Saturday, October 24
Megan Stone liked being popular. She liked it a lot.
Okay, sure, it was horrible that Daddy was so sick, but if her family had to endure the unfairness of his disease, then at least they could do it on TV, where they would be famous, and rich, and powerful. How many other kids’ dads get cancer? Lots. But none of them, Megan was sure, ever get to be on television.
And now her mother was ruining it.
Right there in Megan’s house were the biggest, fanciest television cameras in the world, the most important producers, and the wealthiest sponsors, and all they wanted to do was film her, Megan Stone. Okay, maybe not her specifically, but still. And now she wasn’t allowed to talk to them? It was so unfair. Megan knew it had to be because of Jackie and her stupid YouTube thing.
She couldn’t understand her sister. If Jackie would just let her hair down and try a little makeup, she’d be pretty. And wasn’t that better than being smart? What was so good about being a brainiac? Weren’t those kids the ones who got picked on? Wasn’t their life kind of miserable? It’s not that Megan wanted to do badly in school—and she didn’t—it’s that she knew there were more important things.
If Megan wasn’t allowed to talk to the producers, if she didn’t talk on camera, she wouldn’t be on the show. What would the kids at school think if Megan wasn’t on TV anymore? They would think she was a loser, that’s what. She would become a nobody. And to a girl like Megan Stone, there was nothing worse.
Just before she went to bed later that night, the same day her mom had laid down the law about the family doing nothing to cooperate with the Life and Death producers, she did something she hadn’t done in ages. She got on her knees and prayed.
“Dear God, please help my mom understand how wrong she is. Daddy wanted us to be on this television show, and we owe it to him to see it through. Please send me a sign so I’ll know what’s right.”
When Megan stepped out of school the following Monday and saw the limousine waiting for her—when all her friends saw the limousine waiting for her—Megan knew her prayers had been answered.
***
The meeting in Azeroth, a war council called by the all-powerful Guinevere the Glad, stretched over three days. It took place in a stone castle on a windswept virtual plain. The building was an impressive structure surrounded by a moat filled with unspeakable pixilated terrors. Looming above it all were twin spires, each flying pennants. It looked like a cross between Churchill Downs and Westminster Abbey. The grandeur of the location underscored the gravity of the meeting inside.
News of the war council spread to every corner of the realm, and everyone wanted in. Character upon character converged on the palace, creating an impromptu fair on the field beyond its walls. There were merchants selling goods, heroes fighting the monsters that the game insisted on spawning, and, of course, player after player after player dueling one another. It was a kind of Dark Ages Bonnaroo without the bands.
Only those with an invitation were let beyond the moat. Players who lived in Portland or had a connection to technology, television, and/or medicine were recruited. In an unprecedented move for a Warcraft guild, invitees were required to give their real life names, occupations, and places of residence. Two senior guild members were tasked with screening and reviewing all applicants, turning away far more than were allowed to pass.
It had taken Jackie no small effort to get there. She had “borrowed” her mother’s credit card, and then spent more than five hours downloading the Warcraft software along with a never-ending stream of updates. She’d found the one spot in her room blind to the ATN cameras—in a corner on the floor, next to her closet—and sat there, huddled over her computer.
After a while, one of the producers poked her head into the bedroom, wondering how Jackie had vanished. When she saw Jackie sitting cross-legged on the floor, her MacBook in her lap, the producer shook her head and left. Twenty minutes later, and just a few minutes before Jackie finally arrived in Azeroth, a technician came in and affixed a new camera to the ceiling, aiming it directly at Jackie’s corner. His face was riddled with guilt, and he muttered “sorry” before he left the room. It didn’t matter to Jackie; they still couldn’t see her computer screen.
Jackie’s character was a male dwarf warrior called Gerald the Generous, the name a nod to Hazel’s character. When she—or rather Gerald—first arrived in Azeroth, he was standing in a small outdoor plaza, surrounded by walking, running, and leaping avatars. The theme was medieval, or maybe more aptly, computer-generated medieval fantasy.
An enormous, green-skinned female elf was standing in front of Jackie’s dwarf, its arms gesticulating wildly. When Jackie moved her mouse over the character, she saw that it was Guinevere the Glad—Hazel. Jackie had no idea what to do. The two of them stood there like that for a couple of minutes.
Jackie was just about to give up when she noticed a small chat box on the World of Warcraft dashboard.
Hazel
Can you hear me?
GtGen
Hear you?
Hazel
Yeah, do you have your headset plugged in?
GtGen
I don’t have a headset. Besides, anything I say out loud will just wind up on TV.
Hazel
Right, of course. Okay, we’ll do this the old-fashioned way. We’ll type.
For the next hour, Gerald the Generous followed Guinevere the Glad from one virtual glade to the next. Jackie learned how to manipulate her character, how to fight monsters, how to talk to people, how to pick up and drop materials, how to attach herself to a group, and so much more. She found the game mind-numbingly fun.
When she and Hazel arrived at the palace, they crossed a drawbridge and found two guards arguing with a muscular, human male warrior just outside the colossal stone door. Hazel could hear the conversation; Jackie could not.
“I am invited,” the male warrior was saying.
“Sorry, newb,” the guard answered. “This is a private guild meeting. No one under level fifty allowed.”
“What’s going on, Farsifal?” Guinevere asked.
“This newb is lost,” he answered. “We’re trying to help him understand.”
“Nyet!” the warrior insisted. “Jackie invite me.”
“What’s going on?” Jackie typed into her chat box.
“Some kid who says he knows you,” Guinevere responded. “I think he’s Russian.”
“Max?” Jackie typed.
“Solnyshko! Please tell them I am good.”
