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

happy to have an extended family, as it turns out. It’s just that I’m pretty sure she’s going to get more annoying over time, not less.

I check my other apps, trying to procrastinate on going back out and making conversation. The Mischief Elves have sent me a Gold-Plated Invitation—that’s what it’s called in the app, and it has a glowing yellow border for the visual—to a venture, which appears to be some sort of multiperson activity. They’re assembling in Powderhorn Park. Yes, No, Maybe? I tap Maybe. Another box pops up: Maybe if I can find the time, Maybe if I can get a sitter, Maybe if I can come up with an excuse to escape, Maybe if I feel motivated … I check Maybe if I can come up with an excuse to escape. Smiling, dancing elves give me the thumbs-up and say, We’re on it.

As I’m washing my hands, the dancing elves pop up and say, Check your kitchen for milk, eggs, bread, coffee, or any other staples! Because if you’re out, maybe you can run to the store!

That’s actually a legitimate possibility, so I edge past the living room and open the fridge. We’re down to about a tablespoon of milk, so problem solved. “Oh, we’re almost out of milk. I’m going to run down to the corner store to get more,” I say brightly, interrupting what sounds like something halfway to an argument. Mimi has only been here for what, fifteen minutes? How are they fighting already? “What are we doing for dinner tonight? Is Mimi eating over? Should I pick up something to make?”

My grandmother folds her hands in her lap. “I’m going to take you both out for a nice steak,” she says.

“Okay. So just milk, then.” My mother gives me a thin-lipped smile like she’s perfectly aware I’m just trying to duck out for a bit but doesn’t really feel like she can exactly complain, either, and hands me a twenty-dollar bill. I put on my coat and hat and jam my feet into my boots and I’m on my way down the stairs. The elves jump up and down cheering for me, and I head to the park.

I’m about halfway there when I think about the fact that Nell got sent out on “quests” by the Catacombs, and here I am doing something similar for the Mischief Elves. It’s weird how compelling a game can be, especially when you’re happy for an excuse to escape. Even though the wind is already making my eyes water.

There are about a dozen other people milling around by the park building, looking cold. “Mischief Elves?” one of them says to me, and I nod.

“It’s time!” someone yells.

Powderhorn Park is a giant bowl of a park, with a lake at the bottom like the milk when you’re done eating cereal. It’s covered in snow today, but even with the fresh snowfall from last night, enough people have gone sledding or walked dogs or whatever that there are plenty of trampled paths to walk on, and I follow along with the crowd as we cross the park, go up the hill, and then go down half a block to a house with a big yard. “This is it, Elves!” someone shouts.

Our assignment—the venture—is to build a snow sculpture for a stranger. A sea monster—the more beautifully realized, the better, and someone has brought along tempera paints and spray bottles of water with food coloring, so after helping to heap up snow for the sculpture, I help spray blue dye on the snow at the base of the sculpture, to color in the “water.” The sea monster is a giant octopus when we’re done, arms rippling out across the yard, tips sculpted and frozen into place with the delicate application of water that freezes quickly in the wind.

We’re putting on finishing touches when our phones suddenly go crazy; the elf is waving his hands frantically, and the word SCATTER! is blinking red. Shrieking with laughter and mild panic, everyone runs, including me.

I want a picture, though, so even if my hands and face are freezing cold and I desperately want to go back to the apartment—after I buy milk, I need to remember to actually buy the milk I claimed I was going out for—I turn around and stroll casually back.

The homeowners have returned and are having a conversation out in front of their house. I take out my phone for a picture of the sculpture. Now that I’m not helping to build it, it’s both even cooler than I’d thought and kind of creepy. The tempera paints were used to make a face on the octopus, but it’s not an octopus face; it looks angry. And we were told to make a sea monster, but in my head, it was a beautiful monster rather than a scary monster. I snap a picture, then another.

“Did you see who did this?” the woman asks, her voice angry.

“No,” I say. “It’s kind of cool, though.”

“Not this bit,” she says, and points at writing in the snow on the far side of the monster, away from where I was working. In red letters across their yard are the words WE’RE COMING FOR YOU. They’re big letters; it’s hard to figure how I didn’t notice that being written, but I didn’t. The woman is squinting at me and adds, “Didn’t I see you at Morning Battle Prayer the other day?”

I am momentarily freaked out by the thought that she saw me at the compound yesterday and then realize she probably means the exercise class. “I—maybe?”

“Were you targeted by the fireworks last night?” When I just give her a wide-eyed look, she says, “In the dead of the night, almost all the local Catacombs members got woken up by fireworks set off in their yards. And now this? Things are escalating. There’s a meeting coming up for Catacombs members in the area to talk about self-defense.” She hands me a business card. “It’s tomorrow at