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Anna Huff wasn’t going anywhere. She ported in next to the gargantuan Penske truck that was parked outside Druskin Gate, grabbed her suitcase—a stubborn, lumbering thing that froze in place whenever it came into contact with any uneven surface—from the back, and tugged it down the loading ramp. Sandy, smothering her daughter properly, ported in barely an inch away from Anna, the force from the blowback of displaced air nearly knocking Anna over in front of everyone.
“Mom.”
“Sorry.”
Sandy Huff dutifully followed Anna toward the gate, still too close, spitting out a stream of reminders so long that Anna couldn’t even remember which reminder came first.
“Now, you have to check in before you can go to your room.”
“I know, mom.”
“Are you hungry? We could eat before we go in. There’s a pizza place nearby that is getting absolute raves. We could even go hog wild and skip over to Italy for a minute. We’ve still got our passports out.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Let me take a picture of you.”
“Please God, no.”
There were a handful of armed troops standing around on the street to patrol this first day of school, checking everyone who ported in to make sure they were wearing their passport card lanyards. One of the soldiers—seemingly young enough to be a Druskin student—flipped Anna’s over using the barrel of his rifle. She hated when they did that.
“I’m a U.S. citizen,” Anna insisted.
“Sorry ma’am, but we do have to check.”
“With your gun? You have hands, don’t you? Or are you just so in love with that thing you gotta stroke it all day long?”
Her mom intervened.
“Oh my goodness sir, I’m so sorry for my daughter.”
“Why are you apologizing to him?” Anna demanded to know.
“Because he has a gun. Can you wait until we’ve been here for longer than thirty seconds to start being a pain in the tushie?”
She yanked Anna away from the guard. There was a slipstream of other kids flowing through Druskin Gate. They were part of Anna’s porting group, each group scheduled to arrive in 15-minute intervals on Orientation Day. If anyone ported in earlier, Druskin officials would smile passive-aggressively and make them port right back to where they came from. Oh, you seem to be mistaken as to when you were supposed to port in, aren’t you? They were fun like that.
Anna’s mom wasn’t about to let her join the procession through the gate just yet, nor did she seem to care that every other student in their porting group was going to reach check-in before them. She was perfectly content to hold Anna hostage. The longer the two of them stood out there, the more self-conscious Anna became. Yep, she was the one with the overbearing mother. Everyone have a good look.
“Can we please go?” she begged Sandy.
“Let me just get one more photo of us together.”
“Fine.”
Anna posed for the selfie but didn’t smile. She had the sullen 17-year-old look down, and she was quite proud of it. The world had never seen such dramatic indifference.
“Oh, Anna. That was awful. Let’s do it again.”
“You said one.”
“One good one.”
“How do you know that wasn’t good?”
Sandy had heard enough.
“You know Anna, you agreed to come here. You agreed to be held back a year to enroll. I never forced this on you. You know what a fantastic opportunity this is. Look around you. This place is flawless.”
Even with the pallid skies, it was true. Beyond the wrought iron gate Anna could see a table of cheery Orientation leaders, and past them a gentle hill sloping down to a perfectly manicured quad crisscrossed with paths, like stripes on the Union Jack. Weeds were nonexistent. It already felt more stable at Druskin than anywhere else Anna went. Grounded. It was nice to know she wouldn’t be sleeping in a new ShareSpace every six weeks. She remembered the day she got into this place, when admissions chair Mr. Glenn ported directly to their ShareSpace to give Anna the news in person, and to present her with a formal acceptance letter that she swore to keep forever.
“Mom, I really do appreciate this.”
“Do you?” asked Mrs. Huff. “It’s safe here.”
“I get it. But I don’t know if I wanna be safe.”
“Yes, you do.”
“What do you want me to say? Do you want me to set off sparklers and have a party?”
“No. I want you to recognize hope when you see it.”
Anna sighed and turned back to the gate, which was flanked with Druskin’s own security guards—all of them equipped with enough firearms to raid an aircraft carrier—and had a big sign that cried out STUDENTS AND FACULTY ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. Port marketers blew in for a last-second chance to hawk supplies, music subscriptions, and OTC stimulants to incoming students and their harried families.
There was a bin twenty yards to the left of the gate, where students were expected to drop their PortPhones off for the entirety of their stay on campus grounds. Behind the bin was a brick wall that stretched twenty feet high and ran the entire perimeter of Druskin campus, over 600 acres. It was a gorgeous structure, in its own daunting way. The bricks were spotless, like they had been scrubbed daily with a toothbrush. Druskin brochures boasted that the school’s portwall cost $1 billion and was utterly impenetrable. The physical wall itself probably cost them nothing by comparison.
Sandy walked next to the PortPhone deposit bin. “Are you ready?”
Anna saw other students walking to that box like they were going to view a corpse at a wake. But Anna was ready. They could take her phone, but she’d still sort out a way to go where she wanted, yes she would.
