Chaos on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [bill gates books recommendations txt] 📗

to have a picnic. But not when it’s like this.”

“Yeah, it’s not a great day for a picnic,” Rachel says. “Have you found anything interesting yet? That you could show me?”

I start to say no, but then realize I do know of one cool place we could go—the Midtown Exchange. Rachel has a car, so we don’t even have to walk in the bitter cold or ask my mother for a ride.

And, I mean, I can keep my eyes open for Rajiv.

“How’s your mom?” Rachel asks once we’re back in her car. “I was sort of expecting to see her. Is she trying to give us privacy?”

“I think she’s just still sleeping,” I say. I heard her moving around at some point in the night, long after I’d gone to sleep; I woke up because Apricot jumped off my bed and went to see what she was up to.

“Does she do this a lot?”

“She’s always kept really weird hours.” The only time I’ve ever seen my mother sleep consistently at a normal time, it involved medication. Therapy is helping her, but it hasn’t fixed her sleep yet.

As we reach Lake Street, Rachel gasps and slams on her brakes. “Does that building have a rocket ship on the front?”

The rocket ship building turns out to be a science fiction bookstore, so crammed full of used books they’ve spilled off the shelves and into crates that are stacked on the floor. “Bryony’s got to see this,” Rachel mutters when she finds an entire shelf of used Fast Girls Detective Agency graphic novels.

We eventually tear ourselves away from the bookstore and walk the rest of the way to the Midtown Exchange for lunch. As we go in, the Invisible Castle app pings me. “What’s that?” Rachel asks, peering over my shoulder.

“It’s a game,” I say. “Kind of a game, kind of a social media site. It gives me points for things. Right now, I can get points if I talk a white person into eating vindaloo curry.”

“I’m white,” Rachel says. “You want me to eat it?”

“It’ll make you cry,” I say.

“Try me,” she says, so, hey, okay. Fine. I mark that off as done and buy myself a bubble tea and a sambusa while Rachel buys herself some vindaloo. She winds up stealing my bubble tea and neither of us finishes the vindaloo. It’s actually delicious, what I can taste of it around the incredible burning in my mouth.

“Mischief Elves, huh?” Rachel says after buying some ice cream, and downloads the app as well.

“I should tell you,” I say, and then hesitate—I don’t want Rachel to think I’m paranoid. “The app is intrusive, and I don’t know if I trust them with my data.”

“You’re running it, though,” Rachel says.

“Yeah,” I say.

She shrugs. “If it freaks me out, I’ll delete it.”

I check to see what my new mission is. Write a short poem (it can be a haiku, limerick, sonnet, sestina, or villanelle) and leave it on the windshield of a stranger’s car out in the lot. It’s supposed to be on a theme, which I can pick off a list: Dramatic weather is incoming, Explosions are fun, Trousers are overrated, Rain of frogs. Rachel thinks this is hilarious, even more so when the app gives her a similar mission but with artwork. She rips a couple of pages out of the back of her sketch pad and lends me a pen.

“Rhyming poetry is hard,” I say.

“Limericks aren’t that hard.”

I write:

There once was a lady from France

Who didn’t much like to wear pants

But today was so cold

That in blankets she rolled

And made herself homemade

“What rhymes with pants, and means pants, but isn’t the word pants?”

“Rants fits the rhyme,” Rachel says. “Maybe she could rant about the weather. Or grants. She could get an arts grant for her improvised trousers.”

Instead, I switch to haiku.

Cotton, denim, stretch

Cloaking my legs like a shroud

Trousers are a scam.

Giggling, we leave our notes on cars, taking quick pictures to confirm to the app that we’ve done it, then run back to Rachel’s car.

It’s almost time for Rachel to head home. I kiss her good-bye, inhaling the scent of her hair and skin, my fingers laced with hers. She tastes a little like bubble tea and vindaloo.

“Do you think you could get your mother to drive you down some week?” she asks.

“Maybe,” I say. “I’ll ask about next weekend.”

“Send me a picture of this Nell person,” she adds, and then I get out of her car and go inside so she can drive back to New Coburg.

13•  Clowder  •

Firestar: What’s up everybody I AM BAKING.

Hermione: Like pie or something, right? This isn’t some new euphemism for drug use?

Firestar: CAKE. Layer cake. One of the layers fell apart when it came out of the pan so it’s going to be shorter than I was planning. However: I also need to dispose of a layer of broken cake.

CheshireCat: Does broken cake taste any different from regular cake?

Hermione: No. Cake is cake.

Firestar: Hermy is objectively wrong. Cake tastes better when it’s pretty. But cake ALSO tastes better when you’re eating it on the sly and you can put your broken cake in a bowl and eat it in the TV room with a bowl of icing on the side.

Boom Storm: My favorite cake is the kind that’s decorated with frosting roses.

Hermione: The frosting roses always taste weird and bitter to me. Like they’re made from some sort of icing that’s good sculptural material but not actually great as food.

Boom Storm: Blasphemy!

{LittleBrownBat is here}

Firestar: HI LBBBBB. CHECK OUT THE PICTURE OF MY CAKE.

LittleBrownBat: Ooh. Are those raspberries?

Firestar: YES

{Marvin is here}

Marvin: Is it possible to still die of hypothermia after you’ve come inside where it’s warm? Asking for a friend.

Hermione: If you’re lying on a cold floor, you should probably get up.

Marvin: I am wrapped in an electric blanket.

CheshireCat: If you’re capable of typing and wrapped in an electric blanket, you should recover.

Marvin: NEVER WINTER CAMPING AGAIN

Hermione: I thought it didn’t get that cold in North Carolina

Marvin: