? She had no connection to Peter or Kat whatsoever.

  After buckling her seat belt, Jackie redownloaded Instagram onto her phone. Maybe if Google didn’t have answers about the app, Peter’s and Kat’s social media accounts would. Jackie’s username was the same as in the gaming world—jackielantern—and her account was as barren as she’d left it in middle school. No profile picture, bio, saved stories, or even a single post. The only users she followed were Jay, Mr. Mendoza, and a few classmates from middle school. Five followers, six following.

  Jackie was about to start her search for Peter’s and Kat’s Instagram accounts when she realized that Jay hadn’t moved the car yet. He stared blankly at the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

  “Kuya?” Jackie cringed at herself calling Jay the Filipino term for older brother. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d called him Kuya, not that she’d started using his first name. She simply had no reason to call him in the first place.

  Jay cleared his throat as he turned the car radio on, snapping himself back into reality. “I’m sorry.” The car synced with the bluetooth on his phone and blasted the song Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant. Jackie remembered his obsession with that song a couple of years ago. During one month he’d play it on loop every day after school. The singing and strumming had seeped through the walls and into Jackie’s room, distracting her from her homework. She still remembered the lyrics today.

  Jay’s pointer finger paused over the skip button. With a rehearsed smile in Jackie’s direction, his arm retreated to shift the car into drive. He pulled out onto the road, the rustic guitar rhythm filling the silence between them.

  Jackie held her gaze on him for a few moments before turning to her phone screen again. Jay followed over two thousand people on Instagram, the majority of whom also attended Brookwood High.

  Two Peters emerged on his following list. One had no last name, but the profile picture was a boy with blond hair. He couldn’t be Peter Moon for two reasons. First, the Peter who sat next to her in Mr. Berkshire’s class had brown hair, and second, he never seemed like the type of person to take selfies. She couldn’t even recall seeing him with a phone in his hands before.

  Jackie tapped the second Peter, who had no photo, but his profile revealed that his last name was Ackerman. No luck there either.

  Jackie typed Kathabelle into Jay’s following list, reaping no results. She hit the back button until the search bar displayed nothing but Kat.

  There it was—one result in Jay’s following list. Kat Pike’s account wasn’t even private. She had a total of fifty-nine photos, all featuring herself, and a highly-curated bio.

  bhs ’23 ~ proud stallion, professional procrastinator <3

  “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life” —steve jobs

  It was perfect. A cliché attempt at originality followed by a cringey quote she’d searched for online specifically for social media. Classic.

  Reminds me why I don’t use Instagram.

  Jackie’s eyes grew larger with every scroll through Kat’s feed. Her style was out there. Like, really out there. She’d posted her most recent photo eight days ago, and in it she wore a plaid brown and gray button-down tucked into a turquoise skirt. Neon green socks peeked out from under her combat boots, a knitted cardigan in the same annoying lime color draped over her shoulders. Judging by the arrangement of blurry brick buildings behind her grinning face, she was standing in the middle of Old Town Brookwood—the most historic part of the city.

  The caption read, just two months of school left, but i’m barely hanging in there lol

  Jackie’s grip tightened around her phone screen. Over six-hundred likes for this photo? The comments were filled with support from students at Brookwood High, all of them either complimenting her looks or applauding Kat for her carefree style. Kat didn’t bother replying to—or even liking—any of the comments.

  What does she even get out of this?

  As much as Jackie couldn’t relate to the idea of posting dozens of photos of her face online for everyone in school to see, she found herself drawn to one photo in particular.

  Kat’s first post on Instagram was from over two years ago. She stood in the middle of an ice rink, bulky skates on her feet—the comfortable kind that cost extra to rent—and wore linen shorts despite the chilly air. Unlike the other photos, her outfit was normal.

  Overly plain, even.

  Next to Kat was a girl a few inches taller than her, blonde hair falling over her yellow hoodie in perfectly symmetrical waves. The caption read, happy birthday to the most amazing girl i know <3 Most likely her sister, judging by the endless freckles splattered across their faces.

  Jackie navigated to Kat’s following list and searched for Peter. The only result was Peter Ackerman. No Peter Moon.

  “Kat,” Jay said. “Do you have any classes with her?”

  “No.” Jackie turned her phone off. “But I do have a class with Peter.”

  Jay readjusted his sweaty grip on the steering wheel at the sound of Peter’s name. Jackie waited for him to say something or ask a follow-up question, but he never did. He drove in silence, shoulders high, neck tense—the same posture Jackie remembered him having when he’d started driving for the first time.

