Gagged Read online

  Jasmine looks up. Her eyes are intense; she always wears eyeliner and brushes out her dark lashes. You can’t look into Jasmine’s eyes without being sure she’s about to mock you for something.

  “If I mark the box, I can’t try the maze again,” she elaborates.

  This explains nothing, so I open the fridge, reach for the glass carafe of orange juice, and say, “I don’t think there’s a record for what you’re doing.”

  “I did it in five seconds. Now I’m trying for three.”

  “Why not four?”

  “That’s just shooting below my potential.”

  Jasmine looks back down at the box and drags the Sharpie’s capped tip through the maze. A few seconds turns out to be longer than I’d thought, when spent on the back of a cereal box fronted by a cartoon tiger.

  “Shit,” she announces. “Five seconds.”

  I pour myself some orange juice. I’ll grab my bagel in a second, but for now I’m more interested in being indifferent to Jasmine’s quixotic pursuit. She does this. She’ll decide to try something pointless then won’t sleep until it’s done. She could solve a Rubik’s Cube in three minutes once upon a time simply because she decided to try. But like all the dumb things Jasmine tries on for size, she forgot how to do it after reaching her goal. I doubt she could finish more than two sides on a Cube now if given a day.

  “Where’s your timer?” I ask, leaning against the counter. The normality of this moment is a comfort. The memory of my dream was heavy through my shower and getting dressed, probably because both chores involved nudity and the touching of sensitive areas, but now it’s dissipating and I’m returning to normal, the uncomfortable memory mostly relegated to the past where it belongs. Jasmine, in my shoes, would be telling me all about her hot and heavy dreams. But I’m not like her.

  “I’m counting in my head.”

  “How do you know you’re accurate?”

  “I can walk and chew gum at the same time, you know.”

  “Don’t you know the maze so well now that it’s just a matter of moving quickly?” I look down at the thing. If I had to guess, it was made for an eight-year-old. Jasmine isn’t trying to solve a puzzle, really. This is closer to an agility test. And there is no reason to even try what she’s doing. I’m pretty sure Jasmine has undiagnosed OCD, but I’ve stopped pointing it out.

  “Shh. I’m focusing.”

  She tries the maze again. It takes the same length of time, but she raises her hands triumphantly in the air and looks up at me as if waiting for praise.

  “What?”

  “I did it.”

  “I don’t think you did.”

  “I think I did.”

  I look at the box. If I deny her again, she’ll resume working on her pointless maze game. And she shouldn’t; Jasmine’s not showered yet and needs to get ready. She’ll be crushed if she misses her appointment. Jasmine has hours but will require every minute to primp. She isn’t usually so vain, but today isn’t a normal day.

  “Congratulations,” I say.

  This seems to satisfy her. I pull a bagel from the bag and pry it apart with my fingers. I don’t have much to claw it open, but even Jasmine has to use a knife every time so it’s not like long fingernails are an advantage. She gets bread under her nails and will follow up by saying something inappropriate, like asking how she’s supposed to scratch her man’s back as she comes with bagel under her talons.

  I give Jasmine another look. Her eyes are, as usual, circled with eyeliner. She either slept in her makeup or applied more today before breakfast, and her shower, just because she’s Jasmine. Her lips are red and glistening, but she has a lip gloss addiction, so that means nothing.

  Jasmine stands, slides the cereal box back onto the kitchen shelf, and sits with her slim hip against the countertop. She’s positioned between me and the refrigerator so I’ll have to go through her to get my cream cheese. This is intentional. Jasmine moves like a cat and is equally wily. I anticipate her torment before she opens her mouth.

  “What?” I ask, watching Jasmine’s eyes.

  She’s wearing a tiny, knowing smile. For a half second I’m positive she knows about my dream, about my breathless state on waking, and the way I did nothing about it in the sheets or the shower. Not masturbating is, to Jasmine, like not brushing your teeth. If she suspects, I swear she’ll point a shaped fingernail toward my bedroom and scold me, demanding that I get back in there and do what she’s told me a thousand times must be done daily.

