by Ariel Kaplan
“Get up early and do it tomorrow,” I said.
“I hate this,” she said, closing her notebook. “Like, there’s not that much to remember. How am I so bad at it?” I was putting my shoes on, but she said, “Don’t walk me back, that’s stupid.”
“But it’s dark.”
“Yeah, but then you have to walk home alone in the dark.”
“Yeah, but…”
“I’ll text you when I get there,” she said. “In about two minutes.”
“Fine,” I said. “Don’t forget, though, or I’m calling someone.”
Two minutes later, I got a proof-of-life text from Bethany, along with a photo. I zoomed in; it was another brochure. This one was titled Sunset Hills Adult Living, and the photo was captioned, I’m so screwed.
That night, at precisely ten o’clock, I heard the strains of Star Trek coming from my phone.
This time, I was actually prepared, which meant my phone was by my bed instead of at the bottom of my bag, and I was able to answer it before the autopilot turned on.
Hi, Deanna, Greg had written. So I was wondering, do you speak any languages besides English?
I have been programmed with a natural language processor, I typed. I didn’t think I could play it off that Deanna was programmed to answer questions in Latin, and I was pretty sure Google Translate wasn’t going to get me through this. So I said, I don’t speak any languages but English at this time.
But because I couldn’t help myself, I typed, My programmer is linguistically deficient.
He typed back, Perhaps you need a better programmer.
I laughed. Perhaps.
So who is your programmer?
Damn. Damn damn damn. I am an anonymously authored app, due to privacy concerns.
Right, he said. But it was someone at Middleridge. In the app design class. Who likes Star Trek.
I breathed out. That didn’t actually narrow it down all that much. I typed back, I am a character from Star Trek: The Next Generation. I also appeared in six Star Trek films, and occasionally on Star Trek: Voyager. I like big hair and chocolate.
Right, right. You boldly go where no one has gone before.
I try. What about you? Have you been bold since the last time we spoke?
Well, I tried to take your advice.
And how did that work out?
I couldn’t go through with it. I guess I am not the bold type.
Perhaps you need to work up to it, I said.
Maybe. I don’t know. It’s hard to be around people who wish you were someone else. You know?
I ran a finger across the bridge of my nose. That is very true, I said.
It’s like, they say they love you, but what they love is some fantasy version of you. It has nothing to do with you at all. Like we were talking about yesterday, with Pygmalion, right?
It was hard to imagine anyone having a fantasy version of Greg that was better than the reality, but I realized that was kind of a hypocritical thing of me to think. Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t known anything about him at all, except that he was nice and nice to look at. And still, I’d barely scratched the surface of what Greg was actually like.
But when you try to tell them this, he went on, they just deny it. So there’s no point in even talking about it. And then pretty soon you can’t even talk about the fact that you aren’t talking. It’s just, I don’t know.
Lonely, I typed.
Yeah. I guess. Which is why I’m talking to a chatbot instead of a real person.
I typed, Bleep bleep bloop.
Thanks for that. So what do you think I should do?
I think you should be straightforward and tell them everything you told me.
Right, be bold. Easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with them.
This is true, I said. However, you have to ask yourself: Who benefits if you don’t tell them how you feel? Them, or you?
Well, them, because they won’t be mad. And me, because it makes my life easier if they aren’t mad.
Don’t sacrifice long-term happiness for short-term convenience.
You sound like a fortune cookie.
Sometimes fortune cookies are wise beyond the limits of their size and physical appeal.
Like Yoda.
Yes, like Yoda.
…
I was about to turn off my phone, figuring he was done for the night, when he typed, So there’s this girl. Sometimes I think she likes me, but other times she acts like she’s totally not interested.
No. No no no, this was definitely veering into TMI, and I’d promised myself I wouldn’t let him tell me anything really personal or embarrassing. So I typed: Gender is a social construct. Have you eaten any waffles lately?
If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were changing the subject.
The subject is the main noun of a sentence, which is minimally constructed of a subject, which may be implied, and a verb.
Oh, now you’re definitely changing the subject. Aren’t you programmed to give relationship advice?
I rubbed my forehead. Please, I thought, do not tell me who you are into. It will ruin everything.
I guess it doesn’t matter, he said. You’ll just tell me to be bold again.
That is very good advice for most situations.
All right, all right. I’m going to bed now. Good night, Deanna.
Good night, Friend.
* * *
—
At lunch, I really wanted to slip out, but Sophie wanted me to look at her English paper, so I sat in the cafeteria between her and Bethany reading her essay about the importance of names in Sula.
“Well?” she said.
“It’s good,” I offered. “I think it’s too long, though.”
“It’s supposed to be 500 words, and it’s only 550.”
“Yeah, but you could cut a third of it and it would say the same thing.”
“Gah,” she said. “Why did I even ask you.” She slipped the paper back toward her side of the table and went back to eating her fries.
