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

say these people were?” Bryony stands up and goes and locks the doors to their house.

“Well, they don’t have any obvious way to figure out where we went…” Rachel says.

Except one of them is Rajiv. “There’s something I should tell you about one of them, though,” I say. Everyone in the room looks at me. “Rajiv, the programmer guy who worked with my parents and Xochitl years ago. When we were leaving, I saw him watching us from one of the windows of the big house.”

“From one of the windows?” Rachel says. “We were moving quickly and we weren’t that close. How sure are you that’s who you saw?”

I think this over.

“I mean, I looked at him and thought, Oh, that’s Rajiv. But I don’t know. I mean, I’m not 100 percent sure.”

“You’ve never met him, right?” Rachel asks. “This is just based on pictures?”

“Right.”

“Do you remember a Rajiv?” Nell asks Glenys.

Glenys shakes her head. “I saw Brother Daniel. And Sister Karen. And that was it. I know Brother Malachi was there and I heard other voices, but those were the only people I saw.”

“What does it mean if it was Rajiv?” Nell asks.

“He used to work with my parents. He’s kind of a hacker. I don’t know what exactly he can do.” I mull over possibilities. Had Rajiv recognized me? Did he even know what I looked like? The cult knew or at least suspected that Nell had broken Glenys out, but when they talked about the other girls, they didn’t name us. “I think Rajiv knew I was in New Coburg last fall. So if he recognized me, it’s not impossible he’d work out that I was here.”

“They didn’t want to involve the other girls, though,” Rachel says.

Bryony looks from me to Glenys to Nell to Rachel and sighs.

“At least we didn’t drag you on a car chase this time,” Rachel offers.

“There’s that,” Bryony says, and turns back to Nell and Glenys. “Okay, look. You can all definitely stay here tonight. But Glenys, if you want to stay longer, I will have to tell my mother what’s going on.”

“If you do, will she let me stay?” Glenys asks in a small voice.

“Maybe, but she’ll want a whole lot of explanations, and the authorities may be involved.”

Glenys kind of shrinks in her chair and says, “I don’t know.”

Nell puts her hand on Glenys’s and says, “She’ll come with me. No one in my father’s house pays much attention to what I’m up to. It’ll be fine.”

“Can I borrow your laptop?” I ask Bryony.

On CatNet, Marvin is telling everyone some new story about his LARPing group, involving a game of hide-and-go-seek in an abandoned building and someone almost falling through a hole that would have dropped them three stories.

“This doesn’t sound safe,” Hermione says.

“No risk, no fun,” Marvin says.

“Is that what your LARPing friends are telling you? Didn’t they almost give you hypothermia last week?”

“No, it was the OTHER set of reenactors that almost gave me hypothermia!”

“So hey,” I say, “not to distract Hermione from badgering Marvin about his life choices, but remember how Greenberry was able to host Rachel and I last fall when we were on our road trip? In Buffalo?”

“Yes!” Greenberry says.

“Greenberry’s parents never go down to the basement, which meant we could stay down there and not get caught. Does anyone know of someone like that in Minneapolis, or nearby, who’d let someone stay and not ask too many questions?”

“You’re the only person I know who lives in Minneapolis,” Hermione says. “That’s where you live now, right? I’m not misremembering? This person can’t stay at your house?”

“Not without my mother getting involved.”

“Is this for Nell?” Hermione asks.

“No, no, no,” I say, and fill in the essentials.

“How soon?” Marvin asks. “Do you need something tonight?”

“No, we’re staying with Orlando tonight.” That’s Bryony’s name on CatNet. Rachel is Georgia. “We need something tomorrow.”

“Remember my secondary RPG chat room?” Firestar says. “One of my friends there lives in Minneapolis, and I bet he’d be 100 percent up for a side quest of hiding a runaway lesbian exevangelical! And his family is renovating a huge, huge house. Fair warning, though: it’s probably haunted.” Firestar pastes in an address, and I take a look. It’s huge. It’s not technically in Minneapolis; it’s in Saint Paul, across the river.

Bryony peers over my shoulder. “Is that seriously one house?”

Glenys looks and says, “I don’t want to stay anywhere with a ghost.”

“It’s okay,” Nell says. “We’ll go back to my house. There’s a lock on my door, and it’s not haunted.”

We don’t fit in Bryony’s bedroom, but their mother comes back downstairs to help Bryony move the coffee table out of the living room, and we spread out blankets and sleeping bags on the living room carpet. “No hanky-panky or you’re going to make me feel left out,” Bryony says as Rachel and I spread out a single blanket.

“As if you didn’t make me watch you and Colin make out all summer,” Rachel grumbles.

“I wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers with my boyfriend,” Bryony says. “How come you get to have sleepovers with your girlfriend, anyway?”

“Because she moved to Minneapolis, so I hardly ever see her, plus we can’t get each other pregnant,” Rachel says primly. “That’s what my mother said to my father when they thought I was upstairs and couldn’t hear.”

I glance over at Glenys, and her eyes are so wide I think I can see the whites around the irises. She has one hand over her mouth and the other wrapped around her torso to hug herself.

“My mom has no idea what a normal mom would think was okay or not,” I say. “I mean, I spent most of my childhood not allowed to have friends, basically.”

“So what’s up with your dad, anyway?” Bryony asks. “Is he going to jail or what?”

“He’s in jail. No bail because he’s a flight risk. Eventually, there’ll be a trial. The prosecutor out in Boston said it could be a while. Months. Possibly a year.”

“Are