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

to my front doorstep and immediately regret it—the wind is painful. I’m wrestling the box through the door when I spot something red in the snow.

My first thought, absurdly, is that someone was bleeding in my front yard, but on inspection, it’s not blood but red paint, like we used to make that sea monster yesterday. Someone’s drawn a crude image of a robot.

I’m instantly deeply disconcerted. Why a robot? Why my yard? I kick snow over it and go inside, thinking about what the woman said yesterday about people being targeted. I dig out the card from my coat pocket and realize that the address isn’t a house, it’s one of the businesses on Bloomington Avenue—a restaurant that serves global dumplings.

I won’t even have to explain to my mother where I’m going.

I do tell CheshireCat, sticking my phone in my pocket as they text back, Are you sure that’s a good idea …

Because of that bizarre morning exercise class, I’m kind of expecting a silent room of morose people, but I get the opposite, a friendly welcome from someone who points me to a row of hooks by the door where people are leaving coats, a name tag (I write Arabella and stick it to my chest), and an invitation to help myself from trays of pierogi, momos, and pot stickers. There are a lot of people here, and I don’t feel conspicuous.

The restaurant has a front room with a takeout counter and then a second, larger dining room through a doorway. I fill a small plate with assorted dumplings and carry it into the second room, where there’s nowhere to sit that’s not right up front. I opt to stand in the back instead. Most of the other people here are adults. The women are mostly wearing skirts, which makes me feel self-conscious about the fact that I am not.

One of the women claps her hands for attention and says, “We’re going to begin with a prayer.” This is going to be awkward: I have no idea what I’m expected to do. Everyone around me bows their heads, and a lot of people clasp hands with the person standing next to them, unless their hands are full with a plate or coffee. I’m suddenly very glad that my hands are full. I do stop eating and bow my head with everyone else. It’s short, fortunately, and I’m too busy worrying about whether I’m blending in to really assess whether this is a normal sort of prayer or the sort of weird, fringe prayer you’d expect from a cult with a compound where they keep kidnapped girls.

Everyone around me says, “Amen,” and I mumble along, and then one of the men talks about the Neighborhood Problem. People list off the “harassment” they’ve been targeted by; one woman describes a detailed six-foot picture of a penguin being drawn on the side of her garage, which she tried reporting to the police only to discover it had been written in dry-erase marker that could be wiped away. The snow sculpture gets a mention, along with a whole series of cryptic messages left in paint or dye in the snow of people’s yards. Words, in some cases; pictures in others, though the people at the meeting call them “symbols.” There’s a man who mentions a dirty limerick written on a napkin and left under his windshield wiper while he was at the grocery store. People have been followed on the streets. People have been followed in cars. One of the other teens says strangers take her picture as she waits for the school bus, then run away, and she just wants it to stop.

I’m really confident this is all or at least mostly the Mischief Elves, but why?

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” the man says, and he opens up a cabinet that is entirely filled with guns.

My first thought is that it’s a joke of some kind and that these can’t possibly be real guns, and then my whole body goes cold. The last time I was this close to a gun, it was being pointed at me by my father. I’m so busy freaking out that I miss the next part, which is any specifics about what they’re going to do with these guns, and when I manage to focus my attention on the speaker again, he’s talking about target shooting practice but with air guns in someone’s basement and there’s a conversation about the legality of loaning real guns out and I decide I’m not going to get anything more out of the meeting because I’m too freaked out. I abandon my dumplings and head for the front door.

“Hey,” a woman’s voice says from behind the counter as I’m putting on my coat.

“Sorry,” I say, turning around. “I need to go.”

“Arabella,” she says. “I got a message a little while ago from one of the administrators for the group. It was about you. Do you mind waiting for just a moment?”

“Sorry, I can’t,” I say.

“Well, obviously, I can’t make you,” she says with obvious disappointment. “But here, take this.” I’m afraid she’s going to hand me a freaking gun, but no: it’s a small metal token, shaped like a shield and small enough to slip into a pocket. “It’s very important that we keep you safe, Arabella. If you keep this on your person, we’ll be able to find you when the Tribulation starts.”

“Okay, thanks,” I say, my voice sounding strained even to me.

“Arabella,” she says, and her voice is pitched a little harder this time. “The Tribulation is going to begin soon. Keep close to your mother, and we will send someone with a car to get you both to safety. Don’t make us hunt you down. People might get hurt.”

I want to hurl the shield she gave me into a snowbank, but letting on how much she’s freaking me out seems counterproductive to my goals here, so I nod and then say, “I really need to go.” This