Bethany, who was sitting next to me, finished the last of her bottle of iced tea and said, “Are you wearing perfume?”
“I ran out of deodorant, so I swiped my dad’s Old Spice. I smell like Swagger now.” I lifted my arms and she took a whiff.
“That’s amazing,” she said. “Like, I totally want to make out with your armpit right now.”
“I know, right?”
Sophie said, “Really?”
I said, “Smell me.”
She did. “That’s not bad.”
Of course, that was the moment that Greg walked by with a bunch of his swim team buddies, getting an eyeful of my friends smelling my pits, because that was the exact impression I wanted to make. He waved. Of the three of us, Sophie was the only one with the intestinal fortitude to wave back.
Bethany lowered her forehead to the table.
Over the top of her head, Talia said, “Do you guys want to do cupcakes or pizza after the next regatta?”
“Pizza,” Sophie said. “We did cupcakes last time. Aphra?”
“Huh? Oh. Pizza’s fine, I don’t really care.”
Bethany looked up from the table. “Could we…could we maybe get both?”
“Do we want Pizza Trevi or Pizza Firenze?”
“Trevi has the gluten-free crust,” Sophie pointed out.
“Ew.”
Bethany said, “But if we—”
“Then don’t eat it, but Divya can’t have the regular kind.”
“I have a coupon for Trevi,” Divya called from a little farther down the table.
Bethany was looking down at her lap. I elbowed her. When she didn’t respond, I said, “We’re getting cupcakes after, though, right?”
&nbs
p; “What?” Divya called.
“Aphra wants cupcakes!” Sophie called back.
“Fine,” Talia said. “We’ll do Trevi and cupcakes after.” Under the table, I flashed Bethany a little thumbs-up. She smiled a little and gave me one back.
* * *
—
After Latin, Greg tapped my elbow. “Hey,” he said. “So I was thinking about coming to crew today. Any chance you could take me out in the pair again after?”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah. I mean, I went out with the JV boat for a few minutes on Monday, and I think I’m still doing something wrong. I feel like I’m having trouble keeping up, and my arms hurt like hell after practice.”
“Everyone’s sore after practice,” I pointed out.
“I couldn’t lift my arms over my head yesterday. I had to wear a button-down.”
“Maybe not that sore. Sure, I’ll take you out for a few minutes, if you want.”
So after we’d finished practice, while the rest of the team was drinking their Gatorade and stretching, Greg and I pulled Selkie up to our shoulders, schlepped her down to the water, and put her in. Before we climbed in, I said, “I think I should sit in the bow today.”
“But I won’t be able to see what you’re doing.”
“Yeah, but this time I’d like to check you out.” I winced. “I mean, I want to look at your stroke.”
“You think I’m rowing wrong?”
“If your arms are that sore, yeah. You should be mostly using your lower body. If you’re doing it right, you should be feeling it in your core. Did you have blisters, too?”
“A couple, yeah.”
“Try not holding on so tight, and use your core.”
“I’ll try.”
I watched Greg’s muscles tense and relax as he rowed in front of me. He was too close. So close, in fact, that I could smell his Swagger-scented deodorant. I stifled a laugh.
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” I said, because I didn’t want to explain that we were wearing the same deodorant, which was probably the most physically intimate thing Greg D’Agostino and I would ever share, which was simultaneously very funny and very, very sad. “Are you ready to speed it up?”
“I’m ready,” he said, and I had him bring the stroke rate up to a 26 for the next three minutes before I could tell he was starting to falter.
“Weigh enough,” I said, and he kind of collapsed.
“How is it,” he panted out, “that I’m falling over right now and you’re fine?”
I wasn’t fine, not by a long shot, but I’d seen the problem, so I said, “Your stroke is still too deep. That’s what’s wearing you out.”
“But isn’t that what moves the boat forward?”
“Yeah, but you’re sacrificing speed for power. It’s just like swimming; you don’t run your arms like a windmill. Look.” He did his best to look over his shoulder, and I bobbled my oar in the water and pointed to the end. “Imagine a line here. That’s all you want to submerge. You’re putting in way too much.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I think I get it.”
“You ready to try again?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Sit ready,” I said, “and go….” I watched his stroke as we made our way back across. “Less,” I called. “Even less.” He raised his oar just a hair, and I said, “That’s perfect.”
After five minutes, we paused again. He was still panting, but he’d made it the whole way without collapsing this time.
“That felt better,” he said.
“It was better. Just remember, you’re not rowing the boat by yourself. Rowing’s not like swimming. It’s a hundred percent a team sport.”
“No I in boat, huh?”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re just one leg on a millipede.”
He laughed.
“So,” I said, trying to figure out how to frame this. “I gather swimming isn’t going too well.”
His head popped up in surprise, and I quickly added, “You said you’ve been skipping practice a lot. That’s all I meant.”