  “How tall do you think he is?” Jasmine asks.

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. But then again, I totally do.

  I take a sip of my orange juice. “Who?”

  “Caspian. He always looks so tall, but the magazines do that on purpose, right? Tom Cruise usually looks tall too, and he’s a midget.”

  “I don’t know,” I say. But Jasmine’s question, totally innocuous, doubles my heart rate. I’m not sure why. Jasmine has been going on and on about Caspian White ever since she managed to line up today’s interview with the new best young thing in startup CEOs, but she’d been going on and on about him for a while beforehand, too. He’s the definition of inaccessibly sexy for just about everyone other than me. I don’t see the point in getting all wobbly-kneed over icons and heartthrobs. You’re never going to be with them, so why waste the energy? But Jasmine practically has posters of the man plastering her walls.

  “I’m wearing heels.”

  I look down. Jasmine is barefoot.

  “Not now. I mean, when we go in. Just in case he’s stupid-tall. Plus, they make my ass look delicious.”

  “Good luck with that,” I say.

  It’s the best I can do. I want Jasmine to be happy, and if attempting to elicit an erection from the country’s most notorious greedy asshole will make her happy, I should get over myself and support her. To Jasmine, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, both for her career and her sense of lusty adventure. I’ve got mental baggage about GameStorming’s famously private CEO, but it’s not fair to heap all of my crap upon Jasmine’s shoulders on her day of triumph. She hasn’t done the research; she hasn’t single-mindedly focused on the same course project I have. To her, Caspian White is just a smoking hot guy in a suit. I can pretend to feel the same way.

  Jasmine must see something in my face that betrays me because she’s tapping her foot, arms crossed on her chest. Everything she does is loaded with sex appeal. The look she’s giving her heterosexual female roommate, barefoot in the kitchen, is no exception. Jasmine’s eyes are like a cat’s. Her lips look half-puckered. She’s pushed her boobs up with her crossed arms as if in offering. I’m immune to all of this in a way men aren’t, but it’s easy to see why she usually gets her way.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Don’t you dare just wish me ‘good luck.’ You said you’d go with me to the interview.”

  “I did not!”

  “Yes you did!”

  “Did not!”

  “Did so!”

  Jasmine holds up both hands. “Stop. I’m having flashbacks to kindergarten, when Tammy Cryder and I used to fight over the SpongeBob phone.”

  “Jasmine … ”

  “She was such a cunt. Used to pop juice boxes on my cot after we got up from naptime and tell Ms. Wilson that I’d peed my bed. And most of the time I hadn’t!”

  “Jas? Focus.” Her eyes clear, and I say, “Stop trying to make me go with you when you know I don’t want to.”

  “But you could take pictures. Don’t you want to take pictures?”

  “First of all, you didn’t get an okay for a photographer.”

  Her eyebrows go up, and her mouth opens — she’s about to suggest calling for clearance, so I cut her off.

  “And second of all, I don’t want to meet Caspian White. Not even a little.”

  “But maybe you’re wrong about him.”

  “I’m not wrong. Hell, I’ve done half my research using his GameStorming app. Not only did
it confirm everything else I found, but the social scores on everything I found inside GameStorming just made it all clearer. Everyone I’m connected to on LiveLyfe seems to have a story about someone he screwed.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Jasmine says, licking her lips.

  “And it’s not just children.”

  Jasmine’s sex-filled eyes collapse. “See? Now you took it too far.”

  “I didn’t mean screwing like that,” I say.

  “And now you’re ruining my fun! What’s going on here, Aurora? Why are you trying to hurt me? I thought you were my friend.”

  I step back, shake my head, and raise a single finger. “Uh-uh, Jas. That’s not going to work on me.”

  She makes her face into an exaggerated pout, lower lip sticking out.

