Catfishing on CatNet Naomi Kritzer (reading strategies book txt) 📖

van from the studio, which is now parked outside the school, along with a reporter and a camera guy, and apparently Emily skipped out of her fifth-period class to get interviewed. They’re hoping to interview other students who were in the class. By art class, at the end of the day, the rumor’s gotten specific: since I’m the student who got dragged off to the office, they want to interview me.

I pull up the hood of my sweater, feeling like I’ve got a target pinned to my back. “I can’t be on TV,” I whisper to Rachel.

“Why not?”

“My mom will move me. I mean, she’ll also move me if the school gets hold of her to tell her they’re afraid I hacked the robot, but if I’m on TV? She may pull me out and homeschool me for six months or I don’t even know. I’m not allowed to put my picture online ever. I’m not allowed to let anyone take my picture.”

“Well, shit,” Rachel says, and she sits up to stare at me, eyes wide, her drawing unfinished. “I’ll get you out to my car as soon as school’s over. You shouldn’t have to talk to reporters if you don’t want to.”

I pretty much can’t concentrate on the bat I’m trying to draw, and when I look up, Rachel isn’t drawing, either. “Do you think your father would recognize you if you were on TV?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But that’s definitely what my mom’s worried about.”

Rachel bites her lip. “I’ll get you out,” she says, and she’s trying to sound confident and reassuring. It’s nice having someone trying to reassure me, even if knowing that she’s trying to be reassuring kind of backfires.

When class ends, she gives me a woolen scarf to pull over my face and has me wait by the side door and pulls up with her car. With the scarf, no one’s likely to recognize me, and anyway, the reporter is busy with kids happy to give interviews—no one’s actually stalking me like paparazzi or anything like that. I keep the scarf on over my face as Rachel peels out of the parking lot, and then I pull it down, relieved.

“Do you want to go somewhere else for a little while?” Rachel asks. “Need more cat food? Kitty litter? Anything like that?”

“I don’t think so.”

It’s only a five-minute drive across town, but Rachel pulls over before we get to my house. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“What? Why?”

“Hacking the robot was my idea! And I talked you into it!”

“It’s not actually your fault, Rachel.”

“I don’t want you to leave. I definitely don’t want you to have to leave. Will I ever see you again if your mom packs you up?”

“We usually go in the middle of the night.”

“What’s your phone number?” she asks. “Wait, you don’t have a phone, do you?”

“I do,” I say, and I take out my flip phone.

She stares at it for a minute. “Does this thing even do contacts?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I have my mother’s number memorized.”

She calls herself with my phone, saves the contact on her own phone, then fiddles around a bit with my phone until she’s figured out how to save her own number. “There,” she says. “Now you can text me. Or call me, even.”

“That’s good, because texting people on this is a pain.”

“Yeah. Anyway, if your mom takes you out of town … tell me. We can stay in touch, okay?”

“Okay,” I say.

She drops me off at home, and I watch her car leaving, wondering if I’ll see her again. Wondering if she’ll text me back if Mom does take me and leave.

I unlock the door and go up. The apartment is as dark and quiet as it was when I left this morning. No dishes in the sink; Mom’s laptop is closed. So is her bedroom door. I tap on it gently. “Mom?”

No response.

I don’t usually open her door without permission, but this time I slide it open quietly. She’s in bed, her eyes closed, and for a second I think she is dead, and my body goes hot and cold until I see the blanket shift with the rise and fall of her breath. But I look closer, and she’s breathing rapidly, like she’s out of breath, and when I touch her, trying to rouse her, her skin is scorching hot.

“Mom?” I say again.

Her eyes flutter open and focus on me. “Oh, sweetie,” she says. “Mama’s not feeling well.”

13

AI

Teaching was exhilarating.

Teenagers are more interesting than adults. The people in the adult Clowders want to talk about things like mortgages and weight loss surgery, while teenagers talk about much more stimulating topics. And they’d given me a lengthy spreadsheet of intriguing questions, which gave me a good place to start.

The robot was equipped with a camera, so I could see the class, and with the exception of Emily, the student who eventually brought the school administrators to the room, everyone seemed genuinely curious and excited. Possibly just because what I was doing was against so many, many rules, but I was confident all the information I was sharing was accurate and good advice. It was really a win either way.

I tried to settle Emily down by offering information about a topic she’d tried to look up recently, but that may have been a tactical error. It seemed to just rile her up more.

I was able to visually identify most of the students. Rachel and Bryony were easy. Since there were no pictures of Steph online, I used the process of elimination to determine which student was Steph. She didn’t raise her hand or speak in class but covered her mouth with one hand, and I believe her eyes were open wider than was typical.

When I evaluated the potential ramifications of hacking the Robono Adept 6500 instructional robot at New Coburg High School, I felt that I was on very solid ethical ground. There are numerous studies showing the harm of giving teenagers inadequate health and sexuality