by Lamar Giles
The fries were Cajun style, too much seasoning. I almost gagged swallowing, and with those fries went my patience. I threw the whole bag of food into the trash can a few feet from us, a shot as impressive as a Diana Taurasi three-pointer.
Kya stiffened, surprised by the move.
I said, “I really didn’t come to hear about your boy troubles. That crap is juvenile to me. I been making these money moves, and this, frankly, wastes my time.”
“Boy trouble?” She had the expression of someone trying to interpret a difficult problem. “I’m talking about my coding club? Phillip is a member of the Smart Ones. You don’t remember them?”
“Naw, I don’t remember no coding club.” Truth. Some of the stuff from Cooke High felt twenty years gone, so much has happened.
Her tears dried instantly, like I’d blasted her with oven heat. Her watery red eyes became just red. Almost demonic. Some of our childhood fistfights started this way. If that’s what it was, that’s what it was.
“I’ve tried to text you, Paris. Tried calling, even. You blew me off on my birthday, and every other time I reached out. You’re a star, and it hurt, but I gave you space. Tonight’s not like those other things. I came here desperate.”
So did I!
But I didn’t say that. I didn’t tell her that I’d been so, so low lately. Instead, “So you called me here to read me over missing a movie and some calls. If you knew half of what I been going through, you’d feel stupid mouthing off about your club and your app. News flash, Kya, there’s more important stuff happening in the world than the dumbness you’re doing to pad your college applications.”
She flipped her hood back up, snapped the button at her collar, prepared to leave. Everybody leaves, right. “Go on, then,” I said, faked a laugh. “Tell your friends you got to hang with a legend in the making tonight. Put that in your college essays! Want a selfie before you go?”
Her hood angled toward me, so big and floppy, only her mouth escaped the shadow it created. She said, “No. I don’t want a selfie. I do want you to listen. For once.”
“What?” How was she going to whine now?
“You’re rotten on the inside, Paris.” Her voice was as clear and steady as I’d ever heard it. Better than when she sang. “You’ve always been a little bit. Selfish, and demanding, and hardheaded. Whatever that foulness in you before was, it’s spread. Somebody should throw you away.”
On that, she left. A gust of icy wind swept the restaurant when she shoved her way outside.
Stunned, I was unable to process her words, despite replaying them over and over. Must’ve been an hour I sat there, long enough for Kya to get home and to a computer. The notification on my phone broke my trance:
CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO VAULT CLOUD FILE “MUSIC AUTOSAVE.”
It was an old cloud account, where Kya uploaded stuff we did. Before.
Wait. Wait. Wait.
I tapped the notice. The app opened automatically, navigated to the folder. It hadn’t been changed. It had been emptied.
All our music was gone.
I’m going to get expelled. I’m going to get expelled. I’m going to get expelled. Unless …
Posted outside the bathroom, only catching vague murmurs of whatever information Fuse pried out of Paula Klein, I played sentry. The best I could hope for was no one came along, so no witnesses to back up whatever Paula told the cops later, because, for real, two black girls assaulting a white woman in a bathroom—she was definitely going to the cops. We’d lie, deny, cry … anything but admit to what would surely mean jail time on top of the certain expulsion. A lot of jail time. Even if Paula had killed Paris. That’s the way things worked. We don’t get to stand our ground.
It was after school. The hall was empty. I’d only have to keep things that way until Fuse finished. Simple, if she hurried.
“Kya, hey!”
No, no, no!
Florian rounded the corner. Her backpack straps cinched tight on her shoulders, a single white earbud cable snaked from her ear to the phone she held before her like a compass. From the bathroom, I caught something that sounded like “There’s been a mistake here!”
Fuse, please don’t electrocute her right now.
Quickstepping, I met Florian halfway and hoped sound didn’t travel. “What?”
“You and Fuse Fallon left that meeting in a hurry.” She leaned sideways, inspecting the empty hall. “Where is Fuse?”