  “Don’t,” I say, still holding the finger up. “I told you from the start. Here’s you … ” I slip into a flippant impersonation, complete with hand gestures. “‘Oh, Aurora! You know how everyone in my class is supposed to contact someone famous for an interview? Everyone struck out but me. I got a yes from Caspian White because I offered him sexual favors!’”

  “I don’t sound like that,” Jasmine says, obviously not bothered by my joke that she offered sexual favors in her letter to Caspian’s office.

  “And then here’s me: ‘Jasmine, that’s very nice, but I hope that man gets sucked into a jet turbine.’”

  “Now, that’s not nice.”

  “And then you said, ‘But waaaaaah, Aurora, you need to come with me because I’m scared!’ And I was like, ‘Too bad! Any man who’d willfully, maliciously hurt the futures of millions of children isn’t someone I want to — ’”

  “It’s not willful.”

  “It is!”

  “Just because he chooses not to move GameStorming into education doesn’t mean he’s doing it to hurt them; it just means he has a big business with a lot of parts and that means he has to choose what he — ”

  “If he took GameStorming open source, which the Edison Initiative’s endowment offered to pay for, and let them develop a version which wouldn’t conflict with his current profitable lines of business, then everyone would — ”

  “Going open source would ruin his company!” Jasmine blurts.

  I meet her eyes.

  “What does ‘open source’ mean, Jasmine?”

  She crosses her arms and again taps her foot. “I don’t know. But it’s his company, and everyone just keeps sticking their noses into his business.”

  “Don’t you think he has some implied social responsibility? Especially since the LiveLyfe buyout, with half the kids he’s refusing to help using the network anyway?”

  And Jasmine, her eyes hard and her body closed, says, “No.”

  I consider debating, but she’s in defiant toddler mode right now. If this goes on too long, she’ll open a juice box on my mattress and tell everyone I peed my bed.

  “I’m sorry, Jas. You got the interview, so you need to do it alone. Or find someone else, if you’re uncomfortable.”

  “I need a photographer.”

  “Take pictures on your iPhone.”

  “It’s not the same, and you know it. You’re always taking pictures of — ”

  “Of his building, as construction continues and it keeps getting more ostentatious. To document where all the money is going, instead of to where it’s needed most.”

  “So you should want pictures of Caspian, too.”

  “Not if I have to meet him to do it.” I shiver a little. I honestly don’t think I could shake the man’s hand without slapping him first.

  She seems angry, but then the tension breaks and she takes my hand.

  “Pleeeeeease?”

  I grip her hand then let it go. I turn toward my room, toward my backpack filled with books, notepads, and camera equipment.

  “I have to get to class, but I just know you’ll do great.” I give her a small smile that does nothing to improve her nervous, out-of-sorts facade and add, “Don’t come home pregnant.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  AURORA

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER I’M AT Harmony Elementary on the west side, swinging one leg and then the other out of my Civic. The boots have a decent heel, but nobody’s out here in the visitor parking lot to watch me climb out of the little beat-up car like a giraffe finding its legs.

  I stand, grab my bag, and make my way across the front of the school to the front door. I’m supposed to check in at the office, so I do, but the process makes me a little sad. I’m only twenty-three, and it doesn’t feel all that long ago that my parents were coming to pick me up at a place like this. They never had to check in at the office. And — if this school were one of the many I’ve seen with higher precautions, which thankfully it’s not — they didn’t have to walk through metal detectors, either.

  Come on now, girl, I tell myself, they’re just being careful. Having random visitors check in and get a pass before walking around a school full of little kids is a good thing, not a bad thing.

  The woman who checks me in looks like a throwback: big head of brown hair sculpted into something like my old lunch lady’s helmet. But she’s pleasant enough, pointing me toward Mrs. Krupke’s classroom without requiring me to take an armed escort. I find it without trouble, stopping long enough to take a drink at a too-short fountain. This school of tiny people is making me self-conscious. I usually like being tall, but now I feel weird. I’m reminded again of a giraffe, distorting its gangly limbs to bow down and sip from a watering hole.

