"I’m not," Sejal insisted. "I have the Google. Did you know that?"
"Oh," said Ophelia, stepping back. "That internet disease?"
"It’s not contagious."
"Sorry."
"It makes you forget what’s important. I lost track of myself for a while. I forgot who I was. You can do terrible things when you don’t know who you are, na?"
Ophelia shifted from one foot to the other. She shrugged slightly.
"I became a ghost, and I only cared about other ghosts. I was not available to people at school, on the street…I wasn’t there. But move your mouse like on a Ouija board and you could speak with me. You could conjure me up. I lost every one of my real friends, but I had a box full of trolls and demons, like Pandora."
"You don’t have to tell me all this if you don’t want to," Ophelia whispered.
"No, I don’t," Sejal said. "That’s true. Will you let me?" Now that she’d started, she was impatient to get it off her chest, finally. The story of it all stuck to her like wet clothes.
A second passed, then Ophelia nodded.
"There was this girl," Sejal continued. "A girl from my neighborhood, one of the only ones to follow me onto the web. One of the only kids I still talked to who knew me in real life. Maybe that was part of it…She had a blog. She posted videos, bad poetry. And we haunted this poor girl. Me and the other ghosts. They were awful to her, and I was awful. We posted terrible comments, things I would never say in real life. Because I only cared for the people online and for what they thought of me — and when I was mean, I was funny, and when I was funny, I could make them laugh out loud."
Ophelia was shaking her head. "Lots of people are meaner on the internet."
"And those people will have to deal with what they’ve been. Or they won’t, I don’t know. But listen: This girl, Chitra, she posted a video, singing and playing the ukulele. Because pretty girls playing the ukulele was a thing then. And this girl…this poor stupid girl always left the comments on."
"What did you say to her?"
"I wrote that she had made me pukelele with her bad singing. I–I and the other commenters suggested maybe she wasn’t really pretty enough for the pretty girls-with-ukuleles meme."
"God."
"Yes." Sejal nodded. "She singled me out — I was the only one who actually knew her. ‘Why was I being so mean?’ I had my own blog pages full of posts and videos and hundreds of comments, good and bad. Some terribly bad. In the outside world I felt numb and half dead, but then I could look at my hit counter and read the comments, and every little vicious word was like a paper cut that got my heart beating again. And this fat ukulele player wanted to know why I was being so mean?"
"Um…"
"I became something awful. I made personal attacks. I revealed all her crushes and told all her embarrassing secrets. And because I never knew her all that well, I ran out of secrets fast and began pinning her name to some of my own. Even the trolls started telling me to back off, in their way. They claimed the thread had gotten stale and I was getting boring and, besides, Chitra hadn’t said a word in days. She hadn’t posted in days because she’d tried to kill herself."
"W-what?" said Ophelia. She covered her mouth with her hands.
"When I found out I just…I broke it off with the real world. Entirely. It could not touch me. When my mother came home that night, she found me sitting in front of my own video blog, watching myself watching myself. Like I was trying to fold right up into one single electron. My parents got me help. When Chitra’s parents found out my part in the whole thing, they tried to bring me up on charges, but I hadn’t done anything against the law. But I got help. I got better. That was the best I could do for them, for Chitra. I’m lucky in that way — I had this horrid event to tell me I was not the sort of girl I thought I was, and now I have made the decision to be good. I don’t believe most people think to make this decision, you know?"
"Uh-huh."
Silence.
"I thought I saw something familiar in Doug, but…I’m trying to be good, and I don’t need any more friends who are not also trying."
"Yeah."
Silence.
"Also I think Doug is a vampire."
"Um." Ophelia frowned. "You mean, like, a metaphorical vampire?"
"No, the regular kind."
Silence.
"So, watch out for that," said Sejal. "I’m going to go," she added, and waited for Ophelia to let her out of the laundry room.
Cat tried to talk her into staying, or at least accepting a ride home, but Sejal told her she’d prefer to walk. It wasn’t even a kilometer, and the streets were sort of familiar. Jay lived nearby.
She supposed Ophelia would tell everyone that she had the Google. And maybe that she thought Doug was a vampire. Well, good, she thought as she pulled her coat closer and started down the hill. Fine. What better way to kick-start this new, improved Sejal — this strong girl who’s good and who knows her own mind and doesn’t care what other people think? She shuddered and pulled her coat closer still.
These neighborhoods looked fake at night. In the dim lamplight one could see only a scant spill of stars, and the colors and details of the lawns and houses flattened out and gave the impression of huge miniatures. And now there was a thickening fog at the bottom of the hill. It reminded Sejal of the fogging of distant objects in some video games. There was not enough processing power to render the bottom of the hill. The bottom of the hill would not exist until she got there.
There was a rustling behind her, and then a rustling to one side as she turned to look, and then it was down the hill and gone. Sejal considered suddenly the wisdom of declaring someone a vampire and then taking a walk, alone, at night. Had she never seen a movie? Did she not understand how these things worked? She comforted herself, however, with the insight that the movie would not kill off the well-meaning foreign exchange student with the comical internet addiction. Sejal wouldn’t be the main character, the hero — not in an American movie — but she might be the best friend or the comic relief or the one you think is dead but turns out to be all right in the end. She wondered who the main character in her life was.
When she finally saw the person standing at the bottom of the hill, she was almost on top of him. Given more warning she might have nonchalantly crossed the street, but now she could do nothing but pass him by. Or else stop, turn, walk or run, risk embarrassment and offense against what was probably just a man walking his dog. A short man, about Doug’s height. No dog. A man staring right at her.
Not Doug. This man was a little leaner and older. Just a man. Who seemed to be trying to hoist his careworn features into an unpracticed smile.
"Hello," said the man.
"Hello." Sejal smiled briefly, then dipped her head as she passed.
"A quiet night," the man replied, and kept pace with her, though whether he was now following her or merely continuing on his way, she couldn’t tell.
"Mmm."
"You know, when I was your age, one didn’t often see a girl walking alone at night. You would be tempted to draw conclusions about such a girl. You would say she was no better than she should be."
This seemed like an insult, something that begged for an answer, though maybe it was just harmless chitchat. Times have changed — what a world. She stole a glance at the little man out of the corner of her eye: a dark, long-sleeved shirt over a white tee. Gray wool pants. That was all, despite the chill. Sejal suddenly wondered if this man was in need. Perhaps he only meant to ask for spare change.
"I do not think they have the sort of girls you’re talking about in a neighborhood such as this," she said. "Is your…house nearby?"