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

for the morning round of hospital stuff. They check Mom’s temperature, blood pressure, and a bunch of other things and then give her breakfast. I fall silent, watching, but one of the nurses gives me a big, fake smile and says, “You must be Steph!”

“Yes,” I say.

“Your mother stole my cell phone so she could text you!” She laughs with this edge of irritation.

“Like, when you say she stole it…”

“Picked my pocket when I was taking her vital signs!”

“I did give it back to you,” Mom says.

I can’t tell if the nurse is laughing affectionately, like she thinks my mother’s theft was really clever, or if she’d secretly like to smother Mom with her pillow, but either way, she’s gone a few minutes later.

“I think she’s still mad at me,” Mom says. “I really did need to send you a text, though, and there’s some policy against lending out personal phones.”

“I’m glad you stole her phone,” I say. “Is that what you used to call me?”

“No, your friend Rachel’s mother came with a spare phone. That’s what I used.”

“By the time you finally texted, I’d heard from Xochitl and the mystery person. Who was the mystery person? You sounded like you knew.”

“I didn’t,” Mom says. “I mean, I don’t know who it was.”

“You sounded like you thought you knew.”

Mom shrugs. “Why did you go to Massachusetts?” she asks. “I guess I assumed it was to find Xochitl, but once I talked to Xochitl, it was clear that wasn’t it, since she didn’t know you were there.”

There’s no way to explain the trip to Massachusetts without explaining CheshireCat. I don’t know if I trust my mom with the information about CheshireCat. I sit there pondering what to say a little bit too long, and Mom sighs and says, “I’m sorry for not telling you about the code-breaker. The real reason your father was after us. It was a secret I was hoping to just keep forever.”

“Why did you make something like that only to stuff it in a box?” I ask.

“Homeric Software was me, Xochitl, Rajiv, and your father. I was a math major in college, and I’d started on the path to the breakthrough just because it was a question that no one could answer. Then for a while your father had me convinced he’d only use it for good purposes. Then the actual breakthrough came … and there was a big fight.”

“Over what to do with it?”

“Xochitl wanted to just sell it to the NSA and be done with it. She’d assumed the purpose we were working toward was commercial and that Michael would use the money from the sale toward pursuing his goals, which she assumed were idealistic. But Michael had other plans; he wanted to put himself in charge. In charge of as much, as many things, as possible. And Rajiv wanted the opposite. He wanted to sow chaos, burn down everything, rebuild from the ashes. I listened to the fight and decided to encrypt the file so no one could act independently while we sorted all this out. Michael assumed I would decrypt it for him alone. He was wrong.”

I try to imagine this fight. Xochitl seemed pretty even-tempered on the way home. Practical. So I can believe she was startled to find out no one else intended to sell the software. But in picturing the fight, it’s my mother I focus on: sitting in the back of the room, listening, making a decision she’s going to stick to no matter the consequences.

“So he had you kidnapped,” I say.

“Well, initially, he made it look like Rajiv had done it. But he slipped up. There were details I didn’t even tell the police that Michael knew, anyway. He said I’d told him, but I knew I hadn’t.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police?”

“He’d already had Rajiv killed! Sure, it looked like a suicide, but I knew it couldn’t be. And I had to protect you. Xochitl asked the same question. She talked me into the order of protection, but … I knew what he was like. So I ran.”

“And you kept running.”

“Yes. And you came with me. City after city. Are you angry at me, Steph?”

“No.” I reassure her instinctively, but I decide after thinking about it that I’m definitely not lying to her. I’m not angry about the moves. She was right about my father. I am still a little angry about Julie. Even though I’ve found her again.

After the showdown at Annette’s house, I found the name of the Utah town on Mom’s laptop, and from there, with a little help from CheshireCat, I found Julie.

I don’t know if you remember me was the first line of my email.

OF COURSE I REMEMBER YOU came back exactly twenty-seven minutes later. She’s started signing on to CatNet as Stella. I’m never going to lose her again, unless she decides she wants to get lost.

“What if we move one more time?” Mom asks.

That makes me furious. “What?” I say. “Why? Why now? I have friends here. I have a girlfriend here.”

“But the school is terrible,” Mom says. “You told me so. Two years of Spanish, not enough math. You should get to go to a decent school.”

“I want this school,” I say. “This is the school where my friends are.”

“The hospital had me meet with a therapist,” she says. “I want to get properly treated for PTSD. So I can stop raising you like you live in a war zone.”

“You can drive to Eau Claire for a therapist,” I say. “It’s not that far.”

“Minneapolis isn’t that far, either,” Mom says. “You can come visit on weekends.”

“You weren’t actually asking for my opinion, were you?” I say, furious. “You’ve already decided. You’re moving us again.”

“We can wait until the end of the semester,” she offers. “So you can get credit for the classes you’re in. A transcript. But then, yes.”

We’re interrupted again by another knock on the door. This time, it’s a woman in a gray business suit, wearing a lanyard