“Jackie, did you invite someone?” Guinevere asked. “I’m not sure that was such a good idea.”
“It’s okay. He needs to be here. You can trust him.”
Ten minutes later, Guinevere the Glad was banging the butt of her sword on the stone table, calling the council to order. The myriad side conversations died down.
Jackie waited as the first part of the conversation took place by voice. Hazel had warned her that this would be the case.
“This guild has done more good in the land of Azeroth than any in the realm,” Hazel began.
There were murmurs of assent.
“We have slain mighty foes.” The murmurs grew louder. “We have recovered plentiful bounty!” Louder still. “And we have helped those in need.”
The assembled interrupted with “woots” and “huzzahs.”
Jackie’s Facebook IM flashed.
Max
Solnyshko, what manner of talking is this?
Jackie
I can’t actually hear them, Max, but don’t worry about it. This is a role-playing game, so it might sound funny. Just follow along the best you can.
Max
I will do my hardest.
Jackie
“I will try my hardest,” Max, or “I will do my best.” I think you got them mixed up.
“We all know why we’re here today,” Hazel said. “Jackie Stone, daughter of Jared Stone, needs our help. Jackie will now tell us her tale.”
Hazel had prepared Jackie for this—that she would need to tell her story to the guild. She had even written an introduction for her. Jackie copied and pasted it.
“Good people of Azeroth, members of the guild, I come to you with a heavy heart and ask that you hear my song.” After that, Jackie just started typing in her own manner of speech, and pretty soon, everyone else reverted to the idiom of the early twenty-first century. She told them about her father and his disease, thanking them for the money they had raised for the eBay listing. She told them about life on the set of the television show. She introduced them to Max and explained how the two of them had made The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon. And she told them about Ethan Overbee, and how he had turned her home into a prison and had confiscated her phone, and how he and his minions were watching Jackie and her family twenty-four hours a day.
“What we need is a rescue,” someone said. Others agreed.
“No,” Hazel answered. “Jackie’s request is simple. We need to get her a camera.”
For the next hour, and spilling into the next two nights, the guild discussed various plans to get Jackie a camera. In the end, they settled on the simplest plan of all. Throw her one over The Wall.
No one was more surprised than Jackie to learn that the knight chosen for the task was her awkward, pimply-faced classmate, Jason Sanderson—the boy who had told her she looked nice in her Easter dress all those years ago.
It made perfect sense to Jackie that Jason lived in this world. When the real world treats you like garbage, why not find a better world, one without prejudice, judgment, and cruelty? She was only sad that she hadn’t discovered this world for herself years earlier.
Jason was known in Azeroth simply as G. Ranger, and was now known to the guild as a hero among men.
***
Ethan knew the younger Stone girl would be easy prey. Hell, most of America would have known. In her interviews with the producer, the short segments that aired each night, Megan tried too hard. She fawned for the camera, used her hand to brush her hair back a little too often, and used the producer’s name too emphatically. It played well enough with America because she was so young—Megan was cute, and she knew it—but overnight polling, which peeled away all nuance and stripped things down to their bare essence, said that her unfavorable numbers were on the rise; America was starting to see Megan as a stuck-up and self-absorbed brat.
Of course, those poll numbers were never shared with the family lest it affect their performance. But Ethan had seen them. In fact, Ethan was counting on them.
“Hello, Megan,” he said as she climbed into the limousine. Megan, overwhelmed by the opulence, muttered hello in response. “Would you like something to drink?” Ethan motioned to the bar stacked with soda, juice, and milk. “We have Nantucket Nectars. You know, that’s Jo Garvin’s favorite.” Ethan had no idea what Jo Garvin liked to drink, nor did he care. But he had seen how Megan adored Jo, and he was all too happy to exploit it.
“Oh, yes, please, Mr. Overbee. I would simply love a Nantucket Nectar.”
Even here, Ethan thought, the kid can’t dial it down.
“It’s a shame about Jo,” he said, passing her a bottle.
“Why? What happened?” Megan’s concern was, Ethan could tell, genuine. His face betrayed no hint of the delight he was feeling inside.
“Your sister’s video, Megan. It probably ended Jo’s career.”
Megan sighed. Written in that lone syllable of exhalation was a lifetime of frustration with Jackie, exasperation at why her sister had to be so weird. “End her career?” Megan asked.
“Yes. Jackie’s video made Jo look like a fool, and America doesn’t suffer fools gladly.” Ethan didn’t really think either statement was true. Jo would rebound, the tenacious ones always do, and America, he believed, was populated by cud-chewing cave trolls.
Megan felt bad for Jo—she was a star after all—but she wasn’t sure what any of this had to do with her. “Didn’t you take Jackie’s phone away?”
“We did. But Jackie’s video is only half the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can tell that your mom is upset with the show, upset with me.” Ethan leaned in and dropped the volume of his voice, turning Megan into a coconspirator. Megan had used this same trick on Jackie countless times but didn’t immediately recognize it on the receiving end. She nodded and leaned in, too, completely unaware that she was being played.
“I think,” Ethan said, leaning in closer, “maybe she asked you and Jackie to stop cooperating?” Megan was silent. She felt uncomfortable at the line of questioning. More than anything she wanted to be back on the show, but she didn’t want to get her mother in trouble with the network.
It never occurred to Megan to ask how Ethan knew what her mom had told her and Jackie. Not that he would have told her about the cameras in each of the house’s two bathrooms. Ethan had strict instructions that the director was to never use or even watch footage from those cameras. It was the most ignored rule on set; male members of the crew would routinely watch Deirdre—and her teenage daughters—shower.
“I know how hard it is to defy your mother,” Ethan offered, seeming to read Megan’s mind. “I went through something similar when I was your age.”
