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

leave her here.” She did say run. I try again to think of a place I’d run to.

I plug in my mother’s laptop, open it up, and wake it. A password box appears, because of course the laptop is passworded. Mine is, too, but Mom knows my password. “Question for the hacker types,” I ask CatNet. “How do you get into a laptop if you don’t know the password?”

Marvin asks me about the operating system and version and then gives me a procedure that’s supposed to get me in, only it doesn’t. Instead, a pixelated skull and crossbones pops up with a message saying YOU SHALL NOT PASS.

“A skull and crossbones?” Firestar says.

“Where exactly did this laptop come from?” Ico asks.

“It’s my mom’s.”

“She’s a programmer, right?” Ico says.

“Do you think she wrote this lock program herself?” Marvin asks.

“Maybe. LBB, which would you say is more likely: that your mother would use obscure shareware to secure her laptop, or write something of her own?”

“The second one.”

“I’m out of ideas,” Ico says.

“Go back to that main screen and try your name,” Marvin says. “Or your nickname if there’s some dorky thing she calls you.”

“My neighbors used the name of their dog as a Wi-Fi password,” Ico says.

“How many wrong guesses do I get before it just deletes all my mom’s files?”

“Normally, the answer would be ‘infinity,’ but I have no idea how your mom’s laptop protection program works,” Marvin says.

“Just how sick is she?” Ico asks. “Could you run over to the hospital and just ask her, if she’s out of surgery?”

“Ico, nooooooooo,” Firestar says.

I try STEPHANIETAYLOR as the password. No success, but it does give me a hint: EIGHTH_BIRTHDAY. I report back in.

“Well, what did you do on your eighth birthday?” Hermione asks.

I have no recollection of my eighth birthday. I snap both laptops shut in frustration. “What did you do on your eighth birthday?” I ask Rachel.

She looks up from her tablet. “Uh. That might have been the year we went roller-skating. Or maybe that was when I turned nine? I’m not sure. Why?” I explain the password thing.

“Do you want to go back over to your apartment?” Rachel asks. “Sometimes people write down passwords…”

“It wouldn’t be in the apartment,” I say, and it occurs to me that if she did write this down, it might be in our file box, which is still out in the back of Rachel’s car. I go get it, carry it up to Rachel’s bedroom, and pop off the lid. Rachel scoots over to look over my shoulder as I start flipping through.

There are folders inside, but they’re not labeled. I find a contract and address for something called Secure Forwarding in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and contracts for the cell phones. I find a Social Security card for Dana Taylor, an expired driver’s license, and some other odds and ends. There’s a bunch of Iowa paperwork from the last time she got the car license plates updated, and a stack of my transcripts and report cards (the ones we got) going back to sometime in grade school, held together with a paper clip.

Digging deeper, I find paperwork that says a divorce is granted to some people named Michael Quinn and Laura Packet, from Cupertino, California, which strikes me as an odd thing to have until a little farther beyond that I find the court papers from a name change, Laura Packet to Dana Taylor. And then just a little deeper, a birth certificate for a Stephania Quinnpacket with my birthday on it.

“Apparently, my mother’s name isn’t really Dana, and my last name isn’t really Taylor?” I say out loud and giggle nervously. “My mom is actually Laura, and I’m Stephania Quinnpacket.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“I think it was my parents’ names mushed together.”

There are some more legal papers, including a bunch that say ORDER OF PROTECTION and one that says CUSTODY on it. There’s a Last Will and Testament done with a kit (I can tell from the footers) and witnessed by a notary that says I should go to live with Xochitl Mariana, whoever that is. There’s a battered paperback book at the bottom with a picture of a typewriter inside a box and a photo print of four grinning people standing in front of a sign saying HOMERIC SOFTWARE. One of them looks like Mom. I flip it over, and the names on the back are Laura, Rajiv, Mike, and Xochitl. I have no idea how you pronounce Xochitl, but in my head, it’s zoe-chittle.

No password.

“Okay,” Rachel says. “Your eighth birthday. Are you sure you don’t remember?”

I shake my head.

“Do you remember anything about being seven?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I remember the one time I had a friend. The one time before now, I mean.” I tell Rachel about my summer with Julie: sundresses, bats, the basement apartment with the funny smell. The copy of Stellaluna. Ico’s theory that my mother gave her a false phone number. The number of people named Smith in the United States.

“Do you still have the book?”

“Oh, yeah.” I dig out Stellaluna, and Rachel flips immediately to the front page, which has an inscription: Merry Christmas, Julie, our little star, love Gramma and Gramps.

“Too bad they didn’t write a town,” Rachel says, disappointed.

“It still wouldn’t tell me where we went for my eighth birthday.”

“Lie down on my bed,” Rachel says, scooting off it. “Close your eyes.” She opens the book and folds it delicately across my face. I start giggling, and she says, “Shhh, this is a recognized technique for memory retrieval! Focus on the smell.”

I breathe in the smell of the book. It just smells like a book, not like my apartment under Julie’s house. Rachel doesn’t say anything, so I just breathe for a minute, thinking about Julie’s house again.

After a few minutes, Rachel takes the book off my face and says, “Keep your eyes closed. You told me today that your earliest memory was kindergarten, right? So just start with that one.”

“I was trying to cut shapes