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

you weren’t gaining weight like a toddler should. I made you a milkshake every morning. Whole-milk yogurt and frozen peaches. They were delicious, actually, I had some every morning, too.”

I didn’t remember, but I knew what a peach smoothie would taste like. Made with yogurt. That summer with Julie, we’d had a blender in our apartment, and Mom had made peach smoothies for me and Julie.

“I read you Goodnight Moon every night.”

Suddenly, I do remember something. The story. A goodnight kiss. Being tucked into a bed with a sort of a gauze curtain that hung down from the ceiling, which kept monsters out.

“I remember that,” I say.

I can see his breath quicken a little. “Come on, Stephania,” he says, like he’s urging a skittish animal. “If you don’t want to go all the way to Eau Claire, we can go get a milkshake right now. Or a sundae or something. There’s got to be somewhere nearby that sells ice cream, right? And we can talk about what else you remember and what you want to do next.”

The other thing I remember is monsters.

I remember believing there was a monster in my house. An actual monster, because some nights I heard my mother weeping. That’s why I needed the curtain to protect me. Because I lived with a monster.

I lived with a monster.

I didn’t know what I was hearing at the time, but now I do: I was hearing the same thing CheshireCat heard. I was hearing my father hurting my mother.

My father steps toward me. I fall back a step. There are a few houses nearby, on the same side of the street that we’re on. I don’t see anyone watching, but maybe people in Marshfield don’t lock their doors. Maybe I could bolt into one and lock him out? He moves in, and I fall back another step. Something in his face has shifted. Did I give myself away? Did he see in my face what I remembered?

“Get in the car,” he says, and his voice has gone from soothing to furious. I’m shaking from tension and fear; looking into his face, I’m quite sure he’s willing to hurt me.

“No,” I say, and I take another step back.

“Get in the car,” my father says.

“No. I’m not getting in. Leave me alone.” I fall back another step, putting someone’s decorative mailbox on a post between us. Can I get to the door? Can I get into the house? Will it matter if I get inside?

My father falls back a step, so the car is between him and the houses, shoves his hand in his pocket, and pulls out a gun. He’s got it in his hand, resting against his hip; he’s not pointing it at me, but my body goes cold and I freeze. I can’t walk. I can’t scream. Bolting into the nearest house is no longer an option because I’m not sure my legs will even hold me up if I try.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” he says, “if you get in the car.”

In the distance, I can hear a car coming. Is it Rachel and Bryony coming back? The engine sounds loud, like they’re gunning it. I hope they don’t get pulled over by the cops.

A small red convertible barrels around the corner. The top is down, and I look to see if Rachel is behind the wheel, even though this is a ridiculous thing to hope for.

There’s no driver.

There’s a loud bang as my father fires his gun at the car, at the driver who isn’t there, and the car plows into him. He bounces up and slides, sprawling, across the hood as the car plows through a big overhanging bush, through the yard, and out of sight.

Another car pulls up next to me. This one’s Rachel. “Get in, get in, get in!” Rachel shrieks.

My legs are still frozen in place, but I manage to unstick myself and collapse into the backseat. The next street over, we hear a crash, like the red car has driven straight into something large.

We get the hell out of Marshfield.

21

AI

Michael Quinn is in New Coburg, Hermione said. My first response was denial—how was this even possible when he was definitely in California less than twenty-four hours ago?—and I had to force myself to shift my focus from analysis of where I went wrong in my prior assumptions and onto how to solve the real problem. Michael Quinn had found Steph, he was in New Coburg, and he was a clear and present danger to her, to her mother, and probably to Rachel and anyone else nearby.

He was following them, so I started by trying to get a fix on their location. New Coburg did not have an abundance of surveillance cameras, but there were at least a few around local businesses. There was also one trained on the high school parking lot, and I was able to identify a black car on its way out. It didn’t have California plates; it had Iowa plates. It was registered to another person who was not Michael Quinn or connected with him in any obvious way. Did he steal it? Did he buy it? Had I even identified the right car?

I focused in on Rachel’s phone, but it gave me two completely different locations. I placed a call to Steph’s cell phone, using a synthetic voice, trying to straighten that out, and to confirm that the car that I thought was Michael’s was indeed Michael’s. Steph asked me to call the hospital to have them keep her mother safe.

I should have thought of that without her asking. Pushing aside the distracting sense of self-recrimination along with fear that I was forgetting a long list of other obvious, important things I should be doing, I placed a separate call to the nursing station at the New Coburg hospital. “I’m calling about your patient Dana Smith,” I said, hoping they wouldn’t be too put off by the synthesized voice.

“Are you a family member?”