Very and Ghana could be each other’s going-away present.
CHAPTER 17
The Girl’s a Superfreak / She’s Really Freakin’ Out
Full speed ahead. Engage!
Very stormed down the hall of her dorm floor. She wanted her fucking laptop back right now.
No appeasement. No compromising. No waiting even one more minute, much less another day. She didn’t care what Dean Dean would proclaim he’d determined about her online privileges and other matters in their meeting later in the afternoon. She wanted her machine this very second, or she was gonna go Terminator on someone’s ass.
What had she been thinking, letting Bryan keep it all this time, and acting like she could live with this treachery?
It wasn’t that Very needed that particular machine so much. She didn’t. She could get her fix anywhere, anytime. Top-secret military commandos could kidnap Very and deposit her down into the most remote corner of Siberia, and she’d still find a way to tune back in. She’d find the closest Eskimos, or Siberianos, or whoever the native species were, and she’d be partying with them and tapping away on their cellies in no time. Just try to shut her down! NOT. POSSIBLE.
It was the principle of the matter.
Who the fuck had Bryan thought he was to have commandeered the intervention?
And what had Very been thinking to have acquiesced so easily? So quietly?
Her true self could be contained no longer.
Ghana had spilled all the details. She knew the whole story now.
By bro-code, what happened in Dreams stayed in Dreams, perhaps—but what got discussed in the bathroom during Dreams was fair game. Jean-Wayne had ‘fessed up all to Ghana in there. And Ghana had revealed all to Very.
It was Bryan who was in cahoots with Dreabbie. It was Bryan who’d suggested the intervention to Dean Dean, who then set it in motion with Dreabbie. It was Bryan who’d not only shut down The Grid but also, after swiping her laptop from her room while she was meeting with Dean Dean, wiped the machine clean. Jean-Wayne and Lavinia knew about it but hadn’t had the heart to tell Very yet.
Her hard drive had been erased. All her favorite mementos of El Virus would be gone—their IM transcript logs, their photo and story exchanges, their PowerPoint love-letter presentations. Bryan had perused every nook on her machine before going on his destructive rampage.
It had honestly never occurred to Very that Bryan could go to that extreme. She’d assumed him to be holding on to her laptop in a misguided but sincere and only a little bit cruel attempt to protect Very from herself. How could she have been so naïve as to think he was only safeguarding the machine and not perusing it? She’d never imagined he cared that much. If she had absconded with his machine, she’d have stored it away. Look through it? Nah! What could possibly be interesting there?
It was eight in the morning, but Very was still operating on darkness time. She’d yet to sleep since the blowout party. She’d fooled around with Ghana, yeah, which had been satisfactory until he’d burst into tears afterward, despondent over having been fully unfaithful, in the biblical way and not just in the stoned making-out way, to his girlfriend. It was like he wanted to hurt Very for having prodded him. He’d retaliated with the most hurtful tool at his disposal: information.
Ghana was getting dressed, eager to bolt her room. Very had tried to entice him back into bed. “Your girlfriend won’t mind,” Very said. “Since we’ve already gone this far … why not go there again?”
While pulling up his jeans, Ghana said, “I really should be going. It’s bad enough I did this. But if she finds out with whom, then I’m really in trouble.”
“Why?” Very asked. “I don’t know her.”
Almost casually, while buttoning up his shirt, Ghana said, “But most everyone here knows about you, and that’s going to get back to her.” He leaned in to Very, like he was teasing. “Everyone in your residence hall thinks you’re pretty nutty. You know that, right? I mean, people like you, sure. You’re a cool gal. No doubt. But that thing the Bryan guy says about you—it’s sort of become the party line.”
“What’s he say?” Very asked, her heart sinking.
“That anyone can see you’re robotically attached to your machinery and have no real personality without your props.”
OMFG WTF WTF OMFG?!
“What else does he say about me?” Very whispered.
And so Ghana had spilled the details about what Jean-Wayne had told him Bryan had done to Very’s laptop.
