Endangered Read online

  Mom switches to English, but her accent comes through, she’s still half-irritated. “There is no point for you to have a phone if you do not intend to answer.”

  “Battery died and I forgot my charger.” I hold up my dark, dead cell. “See?”

  My parents maintain their wide-legged, crossed-arm stances, and exchange looks. Mom softens first, relieved I’m home and not stuck in some serial killer’s basement. Dad maintains the attitude, but I know how to soothe him. I produce another book, also purchased yesterday. “Saw it in the bio section and thought of you.”

  One corner of his mouth ticks, though he recovers quickly. He suppresses his grin as I hand over the biography on the late, great Sam Cooke. Dad’s got a whole playlist dedicated to Cooke’s songs, having proclaimed the singer/songwriter a genius many times. I suspect Mr. Cooke’s music has some significance to my parents grand back-in-the-day romance. Unlike the Blachindas, I haven’t heard any backstory here and I don’t want to.

  Mom glances at the book and they exchange looks again, this time with the ewwww factor cranked up. If I have a new sibling nine months from today, it will only be a mild shock. I sneak upstairs to my room while they’re distracted. To finish my work.

  Nudging the door shut severs a column of hallway light, leaving me in darkness, where I’m most comfortable. I unpack my camera and power it up. The hi-def display flares, casting me in blue light before tonight’s photos appear. Cycling through them, mentally flagging the best shots, I’m short of breath.

  “This is real,” I say, the depravity stuttering before me like a flip book.

  Pushing a button on my desk lamp illuminates the soft marble eyes of two dozen panda bears. Or rather their glossy photos, plastered on the wall over my desk in a neat grid. I take my chair, plug my camera into my MacBook, and view the images in a larger aspect, each mouse click causing my pulse to snap. I’ve got more than forty usable shots, but I only need a few to tell the story. The imaginations of my many loyal followers will fill in any blanks.

  Minimal touch-ups are needed. A slight hue adjustment makes the skin tones more natural—wouldn’t want Keachin’s flawless makeup to go unnoticed. Then, some shifts in the levels to decrease the shadows. Almost done. One final touch, a caption.

  Keachin Myer takes phys ed way too seriously.

  I publish the pictures to Gray Scales, my anonymous photoblog. The site’s done up in all the shades of gray, except for the photos I reveal. I even have the blindfolded justice lady with the sword and the scales as my logo. When I post the Keachin/Coach photos, it triggers an alert on the cell phones, tablets, laptops, and PCs of my subscribers. The whole school.

  All my various social media are arranged in separate windows on my desktop. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and, of course, the comments on Gray Scales. I watch them refresh for the next hour as the scandal goes wide and the world sees what Keachin Myer really is.

  When I pop the battery back into my cell, it immediately buzzes with an incoming text. I already know who it’s from.

  Ocie: Oh Sugar Honey Iced Tea. Gray strikes again. Have u seen?

  Me: I don’t pay attention to that trash. It’s like high school soaps.

  Ocie: Today’s episode is TV-MA. You’ve got 2 check the site. Keachin Myer and Coach Bottin. Emphs on AND

  Me: No way. I don’t believe it.

  Ocie: Totes. It’s like porn. Or prom.

  The texts go on, Ocie having a gossip aneurism, me playing dumb. I’m still watching my monitor so I see the email the moment it comes in.

  The sender’s address is unfamiliar, SecretAdm1r3r. I might’ve written it off as penis-growth spam and doomed it to my junk folder if not for the subject.

  A PANDA in her natural habitat.

  I want to believe it’s innocent, some marketing thing triggered by all the wildlife sites I visit. But the caps lock on “PANDA” makes me uneasy before I open my in-box. Part of me knows.

  I preview the message, dropping my phone when I see the embedded photo.

  It’s me, skulking through the woods at the scene of Keachin’s tryst. Another message arrives, same subject, but this one is a wide shot of me taking pictures of Coach Bottin’s car. A third message/photo comes through, this one of me by my car as I lose my footing and plant both gloved hands in a huge mud puddle to keep from falling on my camera.

  Me. Me. Me.

  The pictures even come with a caption: How do you get the color Gray? Throw a Panda in the blender and turn it on.

