1
Julia
Ned Frimpong waits for Julia Pollitt on the porch, six minutes away from the terrible moment. They’re up earlier than teenagers normally are, the sun just rising above the hills of Lakehaven. When Julia walks up to his front porch from two houses over, Ned is frowning at his phone and flicking his finger across the screen, saying, “Oh, that Megabunny just cost me points.”
“Don’t you ever tell anyone we’re doing this,” she says. She gives him a smile.
He smiles back. “My lips are sealed. I have so much Megabunny shame.” He glances at the phone screen. “Oh, there’s a Shockersquirrel.”
“Those are good, right?” she says, pulling out her phone, opening the game, and frowning at her screen. “Lots of points?”
He opens the front door, leans in, calls, “Mom, Julia and I are heading out to play our game. Back in a bit.” He doesn’t wait for an answer but shuts the door. “Oh. Do you want coffee?”
She just started drinking coffee black, the same way Ned takes his, but she can’t play the game and carry a cup of coffee at the same time. Not gracefully, at least. “No thanks,” she says. She’s waiting for the game’s little digital creatures to appear on her screen so she can capture them with a flick of her thumb. She and Ned are up early, like fishermen, because with daylight the neighborhood will be full of little cartoon monsters appearing on their phone screens, and they’re both trying to move up a level in the game.
“There will be tons of them at the park,” Ned says. He turns that way; Julia follows.
She thinks that if they didn’t both have their phones out they could walk to the park holding hands. Ned walks slightly ahead of her, staring at his screen.
“This is a slightly embarrassing addiction,” Julia says. “We’re too old for this.”
“I was at the mall last week and I saw grandmothers playing Critterscape,” he said. “Bonding with their grandchildren. Nothing to be embarrassed about.”
“Telling me grandmas are playing this is not upping the cool factor,” Julia said. She sees a rare Critter wander onto the neighborhood map; a flick of her finger on the screen launches a cartoon net, and the little digital animal is hers. Hundreds of points added to her total, sparkling animation playing across her screen; she smiles.
“Hey,” he says. She turns to him and he’s holding a key. She looks at him again, and there’s that shy-yet-knowing smile that has been part of the change in looking at him, from childhood friend to something more.
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Privacy,” he says. “Someplace where we can go when we’re ready.”
She opens her palm and he drops the key into her hand. She puts it into her pocket. He keeps his smile in place, then turns his gaze to the phone like it’s no big deal that he gave her that key, and she walks alongside him, playing it cool as well.
They walk in starts and stops—stopping to attempt to capture the prizes that Critterscape lays over the digitized homes and yards of Winding Creek Estates. A jogger plods past, then an older neighbor walking her two retrievers. Julia wishes she’d taken Ned up on his offer of coffee. She wouldn’t have to feel she was focusing on the game and maybe they could talk. About everything that was—and wasn’t—happening between them. She watches him stop in front of a house, fingers moving across the screen’s keyboard.
“What are you doing?” she asks. Tensing. “You’re not…?”
“No. I’m just sending a message to someone else in the game.” His gaze is steady on her.
She forces herself to relax. “I just want to catch Critters.” She starts walking ahead of him. After a few moments, he catches up to her with an apologetic smile.
They walk down Winding Creek Trail, the main street in the subdivision; it dead-ends into a park, one with a sprawling playscape for little kids and a large pool, home of the Winding Creek Salamanders, the neighborhood youth swim team.
Julia sees someone sitting on a bench, the person’s back to them as they enter the park, heading toward the pool. A woman. Long hair, stirred by the wind. Even from behind she seems familiar.
“Frustrating,” Ned says, staring at his screen. “My last two Critters have run away. Life is cruel. I swear some algorithm kicks in right when you’re about to level up.”
The woman on the bench isn’t moving. Just sitting there. Julia thinks she recognizes the coat.
“Is that your mom?” Julia asks.
“No. Mom was at home. I mean, I think she was.” Ned stops for a second, as if he doesn’t want to continue. He’s staring at the figure on the bench.
Julia keeps walking. “Ms. Roberts?” she calls. “Hey.”
The woman doesn’t turn around at her voice.
“Mom, are you trying to steal all our Critters?” Ned calls to her. He comes up behind her, touches her shoulder. She slumps to the side. Ned freezes, but Julia keeps walking and rounds the bench. And then she sees Danielle Roberts’s face, purpled, dead, dried blood on her lips and her chin. At her expression Ned pushes past her to his mother.
Ned screams first, the sound raw and broken, grabbing his mother and shaking her like he could will her back to life. Julia pulls him off; he shoves her to the ground and collapses next to her. He sobs, starts screaming the word “Mom” over and over again. Julia reaches over to touch the woman’s throat, but it’s terrible, discolored, and instead Julia searches for a pulse on the cold wrist.
Nothing.
It takes Julia three shaky jabs at her phone screen to exit the game, and she forgets to breathe as she texts her mother.
NEDS MOM IS DEAD IN PARK
2
Grant
Grant Pollitt stands in front of the tree on the greenbelt that leads down to the creek, beyond his backyard. When he was little, he used to hide his treasures in a small hollow near the tree’s roots, until his mother worried that same hole might harbor copperheads or water moccasins.
He stands there, trembling, a little scared, and not sure why.
It’s been a very weird morning.
First the email arrives, sent to him from a friend. The email contains a picture of his favorite football player, arms lifted in triumph after a win. The email reads trust me, Grant, you want to click on this. It makes him suspicious, because a virus could hide inside a picture or a link, right? But it has his name in the caption and the email wasn’t from some unknown person; it was his friend Drew’s address. He bites his lip. He has heard other pictures could be hidden inside digital photos. Maybe this is Drew’s way of sending him the kind of pictures your parents don’t like you to have. He feels guilty, but Drew would know if he doesn’t click it because he couldn’t fake his way out of not knowing. He clicks it.
His browser opens. A new picture appears. It’s a photograph of a woman caught whirling in the misty rain; behind her stands the Eiffel Tower. She’s wearing an expensive raincoat and laughing. People around her are clapping and watching in admiration. At the bottom of the photo are the words:
Some days lies fall like the rain. Go look in your tree.