“Fuck all, if I care.” He kicked at the strands of duct tape coiled like a molted snakeskin.
The roommate stilled, rolled bits of adhesive between his fingers. “Your fault, dude.”
“You made the bet.”
“Never woulda been offered the bet if you hadn’t jizzed in her roommate’s underwear. Chicks stick together, dumbass.” This made a couple of dudes turn back to listen, and the fuckwad added, “So it is actually your fault, Jizzum.”
“Name’s Ethan, you dipshit.”
“Not anymore, Barney Jizz.” The roommate called to the guys up ahead. “Yo, wait up, burgers at Mr. Bartley’s on me.”
Ethan yanked on the string of his hoodie so hard, it broke. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know when, but when the chance came, he’d take the bitches down.
54
I always believed in fate. I just didn’t know what mine was until that text message arrived. Ilena admitting to a cover-up. The release of that video would ruin everything.
That was never the plan.
That was nevermyplan.
Little did I know he had a plan of his own. Ethan’s plan could not be allowed to succeed. Not when it was at odds with all I had done. All I had risked. And endured: humoring him, pretending he was the one in charge even though I was the one who’d done it all to raise our company to the level it deserved.
They deserved.
They would see, they would know, they would thank me.
That night, a month before the outing, they took each other’s hand and walked away as one. United by a secret they could never tell.Idid that. I saved them from losing each other. I was supposed to save us all.
The reveal of the computer glitch was supposed to have come from me—a feat to be perceived as astonishing yet simple in practice as I’d created it. I’d only used Ethan and his position within his company to mask the error’s existence until I said otherwise. The valuation, the attention, the success.Me, me, me.I’d intended to explain it all. And they would understand that I was the one who had manufactured the error and taken us to the brink of greatness, the wealth of users, the wealth those users would shower upon us, and they would embrace me as they did you.
That was the plan. To play out on my timeline. Not his. Ethan got greedy. He sought to blackmail his way to a windfall.First Grayson, then, when that failed, Ilena. The text message Ethan sent me from the bar with the incriminating recording of Ilena could not come to light. It was quicksand. I was drowning. Y’all were drowning. He had to be stopped. And quickly. What none of us knew was that fate had already stepped in to help.
Fate made the printer jam on the document that had to be signed in the morning. Fate made me stay at AIM until it was too dark to comfortably cycle home. Fate made me walk past the stop just as the bus arrived. Fate made me choose to stand in front rather than sit in back. Fate made me see it all coming. Clearly. In an instant. The way out.
They were on opposite sides of the street.
Ethan was in the middle.
My hand found the bus’s emergency stop.
My voice cried, distracting the driver.
The shrieking brakes, the wrenching halt, the thundering shouts, the heaving pain, so much in the moment, so much to come. But they had taught me: one a means to an end; the other right and wrong. This was right. This was the only way it should end. In Ethan’s death.
After we went public, they would see. They would know. They would thank me. They would love me. That was my plan.
That the game annihilated.
One second I was crossing the lawn of the gastropub in my white linen dress to round y’all up, and the next I was lying in white linen pants in a lumpy futon in the living room of the studio I apparently shared with a Tufts grad student. Except I lived alone.
The smell of meat smoking on an open fire from the barbecue restaurant down the street wafted through the open windows, a constant I’ve come to find comforting, but that first day, I ran to the bathroom, gagging. That was when I saw my hair. Red. I never wanted to be anything but the blonde I was.
Time travel was my first guess, yet aside from the hair and toned calves, which I would come to discover are the result of an apparent affinity for heels, I looked the same age. As did all of you.
Panic is not something I do. Methodical, that’s in my DNA. That first morning, my phone had sounded with a reminder to set up the AIM conference room for a meeting with Grayson Fields. No such meeting had been scheduled in what I would come to realize was our universe. I knew little of what was happening then. My mind remained on what I knew of our world and what I had to protect: all of you.
Y’all were easy to find. This phone tracks all things Mallory: her laptop, her phone, herself. She must have trackers on all the things she might lose. I didn’t even change, just hurried to Grayson’s penthouse, and there you all were at the door with that dog that’s so cute it demands to be kidnapped. Then I heard:“Watching the dog while Mr. Fields goes on an unexpected trip.”A lie from Mallory’s lips. At odds with the meeting surely in everyone’s calendar. Y’all were heading to AIM, but I didn’t know if y’allwerey’all. I stayed out of sight and hurried to AIM to find out.