  I slip into the bathroom long enough to check myself in the mirror — which, again, I stoop to use. I think of Jasmine, checking the time on my phone, seeing that she’s still got quite a while before meeting with Caspian White. But I know how badly she’s probably fretting. Jasmine acts bulletproof, but that’s because she’s learned that outward brashness is the best way to protect a tender core. It’s like the best defense being a good offense, and extends to every corner of her life: how she acts in class, how she acts with friends, and how aggressive she is with men. Jasmine manages to walk a fine line; she’s known as a fun girl but not a slut. But I live with her. I’ve seen Jasmine at her worst. I’ve seen how badly breakups hurt her, even though she pretends they’re no big deal. Lots of people know Jasmine writes erotic stories, and erotica is fine from Jasmine because it fits her sexually confident exterior. But I’m one of only a few people who know she also writes literature under a different name, that she has great hopes for it, and that she’s never had the guts to publish it because she can’t imagine the idea that she could ever be good enough for the world.

  I feel bad for lying to her, but she wasn’t letting go. “I need to get to class” is an excuse she can relate to, whereas “I’m going to go hang out with little kids” would strike her as a playdate I could blow off if a friend needed me badly enough.

  Mrs. Krupke’s room is just across the hall. I peek through the window, half hoping I can take a few photos of the class through the door’s little window before the kids know I’m here. But of course there’s wire in the glass, so I can’t get a clear shot. I do take a few moments to watch them. To observe the subjects of my senior project in their natural environment.

  I pay special attention to their tools.

  Pencils.

  Loose-leaf paper.

  Beat-up textbooks covered in brown paper.

  And at the front of the room, Mrs. Krupke is writing on a chalkboard. A chalkboard. It’s not even dry erase. Hell, even my school, years ago, was moving to dry erase boards. But this is the twenty-teens. Science fiction promised us flying cars and jetpacks by now, but we’re still frustratingly grounded. And in the optimistic past, the classroom of the future, too, looked a lot different than this.

  I knock. I open the door a bit as the teacher looks over, her face breaking into a wide smile.

  “Miss Henley! It’s so nice to finally meet you in person.”

  I move forward and shake her hand, suddenly sure that m
y boots are a problem. I’m in a classroom. Shouldn’t I be wearing slacks? A heavy coat? Possibly a false mustache? But I’m being stupid. If the teacher doesn’t think I look scandalous — and I mean, come on, I don’t — then surely the kids won’t.

  She introduces me. It’s clear the kids were briefed ahead of time that I’d be here, and Mrs. Krupke even drops a mention that they took home photo releases for their parents to sign. A few weren’t returned, so she points out the children whose pictures I shouldn’t take — or, if I take them, exclude from my photo essay. But the kids seem excited by a new presence among them, and the notion of being immortalized. A few look at me with admiration I feel unworthy of. I remember being this young. College felt so far away. To these children, I must represent a glimpse of an impossibly bright future. For the girls who are so inclined, I represent a future where they can be tall and nicely dressed, fully realized as an adult woman. For the boys, I might represent someone younger and at least somewhat relatable — like an older sister, perhaps — who can still interact with the almighty teachers as if they were normal human beings.

  I smile while waving hello, as a few of them shout out their names and questions that have no relevance to anything. One girl, in pigtails and wearing blue rain boots with patterns of brightly colored fish, loudly introduces herself as Lily. “I’m going to be a photographer like you when I grow up,” she announces. “And look,” she adds, pointing down. “I have boots like yours.”

  I smile wider and tell her she’s on her way, but I don’t tell her that photography is only a hobby — an impractical art I enjoy that will never pay the bills. My major is in education, and though I plan to change the world now, part of me wonders if I’ll end up in an office with another half decade behind me, pushing paperwork that nobody reads while everything stays exactly the same.

  But I say none of this to the children. The future is in their eyes, and at this age they’ll believe anything.

  As class resumes, I’m unable to take photos that are truly candid until they finally forget me. But once they do, I start snapping, and watching life unspool through my lens.