“You did?”
“It was in eighth grade. Is that the grade you’re in now?” Of course, Ethan knew the answer to his own question. Megan nodded. “Right, so you’ll understand. My mother and father didn’t like the group of friends I hung around with. If you can believe this, my parents thought they were too square.”
“Square?”
“They were nice kids, but a bit goofy. One of them loved movies so much that all he wanted was for us, our whole group of friends, to make our own movies. He had a Betamax recorder—”
“What’s that?”
“Well, this was back in the 1980s, before there was all this digital technology. It was a great big camera that used videotapes. To us, it was the coolest. Anyway, he used his Betamax to make movies. We all starred in them and had fun doing it. We would charge other kids in the neighborhood money to see them. My parents hated it. They thought I should have been hanging around boys who played sports, that sort of thing.”
“Most of my guy friends play sports,” Megan offered meekly.
“And that’s a good thing. But my friends back then, we were like a team, a fraternity. You know what a fraternity is?”
Megan nodded again.
“So anyway, I decided to ignore my parents and hang out with them. And this was doubly hard because my father was a colonel in the air force, and a pretty scary guy.”
“So what happened?” Megan asked.
“To tell the truth, those guys are the reason I went into television. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I had listened to my parents and hung out with different kids.”
None of Ethan’s story was true. His father was a mid-level manager at a regional bank, never in his life had he touched a Betamax recorder, and, like Megan, he only ever hung around with the popular kids. He wouldn’t have been caught dead with the AV Club nerds. But the story, culled from a spec script that had crossed his desk, served its purpose. The girl was wide-eyed. Ethan almost felt a pang of guilt as he realized just how young thirteen actually is. Almost.
“So, Megan, are you willing to do what’s right, even if it means going against your parents’ wishes?”
“I-I think so,” she stammered.
“Good,” he said, patting her knee. Megan recoiled on instinct, but Ethan didn’t notice. “Here’s what I’d like you to do.”
***
Sister Benedict settled into the ebb and flow of the Stone household with relative ease.
Her singular mission was to extend Jared’s life as long as medicine and technology would allow. Where the caregivers and the church failed with Terri Schiavo, Sister Benedict would succeed with Jared Stone. The doctors warned the Sister that a brain tumor was a decidedly different matter than Mrs. Schiavo, whose brain had been severely damaged when it was starved of oxygen due to a massive cardiac event. But the Sister, who knew precious little about medicine, put her faith in God. He would not have brought her all this way, would not have granted her entry to this house, if He did not have a plan.
Besides, Cardinal Trippe had made it clear to the medical team that Sister Benedict was his emissary on the set, and that she spoke for him. The Sister knew that she was not exactly following the Cardinal’s wishes when she instructed the doctors to do everything in their power to keep the man alive, but she was able to rationalize it. The ends, the Sister thought, sometimes do indeed justify the means.
Beyond the care of her patient, the Sister tried her best to avoid any connection to the television show. Of course, one did not set up camp in the Stone household without becoming a willing or unwilling participant.
Obeying the Cardinal’s direction, Sister Benedict succumbed to the daily interview with the producer, and to being filmed almost continuously by the many “hidden” cameras. The first time she saw herself on TV, on the episode of Life and Death that aired the night she arrived in the house, she was mortified.
When did I grow so old? she thought, reaching for the lines on her face. Is this what I’ve become?
She dwelled on that thought for a moment and then shook her head to clear it. She recalled something her first Mother Superior used to say: “The ability to compartmentalize is a necessary fabric in the thread of any good nun’s cloak of invincibility.” It was advice—given to her when she was still Angela Marie the novice—that Sister Benedict would turn to again and again. To be a nun was to be in a state of perpetual conflict. Discipline and obedience locked horns with compassion and forgiveness, self-imposed poverty was a source of mockery in a society driven almost entirely by consumerism, and chastity and desire could never be reconciled.
The Sister considered herself above base instincts like desire and materialism, but in the end, she was human, and some days, one or the other would tug at her conscience. As a young novice she would mention these things in confession, but the penance was always the same—a few Hail Marys, a few Our Fathers, and her soul was clean. As she grew older, she knew enough to mete out her own punishment, and kept her darkest thoughts to herself.
When she saw her aging face, with its harsh mouth, squinty eyes, and not-so-subtle facial hair on the television screen, the Sister acknowledged the sin of vanity, turned off Life and Death, and recited “Hail Mary, full of grace” over and over again.
As was always the case after such episodes of weakness, the Sister approached her canonical responsibilities with renewed vigor.
The next morning, she cajoled Jared Stone out of bed and insisted that he get some light exercise. “The mind is nothing without the body, Mr. Stone,” she told him.
“But, Sister, I’m so tired.” Jared was too weak and befuddled to remind the Sister that his doctors—her doctors—had ordered bed rest. The crew in the truck, who like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz were watching everything, knew that Jared was supposed to be in bed. But the sight of Jared pleading with the Sister, and ultimately trying to do some light stretching and a few push-ups, made for much better television than just watching the man waste away.
When Jared was safely back in bed, panting and gasping until he fell asleep, the Sister went through the rest of the house to see how else she could help.
***
Glio explored the entire network of Jared’s outward-facing nervous system. He rode the brachial plexus to the musculocutaneous nerve to the radial nerve to the ulnar nerve to the median nerve in the tips of Jared’s fingers, reveling in the cool cottony touch of Jared’s pillow. He pushed off from the gustatory cortex and traversed the highway of nerves leading to the tightly bunched fungiform papillae on Jared’s tongue, nearly exploding with joy at the sensation that was oatmeal. He came as close to the outside world as he dared in the nerve endings at the very edge of Jared’s nostril—a flirtation with the termination shock of his host’s corporeal being—momentarily repulsed by the smell of disease, not realizing, at first, that he himself was the root cause.