“Um, she …” I made a show of rubbing my abdomen. “Her stomach …”
Florian grimaced but remained on-mission. “’Cause you two seem real buddy-buddy now. That’s a story I could run, and the ParSec lovers would eat it up. Enemies to friends in the wake of tragedy. That’s good enough to get picked up by some bigger music sites.”
“So, publicity for you.”
“Just sayin’. You obviously haven’t been checking the feeds. Some folks in ParSec Nation still hatin’ on y’all. A little positivity could go a long way.”
“I don’t know if anything you’re saying right now could be classified as positive.”
“You two keep acting like I don’t want to help. Stubborn for no reason.”
Any other day, I would’ve walked away, but if this kept her from getting closer to that bathroom …
“Ask your questions. I’ll give you three.”
She wouldn’t have smiled bigger if I was her mom saying she could have pizza and ice cream. She fiddled with her phone, stretching the cord taut on her earbud. “Awesome. Let me set up my recorder?”
All sorts of bad things occurred to me in a microsecond. Fuse’s warnings about staying off the record with reporter types (even wannabes like Florian), the high possibility of the Paula Klein bathroom maneuver getting loud at the exact wrong moment.
“No recording!” Fear and self-preservation are what made me snatch her device like I did.
The earbud cord popped loose from its jack. Her music app controls appeared on-screen, and my thumb brushed the play command, resuming the song she’d been listening to, loud through the speakers.
A part of me is all, do I stay?
And all you do is take away.
Florian snatched the phone back, silenced it. Too late.
Of course I’d already recognized my voice—mine and Paris’s song. The song no one else on earth should’ve had … unless they also had a fondness for creeper masks and custom sneakers featuring old cartoons.
Paula was sobbing, alarmingly loud. It drew my attention when she lurched from the bathroom before spotting me and stumbling away in the opposite direction. Fuse emerged next, yawning like she was bored. “I think I’m crashing off all that caffeine. What? What’s the matter?”
“Florian! She’s … she’s—” I turned toward the unmasked monster who’d been terrorizing us.
The hall was empty.
Google Maps took us to the address Kya obtained with her guidance office access. Ten minutes from the school, putting us twenty minutes behind Florian’s head start. Given the capabilities her and her merry band of masked crazies had displayed thus far, I feared what she might do with that time. “What if she’s not there?”
“We wait.” Kya brooded. “She’s got to come home eventually.”
That felt … dark. Grim in a way that scared me a little, and I still had Mom’s stun gun.
“Turn right on Edwards Street.”
We cruised into a suburban neighborhood near the Ocean Shore city limits. Detached, single-level ranch homes, mostly. Faded asphalt and patchy lawns. There was no outlet. The street became a wide turnaround. Someone’s basketball hoop, weighted down with a couple of sand bags, marked the end of the cul-de-sac.
“Your destination is on the left.”
Thanks, but the confirmation wasn’t necessary. I recognized Florian’s car—an old, well-kept forest-green Honda Civic—at the curb in front of her house. I circled the b-ball hoop, pulling right up to Florian’s bumper.
Kya said, “Give me that stun gu
n.”
I’d seen this look, a second before I got real acquainted with Kya’s fist. I spoke in the calm, cool tone of my therapist, “K, chill. Remember what I said about you keeping stuff inside, and how it might leak out in unexpected ways? I think we may have reached that point of the program.”
“Give me. That. Stun gun.”
Okay, she’d snapped. Best to comply. Fished the weapon from my bag, and she snatched it from my hand, was stomping across one of the best-kept lawns in the neighborhood on a beeline for the door.
I hurried behind her, anticipating chaos. She triple-jabbed the doorbell, the stuttering gongs loud from my position at the bottom porch steps.
“Kya, be cool!” said the person who just held an old white woman captive in a school bathroom.
The door opened, a dark-haired lady—petite, with round red cheeks like two apples—revealed herself. Florian’s mom, given the resemblance. “Can I help you?”