  Even though the sender’s grasp of color theory is suspect, I get the point.

  I’m busted.

  CHAPTER 4

  WHEN I STARTED THIS WHOLE GRAY business, the second person I exposed was Darius Ranson, a Portside baseball star who’d developed a pregame ritual known as “Target Practice.” It went like this: Darius and his storm troopers snatch some frail/shy/defenseless underclassman and drive him to Kart Krazy, a run-down arcade and go-kart track. Also on the premises, batting cages.

  The owner was a huge baseball fan who gives—gave—any Portside Pirate player the run of the place, which was all but deserted on weekdays. Darius and his teammates used one batting cage exclusively, having removed most of the safety netting to meet their needs. In that cage, they tied up their victim somewhere behind the pitching machine. If Portside’s next-day opponent had a weak left fielder, the underclassman got positioned to the left. If the right field was vulnerable, he was placed to the right. Then, Darius and the rest would take turns popping line drives over the kid’s head. If he was lucky.

  Stupid. Illegal. Dangerous. All words applied. Inevitably, something went wrong. A concussion-and-broken-nose wrong. Claiming the injury happened innocently—intimidating the battered kid to back up a ridiculous story—Darius snaked out of any consequences and resumed Target Practice with updated safety regulations. New targets got an umpire’s mask.

  I did my thing, taking pictures of a Target Practice session from two hundred yards away with a telephoto lens. Had to climb a tree for those shots. Among my pictures were a few of Darius making a shady exchange with Kart Krazy’s owner. Cash for a crumpled paper bag. It got me thinking about our star shortstop, and how he excelled beyond so much of the competition in the district. A couple of days later, I snuck into the team’s locker room during a Saturday practice and picked Darius’s lock. That’s how I discovered his steroid stash.

  A few quick snaps with my cell phone and I had a complete collage. Gray Scales was new then, so it took days instead of hours, but word spread.

  Kart Krazy was shut down, the owner arrested for dealing dope and endangering minors. Strict drug-testing rules were implemented for all Portside High athletes. Darius got kicked off the team, then expelled thanks to zero tolerance. Harsh, maybe. But so was bouncing baseballs off other humans for fun.

  Busting him was a flagship moment for my crusade. What I did made a difference.

  I think of Darius as I click through the candid photos of me spying on Keachin and Coach Bottin. On to the next I go, not seeing myself, but the unsuspecting faces I’ve dragged into the light of day over the last three years, exposing their twisted moments.

  Darius threatened to kill “the guy” who outed him. Surely the dozen others who’ve suffered his fate have similar vendettas. This is so, so bad.

  There’s always been a buzz around the school. Who is Gray? Whenever a new scandal debuts on the site, along come new theories. An angry friend or jilted ex. It has to be someone close to the exposed. Everyone watches too many cop shows.

  It’s never personal. Not after that first time. That’s how I don’t get caught.

  Until now.

  How could I not notice someone else with a camera out there? How many of my targets think the same thing?

  I hit REPLY on the first email, type, and send a single-line message: Who are you? What do you want?

  The mystery photographer won’t reply. That’s what I expect. But I’m wrong. I get a response almost immediately.
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  That’s all. An emoticon. I resist the urge to demand answers, realizing the stranger’s response is an accurate one. He’s enjoying my anxiety. Winky face.

  Ocie keeps texting past midnight, but I don’t have it in me to respond. I sit up all night, scared, barely noticing the Sam Cooke music coming through the walls from my parents’ room. I wait for the secret photographer’s pictures to go live somewhere, outing me as I’ve done to so many others. At dawn I’m still waiting. It never happens.

  And that scares me more.

  CHAPTER 5

  BY 6:00 A.M. I ACCEPT THAT there will be no more messages from whoever-the-hell. I’m exhausted in the worst way possible. It’s a tense sort of tired where the fatigue settles into my shoulders and lower back, knotting the muscles into borderline cramps. Staying in bed sounds great, except my mind won’t switch off. I try to sleep with the same results as trying to fly. As my mom says, in her least attractive adaptations of English colloquialisms, it’s “all retch and no vomit.”

