They looked like golf balls. A whole field of them. She told her dad that these must be the lost balls of golfing giants, shanking their shots from tees hundreds of miles away. Her dad laughed and told her she should write the story of the giant golfers, and she did. The Sahara was a sand trap. The Mediterranean was a water hazard. They used the trunks of redwoods as their clubs. She read the story in class, and her trim, bespectacled teacher pronounced it "wunderbar." Her dad took her to the fancy club at Maxlrain, a special treat, but he spent the entire time talking with his friends – she thought they were his friends then, but they weren't, they were just his coworkers – and she wondered why he laughed so much around these white men, with their thick forearms and squared-off faces that looked young and healthy from a distance but older and older the closer she got to them. They ignored her until she hit a 210-yard drive off the first tee. They weren't interested in what she had to say, only in what her body could do.
Her dad played worse that day than she had ever seen him play. Deliberately bad. She didn't play golf much after that. A year later their move to California coincided with her growth spurt, and she found volleyball.
In California she learned what the giant golf balls actually were. Radomes. They weren't golf balls. They were eyeballs, pupil-less and lifeless, peering into the lives of millions of people. A field of unblinking eyes, watching.
Marvin Cassidy taught his daughter many things, but the one thing he didn't teach her was the thing he was best at. He didn't teach her how he made a living. He didn't teach her how to look at other people as packets of information from which data could be extracted. Kenya had never wanted him to teach her how to do that – it was a side of her dad's life that he did his best to keep from her – but she now wished he had taken the time.
Joanie sat on the bed watching South Park, completely blank, revealing nothing. Not even laughing. Not that South Park was all that funny, really; it was just slightly-more-clever variations on the same shit all the guys at her high school used to say to make each other laugh. White humor. Even when it was smart, it was white, coming from a place of ease and entitlement – or at least from the mindset that such a place was a birthright.
Still – Cartman, though. And Joanie didn't even chuckle.
Joanie had barely talked to her since the incident – the incident that Kenya refused to refer to as an overdose – except to offer platitudes about their unshakeable friendship, and professions of gratitude that rang more hollow every time. And then Tuesday, when Joanie disappeared after her English class, Kenya decided she'd had enough. Audrey was freaking out, so Kenya let her freak out. She washed her hands of it and went downtown for a burrito.
Joanie didn't need a babysitter. But she did need to tell Kenya what, if anything, she saw while she was communing. Then she could bring all this bullshit to Charlie and actually deal with it.
"Joanie," said Kenya, when the show was over. "Want to go downtown? I could use some coffee."
Joanie turned her head toward Kenya. The rest of her body remained perfectly still. It was the first time Joanie had looked Kenya in the eye in what felt like two days. "Coffee," she said. Flat. No inflection.
"Yeah, I mean, neither one of has class till eleven. Come on, I haven't even been to Hallowed Grounds yet this year. We need to reclaim the couch before some punk-ass freshmen try to take it."
Joanie just stared at her. Under that withering gaze Kenya felt tiny, insignificant. She was worried about a couch, when there was so much else to worry about.
Joanie rolled on her side, turning her broad back to Kenya, and pulled her comforter over her head.
"I guess not, then," said Kenya. She turned off the TV. She considered going downtown anyway, but she didn't really want to go out. She just wanted Joanie to talk to her.
Kenya switched off the lamp and settled into her bed. After a few seconds her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she could see Joanie, a black sarcophagus shape on the other bed. A voice came from the shape, Joanie's but also not. The sound of something alien impersonating Joanie: "Don't wait for me after class tomorrow."
Instinctively, Kenya reached for the stuffed elephant on the mini-fridge. She had the zipper halfway down before she realized there was nothing inside. No sanctuary to shelter her, no mentor to offer guidance. Only an empty silver box, a graduation present from her dad. She had no idea what he had expected her to keep in it.
******
After her 11:00 Intro to Political Theory ended, Kenya didn't walk over to Thorn to meet Joanie. If Joanie didn't want her there, she wasn't going to be there. She was sure Audrey would be there. Let her absorb Joanie's weaponized silence today.
Kenya left Salley and took a Green Line to Weston instead. She was getting used to eating alone. A year ago, she and Joanie were practically clinging to each other at mealtime. Every morning they set strict rendezvous times for lunch and dinner, and if either of them was late, it was cause for a minor freakout. Kenya would have never dared to even pass through the doors of Weston alone. The first time she ate solo, when Joanie was bedridden with the flu, she could feel the eyes of everyone in Weston upon her, judging her and pitying her. She saw Bathrobe Billy, similarly alone at his table in the corner, and she felt a surge of compassion for him; but that compassion curdled into disgust, and she left Weston without even touching her Cheerios. She retreated to the safety of the room she shared with Joanie and crawled into bed. Joanie asked what was wrong. Kenya lied and said she was coming down with the flu as well, and by the next morning that prophecy had fulfilled itself.
They needed each other then. They held each other up, like two playing cards leaning against each other. They were strong enough now to support themselves. That's what Kenya told herself, though she didn't quite believe it.
The sound pummeled Kenya when she opened the door, like pressurized air escaping through a pinhole: the engine roar of a hundred conversations happening at once. Noon was the worst time to eat alone. She filled her customary three bowls of Cheerios and scanned the room for an empty table. The odds weren't looking good. The place was packed tight. Even Bathrobe Billy had a companion, though neither of them looked happy about it.