Just then, a coterie of adults blew by the Huffs. They were dressed in fine Italian clothing, all of it custom-tailored, all of it fitting with subatomic precision. Other grownups ported in around the mob: family members, friends, even a TV cameraman or two. They were like popcorn popping, the blowback from porting jostling them all around, like they were all trapped in a scrum with a gang of invisible hooligans. Anna tried to make out the center of the mob but could only spot a sharp bob of black hair. A teenage boy holding a bouquet of tulips that each suffered from bad posture ported in and desperately tried to muscle his way into the mob, shouting, “Lara! LARA!” He seemed desperate and miserable, clutching the flowers so hard he may as well have been strangling them. Seeing that pitiful boy was the first time all day that Anna smiled.
Once the horde reached the portwall, POP POP POP they went, leaving quick as they came with nothing but rude thunderclaps in their wake. Now Anna could see the object of their affections: a girl her age, with an ink-black bob that looked like it had been cut with a diamond laser. The girl took a look back from the gate and Anna could see her in full: all polished cheeks and green eyes. Now Anna wasn’t in such a dickish mood. She could have sworn she had seen this Lara girl before, but couldn’t quite place her. Regardless, now she wanted to go through Druskin Gate very much. She wanted to go wherever that Lara was going.
The girl slipped through the gate without a word and her suitor was left alone and ignored. Grief-stricken. He threw his flowers against the brick wall and yelled “Bitch!” before taking out his phone and porting away. Another rude thunderclap.
“What was that all about?” her mom asked.
“I don’t know, but I hope that kid ports into an open volcano.”
“Anna.”
“I’m joking. I meant that I hope he ports in front of a locomotive.”
“Anna.”
“I didn’t say it had to be moving.”
“Drop your phone in and let’s get on with this.”
Anna joined her mom at the bin and took out the PortPhone. It still felt great to hold it in her palm. She had a thick case for it in the shape of a bulldog, and she called the phone Dougie when no one else was around. What a miracle the thing was. You could take it out of your pocket, hit PORT, feel the shiver, and then be anywhere you wanted, albeit still stuck on this chaotic shithole of a planet. The PortPhone was a key to every door, and Anna loved Dougie as much as everyone else loved their PortPhones, no matter how much misery owning one brought her, nor how much misery she could carry with it.
She took the bulldog cover off and saved it. Now it was just some phone. Now it would be easier to abandon.
“Anna.”
“I’m ready.”
She held the phone over the bin and dropped it down.
“How’d that feel?” her mom asked.
“Like the cell door just slammed shut,” Anna answered. She was faking that particular bit of drama. It didn’t feel that bad.
“They give you laptops and tablets and smartphones, you know. You’ll still be able to scratch a lot of your itches.”
“You still have your PortPhone, don’t you?”
Her mom sighed. “I know, I’m a hypocrite.”
“It’s all right. I get it. I’d be a hypocrite about it too if I were you.”
“You’re gonna be all right here.”
“I know that. What about you, mom?”
Her mom began to cry. “Oh, Anna. Anna, I’ll never be all right.”
They wrapped their arms around each other. Whenever Anna was away from home, she had terrible visions of Sandy dead from suicide. She could picture Sandy slipping away from one of her two dishwashing jobs and doing it with a gun, or with a razorblade, or porting to a scenic cliff and taking a swan dive off of it. Anna didn’t want to picture any of that, but her imagination possessed an inward cruelty that she couldn’t purge no matter how hard she tried.
They kept hugging. Every time they embraced, the angst would bleed out of Anna and leave her refreshed and renewed. And yet, how often did she and her old lady hug each other? Once a month? Why didn’t they always hug like this? It was like both of them wanted to be stiff with tension all the time. Like they both knew instinctively that relaxing, in this world, was a lousy idea.
“Port to Hawaii for a little bit,” Anna whispered. “Get some sun.”
“Hawaii is an ant farm these days,” Sandy said. “Everyone ports there.”
“Then go where the people aren’t. Send pictures.”
“Your tuition here may be paid for but your room and board isn’t, and your father has never written me a child support check. I have work to do.”
“Just take care of yourself.”
“There’s no point in that. You’re all that matters, Anna.” She pointed at her watch. “Every Wednesday, at 5pm, I’ll port right here so you can see me. That okay?”
“Of course.”
“You don’t even have to come out to say hi if you’re not in the mood. I’ll never smother you.”
“Too late!”
“But I’ll never stop worrying.”
“I don’t think anyone stops worrying anymore.”
“I guess not.”
It was time for Sandy to go, but of course there had to be an awkward bit of lingering. There had to be an all-too-noticeable moment where Mrs. Huff didn’t want to leave, and Anna felt too guilty to actively push her mom away. The port group after Anna’s started popping in, the portwinds blowing harsh against the Huffs.
“Mom, you should probably let me go.”
“Can you blame me if I don’t want to?” Sandy asked.
“Of course not.”
“But you’re right. I guess it’s time. But remember: Wednesday at 5pm.”
“Got it.”
“And I love you.”
“Me too.”
Her mom took out her PortPhone and hit PORT. Another portclap. That was it. Sandy Huff was back in Maryland already. It took nothing to leave, and nothing to be forgotten.