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

I pull it up on the map. It’s a twenty-minute drive from where we are, and it is indeed a summer camp, not a campground. But you can rent it on weekends year-round, and they still have platform tents up in October.

“Rachel,” I say, feeling a rush of relief. “Firestar found us a place.”

Camp Whispering Pines is a long way off the road. The sun is going down, and we can’t see much other than the trees (pines, as advertised) until we hit a barricade across the road that’s chained shut and padlocked. We pull the car off to the side and carry in our blankets. Platform tents are big canvas tents set up on wood platforms, and I’m expecting we’ll have to camp out on the floor again, but these actually have beds inside, five cots to a platform tent. We pick a tent, shove all the cots together to give ourselves plenty of sprawling space, and make a nest out of the blankets.

It’s not warm—I mean, Indiana is slightly warmer than Wisconsin, so it’s not any colder than the unheated house we were in last night—but the long trip down the gravel road gave me the sense of driving off the borders of the map, to a location that my father will never find because he’d never think of it.

There is nowhere to charge my laptop, but Rachel’s phone still has a full charge since we had it plugged in in the car, and my stupid phone’s battery lasts basically forever. Rachel calls her mother, who apparently finds it reassuring that her tracking app says we’re staying somewhere as wholesome-sounding as “Camp Whispering Pines” and is in denial about the part where we’re illegally squatting.

I check my texts. Nothing from my mother. Another message from : Steph, it’s Steph, right? Please trust that I am not working with your father. We both have a lot to fear from him, actually. I want to help you.

And then another mystery message: This is your aunt Xochitl. Your mom’s friend. Steph, I recognized your father in the news stories about the car accident, and your mother isn’t answering her phone. Are you in trouble? I want to help you. Where are you?

Aunt Xochitl.

Staring at this text from the person I was supposed to ask for help, something suddenly occurs to me. “Can I borrow your phone?” I ask Rachel. She passes it to me, and I pull up the web browser and search, Xochitl pronunciation.

Her name is pronounced Soh-Chee. Sochie.

I am filled with a mix of chagrin at myself for not having realized that Xochitl and Sochie were the same person and exasperation at my mother for assuming I’d make that connection when I’d never seen the name written down. I wonder if her contact information is somewhere in that file box of paperwork? Not that it matters, now that I have her cell phone number.

I text back: I’m not telling anyone where I am, but if you tell me where you are, I’ll think about it.

Xochitl immediately texts back a Boston address. It’s not the one we’re heading to, but … well, good to know I have an ally (maybe?) in Boston. I ignore Xochitl’s additional texts, offering to fly to me, to fly me to her, to get in touch with trustworthy people nearer to Wisconsin, whatever I need, because … how do I know this is Xochitl and not my father? For all I know, he found my mother’s cell and got my number out of it and is faking the texts from all the helpful people.

I try my mother again. Please let me know if you’re okay. No response.

I’ve been trying not to worry and I’ve been repeating to myself that the hospital people all thought she’d be okay, since I got her in. But if she’s okay, why hasn’t she found herself a cell phone? I feel a flash of anger at her. I’m doing my best. I have my cell phone, and I’ve been texting her. She knows my number; if she doesn’t have a cell phone, she just needs to borrow someone else’s and let me know how she’s doing. Why hasn’t she thought about how worried I am? Is she just not thinking about me at all?

I check again before we go to bed. I feel guilty when I turn my cell phone off, because that means I definitely won’t be there if my mother reaches out. But I need to preserve the battery power. And it also means I can just put the possibility out of my mind, a bit.

So we shut down our cell phones and tuck them into zippered pockets so they don’t get lost, make a last-minute run to the outhouse with a flashlight, and then curl up in our nest of blankets. The cots are much more comfortable than the floor; it’s a shame we brought the mouse-poop smell with us, but it’s not too bad. “Should’ve stopped at a Walmart for sleeping bags,” I say.

“Couldn’t do this in sleeping bags,” Rachel says, and she snuggles up next to me like she had at the house.

Despite all the texts, I still feel safe here; unfindable; almost like we’re suspended out of time as well as off the map. This is what my mother’s looking for, every time we move. This is how she feels, when we arrive at a new destination, and when that “out of place” sensation fades, I wonder if that’s when we hit the road. I decide that for tonight, anyway, I’m not going to question it.

“I feel like I should tell you something,” Rachel says.

“Okay,” I say.

“I’m gay,” Rachel says. “Bryony knows; that’s probably why she kept calling you my girlfriend.”

“Oh,” I say. “Thank you for trusting me. I won’t tell anyone without your permission. Just about everyone in the Clowder is queer. Or maybe that’s not true? But Marvin’s gay, Firestar’s pan, Hermione’s bi, and Ico’s ace.”

Rachel is