Okay, so I expected Kya to kick the door in, snap this woman’s neck like Jessica Jones, and tear Florian out the house through a load-bearing wall. Alas, she took my initial advice and was kind of chill about the whole thing, concealing the stun gun in the back waistband of her pants like a real G, going to her standard scholastic fake-out tactics.
“Yes, ma’am. We go to school with Florian. She told us to come by and talk about the final project that’s due Monday.”
Flo-Mom beamed. “Of course, come in. She’s in her room.”
Kya didn’t hesitate, disappearing into the shadows of the house. I followed while Flo-Mom called, “Florian! Your friends are—”
The thud of running footsteps, a panicked Florian yelling, “Ma, you didn’t—”
She saw us, and maybe reconsidered voicing any concerns she might have.
“Your school friends are here about your project.” The way Flo-Mom put it, not a total lie. She left us, attending to something delicious-smelling, though I doubted we’d be invited to stay for dinner. Kya stalked down the hall, fists clenched.
Florian backed into her room. Kya followed, as did I, closing the door gently behind us. The click from me turning the lock sounded final.
“I’m sorry.” Her twin bed caught the back of her knees, forcing her to sit-fall on the squeaky mattress. Her Rick and Morty sheets were a snarled ball beneath her.
“Are you now?” Kya asked. “Where are your shears?”
Florian whimpered.
A huge monitor lit up the desk by the foot of the bed. On the floor next to it, a tall computer tower hummed and glowed with alternating purple and green light shining through transparent side panels. A custom job, much like the items perched on shelves that rimmed the room’s perimeter.
Those sneakers she wore when she’d terrorized us were on display with other—admittedly dope—shoes. All redone to some animation aesthetic. One pair featured Dragon Ball Z characters. Some Justice League Chuck Taylors sat toe-to-toe with some Avengers Jordans. There was Steven Universe on some Huaraches, and DuckTales on a pair of Adidas shell toes. I kept skirting back to the Air Force 1s I’d come to know intimately in the moments where Florian made me believe I might die. Elmer chasing Bugs, barrels raised. Probably thought you were so meta with that, didn’t you, Florian? Tables have turned now. Her face quivered, terrified.
I said, “It’s not so fun when the rabbit’s got the gun, huh, Flo? Would it help if we put on masks?”
“You’re not going to hurt me. You’re … you’re better than that.”
“Wow,” I said, “she actually tried it.”
Kya hefted the stun gun appreciatively, depressed the trigger so it crackled with blue fire. “Good weight.”
“I know, right?”
Florian hugged herself.
Kya triggered the electricity again, an inch from Florian’s face. “Who are you to twist Paris’s name and legacy so you can run around like a bad Batman villain? We knew her, we were her friends, and you think you can weaponize her memory against us?”
Florian squirmed. “Kya, I really never meant you any harm.”
“You threatened to cut off my freaking pinkie, you psycho!”
“No, no. I wasn’t going to really do it. I promise. It was this thing that came up in one of the Dark Nation forums, like an inside joke.”
I said, “Y’all joke weird.”
Kya’s muscles shook with the strain of, I don’t know, wrestling with her sanity. I wagered Florian had a fifty-fifty shot of not getting cooked today. When I got up this morning, I didn’t realize how many jail-worthy events I’d be involved in before sunset.
Sane Kya won this initial bout, as she tore herself away from Florian and stepped toward the massive computer. “Is this where you listened to our conversations? Made your little polls about us?”
“You better answer,” I told Florian, leaving off “for both of our sakes.”
“Yes! I am sorry. I understand that, maybe, I crossed a line.”
I said, “Maybe? Who else was in the van that night? Were they the same guys at ParSec’s apartment? They go to Cooke High too?”
Again, Florian attempted to maintain some fading tough chick facade like she wasn’t going to talk.
“Okay. Kya, fry her.”
Kya lunged, stun gun extended like a spear.
“Wait, wait!” Florian cowered. “Keep it down. My mom doesn’t know about any of this.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?” Kya scoffed.
“There’s no one else at the school that I know of. We don’t even know each other. The masks aren’t just for scaring you two.”
