Little White Lies

by Brianna Baker

  Karl gestured with the remote, and a red slash appeared across the word BUILDER with the word BUTCHER painted in red above it.

  The black-and-white photo was now digitally defaced with the same red splattered over the man’s face and body. The remote control clicked, and the image of bloody Leopold gave way to a montage of black-and-white photos picturing Africans of various ages—each of them missing a hand.

  “In fact,” Karl continued more quickly, “Leopold the second was one of the most brutal and devastating imperialists in the history of mankind. He robbed the Congo region in Africa of its natural resources while systematically enslaving, mutilating, and murdering millions and millions of innocent people. And now two of his descendants have decided to pick up where he left off.”

  Now Anders was whispering in Karin’s ear and peering at the studio crew. I held my breath.

  Another click of the remote refreshed the screen behind us to reveal the following equation in boldface type:

  SKOOLS 4 ALL = $$ 4 SKOOLS.

  “Karin and Anders Skool, the grandchildren of Leopold’s son Lucien Philippe Marie Antoine, wish to follow in their great-granddaddy’s footsteps. Make no mistake, they intend to exploit children and their families—not just in Africa and in the United States of America, but throughout the entire world. And perhaps the most perverse part of their plot is that these twisted siblings have been enriching themselves at the expense of the disenfranchised, all under the guise of education and a progressive social agenda.”

  I think I must have had what is known as a “disassociative moment.” Because instead of listening to Karl’s presentation, I was once again flashing back to our arrival at the Pulse TV studios this morning, my parents on either side of me.

  This is it.

  We all looked at one another, took a deep breath, and walked in. We saw the security guard, the one we’d arranged for. We knew because he had a red ribbon pinned to his chest.

  “If you’re all headed to the studio, it’s the elevator on the left. If not, I’d say it’d be on the right, but then again, who knows.” The guard nodded, smiled, and handed my parents access cards.

  As we parted ways, I felt my phone buzz in my jacket. It was a text from Mike.

  Ethan got me in. All set.

  Then I was back. The audience was murmuring uncomfortably. Anders whispered furiously in Karin’s ear, and she nodded. Only then did they finally stop smiling.

  Anders whirled around and shouted to the tech booth, “Enough already! Cut the feed to the stage. These liars have gone too far, okay? We all know they’re lying …” But his voice was lost in the swelling protest from the audience.

  Karl stopped reading and grinned at me. He nodded toward Karin, who for a brief second attempted to cover up the words and images with her hands. And that was it, the money shot. That one shining moment showed her as desperate and demented—in public. It was all we needed to legitimize Karl’s revelations; nothing could possibly be more damning. And she knew it. She shook her head, glaring at Anders for some sort of solution.

  He shrugged and bolted for the side of the stage. She had no choice but to clatter after her twin on her very high heels.

  I don’t remember much after that, except for giggling. I mean, it was funny. But yes, I still giggle at inappropriate times.

  Waiting in the wings were the same security guards who had been watching our every move. Next to them my parents, the Corneliuses, Rachel, and Ethan. Yes, tiny little Ethan, the Skools’ protégé. The one who’d allowed Mike access early this morning. He had actually been instrumental in giving us access to quite a bit of privileged information—and more importantly, in getting Mike into the tech booth, so we could stage the coup.

  The Skools’ escape route was blocked by an army.

  Esther Cornelius stepped forward. “Karin, Anders, it stops here. You’ve been found out; the whistle has been blown. You’re done.”

  The twins stood there in silence. They glanced at each other. They had no rebuttal. I think everyone expected some sort of fight. Instead, Anders muttered something about their lawyers. As in, the twins needed to see them.

  Then the Skools raised their chins and joined hands. (So creepy.)

  After that, they were perfectly calm. (Creepier.)

  They allowed themselves to be escorted out of the building by the security officers. Karl and I witnessed all this from the stage. The audience watched it on the screen behind us. Then I saw the red and blue flashing lights. What the hell?