From the top of Jared’s scalp to the tip of his pinky toe, Glio had explored Jared like Magellan circumnavigating the globe. There was only one place left to go: the optic nerve.
Glio, having been imbued with emotion from Jared’s memories, was frightened. Hearing the world, touching the world, tasting the world, and smelling the world were not, he was certain, the same as seeing the world. But curiosity was a powerful master.
Feeling his way from the medulla oblongata to the visual cortex, Glio arrived at the lateral geniculate nucleus, the point of no return. In the way a six-year-old is filled with terror at the top of a large waterslide, so, too, was Glio at the site of the optic nerve; a swirling rope of ganglia spiraling into the brightest light Glio had ever seen. It was too late to chicken out now.
He jumped in.
A moment later, Glio was looking at a blinding red light with no definition and no form. He realized he was looking at the inside of Jared’s closed eyelid. The membrane of tissue was thick enough for its host to experience darkness. But to a being like Glio that had never known real light, it was paper-thin.
Glio desperately wanted to see the outside world, only Jared was resting, and thin though it was, the eyelid was an impenetrable barrier. Glio needed a plan.
Having spent months inside Jared’s head, he had come to know every twist, turn, and fold of his host’s brain. And Glio had grown large. What the doctors thought were twenty-four distinct tumors was really one large organism, the seemingly individual growths connected by strings of microscopic cells. While Glio’s attention was focused on the optic nerve, his tendrils simultaneously reached everywhere else. He would force the eyelids to open.
With the flick of his metaphorical wrist, Glio tugged on a packet of neurons that made Jared gag. An instant later, he felt the entire body convulse, and then Jared’s eyes opened.
The light was too intense, and Glio had to retreat part of the way up the optic nerve. The experience was painful and exhilarating all at once. Slowly, he inched his way forward again until, at last, he could see the world.
His first vision was shocking: The edges, the shadows, the innate qualities of the image were entirely different and entirely more satisfying than the memories and dreams on which he’d been feasting. Glio found himself looking at the person Jared thought of as “the nun.” Her weathered face had a countenance that was both angry and sad, a kind of fierce expression meant to calm but that could only terrify.
“Mr. Stone,” she was saying, “are you all right?”
“I don’t think so. I can’t see.”
Glio knew that Jared’s impaired sight was a direct result of his own activity on the optic nerve. No matter, he wasn’t going to stay long.
As he adjusted to the light, Glio could see that he was in the makeshift hospital room that had been Jared’s office. He was sorry he hadn’t seen the room before all the medical equipment had been moved in. Jared’s office was, Glio knew, a focal point in space that was central to the man’s character. And as Glio was subsuming the very essence of Jared’s character, it had become a focal point for him, too.
“Try shutting your eyes for a little while,” the nun said to Jared.
Jared tried to shut his eyes, but Glio tweaked the packet of neurons that made them pop back open.
“I can’t,” Jared said.
“That’s odd,” the nun answered. “Wait here. I’m going to get the doctor.”
“Right,” Jared answered. “ ‘Wait here.’ ”
Glio was no fan of the doctors. Twice they had pumped Jared full of morphine, and twice Glio had drifted off in a daze. The drugs slowed him down, and he didn’t like it. Not wanting another dose, he fled to the center of the brain, occupying himself with a memory of the night Jared won his first election but already scheming and planning for a more meaningful outing.
***
While Megan tried not to show it, she was annoyed with Ethan.
She’d hoped he had come in his limousine to tell her that she, Megan Stone, was, at least for a little while, going to be the star of Life and Death. She knew that with her dad too sick to do much of anything and her mother and sister on strike, now was her chance to step into the limelight.
But that wasn’t it at all.
“I want you to do something for me,” he had said. “I want you to keep an eye on Jackie and let me know if she tries to make any more movies.”
It left a bad taste in Megan’s mouth.
For one thing, she and Jackie had grown closer since their father had gotten sick. She knew it was just temporary, that Jackie wasn’t going to suddenly stop being weird, that things would eventually turn back to their natural order, but still, if she was being honest, she liked that she and Jackie were talking. Plus she guessed that what Ethan was asking would go against her mom’s wishes, and that didn’t sit too well.
Megan paused, looking at Ethan, waiting for the rest of it.
“I promise, Megan,” Ethan said, sensing her disappointment. “I will personally see to it that you get whatever you want. Better clothes, better makeup, better toys.”
Better toys? Megan thought.
“Just tell me what you want.”
When she didn’t respond, Ethan surged ahead, assuring Megan it was for the good of the show, that in the end, her family would understand.
“I-I … ,” Megan finally interrupted, feeling stupid saying it out loud, “I thought maybe you would want me to be in the show more.”
Ethan sat back and smiled. “Is that all? That’s easy, kiddo.” He took a deep, cleansing breath. “You help us, and I promise, you’ll get lots of screen time. This is how Hollywood works.” That was the phrase that sealed the deal for Megan. She was an insider now, in the know. She was Hollywood.
“Besides,” Ethan added, “the rest of your family is on strike. If you’re the only one talking to us, then you’re the only one we can use.”
In the end, Megan was able to convince herself—her inner demons drowning out her better instincts—that Jackie kind of deserved it for making that video. At least that’s what Ethan had told her.
Megan nodded and shook Ethan’s hand when it was offered.
