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

to Rachel’s house without her, and she’s still in the pep rally. I unzip my backpack and dig out a book to read; out comes my mother’s laminated clipping.

A San Jose man has been sentenced to three years in prison for felony stalking of his estranged wife. Michael Taylor, 34, pleaded guilty to stalking on September 13, as part of a plea agreement.

Taylor’s former wife, Dana Taylor, accused him of arson in May after her house burned down. The fire on May 21 was found to be arson, but nothing conclusive could be found tying Taylor to the blaze. Prosecutors said that Taylor sent email messages, letters, and texts to his ex-wife, threatening her with violence. Taylor’s lawyers said that Taylor’s messages were “more passionate than threatening” and “should not be read literally.”

The Taylors were business partners and owners of a technology security company. They have one child together. In an agreement reached in August, the company was liquidated, assets divided between the four partners.

The printout has the newspaper name and date. It’s the Los Angeles Times, which is a real newspaper, and it looks like a normal newspaper article, with links to other articles at the bottom and stuff like that.

I try imagining living in my father’s house, only this time I imagine him as the sort of parent who mostly just ignores you, like Firestar’s parents. Doing my homework in an upstairs bedroom in an empty house. Maybe he’d have a dog. Or a cat. Maybe he’d let me bring the cat with the kittens. He probably won’t want me to keep the whole litter of kittens.

The bathroom door swings open, and the noise from the pep rally rushes in like cold air. “Steph?”

It’s Rachel. I unlatch my stall and come out. “Hi. Sorry I ran away.”

“Are you okay?”

“I just really hate pep rallies.”

“Oh.” She digests this. “Do you want me to take you home?”

“You wanted to stay and watch Bryony, didn’t you?”

“No, her bit’s done. We can go.”

“I’m really okay just waiting in the bathroom.”

Rachel lets the door swing shut behind her and comes a little farther into the bathroom and rests her backpack on the sink. She stares into my face for a long moment and then says, “Don’t be silly. Let’s go. I want to take you to the store and buy a henna pen.”

Rachel drives us to the larger town nearby that has a Walmart. She counts her money and buys a fistful of the henna pens. “These run out of the lawsone really fast,” she says. “It’s super annoying when the ink works but the stain doesn’t, because it just washes off in a couple of days. Anyway, do you want me to do some art on you?” Her eyes are wide and a little anxious.

“I’d love that,” I say.

“This afternoon? If you don’t have time right away, that’s fine, but don’t tell anyone I bought new pens or they’ll all be after me, and I’ll run out of stain before I get to you.”

“I’ve got time,” I say.

The larger town has a shopping mall, the old-fashioned kind with an indoor area, and that’s good because there’s a bitingly cold wind outside today. We find a bench next to an empty storefront.

“What do you think you’d like?” Rachel asks.

“You choose,” I say.

“I really want it to be something you’ll like.”

“I’d like anything from you.” I’m not lying. Everything Rachel draws is beautiful. The thought of her bringing birds or flowers or anything into being on my body gives me butterflies in my stomach, but in a good way. She could use my whole body as a canvas, if she wanted. Every inch.

“Okay,” she says. “I have an idea. I was thinking I’d do it on your left arm.”

I take off my hoodie and roll up my sleeve so that she can start the drawing on my upper arm, and she has me rest my arm across the back of the bench to hold still and goes to work.

She uncaps the pen and kneels on the bench so she’s a little higher than I am to start, and draws a grid of diamonds on my shoulder, like a skewed checkerboard. Her head is bent close over my arm, and for a fleeting moment I worry that I forgot to put on deodorant this morning. She doesn’t wrinkle her nose or anything, though, and after a few minutes I forget to worry about it. The pen tickles slightly, but not so much I can’t hold still.

After a few minutes, she sits back on her heels and looks up at me. “If I were doing this as a tattoo, I’d want it to wind around your arm,” she says. “But if I had a tattoo studio, I’d have a proper chair for you to sit in and keep you comfortable.”

“You’d also be jabbing me with needles, though. That doesn’t sound comfortable at all.”

“Well, okay, not comfortable, but it would be easier for you to hold still.”

“Like, what do you want me to do?” I turn my arm palm-up, still resting on the bench.

“Can you turn it the other way, too?”

I twist a little. “I think so. How long will you want me to hold it like this? A few minutes?”

“I’ll give you a break if you need one,” she says, deciding, and takes my hand to turn my arm palm-up again.

She started the diamonds on my bicep; she curves the design around and under, coming back up the inside of my elbow as the diamonds start to skew and evolve into something with wings.

“Pretty sure that’s it for this pen,” she says, capping it.

“How can you tell?”

“I have a feel for it. I’ve done a lot of these.” She opens the next package. “I think I’ll need two and a half for this art.”

She turns my arm palm-down again when she gets to my forearm, and the winged diamonds turn into bats, then scatter across my arm. Some fly straight down toward my wrist, some