“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I have.”
I looked down at my feet. I was wearing the Rainbow Dash socks Bethany had given me last Christmas.
Greg said, “I kind of want to quit, actually.”
This much I knew. “Tired of the early mornings?”
“No. Well, yeah, there’s that, but also I’m just super burned out.” He exhaled a stream of air. “I’ve been burned out for a while, actually. I wanted to quit last year.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“My parents kind of flipped. They were hoping I’d be going to college on a swim scholarship.”
“That…that sounds tough. But…but you talked to them, right?”
“I don’t know.” I felt a little wobble in the boat. He had a hard time sitting still in general, which was a problem. “It’s hard.”
“Not for you, though. You could tell them in six different languages.”
“Probably only four,” he said. “But that’s not the point.”
“The point is…”
He made sort of a choking noise. “Why do you care so much?”
“It’s not…I don’t…I just think you’d be happier. Like, you’re dreading this conversation, so just have it already, right?”
He shrugged.
“Are your parents as conflict-avoidant as you are?”
He laughed.
“Right. Okay. Got it.”
We rowed a few more strokes. Finally, he said, “It’s not that I don’t know what to say. It’s that I can see the entire conversation playing out in my head, and I know exactly, line by line, how it’s going to go and where it’ll end up, and I really don’t want to go there. It’s like…like every conversation I have with my parents is a script that’s already written. All I get to decide is whether to have the conversation or not.”
I nodded thoughtfully, because I kind of knew what he meant. Sometimes I’ll work out a whole dialogue in my head and then when the actual conversation happens it seems anticlimactic. I smiled. “Did you script this conversation, too?”
“Well, no.”
I found that oddly satisfying.
“You’re right, though. I should get it over with. Fortuna audaces iuvat, right?”
Fortune favors the bold. “There you go. Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out.”
* * *
—
That night, when Greg messaged me, I decided to cut to the chase. Were you bold yet?
Actually, he typed, I was.
I was sore from the extra rowing with Greg, and I had a hot pack wedged behind my lower back. I typed, Excellent!
And now my parents hate me.
I put my hand over my mouth.
I’m sure that’s not true. What did you tell them?
I told them I wasn’t as good a swimmer as they thought, I’d never get money to swim at a Division I school, and I want to quit. In return, they called me an ungrateful brat and yelled about all the money they’d spent for me to swim for the last nine years. It turns out I was a really bad investment.
I felt myself seething at Greg’s parents. They had a kind, smart kid who spoke six languages, and all they could see was the money they’d poured down the drain for sports? You are a great person! So what if you aren’t some swimming robot? You are more than just some commodity. You’re worth more than the size of your financial aid package.
There was a very long pause, and I realized I was sounding even less like a computer than usual. I was trying to think of something to save it when he typed, What is the value of 2462/452?
I stared at the figure for a minute. Why is he asking…
Oh, shit.
&nbs
p; I pulled my calculator out from under my notebook and started frantically typing in numbers.
427, I replied.
Too late, he said. No computer would have been that slow.
I am programmed for dialogue, not mathematical reason—
Bull. Shit. Who is this?
I am an application programmed by a student at—
BULLSHIT. Who is this?
Bleep bleep bloop.
Don’t give me that crap. I’ve been telling you my life story for days. Who is this? I’m sure you know exactly who I am.
I sat back and ran my palms down my face. This was bad. The whole point of the app was that it was supposed to be anonymous. I’d been so, so careless. Of course he knew I wasn’t a computer.
So here’s what I’ve figured out: You’re in the app design class at Middleridge.
That didn’t narrow it down too much; of course he’d know that.
And you knew all about Division I sports being the ones with the scholarship money, so you’re an athlete.
I sat up. Oh, shit.
And you’re a girl.
There’s no way he could have known that.
Women use language differently than men. You have feminine speech patterns.
That may have been the first time anyone said that to me. I do not! I typed.
The exclamation point gives it away, he said. So how many female athletes are there in Mr. Positano’s app design class?
Answer: not many. Aside from me, Amy Berger played field hockey, Mitzi Schwartz was on the swim team with Greg, and then there was Bethany.
Probably he wouldn’t have figured that out yet.
I just texted Matt Williams for a class roster, so it’s really only a process of elimination.
Ugh. Matt Williams was one of the seniors with the nonfunctioning Steak Ninja game, and he swam with Greg. I closed out of the app and threw my phone to the far end of my bed, where it landed next to Walnut, who promptly sat on it. Then I sat up, curling my knees into my chest.
I heard the Star Trek theme from underneath the cat, but no way was I picking up. Let him talk to the Deanna autopilot for a while. I needed to figure out what to do.
What was I going to do?
I needed to turn in the source code and my sample pages tomorrow, so at least I had an excuse not to run the app anymore. I could take the entire thing down and just hope he never figured it out. That sounded like a good plan to me.
