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She puts her face in her hands. I watch her cry. I know I’m not going to hug her, know I’m not even going to pat her arm. But I feel like I should do something. So I take a cookie from the tube. So I bite it. It’s the first solid food I’ve had in over a year, and chewing feels funny. Saff looks up at the crunch. Her eyes are wide, like it’s some big deal, which makes me want to spit out the bite. Instead I take another bite. Then I pass it to her. She takes a bite and passes it back to me. We finish the whole cookie that way, bite by bite.
CASE NOTES 3/27/35, EVENING
MEANS
Any of our suspects could have found the means to dose Saffron Jones.
Linus Walz (age 17) deals recreational drugs, primarily LSD, X, and hoppit, but it wouldn’t be difficult for Linus to get zom, either for his own use or for a classmate. Ellie never confessed where she got the zom she was caught with last year, but it’s common knowledge that Linus got it for her.
Josiah Halu (age 16) is Linus’s close friend, and like Ellie, he could’ve asked Linus to get him the zom or even stolen it from Linus’s stash.
Of the four suspects, Astrid Lowenstein (age 17) seems the least likely to have been able to secure the drug, though she shouldn’t be ruled out on these grounds.
At this point, none of them can be ruled out. Any of them could have done it, even if it’s difficult to imagine any of them having done it. It’s difficult because they used to be my friends. I can’t allow my bias to blind me. One of them did do it. Sentimentality must be starved.
THAT WHOLE NIGHT, I keep thinking about Saff crying in my bedroom. For the first time since I left school, I almost wish I could be back at Seneca Day so that Saff would have someone there to, I don’t know, trust. Except, if I’d stayed at Seneca, I would’ve played the Scapegoat Game with the rest of them, I would’ve gone to Ellie’s party that night, and then I would’ve been just another one of Saff ’s suspects. I’m only able to help her because I’m here, on the outside.
I ask myself why I even care about helping Saff. Ask myself why I keep picturing her blotchy one-eyebrowed face. I mean it’s not like Saff cared about me. None of them did. After I left, a few emails, a handful of texts, a “get well” card some teacher undoubtedly bought and made them all sign. Linus and Josiah came by the apartment a few times, then just Josiah, then no one. Not that I wanted anyone to visit. Not that I answered any of their emails or texts. Then just last week, almost a year to the day that I’d left school, Saff texted me: I think you’re maybe the only person who hasn’t seen it yet. I need you to tell me you haven’t seen it yet. Please don’t have seen it.
It was the video. And, no, I hadn’t seen it yet. Saff and I met at the bus stop outside my building. We sat in the plastic rain shelter, even though it was sunny, and let bus after bus go by. She looked the same, Saff did, short crinkly hair; round face; sleeve of metal bracelets, like her own personal wind chimes. I’d never thought much about Saff; she was always Ellie’s friend, daffy and harmless, a sidekick, a tagalong. Ellie wasn’t here now, though. Saff had come to meet me by herself. And maybe she looked different after all. Maybe she looked harder. Braver.
She sat on the bench next to me and said, “Hey, Rhett.”
She didn’t say, You look better, or You’ve gained weight.
Which meant that I didn’t have to say, Yeah, I got fat again.
Which meant that I was able to say, “Hey, Saff.” Like we were just two normal people waiting for the bus.
I told Saff that she didn’t have to show me the video if she wanted there to be one person who hadn’t seen it. She said it was different because she was choosing to show it to me. She unfolded her screen and told me to check that the projection wasn’t on, then she watched me while I watched it. When I handed her screen back, I made sure not to glance at her body, made sure not to not glance at her body. What Saff said about the way everyone looks at her, I know about that. People do it to me, too.
The idea for how to help Saff comes to me that night in the middle of a calculus exam, and I’m so excited about it that I get the last question wrong on purpose because it’s taking too long to work out the numbers. I hit Submit on my screen and jump out of my seat. Mom is due back from work any minute, and if I don’t get it now, then I’ll have to wait until morning. Mom’s work just upgraded her machine a few weeks ago, and so if I’m lucky, the old model will still be in the hall closet waiting to be returned to the office. And it turns out that I am lucky because there it is sitting next to her rain boots: the Apricity 470. I pick it up and weigh it in my hand, that little silver box. And I forget that I hate it, hate Mom’s belief in it and its so-called answers. I ditch all my moral qualms. Because this is how I’m going to do it. This is how I’m going to figure out who dosed Saff.
