S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (19 page)

To Cody’s astonishment, one night after dinner, Rebel’s Rest voted him president of their section, a symbolic title with less power than glory. His job was to pass student complaints and suggestions up the S’wanee ladder. Still, it meant they liked him.

“Congrats, Tiger! I was section president myself once.” Certifiable-BMOC and potential-Gownsman Ross high-fived him.

“So do I call you ‘Mr. President’ now?” Banjo joked in the bathroom that night.

“You call me ‘Massa,’” Cody replied to Banjo and Elliott’s cackles.

With his new title, however worthless, Cody instinctively grew more highly tuned to his Rebel’s Rest family, almost protective. Taking a cue from psychology-major Ross, Cody observed everything. He noticed when workers moved boxes out of Caleb’s old cabin—“He forgot a few things,” said Pearl—and was probably the first to pick up on the trouble-in-paradise Bishop/Vail situation, as they sat together less often during meals and never held hands anymore. He didn’t need his Spidey Sense to know it was Skit’s period, as she proudly volunteered this information at breakfast. “What a relief!” she quacked.

As the semester moved along, hair grew longer and clothes more rumpled, just as Ross predicted. The freshmen loosened up, especially the girls. Weekends at the Lodge kicked off on Thursdays, right after Cody got off work. He saw the same faces at the library each time, diligent students committed to their study routine, but nobody ever checked out a book, and with Caleb gone, Cody was left on his own at the desk, save the occasional and often unintelligible Widow-Speak.

Like everyone else, Cody was drinking more, and not just beer, since the Wellingtons seemingly had an endless supply of Jack Daniel’s, which they freely shared with members and nonmembers alike. It definitely made the girls not quite so ladylike, Cody noted, as he crushed out his third cigarette and tried to remember when exactly he’d picked up this latest—and surely temporary—experimental college habit. He’d get it out of his system soon.

One Friday night, a somewhat sloppy upperclass girl named Lucy led him by the hand upstairs to the “Crow’s Nest” at the top of the Lodge by the attic. There, she dropped to her knees and blew him, all the way, before staggering back down the stairs. “I need a drink,” she mumbled to no one, since Cody was still buttoning his jeans. Banjo raised his eyebrows in mock horror when Cody returned and said, “Desperate times, paleface,” but Cody settled into a semi-regular routine with “Loose-y,” who one time brought another friend to help out, a memorable first for Cody. He wanted to thank whoever had invented Jack Daniel’s.

•   •   •

Having missed lunch, Cody ordered a small pepperoni and mushroom pizza and waited at a McClurg table for his number. It was nearly empty this time of day. At the next table were four grown-ups dressed in varying degrees of square and eating big salads. They had large briefcases and were talking too loudly. Cody thought tourists and intruders should lay low at his school.

They talked about the next generation of prescription drugs like Ambien and Chantix—names he recognized from his own mother’s use—and others Cody hadn’t heard of. They debated the pros and cons of the new “smart pills” which, according to them, contained tiny microchips that could transmit vital information back to “pharma researchers,” whatever those were. They spread notebooks and laptops across the table and took up too much space. They acted like they owned the place.

“Where you staying this trip?”

“The S’wanee Inn. It’s okay. My room opens up to the golf course, but I didn’t bring my clubs. And it’s a little far away.”

“I wanted the log cabin. I stayed there in June; it’s like a bed-and-breakfast right in the middle of campus.”

“I wanted that, too, but they got kids staying there right now.”

“They got kids everywhere right now.”

Because it’s our school
, Cody thought, but the intruders were laughing loudly about something and didn’t notice him. They looked like pudgy corporate tools on casual Friday with their geeky short-sleeve button-down shirts. Only girls and pudgy corporate tools ordered salads at McClurg. Cody checked his watch and looked back at the pizza counter.

“What time we gotta be at Spencer?” one of the intruders asked, but Cody’s number was called, and he got it to go. He passed Ross on the way out, but he seemed distracted and in a hurry, and Cody walked on to Burwell Garden to eat his pizza. The goldfish in the fountain were sluggish and sucking at the surface. He fed them pieces of his crust, but apparently they weren’t hungry today.

•   •   •

“Well,
hey
there, kiddo!” his mother answered loudly when he called from his room late one night. “I thought you’d forgotten about me!”

