HOLLY
BREATHE. Breathe. Breathe.
I’m getting through Sunday supper like I’ve gotten through every Sunday supper of my life. Smiles. Big bites. Pure stamina.
Carter and Oran are making faces from across the table. On any other day, it wouldn’t bother me. Kids will be kids, right? But Carter recently got Dad’s old iPhone—no cell plan, only data—and he uses it to message with his friends. I’m wondering if he’s seen the meme, and if he’s shown it to Oran. Are they mocking my face in it? Is that what this is?
“I’m glad you’ve finally found something you’re good at,” I tell them.
“What?” Carter asks.
“Being ugly,” I say.
“Boom!” Oran says, and he starts cackling. He may be the younger of the two, but he’s the more sadistic one. People sometimes call him my “carbon copy,” which I don’t see. At all.
“I’m talking about you too, buddy,” I tell Oran.
“Okay,” Oran says with a sneer. “Then you look like a baboon butt!”
“Not another word,” Mom says.
And Dad says, “Yeah, quit it or else,” but it’s more for Grandpa’s sake than anything. If Grandpa weren’t here, Dad would ignore all of this, focus on scarfing down his food so he could get back to watching football. But Dad feels like he has to show his father that he’s in control of the madness. Funny thing is, Grandpa doesn’t seem to care. He’s all about the potatoes right now.
“Lovely mash, Heidi,” he tells Mom. “Are these reds? Or russets?”
“Yukon Golds,” Mom says. “With a splash of cream and a touch of cauliflower. It was your son who cooked them.”
“That so? Still delicious,” Grandpa says to Dad as he takes down another forkful.
I’m not hungry, but this is my favorite meal. Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, apple slaw. So I eat, because not eating would seem weird. I’ve gotten through enough of it that I can see a window opening up. I can make my escape.
But Mom delays me with a question. “So, now that you’ve had time to reflect on it, how does it feel?”
I know she’s talking about the record, but my answer is about the other thing. “It’s not nearly as big a relief as I’d hoped.”
“It was never meant to be a relief,” Dad says, his mouth partly full. “Success is simply an outcome you earn.”
Is he trying to be deep? I suppose so, though I wouldn’t put that quote on motivational posters. “I’m looking forward to not thinking about it,” I tell them.
“I’m looking forward to dessert,” Grandpa announces, and he scruffs Oran’s hair. “Right, pal?”
“Peanut butter pie!” Oran shouts with a fist up. “Peanut butter pie!”
As delicious as that sounds, I use this as my cue to exit. “Save me a slice. I’ve got homework to finish.”
I kiss Grandpa’s dry forehead as I pass, and he pats me on the cheek. Then I hurry to the back staircase and take the steps two at a time. When I’m at the top, I suck in another big breath.
Okay. Okay. Okay.
From the back of the linen closet, I snatch Grandpa’s laptop. Actually, it’s hard to call it his laptop because he’s never used it. He never even opened the box. We bought it for him as a Christmas present last year. Mom thought it would be good for him to be on Facebook so he could keep up with the world. Grandpa disagreed.
“They still print the newspaper and they still make stationery, pens, and stamps, don’t they? Therefore, I will not be needing one of these contraptions.”
Even for a grandparent, he’s old-fashioned. But then, he’s older than most. Eighty-four, an entire generation separated from the tech-friendly seventy somethings my friends call their pop-pops and nanas.
Since he didn’t want the laptop and everyone in my house already had their own—and since Mom had gotten it cheap in Williston on Black Friday and didn’t think it was worth returning—we exiled it to a shelf behind some old towels, in hopes of regifting it.
Happy early birthday to me.
With the new laptop tucked under my arm, I jog the length of the upstairs and head down the front staircase, then down to the basement. Our house was built five years ago, and our basement is more or less a fortress. The foundation is so thick that you could pile ten houses on top of it and it wouldn’t crack. It’s as well insulated as a cave. It stays cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It’s carpeted wall-to-wall. It’s all part of our builder’s energy-efficient plans. This also means that you can say anything you want down there and nobody is going to hear. You can play an action movie on full volume. If you’re up in the kitchen, not even the faintest sound of an explosion will reach your ears. There’s one way in and out, so it’s the only place in this house where you’re guaranteed a certain amount of privacy.
I settle into Mom’s comfy reading chair in the corner. I plug in the laptop and power it on. It prompts me for all sorts of information. I enter a fake name, fake email address, etc., and when it asks me to connect to a Wi-Fi network, I have no choice but to select our own. Our neighbors’ houses are too far away to piggyback onto their networks, even if I did know their passwords. I’m taking a small risk, but as soon as I’m done, I’m going to reformat the drive and restore all the defaults, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be in the clear.
Even though I feel like an idiot for doing this, I open an incognito tab on Chrome and I start to type a question into the search bar.
How do you make . . .
The autofill presents some thoroughly odd options.
French toast? No.
Slime? Really? Gross.
Buttermilk? Even grosser.
Why are these the top searches?
A meme, I type. How do you make a meme?
Obviously, I’m not the first person to ask, because there are a ton of results. Most of them link to sites where you can upload your own picture or redo popular memes with your own text. Whether any of the sites will help me narrow down who did this to us is a long shot.
I need another plan of attack.
I need to see the meme again.
Riley posted a version to her Instagram page. Obviously, it’s her passive-aggressive attempt at payback for my breaking her phone in the parking lot. “Not a big deal. It’s insured and I wanted a new one anyway,” she told me at the time, but there was no way she isn’t holding a grudge.
As soon as I get the meme on my screen, I realize that I haven’t looked at this thing close enough. Whenever I’ve seen it, I’ve turned away, like it’s a dirty picture. Which it is. The dirtiest. But if I’m going to have any hope of figuring out who first spread it, I have to study it. So that’s what I do.