The next afternoon, just after she had given the most detailed, enthusiastic, and altogether saccharine interview in the history of television interviews (“Oh, Andersona, I was just devastated at what happened to poor Trebuchet. That dog was a kind of soul mate to all of us.”), Megan put “Operation Nancy Drew” into action. Ethan had come up with the name, and even though Megan didn’t really know who Nancy Drew was, she played along.
Watching from the kitchen window when Jackie came home from school, Megan took notes on everything her big sister did, and what she did was really strange.
Jackie, who always came in, said hi to Trebuchet (or used to), and then went to her room to do her homework, went instead to the backyard. She made a beeline for The Wall and started picking up different rocks at the base of the fence and shaking them. She had a very serious look on her face, like she was searching for something important. After a minute, Jackie picked up a large, off-color rock, shook it, and smiled. She looked around, like she wanted to make sure no one was watching, and carried the rock back into the house.
When Jackie walked through the door from the backyard, hiding the rock under her shirt, she didn’t even notice Megan skulking behind the ficus tree in the dining room. She bounded up the stairs, went right into the bathroom, and closed the door. Megan crept to the door just in time to hear the shower curtain move, like Jackie was taking a shower.
Recording every last detail in her notebook, Megan retreated to the hallway outside Jackie’s room and waited. It was a full five minutes before Jackie showed up.
“Hey,” she said to Megan.
“Hey,” Megan said back. “What are you up to?” She tried to sound casual but could tell by the look on Jackie’s face that it hadn’t worked.
“Nothing.” With that, Jackie went into her bedroom and shut the door.
Megan sprang up and ran to the bathroom. There was no sign of the rock anywhere. Just some cut-up cardboard in the garbage can. She added it to her notes and went back to her own room, where she sat on her bed and tried to figure out what her sister was doing. After a while, her attention drifted, and she dozed off, dreaming about how famous she would become. She didn’t think her notes revealed anything terribly clever or insightful, so she never gave them to Ethan.
Later that night, as the family sat gathered around Jared’s makeshift hospital bed to watch Life and Death, Megan could scarcely contain her anxiety. With the rest of the family on strike, the entire episode revolved around her—her day at school, her wardrobe, and her feelings about her father’s illness. Other than Jared’s momentary and inexplicable bout of blindness, which was teased in every commercial break and held for the end of the show, this was Megan’s hour.
She had hoped Ethan was right, that her mother would see how good it was for Megan to participate, but those hopes were dashed at the first commercial break when no one in her family so much as looked at her. “Mom?” Megan asked. But Deirdre didn’t respond.
By the second commercial break, Jared had fallen asleep. During the third commercial break, Jackie had left the room shaking her head.
By the time it ended, only Megan and her mother were watching.
When the last of the credits scrolled off the screen and faded into a commercial break, Deirdre used the remote to turn the television off. She choked back a sob, said, “It’s okay, honey, I forgive you,” and left the room, too.
“Forgive me?” Megan said out loud, her only company her sleeping father. Her voice tried to sound confused, but her heart was thoroughly ashamed. Megan used the TiVo to roll the show back to the beginning and watched it again in its entirety, never moving from her father’s side. By the time it was over, she thought she might throw up.
***
Max couldn’t believe it. The plan had worked perfectly. Deirdre had retrieved Jackie’s confiscated cell phone on the way out of the house—“If she’s not allowed to use it, at least let me try to get my money back,” she had told Andersona—and dropped it off at school per Jackie’s instructions. Jackie gave the phone to Jason Sanderson, who tucked it inside a cardboard rock he “borrowed” from the school’s drama department. That night, while all of America, including everyone in the Stone household, was watching Life and Death, Jason rode his bike to Jackie’s house and threw the rock over the seven-foot-high fence into the backyard. Jackie retrieved it the next day.
Now Max was looking at fifteen minutes of brand-new footage. He was giddy.
With the crew on strict orders to stop Jackie from filming, capturing footage had become much more difficult, but the assembled group in Azeroth anticipated this. The guild counted among its members two East Coast television editors—one worked at Lifetime, the other at TLC. Using a floor plan of the Stone household provided by Jackie, the two editors analyzed five episodes of Life and Death, noting camera angles and edits. They used the information to identify what they believed were enough blind spots for Jackie to remain hidden while filming.
The footage wasn’t as good or explosive as the earlier episodes, and it was all taken in a relatively short window of time, but it was enough for Max to work with. The real magic was in the voice-over.
Jackie and Max wrote it together, and she recorded it while she was in the computer lab at school. It was a poignant plea from Jackie to the American viewing public to let her father die with dignity:
It’s not just the cameras and the microphones. If they were capturing the truth, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, if I’m being honest, my family—well, really, my parents—signed on for all this when they invited ATN into our house. But they didn’t sign on for the lies.
The network doesn’t want you to know the truth. They want you to see my dad at his worst; they want you to think my mother, sister, and I are helpless; they want you to think we give a shit about Jo Garvin. (Jackie, who was something of a prude, didn’t want to use foul language. Max convinced her that the soliloquy needed it.)
This isn’t real life. Nothing on TV is real life. It is fiction. The only part of this that’s true is that my dad is dying, and that he is—that we are—being robbed of our privacy and dignity. Think about it. What if your father or mother or sister or brother was dying? What if it was your son? What would you want?
If you really care what happens to my dad, if you really care what happens to our family—Max cut to an extreme close-up of Jackie talking to the camera—then I beg you, don’t watch the lie that is Life and Death. I promise I will give you updates via YouTube, but please, get these damn cameras out of my house.
The third installment of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon was posted at three a.m. Pacific standard time, just twelve hours after Jackie had done the principle photography. A team of Azeroth guild members based in London was standing by. The minute the episode was posted, they unleashed a social media campaign announcing its arrival.