Cody filled her in on his S’wanee adventures, minus the debilitating headaches and tawdry Lodge hookups, and Marcie squealed, “President Marko?
That’s
my boy! I like the sound of that!” In the background, Cody heard the unmistakable melody of a slot machine.

“Mom, where are you?” he asked. “At a casino?”

“Yep. I’m gaming,” she said, slightly slurry. “That’s what they call it here.”

“Atlantic City?”

“Vegas,” she said, and he heard her take a drag on her cigarette.

“Why are you in Vegas?” he quizzed.

“Because I’ve never been, and I always wanted to go, and it’s
fantastic
!”

In the background, slot machines kept eating people’s money, probably hers.

“Never you mind about that.” She giggled when he asked whom she was with, and then she said, “Oh Cody, I’m with June, from the store. She dumped that deadbeat boyfriend, and we came to celebrate for a few days.

“We’re at the Bellagio,” Marcie continued. “The one George Clooney robbed, and Cody, it’s just spectacular. The restaurants, the spa, that damn fountain! June got wet!” She giggled again and said quickly, “I mean, the fountain sprayed her, and she got wet.”

She covered her mouthpiece and said to someone, “Pinot grigio, please. The Chilean one.
What?
” And then she said, “I can’t use the phone in the casino, Cody. I’ll call when I’m back in my room.”

“I gotta crash, Mom. I got a test tomorrow.”

“I miss you, kiddo! I love you, Mr. President!” she said, hanging up.

Cody went back to his iPad, listening to the rain trickle outside his window. He wondered how big that Bellagio bill was going to be.

•   •   •

One Sunday afternoon, Cody unlocked his iPad to find a .pdf document open on his screen. At first he thought it was one of his assigned biology lab reports, but it was full of abstract, scientific jargon that had nothing to do with his own class work. It had phrases like “Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation” and “Digitized Electro Neuron Magnesis” and “Brain-Computer Interfaces” and “Deep Brain Stimulation.” It referenced “artificial hippocampus” and “involuntary implants” and “terminal experiments.”

Cody flipped to the front page and saw the title “The S’wanee Call Project.” It was a complicated report and started with the words “For my thesis project, I propose the following:” The proposal was seventeen pages long and counting, and there was no name on it, and when Cody hit the “home” button and saw the wallpaper, he realized it was not his iPad.

Ross’s name was labeled on the back, and Cody had taken it by accident when the group downstairs watching the Army-Navy football game had made so much noise he couldn’t concentrate. He had, he realized, Ross’s psychology/Gownsmen thesis project in his hands. Downstairs, the crowd cheered a touchdown.

Cody had been curious about—borderline obsessed with—Ross’s Gownsmen project since he’d first mentioned it on the ride to S’wanee. Ross had evaded his questions thereafter—oddly protective and borderline superstitious, claiming he didn’t want to “jinx” it—but Cody was intrigued by the big, bustling Spencer Hall where Ross spent so much time and where so many researchers seemed to be doing important work far from his smelly—and frankly high-school-level—biology lab.

Now Cody had it all here in front of him, and if his curiosity was getting the better of him, well, wasn’t that what Dean Apperson had demanded of them in his speech, he asked himself, as he opened Ross’s mail program and attached the .pdf file. Never mind the same speech was about the honor code that Cody had signed, practically in blood, since it wasn’t cheating to copy and paste a file that had nothing to do with his own tests or schoolwork. And it wasn’t technically stealing either, he reasoned, as he typed his own e-mail address, because Ross’s thesis proposal had no real monetary value, and if he simply
shared
it with his mentoree/little brother, albeit without knowing, he was only furthering his education, which was, after all, why they were here.

Downstairs, the crowd roared again with hoots and whistles, energetically invested in the Army-Navy matchup, which was understandable since S’wanee’s own football team was hardly worth investing in, and Cody hit the “send” button, and the thesis proposal whooshed away toward his own iPad still down in the living room.

Cody went back to the iPad home page to find and put the thesis proposal back on the same page he had found it—not to cover his tracks, but just so Ross could easily pick up where he left off—and he was going to march it right back down to Ross and admit he had taken it by accident when he spotted in the bottom corner an app he didn’t recognize but instantly leaped out at him. It was a square with a yellow dot in the middle and simply said “purple haze.”