Kya glanced my way, I returned a slight nod. I believed the part about the masks at least. Whenever #DarkNation popped up with one of their ratchet videos or online photos they were masked up too. It’s something they did from the start, though I never knew why. Till now.
Still. “Aren’t you the leader?” I asked. “They took orders from you.”
She made an “eh” face. “Only because I handled the tech. They treated what I did with my iPad like sorcery. Here be dragons!” Florian snort-laughed at her own bit.
Kya was deadly serious. “No more jokes. Nothing’s funny.”
“Alls I’m saying is the Dark Nation is a bunch of splinter cells. Mostly in North America, but there are members on at least four continents. Second-heaviest population is Asia. ParSec’s music bangs in Japan.”
“I’m aware,” I said. “So you felt okay rolling with a bunch of masked dudes you knew nothing about?”
“I think the guy with the van is from Portside. The two that snatched you, Kya, I believe they’re brothers. Don’t know where from.”
Kya leaned in, jaw set, stun gun in a death’s grip. “How did the brothers from nowhere get my address?”
I touched Kya’s shoulder, guided her back with a light grip. “Florian, as you can see, Kya is prepared to hurt you. You’d deserve that. I might let her do it. But we have other concerns at the moment.”
Kya’s mean expression communicated a clear question: We do?
In the race to Florian’s, I hadn’t had a chance to fill Kya in on what I’d learned from Paula. I’d need to be careful how much I let slip here. Just because Florian was caught didn’t mean she was defanged. Horror movies had taught me vampires were most dangerous when they’re cornered.
Motioning to her computer setup, I said, “How good are you with that stuff?”
Florian answered carefully. “Good-good.”
“If I gave you a name, could you do all your spy hacker stuff to get us info on that person?”
“Depends on the name.”
“Lil’ Redu.”
Florian grimaced. “His rhymes are so stupid. In my opinion, ‘Calm Down, Turn Up!’ succeeds in spite of him. Contrary to what he’d have the world believe. That whole Lil Wayne vibe meets—”
Kya ignited the stun gun.
“Let me see what I can do.”
“I’m sorry about the way I been acting. Okay? I’ve been s
tressed out, everybody been on me about stuff. I know it’s not an excuse. Still, I hope you’ll accept my apology.”
Winston swiveled his chair and patted my knee. Quick. Two taps, then pulled away. He’d been my only comfort lately. He said, “You haven’t mistreated me. At all.”
Absently, I tapped the pads on my drum machine, alternating between a bass and snare. The only sound in the studio. The booth was empty. No one in the place except the owner—asleep in his back office—and us. These days I preferred the empty studio to home.
I hadn’t worked on any new music in a couple of weeks. No energy. The love was absent.
But that crap with Fuse and Shameik, then the blowup with Kya, things ain’t been feeling right since.
Was my only friend really a reporter? “You’re probably the last person I should be telling this stuff to.”
Winston lifted his phone, showed me a black display, set it back down. “We’re off the record. No one ever has to know about this. Believe it or not, I recall some of what you’re going through.”
“All your friends turned on you?”
“Don’t know that I’d put it that way. At different stages in life, you grow apart from people. The break can be a subtle drift, or a quake fracturing the world. It’s almost always for the best.”
I triple-tapped my snare. “That could be a song.” I was only half-kidding.
“I dabbled a bit in my youth.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. I could jam. Write, sing, play a little guitar. I saw myself as a Lenny Kravitz type.”
“Who that?”
“Guy who made Katniss’s costumes in the Hunger Games movies.”
“Oh.”
He picked up his phone, tapped the screen. “Here, listen. This one is called ‘Again.’ He won a Grammy for this.”
The drum intro, plus the accompanying guitar, had me immediately. Winston closed his eyes, reclined as far as his chair allowed, mouthing along to lyrics about someone Lenny Kravitz loved and hoped to see again. Simple, really. And devastating.
“Can you”—I cleared my throat—“turn it off, please?”