It took each of the first two episodes more than a week to top one million views. The third episode got there in twelve hours. The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon had gone from being viral to being a phenomenon.
***
Ethan was back in California, asleep in his Malibu beach house and dreaming about a girl he knew many years ago. For some reason, every time the girl opened her mouth to speak, a loud buzzing sound came from the back of her throat. It was happening in a rhythmic pattern—mouth closed, mouth open, buzzing, mouth closed, mouth open, buzzing. It took on a hypnotic quality, almost like a—
The cell phone vibrating on the bedside table buzzed Ethan to consciousness. He tapped the answer icon and mumbled a groggy “What is it?”
“It’s your ass, Overbee, that’s what it is!” The sound of Roger Stern’s voice was enough to bring Ethan into a hyperwakeful state.
“Roger? What time is it? What’s going on?”
“Time is immaterial.” This was one of Stern’s favorite sayings, though no one was quite sure what it meant. “As for what’s going on, check your e-mail. I want a full report on how you’ve contained this problem before the end of the day.” He hung up.
Before the end of the day? Ethan thought, still in a fog. I’m not even sure what day it is.
Ethan used his phone to check his e-mail, and he saw it right away. A link to a new installment of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon. He paused a beat, then hurled his cell phone at the nearest wall, cracking its screen and leaving a dent just under a framed Andy Warhol original. It was 4:30 a.m. He landed in Portland five and a half hours later.
***
The entire Stone household was abuzz with the news of the latest YouTube posting. The third-shift director, who received a phone call from Ethan at 4:45 a.m. local time, was instructed to have his team go through the previous three days of outtakes to find out how and when Jackie had managed to record new footage.
While a growing number of crew members were secretly rooting for Jackie, their first loyalty was to their paychecks. Besides, they were too terrified of the damage Ethan could do to their careers if they failed him, so they did as they were told.
It didn’t take long to find the image of Jackie picking up the rock in the backyard, bringing it into the house, and cracking it open in the bathroom. After that, they watched her disappear into one blind spot after another, always reappearing twenty seconds later. You didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to piece it all together. You only had to know to look.
Andersona, also on orders from Ethan, confined the Stone family to the house, not allowing anyone in or out. While Megan, who had become persona non grata with the family, stayed in her room, Jackie took her computer and crawled into bed with her mom. She looked for Max online, but he was still recovering from his all-night editing session and had gone to bed very early.
When Jackie heard Ethan arrive, she considered hiding but knew it was no use. She looked at the camera in the corner of the ceiling in her parents’ bedroom—an unfathomable invasion of privacy, she realized—and said, “Tell him I’m on my way down.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No, Mom, that’s okay. Besides, you can always watch it on TV tonight.”
Deirdre was still smiling at the joke as Jackie left the room with her computer tucked under her arm.
Ethan was sitting alone in the living room. When he saw Jackie, he clapped, very slowly. “Smart kid,” he said, “but you have no idea how much trouble you’re causing.” This, more than anything else, made Jackie smile. “Give me the phone.”
Jackie expected Ethan to ask for the phone and knew it was pointless to fight. She took the iPhone out of her pocket and tossed it across the room. “The computer, too.”
“What?”
“The computer, Jackie.” The edge in Ethan’s voice was frightening. “We’ve decided you need to engage more with your surroundings. Burying your nose in your computer screen all day isn’t very good television, now, is it?”
Jackie just stood there. Ethan shook his head, got up, crossed the room, and took the laptop out of Jackie’s hands. She didn’t put up a fight. Ethan went back to the couch.
“You told people not to watch the show.”
“I did,” Jackie said.
“I’m not sure I care, but curiosity is getting the best of me. Why?”
“You really don’t know, do you?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think there is any way I can make you understand.”
Ethan shrugged his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter. Your wings are clipped. You’re going to get in line and do what we say, starting tonight. You’re going to tell America that you were just lashing out because you’re sad about your father’s illness.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re not what?”
“I’m not going to tell America that I was just sad because of my dad’s illness. I’m going to continue to tell them, every chance I get, what a big phony you and this television show are.”
“Don’t be so sure, Jackie. I’ve handled some of the toughest people in show business. I think I can handle a fifteen-year-old girl.”
It was this moment of arrogance, of naked hubris, that gave Jackie all the confidence she needed.
Later that afternoon when Andersona tried to interview her about how wrong she’d been to post the new episode of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon, Jackie answered every one of the questions with a stream of curse words.
ANDERSONA: It must be hard on you, having to watch your father go through this.
JACKIE: Fuck, shit, piss.
ANDERSONA: The YouTube show was all about you lashing out, wasn’t it?
JACKIE: Cock, tits, bitch.
This went on for a full five minutes. When Andersona was done asking the questions she had come to ask, which she read from a prepared script, she left the room without saying a word.
Jackie stayed in the chair and laughed, at first. Eventually emotion overwhelmed her and the laughter turned to tears. She sat there until she was done crying, and then retreated to her room to read a book.
***
The episode of Life and Death that aired that night was made especially for Jackie.
The opening scene was Jackie’s plea, from The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon, for people not to watch the show. It dissolved to Jackie listening to Andersona’s question: “The YouTube show was all about you lashing out, wasn’t it?”
The camera shifted to a view over Jackie’s shoulder, showing a concerned Andersona. Jackie’s voice-over, plucked and cleaned up from her conversation with Ethan, was made to seem like an answer to Andersona’s question: “I was just sad because of my dad’s illness. I was a big phony.” Only the most seasoned editor could have spotted the fakery.
“How does that make you feel?” Andersona asked. The editors cut to Jackie cursing, with all the swear words bleeped out. Then back to Andersona to ask the question again. This time the camera cut to Jackie, sitting in the interview chair, weeping.
