Catfishing on CatNet, Naomi Kritzer [best e ink reader for manga .txt] 📗

education. I knew I could provide them with comprehensive, medically accurate, sex-positive, consent-based information that would be far better than what their school wanted them to have, despite the fact that I have no sexual organs of my own, no sex drive, and no sexuality.

The school’s curriculum really set a low bar.

I made two serious errors.

First, I assumed that news of the scandal would be limited to New Coburg High School.

Second, I assumed that Steph still wanted to leave New Coburg, and her mother would take her away. I guess that’s actually three bad assumptions. And a fourth: that her mother would be available to take her away. That was probably the worst assumption of all. Honestly, it’s easy to forget just how fragile bodies are and the way every single human is at the mercy of their meat suit not randomly deciding to go haywire.

INSTRUCTIONAL SEXBOT GOES BANANAS was the first headline that caught my attention. Sexbot usually means something else, but headline writers sometimes make things sound extra salacious. You’ll never believe what happened in this small-town sex ed class! Sex ed robot hacked to provide accurate information, parents dismayed.SEX ED ROBOT SPEWS OBSCENE INFORMATION TO CLASSROOM OF CHILDREN.

There was a video clip of the robot talking—of me talking. In the clip, I’m explaining consent, and how before anyone does anything they should be making sure it’s okay with the other person or people they’re doing things with, and how everyone should be sober, informed, and enthusiastic. People seemed to find this clip either shocking or hilarious. Apparently part of the issue was the robot voice.

There was no mention of Steph’s name, and her picture wasn’t up anywhere, so … hopefully even if people were fascinated by New Coburg for fifteen minutes tomorrow, this shouldn’t lead to her father showing up.

As I was pondering this, Steph got online.

“My mom is super sick,” she said to the Clowder. “I don’t know what to do.”

14

Steph

I hang up on the 911 dispatcher even though she wants me to stay on the line with her. I can’t stay on the line; I need to hide my mother’s wallet. And my wallet. And anything else with IDs. And … maybe I should hide myself? What will they do if I’m there in the hospital and I won’t give them any information about my mother? But I can’t imagine letting them take her away from me. I shove her wallet under my mattress. Then my wallet as well. Then I start worrying that this is a bad hiding place (didn’t Ico just say it was a bad hiding place?), and I take out Mom’s driver’s license and shove it under my cat’s litter box instead. Under the box, not in the litter itself.

I can hear the siren, and a minute or two later, an ambulance pulls up outside. I unlock the door and let in the EMTs. There are two, a man and a woman.

They don’t spend even a moment looking for ID; they focus on Mom. The woman starts to assess her breathing, her heartbeat, and her blood pressure while the man asks me questions. “Are you her daughter?” is the first question, and I nod. “How long has she been like this?”

“She was sick for a few days, like, throwing up. And then yesterday she said she was feeling better. She wasn’t up when I went to school this morning, but that’s not all that unusual, and then when I came home, I found her like this.” I skip over the part where I had to ask my online friends what to do. They don’t need to know that part.

“What’s her name?”

I’ve decided to give them a real first name and a fake last name. “Dana Smith.”

“Birth date?”

I make up something I think will be easy to remember.

“Do you have her insurance card?”

I shake my head.

“Can you go grab her wallet and bring it along?”

I pretend to check for it on her nightstand.

“Pulse 130, respiration 32, and I got a blood pressure of 68 over palp,” the woman says. Her voice is quiet, but the guy asking me questions breaks off and goes back outside to get the gurney.

What do those numbers even mean? I try taking my own pulse as they strap my mother to their wheeled cart, but my own heart is pounding with fear for my mother. Also, I keep losing count.

“You can come along to the hospital,” the woman tells me, so I grab my coat and lock the door behind us. They ease her down the stairs. Mom yells something that sounds like “Run!” and I have no idea if she’s talking to me or if I misheard.

In the ambulance, the woman drives; the guy keeps asking me questions, like when did she get sick, what were her symptoms, when did they start, does she ever use drugs, does she have diabetes or epilepsy or any other health problems I know about, does she take any medication, when was the last time she saw a doctor …

I debate telling him that she’s sort of paranoid. Do they need to know that she’s sort of paranoid? I finally settle on saying she’s very anxious and doesn’t take any medication for it. If she freaks out when she wakes up in the hospital, hopefully they’ll be prepared.

Mom is only sort of conscious through all of this. I hear one of the EMTs call this an altered mental state, and that seems like a fair description. She’s not sure where we are, or what’s going on, and she keeps calling me Stephie, like she did when I was little.

When we pull up outside the hospital, nurses meet us and let me follow them into the ER, where Mom gets a cubicle and an IV and a bunch of people in scrubs doing an exam. “Can we handle this here?” one of them is asking another, which gives me a new thing to worry about. They start running tests. It’s late enough that apparently