  The Mendoza siblings arrived at school a few minutes early, which was barely enough time to walk to their respective classes. As soon as they landed on campus, Jackie and Jay headed their separate ways. The car rides to and from Brookwood High were the only moments Jackie felt like she and Jay were actually siblings. The commute forced them together in a car with no distractions, barred from the outside world of opinions of who they were in relation to each other. It was just them, just a brother and his little sister, but the car rides were only ten minutes long.

  Jackie held her breath as she entered the science hall at Brookwood High, greeting a mixture of near-dead and over-energetic teens. Some stood on their toes or crouched to reach their chipping teal lockers, and others lined up in front of classrooms waiting for the teachers who only opened their doors after hearing the bell ring. The longest stretch of lockers in the science hall—where Jackie’s was located this year—filled the wall between two AP physics classrooms to her right. Jackie had nearly reached it when her shoes froze to
the ground.

  Peter Moon’s locker.

  It was only a few steps away from her own, but she didn’t know that because she remembered seeing him there. Peter had only been announced missing to Brookwood High yesterday and students had already moved past a level of remorse and scribbled cruel messages on the steel in his memory.

  I hope they don’t find you.

  How long until they report you dead?

  What have you done to Kat?

  About time you disappear.

  Each note had been written with different handwriting. Some in pencil, others with Sharpie, and judging by the fact that bye blogger boy rubbed off with a quick swipe of Jackie’s finger, some had been written with whiteboard markers.

  “Can you just go?”

  Jackie turned to face a short-haired girl holding a dripping rag. She was slender and about a foot taller than Jackie with checkered knee socks nearly reaching her shorts. The girl stepped forward, forcing Jackie aside as the maroon rag in her hands met the faded blue steel. After a few scrubs, most of the messages came off, but a few had stubborn ink they both knew was going nowhere.

  “I didn’t write anything,” Jackie said.

  The girl’s bangs jumped as she turned around. Her piercing blue eyes threatened Jackie, but after a moment the sharpness dissipated. “Sorry.” She frowned at a string of words she couldn’t get off before scrubbing at them harder. “I’m just really sick of this. There’s been a lot of hate for Peter lately.”

  Normally this was the scene where Jackie would make an exit and never speak to the short-haired girl again, but today she couldn’t contain her curiosity. Maybe learning about Peter would help her discover why the app had chosen to connect her with two random students from Brookwood High. So instead of walking away, Jackie planted her feet and asked a question.

  “One of the quotes…” Jackie rubbed the whiteboard marker ink from her fingers. “It said blogger boy.”

  The girl scraped her thumbnail against the locker, attempting to scratch off a stubborn patch of writing. “They’re just talking about Moral Moon.”

  “Moral what?”

  “You know, Moral Moon. It’s where he writes about different people from school.” She gave up on scrubbing and tossed the rag into a trash bin standing by the nearest classroom door. “Kids act like he’s the worst person alive when they’re thinking the exact same thoughts. The only thing that differentiates Peter from the rest of us is that he actually says what he thinks.”

  The girl stepped away, but Jackie’s voice stopped her. “It sounds like you know him pretty well.”

  “Yeah.” She looked over her shoulder with a light grin. The hallway lights reflected off her golden brown hair, and for a brief moment, she glowed. “We’re in book club together.”

  Jackie pulled the phone out of her back pocket, opened the Capsule app, and held the screen toward the short-haired girl. “Has he ever mentioned this before?”

  The girl frowned. “Mentioned what?”

  Jackie pointed to her screen. “The app.”

  She took the phone from Jackie’s hand for a closer look. “Which one?”

  “The one the screen’s on.” Jackie crossed her arms, already growing impatient.

  The short-haired girl’s eyes trailed over the screen, never landing on one destination. As the hall emptied out, she passed the phone back to Jackie. “I’m not sure what you mean, but trust me, Peter never would’ve mentioned an app. He hates the internet. Said he deleted his social media accounts before sophomore year.”

  What kind of person hates the internet but still runs a blog?

  “You can’t see it?” Jackie raised her phone screen higher, trying to get the girl to focus on Capsule again. “With the text? And there’s a button at the bottom to start the countdown.”

  The short-haired girl blinked a few times, the folds on her forehead growing more defined the longer she stared at Jackie’s phone. “All I see is your home screen.” She ripped her eyes from the device as a prison bell screamed through the hallway. “Sorry. I need to get to class.”

  As the short-haired girl disappeared into a swarm of late students, Jackie tightened her grip around her violet phone case and twisted her wrist to double-check. As expected, her phone revealed the elements of the Capsule app, not her home screen.

  Lines of students in the hall vanished, the obnoxious chattering coming to an end, leaving the hallway unusually silent. The short-haired girl didn’t seem like the kind of person to mess with people for her own entertainment, but she had to be lying.

  A boy in an oversized puffer jacket shot past Jackie, fiddling with one of the lockers to get it open. She approached him without a second thought, nothing but the app on her mind. “I have a question.”

  The boy jumped as he turned to find her standing next to him, not expecting an interruption after the bell had already rung. He continued with his rummaging, arms tense. “Yeah?”

  Jackie raised her phone to the height of his head. “What do you see on my screen?”

  The answer was clear in her mind. On the top was the phrase PLAYER, WELCOME TO CAPSULE followed by Peter’s and Kat’s blunt descriptions and a prompt to save them. At the bottom was a bold red button labeled START THE COUNTDOWN.

  It took a moment for the boy to look at the screen. He obviously had higher priorities.

  “Um, I don’t know. A bunch of games?” He clicked the lock shut and hurried to his first period class.

  Jackie walked down the hall as she pressed her fingers on the volume and lock buttons simultaneously, taking a screenshot of the Capsule page. After exiting to view the photo in her library, she came to a complete halt.

  Capsule wasn’t there.

  All that appeared in the screenshot was her home screen, which didn’t even have the app icon. Next to Clash of Clans was nothing. The hallway grew dark, the occasional student walking past her only a silhouette, a menacing shadow. She leaned her head forward on the way to class, blocking her face with her long hair.

  Only I can see it? She tapped her home screen, a chill running down her spine as the Capsule app stood proudly next to Clash of Clans. Is it possible for an app not to show up in a screenshot? What if it’s somehow built into Capsule’s code? Or maybe it’s a glitch. Her mind buzzed with more scenarios than she could comprehend at once, but her theories had one tragic characteristic in common—they failed to explain why no one could see the app but her.

  Overwhelming dread tightened around her throat, wringing her breath away. Someone had to be playing with her. Toying with her.

  This can’t be real.

  Jackie stopped in the middle of the hall, spinning for a sign of someone—anyone—but she was alone.

  DEAR STRANGER

  Sometimes when I visit my family

  They compliment my new car

  I don’t want them to

  But they can’t resist the smooth paint

  The bright scent

  The way the windshield sparkles under the sun

  Sometimes while I’m driving my new car

  I think of you

  I think of how happy you would be

  To drive a new car like this

  And I hate to admit it

  But I start to believe it was meant to be yours

  3:43 PM

  JACKIE WOULD NORMALLY approach her closet after school to get dressed for an afternoon run, but today she approached her closet to tear it apart.

  She raised her chin to a shelf above the hanger rod. On it were layers of middle school notebooks, random board games, and other junk she never bothered using. Jackie dragged her gaming chair to the closet and stepped onto it.

  Balancing on the seat cushion put her on high alert—a spinning chair wasn’t the best solid object to stand on, its position sliding in response to even the most discreet m
otions. With one hand she rummaged through the mess of her closet shelf, the other pressed against the wall to hold her balance. Her searching fingers met with the cold buttons of her old digital camera.

  Bingo.

  Tucked under a sixth-grade PE sweatshirt was an old Canon EOS Rebel T3i. Mr. Mendoza had purchased the camera used on eBay after noticing her interest in taking photos on her iPhone, but this only made her more resistant to pursuing a hobby in photography. Into the closet of junk it went. Another failed attempt of meeting the high standards Jay had left behind for her.

  Jackie lowered herself into a seated position on the chair. She flicked the switch on the camera body to find that the battery still had two bars left. With the phone in her extended left hand and the Canon in her right—only inches from her nose—Jackie peered through the viewfinder. In the frame was every element from the Capsule screen—the descriptions of Peter and Kat as well as the prompt to start the countdown.

  Jackie pressed the shutter button to take a photo.

  Holding her breath, Jackie clicked the photo view button on her camera. The short-haired girl’s statement from earlier echoed through her mind.

  “All I see is your home screen.”

  Jackie had seen the app in the camera’s viewfinder, but the actual photo displayed nothing but various mobile games. Like the screenshot she’d taken before class, the Capsule icon was missing.

  Fine then. Jackie jumped off her gaming chair and abandoned her camera on the sheets of her unmade bed. Time for Plan B. She monitored the screen on the way to the bathroom as though Capsule could disappear with only a blink. After shutting the door behind her, she locked her gaze onto the mirror’s reflection. The bags under her eyes from last night were stronger than she’d thought.