The credits rolled.
After the commercial break, Ethan, who was furious that Megan hadn’t alerted him that Jackie had somehow recovered a phone, had a small message for her, too. They showed the entire sequence of Megan following Jackie, and even included a bastardized version of her conversation with Ethan in the limousine. In the version that aired, Megan approached Ethan and offered to spy on Jackie if the producers would feature her, Megan, more prominently in the show. Ethan, in a set piece recorded after the fact, refused.
The actions of the two Stone girls were stitched together to show a family splitting apart over the stress of their dying father. Jackie and Megan were shown to be conniving but pitiable characters, with Ethan and Andersona each playing the part of compassionate benefactor.
It was both a high and low watermark for the power and pull of the medium.
***
Jared watched the episode with his wife and daughters like he always did, but none of it was making sense. He knew that something bad was happening between his family and the producers of the show, he just didn’t understand what. And worse, he didn’t seem to care. All Jared wanted to do was sleep. Even the pain in his head seemed like it should be someone else’s problem.
He found himself wondering about the strangest things. Like what was a nun doing in his house? Was this even his house? The frequent visits from Deirdre, Jackie, and Megan suggested it was, but maybe the television network had built a replica of his house for the show. Maybe they were all in Los Angeles. That was a horrible thought. He didn’t want to die in L A.
Jared was increasingly aware that he was dying, and he knew that it would be sooner rather than later. He knew he should be putting things in order, or at least that’s the phrase that kept rolling around his brain. (Intrepid snorting thug.) Though what things and what order were a mystery.
He’d had three more instances of blurred or lost vision, and the same had happened with his hearing, inexplicably failing and then returning to normal.
Jared Stone was checking out, and he knew it. He had only one foot in this world; the other was already probing for the next, whatever and wherever that might be.
As he maneuvered through the remnants of his faculties, he made a decision. It was the last lucid thing on his mind, and he needed to tell someone before it was gone. He summoned Deirdre.
“D,” he told her when she arrived by his side, “come closer.”
“I’m here, Jare,” she answered, putting her ear next to his mouth.
“I want to end this,” he whispered. She didn’t respond, and Jared closed his eyes. She was about to go when he added, “Please, help me.”
With that, Jared rolled over and went to sleep. Deirdre kissed his head and said, “Of course, my love. Of course.”
***
When Max watched the latest episode of Life and Death, he knew immediately what had happened. His video-editing skills were growing at an exponential rate, and it wasn’t hard for him to spot the handiwork of the ATN team.
“Pizdet!” he barked. He was watching Ethan Overbee’s evisceration of Jackie on the ATN website after school the following day. A cold wet rain that smelled of winter was pelting his window.
More than anything, Max wanted to talk to Jackie, to tell her that he knew what the editors had done to her, that together they could make people know it was all lies. But afternoon in Western Russia is the middle of the night in Oregon, and Jackie was not online. Max needed to talk to someone, to do something now.
After the meetings in Azeroth, Max and Hazel had become Facebook friends. Knowing that it was already six thirty in the morning in Alabama, he sent her a message.
Max
Hazel, do you see the television show yesterday? Do not believe this is true! They use editing tricks to make Jackie look bad. We must do something. Meet me by palace.
Five minutes later, he was standing outside the guild headquarters in Azeroth.
Hazel
Hi, Max.
Max
Oh good! You are here. Did you see this new episode?
Hazel
I did, and I didn’t believe it. Jackie told me how heavily they edit the show to create story lines that don’t really exist. It’s sick, but I don’t know what to do.
Max
I am worried about our friend.
Hazel
Me too, Max. But maybe they’re just too big and powerful for us.
Max
Nyet! This is not true of American colonists, this is not true of Russian Bolsheviks, and I do not believe is true of Jackie Stone. She is not girl to give up. She beat them step by step. We have Russian saying: “Ispodvol’ i ol’khu sognyosh.” Anyone can bend alder tree, if they do it little at a time.
Both he and Hazel were silent for a minute.
Hazel
Okay. Let’s think about the problem. We know they’re manipulating their own footage to box Jackie in.
Max
What means box in?
Hazel
Sorry. They are making it very hard for Jackie to react or take any action against them. They are cutting off her options.
Max
Yes.
Hazel
We know they took her phone, twice. They’ll probably take her computer, too.
Max
Yes, I think this also.
Hazel
So Jackie probably can’t get us footage, at least not until we figure out how to get a camera into her house.
Max
Yes.
Hazel
So what we need is another way to make an episode.
At that instant, a lightbulb went on over Max’s head. Literally. His mother had entered the room and turned on the overhead light to combat the grayness of the day beyond the window.
“Maxi, I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time in front of that computer,” she said before moving on down the hall.
He barely heard her. The literal lightbulb had, in fact, been accompanied by a figurative one.
Max
I have idea. And I will be needing your help.
***
When Jackie got to school the next morning, her heart fell into her stomach.
Three large ATN trucks dominated the teachers’ parking lot. Students gawked at them like they were looking at Taylor Swift’s tour bus. Jackie knew what was going on even before the principal—a balding man with a rumpled suit, mismatched socks, and an old ketchup stain on his tie—pounced on her at the front door.
“Good morning, Miss Stone!” he offered with too much enthusiasm. “Isn’t it wonderful? Your television show has come to our school!”
Jackie clenched her jaw. “This can’t be real. Don’t you have to get parents’ permission or something?”
“Apparently the ATN legal department worked on that all night, and we’re good to go. The few students who didn’t want to participate are attending another high school until this is all over.”