Very had jumped out of bed and rushed out of her dorm room before Ghana’d had a chance to put his shoes on. She was glad Lavinia had spent the night away with her crew friends, because if Lavinia were in their room now, Very would want to kill her, too. Very didn’t want any distraction from her primary goal.
Target: Bryan.
Mission: Annihilation.
She had to settle the score with Bryan. Before he turned her in to Dean Dean for the Astronomy Club party, too. Before he could wreck her life any further.
“BRYAN!” She pounded on his door. “BRYAN!”
She didn’t care how early in the morning it was or that most students living on Bryan’s floor were probably still asleep. No answer from Bryan. A few calls of “Shut the fuck up!” came from nearby rooms, but no response from Bryan’s room.
Very reached for the doorknob. Times like these demanded no respect for privacy. “I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!”
Sure enough, the door was unlocked. She pushed it open. Jean-Wayne’s bed was made up—he’d obviously not come home the previous night. Bryan’s bed was unkempt, with clothes tossed on it. But no Bryan.
Ahhhh-chooo!
That sneeze.
Very pivoted to face the side wall of the dorm room. She opened the closet door. And there Bryan was, naked, with the girl whom Very had so generously suggested he faux-mo standing behind him, wearing a G-string and nothing else, her arms clasped over her chest to cover herself.
Very tapped the girl on the shoulder. “You. Leave. Now. For your own good.”
The girl scurried from behind Bryan, grabbed her clothes from his bed, and bolted out of the room.
Bryan and Very inspected each other warily, like gunslingers at a showdown. Nude Cowboy and Nude Cowgirl. For Very, too, it seemed, was not dressed. She’d left Ghana so angrily and hastily, she hadn’t, she realized now, bothered to put on clothes.
And Nude Cowboy had the audacity now to try covering his junk with his hand!
Very pulled a pillow from Jean-Wayne’s bed and flung it at Bryan, who positioned the pillow to cover his private parts. Still standing in the closet, Bryan reached for his newsie jacket and tossed it to Very. “Cover yourself up at least!” he hissed.
She let the jacket drop to the floor. What did she care about nudity? That’s how her mother had raised her—to be free and open.
And to express rage at men, as appropriate. If only she had a lighter handy …
“I HATE YOU!” Very yelled. “I heard what you did to my machine. How could you have done this to me?”
Bryan tried to hand Very a robe from the closet, but she shoved it away.
“It was for your own good,” he said.
“Give it back to me. Now. Give me my machine.”
“I can’t. The machine had to be put down. One of those El Virus files of yours—when I tried to open it without the right password, it launched a virus on your hard drive. Obliterated the laptop. It’s useless now.”
This was not possible. Weren’t there constitutional amendments that protected Very from this tyranny? The right to bear arms, and laptops, and have private exchanges with an unseen electronic amour?
No. Please, no. This can’t be happening.
It wasn’t possible that tears streamed down Very’s face. Such humiliation. She could feel the wetness on her cheeks, but she couldn’t give in so easily. She couldn’t let Bryan see this effect he’d had on her. She wiped her face with her hand and
tried to steady her expression back into a hateful gaze.
“Give it back to me,” she repeated. “Even if the hard drive is destroyed, it’s still my machine. And I want it back.”
He said nothing. Just stood there.
“NOW!” Very shrieked.
“You’re not listening,” Bryan said, all of a sudden speaking very East Coast fast for a West Coast granola spawn. “It’s destroyed. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this whole thing to go this far. I’m so sorry, Very. So sorry. I didn’t know what to do. That El Virus guy is quite the masterful programmer. There was no saving your machine after the virus launched without the proper passwords. Very”—Bryan did have the decency to appear despondently sheepish—“when I realized what I’d done, I panicked. I threw away your laptop.”
“Like, in the trash?”
“Yes.”
Not only was his action completely environmentally irresponsible, but what Bryan had done was also the most unspeakable, vile act imaginable.
And yet he’d just spoken it, as fact.