  So, no sleep. I could play sick and stay home from school. But why? To spend the rest of the day doing exactly what I’ve done for the last seven hours, clicking refresh on my web browser, waiting to be exposed? No way. I’ve never missed school the day after a Gray Scales reveal. I’m not about to let some sneaky degenerate make me break tradition.

  School it is. First, I need to put on my face.

  Or pull it off. Depending on how you look at it.

  Part of the reason I can do what I do as Gray is because I’m a Hall Ghost. It’s a talent that I’m super proud of because at one time, I was the most infamous person in my grade.

  Pulling off a complete notoriety reversal like that was difficult, but you’d be surprised how many books and websites there are that tell a person exactly how to disappear in a crowd. A combination of social engineering—which is like psychological manipulation, or “people hacking”—stealth, and misdirection goes a long way.

  My dad’s sister, Victoria, who comes around annually to semi-ruin Thanksgiving and Christmas, has this saying: “Pretty is natural, but real beauty takes work.”

  Usually, it’s said directly to me, preceded by a frown, and followed up with a gleaming, optimistic smile. Like she’s a doctor who’s given me a scary diagnosis, but has high hopes about my treatment options: Shiseido skincare products and gift subscriptions to Seventeen magazine.

  “You could look like a young Alicia Keys,” she’ll mention at some point in the evening, like I missed it the first few years she said it, “with some effort.”

  It’s clear that Vicky thinks my actual look—an age-appropriate Lauren Daniels—is the epitome of disinterest and laziness. I don’t doubt that her standard of beauty takes work. So does invisibility. Her disapproving, squinty-eyed glances are the best compliment she can give.

  After a quick shower that does nothing to make me feel more alert, I put on the day’s Jedi ninja uniform. Dark-blue cowl-necked sweater that falls to midthigh, some fitted Old Navy jeans, and crisp, clean Skechers (oddly, people tend to notice dirty shoes). In front of my lighted makeup mirror—last year’s not-so-subtle gift from Victoria—I add final touches. Plain ChapStick instead of the unopened lip glosses Victoria included with the mirror. A bit of foundation to conceal the sleep luggage under my eyes and a patch of pimples on my forehead. And I pin my curls back, wrapping the excess in a bun. Finally, the tried-and-true classic that has served the world’s greatest superhero for over seventy years, a pair of black-framed glasses to draw some attention from my unusual eye color (gray, ha!).

  By themselves, these little tricks and cover-ups don’t make me the chameleon I’ve become. There’s much more technique to it than that, but it’s the base. I’m proud of how good I’ve gotten at it.

  Until I remember a certain set of photos could undo all my good work, and a corkscrew plants in the bottom of my stomach, turning and turning.

  I grab my keys and bag, trod downstairs past the kitchen, grunting a good-bye to Mom and Dad, who are busy making sexy eyes at each other over orange juice.

  “Hey there!” Mom calls.

  I stop in the foyer, my hand resting on the doorknob. She rounds the corner, tugging her robe tighter, only I still get a glimpse of some black lacy thing before it disappears under her lapel. In spite of myself, my mood warms by a degree or two.

  “Are you feeling all right this morning?” she asks.

  “You’re moving kinda slow, kiddo,” Dad calls, joining Mom, his hand on the small of her back. “You catch a flu bug?”

  Mom presses the back of her hand to my forehead. “She is not warm.”

  “I’m not sick,” I say, not in the way they think. “I was just up late finishing a project that’s due today.”

  Mom says, “You should not worry yourself over grades the way you do. You work hard. You will get what you deserve.”

  The corkscrew in my belly twists a half turn. “Gotta go.”

  I’m more like a Car Zombie than a Hall Ghost as I drive, every stoplight tempting a nap. I probably shouldn’t be behind the wheel at all.

  I pull up to the curb outside of Ocie’s house. Drivers motor past so fast my car shakes. She lives on Claremont, a busy four lanes that are so noisy she can’t always hear my signal. I wait for a traffic gap before I beep, nearly missing my window because the warm air blowing from my heater and a super-mellow song (thanks, iPod shuffle) have me dozing by the time the road sounds ebb. I jerk from the edge of slumber and quadruple tap my horn, a tone I imagine as “Come, Ocie, come” but probably sounds like Honnk-Onk-Onk-Honnk to everyone else.