  As soon as the twins reached the sidewalk, they were greeted by a posse of law enforcement officers that included NYPD, state police, and federal agents as well as a swelling scrum of paparazzi.

  The police!

  Amazing. Perfect. The police were never a part of our plan. We’d anticipated that a public shaming outside the building would probably be involved, but not the actual law. It turned out the Corneliuses—with the help of the Bernsteins and my parents—got the actual attorney general involved. Which led to actual arrest warrants and actual cops.

  The moral of the story? It’s best not to piss off a group of lawyers.

  I didn’t have a speech planned for after it all went down. But when I turned and squinted at the camera, I saw the telltale red blinking light. It was still recording. I was still on TV, live. And now I felt something rising up inside me. I looked at Karl. He nodded at me and smiled encouragement. As I looked at Mike in the booth and the faces of the teens from all over New York City in the audience, the words … just came out.

  “So as you can see, there’s a lot more to this story than any of us thought possible. I don’t know what the future holds for me or for Karl or for Little White Lies, or even for Pulse TV … but I do know that we will do everything we can to make sure it is all rooted in truth and social justice from now on. This world is a scary place, and if you’re not careful, it’s easy to be swept into its dark corners. I know I was. But this world can also be a beautiful place. It is a beautiful place.”

  Here I had to pause. Mostly out of surprise.

  Karl was dabbing at his eyes.

  Amazing. I’d moved the guy. I took a deep breath and finished.

  “So maybe if we all do our best to seek truth and justice while working to expose injustice and deception, and if more and more of us do that on a daily basis, then perhaps we will need fewer and fewer little white lies to get ourselves through the days. I’m Coretta White, and this has been Takin’ U to Skool. Thank you.”

  EPILOGUE

  Karl (Summer 2014)

  Yeah, so that stuff all happened.

  Um, any questions?

  Who? What? How? When? Where? Why?

  Okay, let’s start with where. I’m writing this final chapter from my new apartment. It’s in Fort Greene, and I own it! Alex and I made up after the whole revenge/justice scenario went down (Operation Skools Out), and she told me about another super-secret bank account.

  Unbeknownst to me, for the past twenty years, Alex had been siphoning off twenty percent of all my AllYou earnings, placing half the money in an IRA (stands for “individual retirement account”; not being condescending—I never knew what it meant, either). She placed the other half in an investment account that’s now worth over a million bucks.

  I’m not exactly set for life, but it was enough to buy a decent apartment in a nice part of Brooklyn and a tiny shack in the Catskills. I’ve been able to take some much-needed time off after deciding to embark on an indefinite leave of absence from all social media. And hopefully by the time I’m sixty, if the human race and/or the United States still exist, I might be able to retire for real.

  Thank you, Alex.

  In case you are wondering, Dear Reader, whether Alex and I got back together after this whole ordeal, the answer is a resounding NO! However, much to her elation, I did decide to retire from rapping. Good-bye, MC Expensive Meal. And after a lot of encouragement from my ex-girlfriend, former boss, and Friend For Life (FFL), I’ve finally st
arted writing my first novel. No title yet, but it takes place in the 1990s and follows the international misadventures of an Ivy League–educated PowerPoint specialist who secretly works for the CIA* and—even more secretly—is the son of Huey P. Newton*.

  I’m happy to report that I’ve also disabled my Tinder and OkCupid profiles. It’s kind of a long story, and I’m going to spare you the details, but lately I’ve been spending a lot of time enjoying the company of Chloe Delvoye, the young woman I met on the Pulse TV “limo boose.” I probably shouldn’t even be mentioning it, but there it is. (Hi, Chloe.) And to her credit, she quit Pulse TV the morning after our bus ride, disgusted with the Skools.

  A few more notes on where along with a bit of how:

  The Skool twins also reside in Brooklyn, where they are still being detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, affectionately known as “Little Gitmo” because it is said to contain a number of high-level terror suspects. (I can’t resist mentioning that Lil’ Gitmo would be a pretty sweet name for a rapper. Just not me.) Between the connections that Coretta’s and Rachel’s fathers have with federal prosecutors and which the Corneliuses have in general—and thanks in large part to Mike’s incredible hacker-sleuthing—the state department was able to quickly build a case against Anders and Karin.

