It is not really true that you can feel people looking at you. Well, at least it’s not true for me. But sometimes I can spot that really quick shift in gaze direction, where someone was staring and then looks down so you don’t catch them. When you’re a new student in a small-town school, people do that a lot. And when you’re raised by someone intensely paranoid, you’re always alert for it.
Here’s what I see when I turn: an older white woman hastily lowering her phone as if she just took a picture of me. She’s turning away, and I whip my camera out and just barely manage to get a picture of her where she might be recognizable. She turns her back on me and hustles away, like she’s afraid I might run her down and tackle her.
A year ago, I’d have been absolutely sure that this person was connected—somehow—to my father.
But my father is now being held without bail in jail in Boston! Am I still in danger from him? “CheshireCat,” I say. “That person just took a picture of me.”
CheshireCat texts back, since I’m in a crowd. I’ll see what I can find out about her.
Of course, I also took creepy pictures of a stranger today. And if anyone asked me why, I’d have had no idea how to answer. “Do you know what those pictures were for?” I ask Nell as we’re leaving.
“No,” she says.
“The app told me to try to get a picture of the woman, Betsy, and Thing Three together and then sent me over so it could overhear their conversation. Do you think this is for blackmail or something? Like … is that something the Catacombs would do?”
“I don’t know what it’s for,” Nell says again, and lowers her eyes. I notice she doesn’t say that it’s not something the Catacombs would do.
We walk to the bus stop mostly in silence, then sit down on the bench to wait. There are several people at the stop, including a white girl with a pierced eyebrow, not a lot older than we are, who’s covertly staring at Nell, taking in her long braids and the wool plaid skirt that falls most of the way to her ankles. Nell’s phone vibrates, and she checks it and swallows hard.
“Is something wrong?” I ask.
“Truth-sharing mission,” she says. “From the Catacombs. I’m supposed to talk to someone I don’t know. I never do these.”
“Are you supposed to try to convert them?”
“I’m supposed to share a message from the Elder.”
“Everyone hates being preached at.”
“Messages from the Elder aren’t like that.” She closes her eyes, and I watch as she psyches herself up to do this. “At least I’ll probably never see this person again.” She opens her eyes, stands up, and walks over to the girl with the pierced eyebrow.
Nell’s voice sounds both upbeat and resigned as she launches straight into a pitch with no lead-up or beating around the bush. “If the Lord came back tomorrow,” she says, “do you know how your soul would be judged?”
The girl raises an eyebrow—the one that’s not pierced—and says, “Not interested, thanks.”
I watch Nell take a really deep breath and add, “The Lord knows about the fire.”
The girl’s face goes pale and her eyes narrow. And then she turns and strides away without another word.
“Have a good day,” Nell calls after her, and then comes back to stand with me. Everyone else at the bus stop looks at Nell and then looks at me. I feel judged for being the person standing with the pushy Christian, and my cheeks burn, although looking at Nell, she’s too flushed herself to notice.
Nell opens the app, checks off that she did it, and when our bus pulls up a minute later, we get on. Nell’s profound discomfort has cast a pall over our conversation; it’s hard to go back to laughing about tiny squishy balls. I let her collect herself, thinking about how much I want to talk to CheshireCat. Or Rachel or Firestar. But I’m on the bus with Nell, and I can’t very well do any of that while she’s watching. And she is watching; her eyes are on me, and even as the flush fades from her face, I can feel her tension next to me. It’s awkward, but it’s also familiar.
That moment when you’re with a new acquaintance, someone you’re pretty sure is cooler than you, when you’re afraid you’ve just done some unforgivably awkward thing? When it sinks in that maybe they don’t even want to be seen with you? When you’re waiting for them to talk, because you’re expecting them to say something cruel, something that makes it clear that you are definitely not friends?
I know that moment. It’s just always been me who’s waiting.
“Are you still up for hanging out after school?” I say.
The tension doesn’t leave Nell’s body, exactly, but it at least goes down maybe 15 percent. “Yes,” she says. “I want to show you my house.”
At school, once we’re checked in, I excuse myself to the bathroom to get out from under both the adults’ eyes and Nell’s, and I pull out my phone in the stall.
“Okay,” I say. “What can you tell me about those people whose pictures I took?”
“The first one is a woman named Betsy Lundsten,” CheshireCat says. “She is romantically involved with Siobhan Garcia. This is not a secret from anyone, however, so blackmail seems unlikely.”
I am extremely relieved to hear that.
“The second one—it wasn’t a very good picture. I tried to track her by her phone, but she’s using a security app that made this much more difficult. But if I correctly matched her to the car in the parking lot that I think she got into—she’s someone