"Kenya!" Over by the big north window, someone was waving at her. Kenya realized with horror that it was Sarah. She briefly considered joining Billy and his friend before squeezing through the crowd to take a seat at Sarah's table.
"Cheerios, huh? Honey Nut or regular?" Sarah reached across the table to grab an O, her black bracelets clacking. Before she could even think about it, Kenya swatted Sarah's hand away. Sarah jerked her hand back and stared at Kenya, stunned. Then she grinned. "Cool. Just don't try to take any of my fries, though."
An enormous mound of fries covered Sarah's plate, golden and glistening with grease. It looked like a cheesesteak was buried somewhere in there too. The food hadn't been touched, like Sarah had been sitting here waiting for Kenya to show up. "Don't worry," said Kenya. Fries were definitely not on the approved Lady Ambassador diet plan.
"So," said Sarah, "I've got some news. Lark did her thing with Joanie's blood. There was something in there, all right, but not gunpowder. Something close to gunpowder. But not gunpowder." Sarah shook some salt over her fries, then pepper. She picked up a handful and inhaled them.
"So what does this mean?"
"What this means is that you girls got a hold of some bad stuff. Some real brown acid, man."
"We got it from—" Kenya glanced around, lowered her voice. "We got it from Charlie." Not from Charlie directly. She wasn't dumb enough to be making drug deals in the Student Activities Office. You ordered one of a few specific items – stuffed animals in UNWG sweaters, mostly – from the University Bookstore catalog, a real horrorshow of hideous Ambassador-themed clothing and gewgaws, full of thick-necked white guys and their brittle, huge-haired wives in matching purple golf shirts. A few days later a plush purple bear or elephant would show up in your mailbox, a baggie of gunpowder hidden inside its zippered belly. Or, if the need was particularly urgent, you could pick up the toy from the Bookstore yourself an hour after ordering, though it was best not to be seen buying one of those things – both to keep the process secure, and just in general not to look like the kind of person who spent money on UNWG-branded stuffed animals.
"And that's why I didn't want to go to her first. I'll say it again: the chain has been compromised. How do we know she's not the one who compromised it?"
"Come on."
"You come on. What do you even know about Charlie, really?" Kenya had to admit she didn't know much. When she'd first met Charlie, she went digging in her Handbook and found only the most basic information.
As elusive as the Nine Dead Men may be, there is an even more secretive secret society on campus: The Living Creatures. Their sigil, an exploded heraldic crest depicting the Delmonico Box, is not as ubiquitous on campus as King Milo, but its scarcity only contributes to the Creatures' notoriety, and happening upon one of their spectacular murals is one of the greatest joys UNWG has to offer.
Little is known about the history of The Living Creatures (as with the Nine Dead Men, the usual caveat applies: this may all be entirely fictional). The society is exclusively made up of women, in contrast to the all-male Nine, but exact numbers are hard to pin down. It is generally agreed, however, that there are between five and twenty Creatures on campus at any given point, the numbers fluctuating as seniors graduate and freshmen are recruited. The Creatures' sigil began appearing on campus soon after the first King Milo was chalked in 1967, but abundant rumors suggest that both societies date as far back as the University's founding.
It is unclear how leadership – if in fact the Creatures recognize a leader – is achieved in the society, but the most persistent rumors suggest that the Assistant to the Vice President of Student Activities, one Charlotte St. James, currently holds the Creatures' reins. Asked to comment, Miss St. James laughed in our face and slammed her office door.
Charlie's authority came from that office in Student Activities – which Kenya had heard she inherited from her grandfather, a former big cheese at the University – and her imperious nature. How she had come to be in charge of the Creatures, Kenya had no idea. "You don't really think Charlie had anything to do with this?"
"I don't know. But at some point, someone slipped some fake gunpowder into the pipeline. Either Charlie did it herself, or someone did it without her knowledge. Either way, my faith in her is not exactly bolstered." Sarah shoveled in another fistful of fries. Kenya felt a mild twinge of jealousy.
"But we still need to tell Charlie about this, right?"
"At a certain point, it becomes more risky not to tell her. Has Joanie told you what she saw?"
Kenya took her time chewing a mouthful of Cheerios. "Not yet."
"Not yet."
"I'm working on it. Joanie's been... quiet."
"Joanie's always quiet."
"More quiet than normal. I think she feels like I'm hanging around her too much. Like I'm always watching her. Which, you know, I am."
"We need to know what she saw. Then we can bring Charlie in. Find a way to talk to her."
ECHELON was what it was called. What Kenya's dad did for a living. The reason for the giant golf balls at Bad Aibling. The radomes. A global network of eyes and ears that could read your mail, hear your phone calls, watch you no matter where you were. Kenya pieced it together when she came to UNWG and gained unfettered access to the internet for the first time. She finally got a sense of how her dad spent his days, how he provided for his family. After a few years in California, they'd moved to Atlanta for Kenya's junior and senior years. He said he'd gotten a job at Lockheed, but who really knew. He was watching, listening, sorting the signal from the noise.
It would take something like ECHELON, a system with the same reach and power, to penetrate the wall that Joanie had constructed. To find the signal buried in her silence.
"I'm not sure how to do that," Kenya said.
"I'm sure you'll think of something," said Sarah. She dusted her fries with even more salt and pepper. Kenya watched the fine black powder rain down, and she saw her answer.