  The timing worked out perfectly. They served the arrest warrant immediately after the twins’ public humiliation on Pulse TV.

  I also imagine that Coretta and I were able to serve such just desserts on live television because of some political power moves by Mr. White and Mr. Cornelius. Why would they allow us to do so? Four words spring to mind: Guilt, Justice, Revenge, Redemption.

  As far as I know, the other principal characters from this saga—including my trusty cadre of subcontractors, Kris and Sarah, now otherwise employed—all remain in New York City, most of us in Brooklyn and none of us incarcerated.

  Coretta graduated high school and will be enrolling at Harvard in the fall. I’m not sure if her decision to forego Stanford was due to her disdain for Condoleezza Rice* or because Mike is going to MIT, but I suspect the latter. I’m a little bit sorry to see two such amazing young people leaving Brooklyn for Boston (yuck!), but I suppose those are both good schools, and I’m sure neither one of them will decide to live there after they graduate. (Sorry, Boston.)

  I can’t remember where Rachel is going—probably her safety school. She and I have not stayed in touch, though not for her lack of trying.

  Evidently Rachel is one of those people who’s slow in warming up to others, but she doesn’t hold tightly to first impressions. Since we’d gotten off on such hostile footing when we first met, Rachel Bernstein was the last member of our “Skools Out” squad I expected to hear from. But not only did she send me a handwritten card (as I imagine all of us got), Rachel also texted me several times with questions about recipes, shoe storage, shower curtain rings, Ohio, and other seemingly random subjects.

  Typically her texts would come in bursts of five. Initially I responded to all of them, but then I gradually reduced my number of replies to zero. Maybe it’s society’s pernicious influence, but there was something about being text buddies with a teenage girl that was starting to make me feel creepy. I mean, it’s one thing if it’s work related, but this kid is definitely not Oprah.

  Alex is still ensconced in her Chelsea mega-loft, but even she is considering a move to Brooklyn as of late. (I’m not holding my breath.) Business is booming again at AllYou™. In typical Melrose fashion, Alex spun the negative impact from her association with the Skools into good fortune. She was able to warn a few of her clients who sat on the boards of SKOOLS 4 ALL and Pulse TV about the evil twins before the shit hit the fan.

  So she not only scored some valuable brownie points, she also helped facilitate the secret board meetings that led to the ouster of the Skools from both Pulse TV and their SKOOLS 4 ALL foundation, which coincided with their dramatic arrest. There was some talk among the Corneliuses, the Whites, and the Bernsteins about installing a new board of directors that would take the foundation in a new direction.

  Initially the Corneliuses even considered buying Pulse TV outright. But the intermingled finances between the network, the foundation, and the Skools’ various other “nonprofits” and corporations are so cryptic, convoluted, and riddled with fraud that it will take months, if not years, to decipher (never mind assess) the largely illegal assets and accounts.

  Also, dark pools.

  Oh, and Mr. Cornelius has made a pledge to help find jobs for any SKOOLS 4 ALL or Pulse TV employees not implicated in illegal or unethical activity.

  Are we still on where? Because speaking of pools, I’m happy to report that immediately after our triumphant trampling of those twisted siblings, Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius welcomed our entire crew—Alex and me, Coretta and her parents, Rachel (who for some reason brought her bubbi), and of course Mike—to fly on their private jet to their vacation home in Bermuda.

  They call it a “vacation home,” but it felt more like a private resort.

  Ironically their spread is situated in between Bloomberg’s and Oprah’s. Yes, real Oprah. No, we didn’t see her.

  Let me say if you’ve never been to Bermuda and stayed at a billionaire’s house, I highly suggest you do so.

  The highlight of our stay came while Alex and I were sunbathing on their private beach, drinking tropical cocktails out of blown-glass coconuts. We looked up to see Coretta and Mike on the deck of his parents’ sailboat, drinking what I have to assume was a nonalcoholic sparkling beverage.