This was happening.
“NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Very screamed.
His conciliatory tone gone, Bryan added: “One more thing. That El Virus stuff was totally gross. I saw it all. You must be crazy to get involved in that kind of sordid mess with a stranger. You. Are. Such. A. Freak.”
Very didn’t care that a crowd had gathered outside the room, spurred on by the noise from her argument with Bryan. She didn’t care that she was standing opposite him, completely exposed, in every manner possible. She would make him pay.
Very lunged forward, her hands reaching for Bryan’s neck.
Yes, she was going to have to kill him.
“Aargh!” she cried out.
Very LeFreak was indeed the freakiest of the freaks. Not the cool brand of fun freak. She was the worst case of freak, a complete and utter loser.
And now, she was a monster, too.
PART TWO
White Noise (The Real Kind)
CHAPTER 18
ESCAPE, Emergency Services for Computer-Addicted Persons Everywhere, was a former fat farm fallen on hard times. Originally built as a summer vacation lodge during the post–World War II period, it developed a reputation as a refuge for plump housewives seeking to discreetly shed pounds at discount rates during the off-season. The lodge became a full-fledged fat farm during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, when the Vermont lake resort targeted a new clientele and transformed to cater year-round to a pampered elite of suddenly wealthy/suddenly porky millionaires. But a shyster accountant and global economic turmoil ultimately forced the family who’d owned the establishment to sell it off. The controlling interest was bought by a faceless conglomerate (IBM and Microsoft were both rumored; a consortium of dot-com fat farm graduates was the more likely candidate—skinny people could get so mean and vindictive). The new regime was looking to profit from the flip side of the new technology economy: technology addiction. The conglomerate hired Dr. Joyce Kuntz, a New Age shrink who’d dreamed of finding a cheap resort that could be converted into a technology dry-out clinic, to run the new endeavor. She preferred to be known professionally as “Dr. Joy,” for obvious reasons.
Very had seen the ESCAPE infomercial once, when she was in high school, on the television in her dentist’s office in New Haven. The TV had been set up to distract patients during root canal procedures.
“Hi, I’m Dr. Joy. I’d like to tell you and your technology-addicted loved ones about a program I’ve started, at a place where overstressed, overstimulated people can go for guidance and strength, to learn about the beauty in their hearts, away from the numbing addiction of their machines. Located along the scenic Lake Champlain shoreline in Vermont, ESCAPE is a resort clinic where you or your loved ones can withdraw from technology and travel to the inner depths of the soul. At ESCAPE, you’ll receive premium physical and mental rehabilitation, in a relaxed natural setting. Call the number on your television screen now for more information.”
Lavinia had promised the place would be like spa rehab.
Lavinia had been wrong.
Newly technology-less residents roamed the ESCAPE grounds like automatons, mindlessly performing stupid provincial chores foisted upon them as “voluntary,” like churning butter and picking berries to make into jam. They gardened and trimmed bushes and trees on the property, under the guise of “nature time.” Residents had to launder their own clothes and sheets, using old-fashioned wringers and washboards, and then hang the laundry on outdoor lines to dry. There wasn’t even a manicurist on site to fix inmates’—er, residents’—hands after all that hard work.
In Very’s opinion, the “spa rehab” was more like a technology-free indentured servitude zone, without Google and iTunes and satellite TV and a Wii—in other words, all the perks that were supposed to come along with basic existence. The ESCAPE brochure—with all the pretty Vermont pictures and 12 Steps jargon and quotes from “healed” technophiles—was just a subterfuge.
Very didn’t know if she’d make it through the first week, much less a whole month. She’d rather have a dozen root canal procedures than suffer through twenty-eight days of ESCAPE rehab. At least with dental work, you got painkillers to help you sleep away the time.
The experience as a whole Very didn’t so much object to. It’s not like she had something better to do with her summer.
It was the sheer quiet that was going to be her downfall at ESCAPE.
There was nothing to do at this place except think. Ruminate hard on all her failures in life that had led her to this rock bottom of disconnected indignity.