It had a similar interface as other file-sharing and video/music streaming apps that Cody knew and had on his phone, but instead of playlists with album cover art, there was a matrix of tiny squares on the left and a Google-style aerial map of the S’wanee campus on the right. The map was dotted with dozens of purple “pins,” and when Cody maximized the map and tapped on the “pin” near DuPont Library, a box popped up with a live streaming view of the sidewalks leading to the front door. The pin spearing the library itself brought up the front desk where Cody worked and which currently was vacant. After a moment, the Widow puttered into view, and the stop-motion streaming made her polio limp/lope seem even more pronounced and almost comical as she sprayed down the wooden desk with Windex and then rather doggedly picked her nose.
Your Honor, I submit into evidence proof of the Widow’s battiness.

There were live streaming views, inside and out, of McClurg Student Center, Gailor Hall, the Klondyke, the infirmary, Fowler Sport and Fitness Center, the entrance gate to campus, which was now shut and fortified with proctors. There were bird’s-eyes of Manigault Park and outside/inside Wellington Lodge, although luckily, thankfully, not up in the Crow’s Nest where “Loose-y” entertained him. There were views up and down Tennessee Avenue, the memorial cross, Morgan’s Steep, and several throughout the long Perimeter Trail. On this sunny day, Cody could almost make out the forbidden S’wanee Truffles growing on a log and the waterfall pool he had just fled past when his brain quit on him that not-so-distant morning.

There were no “pins” in or around Cravens Hall, where Dean Apperson lived, and no streaming views inside Spencer Science Hall, but the Quad was covered—Cody compared the stop-motion pedestrians to his own window view to confirm it was live—and Rebel’s Rest was practically purpled over with pins. He saw Pearl in the kitchen stirring a vat of homemade chili for dinner; Houston coming up from the laundry basement; Vail and Skit having a tête-ê-tête on the back rocking chairs, almost like a counseling session; Sin trying to read in one living room while the crowd roared around the television in the other. Banjo was rooting from his perch on the back of an armchair, and even Elliott looked caught up in the game frenzy. Cody scanned from room to room to hallway to fire circle, but saw Ross nowhere.

One of the Rebel’s Rest cluster of pins was red and blinking. On closer inspection, it wasn’t a “pin” at all, but a floating red dot. Cody tapped it, and he was looking at himself looking at the iPad, through his bedroom window. He carried the iPad closer to the window, and the red blinking dot migrated with him. Cody knew these device tracking apps; he had one on his phone, in case he lost it. He peered out his window and tried to locate the camera, aimed from high and across the Quad. The phantom camera struggled to focus on Cody. The Observatory? Shapard Tower? He couldn’t pinpoint it this far away, but he smiled and waved at himself anyway.

There was a single knock and then Ross said, “Hey Tiger, you in here?” as he opened the non-locked door. Cody snapped the iPad case shut.

“Hey dude, I think I took your iPad,” Cody said first and Ross said, “Yeah, yours dinged an e-mail downstairs, and then I realized it wasn’t mine.”

“Sorry bud,” Cody said, wondering if Ross had seen his thesis proposal that Cody had sent himself, and Ross said, “No biggie. They all look alike. Cool pic on your wallpaper.” And then they traded out.

“Hey, what’s the score?” Cody asked.

“Beats me.” Ross shrugged at the top of the stairs. “I wasn’t really following that game.” And then he said, “Hey, you found the cameras!” His iPad was open to where Cody had shut it.

“Sorry man,” Cody started, but Ross interrupted. “Yeah, that’s the school’s new security app. Pretty cool, right? Proctors and teachers and RA’s get it.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” Cody assured him, and Ross said, “Tell anybody you like. I’m glad we finally got one. You like the name I gave it? Gotta keep an eye on you rascals.” He double-stepped down the stairs. “You coming down for chili?”

Cody checked his iPad e-mail. Ross hadn’t opened it. Cody was relieved, even though, really, he had nothing to worry about even if he had been worried about it, because he hadn’t, really, done anything wrong. After all, it’s not like he had an iPad that
spied
on people.

•   •   •

For a few weeks after his headache ordeal, Cody slept normally, waking up alone in his bed. The girls at the Lodge were sleepover-averse and wanted “on site” and “no strings” only, which was fine by him. He slept like a log, unusual for him, but the air up on the Mountain was so clean and fresh, and his days so busy and tiring, that he would crash out and wake to his iPhone alarm, with the time in between a blissful, dreamless void.