Katie Williams: Tell the Machine Goodnight

CASE NOTES 3/27/35, EVENING

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

“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.