They tried to make me go to rehab and I said …
“Yes, yes, yes?!”
Indeed, Very had been a complete pushover when it came down to the decision.
Although she’d originally sung to the tune of “No, no, no.”
But Aunt Esther had taken command of the situation. “Oh yes, you will, young lady,” the senior lady had proclaimed.
And that was that.
In all honesty, Very was so very tired. And relieved to have the decision made for her.
She needed something to do, anyway.
So she’d agreed to go to rehab.
Whatever.
Snooze.
Her presidential libraries idea would never have worked out. What had Very been thinking? She didn’t even have a legal driver’s license, only that fake Montana one that said she was twenty-three and her name was Ermengarde Schnitzel—eyes: green; hair: red; weight: ‘scuse me, that’s personal. Very wouldn’t know what El Virus really looked like even if she found him. And she didn’t know whether going on a road trip to presidential libraries was, in fact, what his clues had meant.
Very didn’t, quite honestly, know anything anymore.
She’d tried to kill a man. She was pretty sure.
She wasn’t exactly a reliable narrator.
She probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. But the desire had been there.
The memory was hazy. She remembered lunging toward Bryan, reaching to grab his throat. She remembered screaming or shrieking or some hellacious form of Mariah Carey trilling coming from her mouth that possibly could have broken the sound barrier. She knew that Bryan had shoved back at her, trying to deflect her and silence her. But her feet had been bare, and she’d slipped on the floor, knocking her head against a bed frame as she tumbled down.
What happened in between she’d have to consider A Lost Chapter in her life. She preferred those memories silenced anyway. Who was she to protest her subconscious?
When Very came to, she was laid flat on a hospital gurney. With her hands in restraints.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” she yelled. Her wrists ached from the shackles; they must have been fidgeting beneath the restraints for—who knew how long?
Her gurney was parked next to a hospital corridor wall. A nearby nurse strolled to Very’s side, unconcerned. “We’re waiting for your room to open up, sweetie. Bed up
stairs should be ready in about an hour. I’ll let your folks know you’ve come to.”
Very had folks now?
No, she only had Aunt Esther and Lavinia, who rushed to her side from a waiting room.
“You gave us quite a scare,” Aunt Esther said.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” Very repeated. She spread and wiggled her fingers from beneath the restraints, intending to gesture, How could this be?
“Language,” Aunt Esther chided her, paying no mind to Very’s hands. “You know I will not tolerate that.”
Trying to sound calm, Very singsonged, saccharine-sweet, “Please may I know how the frock I came to be here?”
Lavinia filled in the blanks. “You and Bryan got into a scuffle.” (And may Lavinia always be such a blessed old soul to drop words like “scuffle” into conversation completely without irony.) “You fell and got knocked out. When the ambulance came and the medics tried to take you for help, you … resisted. It wasn’t pretty. They sedated you. Doctor says physically you’re okay, but mentally … you’re going to have to stay overnight for psychiatric evaluation.” Lavinia leaned down and cupped her hand around Very’s ear to whisper one last thing. “Also, you were naked when it happened, and no one’s judging you about that; everyone who saw agrees you look fierce au naturel, but don’t mention it to your aunt because I didn’t tell her that part.”
Thank God. Aunt Esther disapproved of low-rider jeans with thongs showing through (“Oy, despicable!”), so nakedness to her was almost as unholy as the f-word spewing from the mouths of young ladies.
Funnily enough (not really), much of Very’s “psychiatric evaluation” took place without Very’s having the benefit of being present. It happened in the hospital waiting room the next day, in a conference attended by the attending physicians and Dean Dean, Aunt Esther, Dreabbie, and Lavinia. They made the determination—er, recommendation—that Very go into rehab. Apparently, charges wouldn’t be filed against Very (FOR WHAT?!?! Very wanted to know—Bryan had gotten safely on a plane home to Portland, according to Lavinia) if she agreed to voluntarily go into treatment.