  While I wait, I turn off the heat and scroll to something random on my hip-hop playlist. The erratic bass line is sonic caffeine.

  Then Ocie’s there, hopping into the passenger seat dressed in a green sweater, matching knit cap with her hair flipped up on the sides, dark denim, and black/green high-tops. She’s short, so the outfit makes her look like a trendy elf.

  She says, “What up with you going off the grid last night? I texted fifty times.”

  “What normally happens to people at night? I fell asleep.”

  “Oh.”

  She’s looking at her front door like she wants to escape my carriage of bitchiness. Okay, I was somewhat harsh. All-night anxiety will do that to you.

  I change the subject. “Why are you all Leprechaun in the Hood this morning? Are you having an episode?”

  A sidelong glance tells me this green-on-green thing isn’t one of her quirky fixations where stuff has to be in a certain order, arranged in the most precise way ever. “Ocie” is short for OCD. Her real name is Mei Horton.

  “No, Panda-Boo.” She pulls her knee to her chest, displaying the emerald sole and swoosh on her shoes. “These Nikes I ordered came yesterday, so I put something together.”

  “Explain to me again how your freaky sneaker fetish and the resulting color coordination don’t classify as obsessive or compulsive.”

  She pokes her lip out. “You and my dad are making me feel really bad.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called me ‘Frogger’ and told me to be careful crossing the street.”

  “Huh?”

  “I don’t know, the man speaks in riddles. For reals, what do you think? Be honest.” She strikes poses in my periphery.

  It’s too flamboyant for my Hall Ghost tastes and may be better suited for St. Patrick’s Day, but she’s working it. “Kinda hot.”

  “I know. It’s our black.”

  She’s referring, of course, to our shared lineage. We are both mixed race, half African American, half something else. My mom is German. Her mom is Chinese. Whenever we agree on anything, “it’s our black.” Disagreements are “so other.” For a moment, I’m energized by our familiar routine. I shift to drive and start into traffic.

  Ocie says, “I hear Coach Bottin got fired last night.”

  “What?!” I hit the brakes so hard a car nearly rear-ends us. The driver slingshot
s around, laying on the horn. Everything I’d managed to forget in the twenty seconds of friend banter comes crashing back.

  Driving again, I say, “No way. Too soon.”

  You knew there would be consequences, Panda. Not that fast, though.

  “Now who cares about high school soaps? It’s unconfirmed,” Ocie says, like she’s a reporter. “I’ve seen Facebook statuses about him losing his job. We know how accurate those can be. It could happen, though. Right?”

  “Probably will.”

  “He might go to jail. What if we, like, see him on the news doing a perp walk or something?”

  My mind’s drifting back to the email I got last night. I only half hear Ocie, and the best image I can come up with is me doing the perp walk. In front of all my classmates as they hiss and boo like angry villagers sans torches and pitchforks. Headline: Secret Teen Paparazzo’s Identity Revealed.

  “Too awesome,” Ocie gushes, obviously having no trouble conjuring a visual. “Don’t you think?”

  I want to agree, but all things considered, that crap is so other.

  Paranoia ramps up as we near our destination. Sleep deprivation and the power of Ocie’s suggestions make me superimpose phantom news vans in front of the school. Channel 9. And channel 13. And channel 20. The reporters forming a loose semicircle, each with their network’s camera pointed at them, recording lead-in spots with the brick Portside High School marquee in the background. I turn into the student lot with my neck craned, eyes on the imagined commotion.

  “Panda!”

  I slam the brakes with both feet. My seat belt snaps tight against my chest, and Ocie plants her palms on the dash as if afraid hers will fail. Our momentum settles and we rock back into our seats. I make eye contact with the person I nearly pancaked.

  Taylor Durham.

  He’s a foot from my bumper, tall and slim. His backpack’s cinched tight over the shoulders of his denim jacket. His baseball cap is canted at an angle, the brim curved like a duck’s beak. He thinks it looks cool, but he’s twisted partially toward me and partially toward the sun so the hat creates this weird dark shadow that falls over his darker face. The effect makes him look almost as shady as he actually is.