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

Greenberry is on a network for fans of Fast Girls Detective Agency that promises real car chases, which fortunately they don’t seem to have provided. Yet. I focus in on the groups that are the most active in the Twin Cities, since that seems to be where things are blowing up. Your mission is to skip class! I tell someone who was supposed to vandalize a peer’s locker. Your mission is to sleep in! I tell a hundred different Catacombs members. If you’re already up, consider a nap! Self-care is important!

The Elves told me to skip class, I see someone send out. But school’s off today, so obviously this means something else. Any ideas what? A dozen ideas pour in, half of them terrible. I try a replacement mission, one that’s more explicitly harmless, but it’s too late. Meanwhile, the Catacombs members I suggested naps to all seem to interpret my instruction as a Bible reference that spurs them to action.

Protocol A, I see someone send out through five different social networks. I look for online information and find none.

This isn’t working.

In fact, I’m afraid I just made things a whole lot worse.

35•  Steph  •

It takes me some hunting to find the door, which turns out to be around the side of the house under a very fancy carport thing. This house is enormous, but looking up, I can see paint peeling, a gutter hanging loose and swinging in the wind, and a total of four birds’ nests tucked into gaps in the fancy woodwork. A gust of wind hits me, and I wonder how many nests were there before winter hit.

I try the doorbell, which doesn’t really have the “working doorbell” feel, and then try knocking. I hear footsteps and a very creaky floor, and the door swings open. It’s an adult: Morthos’s father, probably. He’s a tall, dark-skinned Black guy, with braids he’s tied back. He looks me up and down and says, “Are you selling Girl Scout cookies?”

“No, I’m looking for Morthos,” I say, since I have no idea what Morthos’s real name is. “I’m a friend of his from an online game, and I was in the neighborhood.”

“I’m guessing you mean Bijan,” he says, and turns around to yell, “Beej!” over his shoulder. When there’s no response, he says, “Why don’t you come on in and I’ll see if I can find him for you.”

“I mean, I don’t want to put you to any trouble,” I say, worried that if Nell and Glenys are hiding here, he’ll stumble across them while looking for his son, but it’s clearly too late to worry about this, as he’s waving me inside, saying, “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ll freeze your ass off. Excuse me. You’ll get frostbite. Bijan doesn’t have school today, it’s that cold. I told him to work on the wallpaper in the third second-floor bedroom, but he’s probably on his computer somewhere.”

I’m staring around us at the house, barely hearing him. The entry room is overpoweringly grand; it’s a two-story room with a sweeping staircase and a glittering chandelier. There’s a window on the landing of the staircase, set with stained glass. The man sees me staring and pauses with a laugh.

“Houses like this were built to impress, and first impressions count. Let me show you the kitchen; then I’ll go get Bijan.”

I follow him past the staircase and through two doorways into a dumpy, cramped, unpleasant little kitchen.

“Kitchens were for servants. Those Gilded Age motherfu—uh, railway barons, they were really something else. Anyway, this house’ll be a hell of a thing to see once it’s all fixed up. Grab yourself a snack if you want; I’ll go find Bijan. What did you say your name was?”

“Firestar’s friend Little Brown Bat,” I say, hoping that one of those names will ring a bell. “I mean, my real name is Steph, but he doesn’t know it.”

The kitchen has a grimy tile floor, a stained fridge, and a chipped stove. There’s a dishwasher next to the sink, and the counter over the dishwasher doesn’t quite line up with the sink. Mostly, it feels like any number of dingy kitchens that have come with apartments my mother has rented over the years, except for the startlingly high ceiling, which is water-stained.

It’s taking a while for the dad to come back, so I peek out the door. The kitchen door leads into a sort of walk-through pantry that leads to the dining room, which has a fancy chandelier with a card table and three folding chairs set up under it. A woman with long black hair tied back in a bandanna is scraping peeling wallpaper off the walls.

“Oh, hello?” she says, her voice muffled slightly by the filter mask she’s got on.

Bijan’s mom, I guess. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m here for Bijan. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

It’s too late; she’s going to be friendly. This takes a minute. She puts down her scraper and spray bottle, takes off the thick rubber gloves she’s got on, takes off her mask, takes her phone out of the hip pocket of her jeans, unlocks it, stops whatever she was listening to, and pulls her earbuds out. Then she gives me a genuinely friendly smile. “Did Zeke let you in? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you knock.”

“I really didn’t mean to interrupt,” I say.

“It’s okay. I’m kind of ready for a break.”

“I’m here for Bijan,” I say, since I’m not sure she heard me the first time. “Zeke? Zeke is getting him.”

“Did you come in through the porte cochere?”

“The what?”

“The carport thing.”

“Yes.”

“Then you saw the entryway! That’s what the whole house will look like when we’re done. Right now, it’s a complete mess, though. Want to see the living room?”

She leads me to the big front room, which is an unsettling mix of beautiful and totally wrecked; there’s a giant ominous hole in the ceiling and a section of the wallpaper that’s coming down in sheets. “That’s where a pipe burst,” she says. “Oh, I’m Parisa,