  We raised our glasses. The four of us, without missing a beat, reenacted the “Looking good, feeling good!” scene from Trading Places*.

  Unfortunately Coretta and Mike hadn’t even heard of the movie (they still might not have), so they didn’t get the reference, much less recognize the roles they were unwittingly playing. And that is very sad—for them.

  So there was that.

  Why did all of this happen? Well, we hope it was for a good reason. The Universe works in mysterious ways, and by the time you’re reading this epilogue, there will no doubt be countless effects and side effects felt from the remarkable space in time that we have attempted to recount within these pages.

  I could delve into the motives of the Skool siblings in targeting a seventeen-year-old girl and a hapless middle-aged man for destruction at the expense of their own odious empire. But since they are psychopathic freaks descended from evil incarnate, anything I write would be mere conjecture.

  Having trolled through Mike’s collection of hacked emails (thank you, Mike), it’s clear why the Skools viewed Coretta as a perfect pawn/cloak for their insidious enterprises. It’s because their own racism got in the way. They underestimated both her brilliance and moral backbone. They believed they could control her through their carefully cultivated relationship with the Corneliuses, and by the bounds of her restrictive Pulse TV contract.

  But when Coretta sent them her heartfelt confession and they glimpsed her depth of character through her genuine struggle with this ethical dilemma, they must have realized that 1) they did not control her, and 2) they did not even know who she was. They had taken the words of her underpaid surrogate—a man old enough to be her father!—as the true gospel of Coretta and then found themselves duped. They feared Coretta’s power, which they had helped to create, and were also butt-sore over her violation of their so-called trust.

  So they engineered revenge.

  As far as I’m concerned, they belong in Lil’ Gitmo.

  So what now?

  The good news, of course: I’m not broke.

  Coretta and Mike (and yes, Rachel) are going to college. And as much as my feelings are mixed about the University Industrial Complex, I recognize the value of a good education at a prestigious school. And seeing these bright youngsters on the road to continued success—as cheesy as that sounds, especially when read in the junior high vice-principal voice that’s playing in my head right now—it honestl
y gives me hope for the future. And when I say “honestly” that is not to suggest that I am being in any way disingenuous.

  I’m not sure if I’ll keep in touch with Coretta, or if I’ll even see her again.

  It was weird enough working for a seventeen-year-old—now I’m going to be friends with her? Not that I have anything against young people; I just don’t think I want to be that old dude hanging out at the college parties. But who knows? Maybe we’ll get coffee together sometime. Maybe she and Mike will invite me to their wedding. If so, I hope it’s in Bermuda! Or maybe this book will be a big hit, and Coretta and Karl will get their own TV show after all.

  The bad news? You don’t wanna hear the bad news. The bad news is that stop-and-frisk still exists. And so does Boko Haram. And now, apparently, something horrible called ISIS (not to be confused with Isis, the Egyptian goddess). The “War in Afghanistan” is soon coming to an “end.” But not really. Meanwhile the “Iraq War” came to an “end” three years ago, and that country has never been more fucked up than it is now. Want to see something scary? Read the Iraq War page on Wikipedia. (I just did, and I’d like to throw up.)

  But the bad news does bring to mind a conversation I had in Bermuda with my personal link to the top point-oh-one percent, Ms. Alex Rose, and my new favorite venture capitalists—Esther and Douglas Cornelius.

  It took place a few hours after our Trading Places moment. I imagined Mike and Coretta were still happily sailing in the sunset. Coretta’s parents were off taking a romantic walk on the beach, or so I also imagined. Rachel was swimming laps in the pool as her bubbi snoozed on a deck chair beneath a bright pink umbrella. Alex and I sat at one of the outdoor dining tables with Douglas and Esther—which was how they insisted we address them—enjoying fresh cocktails and snacking on tangy ceviche prepared by their housekeeper/driver/chef.

  I sensed that our hosts were straining to make sense of two forty-somethings who for whatever reasons had never procreated.