CASE NOTES 3/28/35, AFTERNOON
FROM GROVER VS. THE STATE OF ILLINOIS CONCURRING OPINION
“Whether or not the Apricity technology can truly predict our deepest desires is a matter still under debate. What is certain, however, is that this device does not have the power to bear witness to our past actions. Apricity may be able to tell us what we want, but it cannot tell us what we have done or what we will do. In short, it cannot tell us who we are. It, therefore, has no place in a court of law.”
SAFF AND I DECIDE TO SPRING IT ON THEM, spring me on them. There’s a class meeting after school to come up with a proposal for the end-of-the-year trip. The only adult there will be Teacher Smith, a.k.a. “Smitty,” the junior class adviser, and Smitty insists on “student autonomy,” which means that during class meetings he sits across the hall in the teachers’ lounge grading papers. We can sneak in, me and Apricity, with no one the wiser.
“Let’s go through it again,” I say. We’re sitting in Saff ’s car at the far edge of the parking lot waiting for the meeting to start. “We’re focusing on four people: Linus.”
“Because he has access to zom,” Saff fills in.
“Ellie.”
“Because she could get zom and because she would do it.”
“Astrid.”
“Because I was a monster to her,” Saff says.
“And Josiah?” I phrase it like a question.
“Yeah. Josiah,” she agrees, but nothing else. She won’t tell me why she suspects him.
Is it because you two were together? I want to ask. The thought has been in my head all week. But I can’t ask, because then Saff might think that I care. Though maybe that’s why she’s not telling me. I should tell her not to worry about it, me caring. I should tell her that I don’t care. About her and Josiah. About her. About anything. I should tell her that.
Instead I say, “Have you ever thought it could be all of them? I mean, the whole class together?”
Saff turns to the window, blows on it, then erases the mark her breath has left. “Sure. But I don’t think about it for long. It’s too shitty to contemplate.”
“Sorry.”
She looks over, surprised. “Why are you sorry?”
“I don’t know. For saying it could be all of them.”
“But you’re right. It could be.”
“It won’t be all of them,” I say, though of course I don’t know that this is true.
“The only thing I’m sure of is it wasn’t you,” Saff says, holding my eye.
“Yeah. It wasn’t me.”
She flashes a smile, fleeting as the jangle of her bracelets. There and gone.
The meeting is about to start, so we go in.
Smitty does us one better than the teachers’ lounge. He actually goes out to sit in his car and (not-so-) secretly smoke. Saff enters the classroom first, while I wait in the hall. It turns out that I’m nervous. My heart is going at about a million. A few months ago, I would’ve had to sit down and put my head between my knees, but now I’m strong enough to keep standing. I guess that’s something anyway. The doctors would say that’s something. To stand when you need to stand. Strength. I count to thirty, then step into the room.
“Rhett!” Linus shouts, and suddenly, it’s a year ago, and I never left them. “My man!” He’s smiling big, his arms stretched wide in welcome. A couple of the girls, Brynn and Lyda, rush over to fuss at me. (“You look so good, so much better.” “Yeah, there’s, like, color in your cheeks.”) These two would make a project out of me if they could. Astrid gives a half wave, and Ellie calls out, “Hey, skinny,” causing a couple of the others to shoot her looks, which she ignores. Josiah doesn’t say anything until I catch his eye. As usual, his bangs are in dire need of a cutting. “Hey, man,” he says so softly I only know what the words are because I can read them on his lips.
The classroom is seminar style, so instead of desks there’s a conference table and swivel chairs. Brynn and Lyda guide me to the head of the table, where the teacher usually sits.
“Are you back?” Linus asks.
And it occurs to me that I could be. I could say yes and, just like that, be back with my class at Seneca Day just in time for my senior year. The school would let me. The doctors would, too. Mom would be overjoyed. But I look around at them, these too-familiar eleven faces, and I just can’t. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s nothing that any of them did, and it’s nothing that I think they would do. I just know that if I came back I’d stop eating again. And, look, I’m not saying I want to eat. But for the first time, I maybe want to want to.
Josiah is staring down at his lap. All the others are watching me. Saff has her lips parted like she’ll step in for me if I can’t answer.
“No. I’m doing a project for school,” I say. “Cyberschool,” I amend. And if there’s any disappointment that I’m not returning to Seneca Day, it’s whisked away by their excitement over the Apricity I set out on the table.
No one resists taking the Apricity. Everyone is willing to be, as Mom would say, swabbed and swiped. The only hint of hesitation comes from Ellie, who announces, “I don’t need to be told what makes me happy,” though she sucks on her cotton swab along with the rest of them. Ten times, I brush the cotton on a computer chip and fit the chip into the side of the machine, just like I’ve seen Mom do. And Saff and I lie to the class a second time, saying that my screen battery just ran out and that I’ll have to take it home to recharge it before I can get their results from the machine.
“So we’ll see you again?” Josiah says, a little stiffly. I can’t tell if this means that he wants to see me again or that he doesn’t.
Before I can answer, Smitty pops his head into the room, making a surprised face at seeing me there. “Rhett! What a surprise! If I’d known you were coming I would’ve baked you …” He trails off, embarrassed.
“A cake?” I finish the sentence for him. “Sorry, Smitty. Not hungry. Haven’t you heard? Never hungry.” And after an awkward pause, everyone laughs. Even me.
CASE NOTES 3/28/35, LATE AFTERNOON
SUSPECT APRICITY RESULTS
Linus: arrange fresh flowers, visit Italy, sing out loud
Josiah: put a warm blanket on your bed, spend time with your sister,
Astrid: take the night bus, drop math class, get a tattoo
Ellie: run ten miles a day, write poetry, don’t listen to your father
“I DON’T SEE ANYTHING SUSPICIOUS,” Saff says. “Do you?”
I shuffle through the results again, reluctant to tell her that I don’t see anything suspicious either. We’re sitting on the floor in my room, Saff with the tube of cookies again. She’s eating so frenetically I’ve lost count.
“I was hoping someone’s might say, Tell the truth, or Apologize to Saff,” she says through a mouthful of crumbs. “Isn’t that stupid?”
“No. That’s actually the kind of thing that happened when the police used Apricity in interrogations, you know, when that was still legal. It’s like the person’s guilt is what’s keeping them from being happy.”
“Well. I guess whoever did it must not feel guilty then,” Saff murmurs. “They must think I deserved it.”
“Yeah, maybe. But then again, whoever did it is pretty fucked up.”
She sighs. “What’d you get?”
“‘Get’?”
“On the Apricity?”
“I didn’t take it.”
“Yeah, but when you have?”
“I’ve never taken it.”
“What? Never? But your mom,” she says. “It’s, like, her job.”
I keep my eyes on the results. “Uh-huh. So?”
“So you’ve never even been curious?”
“I’m just not interested.”
“You’re not interested in happiness?”
“Yeah.” I look up at her. “Exactly.”
She narrows her eyes. “I’d think sad people would be the ones most interested in happiness.”
“I’m not sad.”
“Yeah,” she says, deadpan. “Me neither.”
We look at each other for a minute, but what is there to say? We’re both sad. So what.
“You know what’s funny?” I push our friends’ results at her. “What’s the first thing you think of when you look at this?”
“That I can’t imagine Linus arranging flowers?”
“Okay, but in general, looking at all of them, what do you think?”
She flips through the pages. “I don’t know. They don’t make much sense.”
“That’s what I mean,” I tell her. “Apricity results sound random. They don’t make sense. ‘Take the night bus.’ ‘Arrange fresh flowers.’ ‘Drop math class.’” I pause, then say, “‘Recite French verbs. Shave your eyebrow. Eat a bar of soap.’ The things you did on zom, it’s like someone made you do a reverse Apricity.”
“Oh.” Saff raises her hands to her mouth, and her bracelets clang. “I think maybe I took one.”
“An Apricity?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
“You mean that night? You remember something?”
“Maybe,” she repeats, her eyes tracking back and forth as she tries to remember. “Maybe in an arcade?”
They have those remakes of the old fortune-teller machines with the papier-mâché Gypsy. You press your finger to a metal panel and the machine prints out a contentment plan. It’s not a real Apricity, though. There’s no DNA involved, no computing. It’s just a game.
“There’s an arcade on Guerrero, isn’t there?”
“Yeah. The Tarnished Penny.”
“Isn’t it just a couple blocks from Ellie’s house? Do you think you went there that night?”
“I told you. I don’t remember that night.” She brings her hands up higher, over her face, and I think of Astrid saying, I like it better in here. From behind her hands, Saff says, “Rhett. What did I do?”
CASE NOTES 3/29/35
Josiah’s Apricity results (in full):
Put a warm blanket on your bed.
Spend time with your sister.
Tell someone.