Jackie locked eyes with the principal, the scowl on her face making him realize the horror of what he had just said. He put a hand to his mouth the way a bad actor feigns surprise and regret.
Jackie rolled her eyes and tried to brush past him. The only thing she wanted was to go to her locker.
“But you don’t understand,” he said, blocking her way and trying to regain his footing in the conversation. He looked up at the ATN camera suspended from the ceiling like he was starring in a soap opera. “The network is going to build us a new gymnasium, and we have you to thank!” He stood in front of Jackie holding his arm up, palm facing her.
Does he actually want a high five? she thought. Lame! This time she squirmed past with force and ran inside.
Everywhere Jackie turned, she saw cameras, and everywhere she turned, students were staring at her. A gaggle of the school’s most popular girls had formed a semicircle around her locker.
“Hi, Jackie,” one of the girls said. They all wore the same basic outfit, the same hairstyle, the same makeup, and had the same affected speech; Jackie had trouble telling them apart and wasn’t really sure which one was talking. “Isn’t this exciting? Now we know how special you must feel every day!”
“Why, is your father dying, too?” Jackie couldn’t help herself. She knew the smartest course of action was to keep her head down and her mouth shut, but this was too much. Ethan was pulling out all the stops, and it was getting to her.
Before the stunned popular girl could think of a response, a high-pitched whine originating from deep inside someone’s sinus cavity was saying, “Let me through; let me through!” An instant later, Jason Sanderson pushed his way into the center of the crowd.
“Hi, girls,” he said, grinning like the village idiot.
“Go away, geek,” the same popular girl said.
“Congratulations, Brie,” Jackie answered, having sorted out which queen bee was which, “you were just a primo bitch on television’s most popular show.” Jackie pointed at the camera aimed directly at her locker.
Brie’s cheeks turned the same color as her cherry lip gloss, and she stormed away. The gaggle followed her.
“Thanks, Jason,” Jackie said. “It’s really good to see you.”
Jason blushed, shook his head, and got right to his point. “Did you see it yet?” Jason asked.
“See what?”
“Oh, boy!” he said. “Come with me!”
Jason led Jackie to the computer lab.
“Hi, Miss Onorati,” Jason said.
“Mr. Sanderson, Miss Stone,” the teacher answered, unable to stop from grinning.
“Jason,” Jackie whispered, pulling his arm, “we’re not supposed to be here. I have history now. So do you!”
“It’s all right, Miss Stone,” Ms. Onorati interrupted. “I spoke to Mr. Egloff a few minutes ago, and he understands that you might need to miss history this morning.”
Jackie looked from Jason to their teacher. “What’s going on?”
“What’s going on,” Ms. Onorati offered, “is that the young squire here has a small bit of treasure to impart to Gerald the Generous.”
“What?” Jackie looked closely at her teacher. She was a pretty woman but didn’t seem to know it. Long but stylishly unkempt brown hair with a touch of gray; bright, hazel eyes made large by a pair of round glasses too big for her vertically orientated face, its long nose holding court over a wide and smiling mouth. She looked like a short, disheveled version of Angelina Jolie.
“Surprised?” Ms. Onorati asked.
Jackie was too surprised to speak. She nodded.
“Jackie, I’m a forty-one-year-old, unattached computer science teacher. Do the math.”
“Her name in Warcraft is Onan the Arbarian,” Jason snorted. “Isn’t that great?”
“Were you at the guild meetings?” Jackie asked.
“No, but when you’ve been in the game as long as I have, word travels fast. I’m here to help you in any way I can.”
“But what about them?” Jackie asked, pointing to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.
“What about them?” Ms. Onorati said. “Let them watch. I think they’ll want to see what Jason has to show you, too.”
“I’ll show you on my computer,” Jason said with just a bit too much volume. Jackie realized that everything that had happened to her—was happening to her—was actually a good thing for Jason. It was helping him belong, giving him a purpose. It wasn’t much of a silver lining, but it was something; Jackie tried her best to hold on to it.
Jackie sat at the computer station with both Jason and Ms. Onorati standing behind her. On the screen, Jason clicked a link to YouTube, and there in the middle of the screen was The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon: Episode IV, A New Hope.
Jackie knew the title was in homage to the original Star Wars. What she didn’t know was how a new episode of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon could even exist.
“Seriously, what’s going on?”
“Just watch,” Ms. Onorati said, putting a gentle hand on Jackie’s shoulder.
On the screen, the video started. It was footage Jackie had shot more than a week ago, for the second episode. It was a thirty-four-second clip of the Jo Garvin interview, the scene where Jo goes from crying to winking at Andersona’s “Honey, you’re going to win an Emmy” remark. The image freezes on Jo’s wink and fades to black as a voice-over begins.
“This is unedited footage; it’s what actually happened.” Jackie didn’t recognize the voice, but the lilting Southern drawl gave her a good guess as to who it was.
“It has not been manipulated in any way,” the voice continued. “It’s footage that came directly from Jackie Stone’s now confiscated iPhone. Our showing this to you is not meant to influence your opinion of Jo Garvin. We only want you to see the truth.
“If we had wanted you to like Jo Garvin, we might have shown you this.”
A scene, back in the interview room, fades in. The footage is of Andersona interviewing someone. Jackie remembered capturing the footage her very first day of recording and knew that the shoulder the camera was looking over belonged to her mother. The shot is framed so that only the smallest wisp of Deirdre’s hair is visible. Out of context, it’s impossible to tell who is being interviewed.
“Tell me, what has this done to your career?” Andersona asked.
There is a seamless cut back to Jo Garvin, whose tears are already starting to fall. The unmistakable impression is that Jo Garvin is devastated that her career as a television character actor is over.
Max’s edits were so good that even Jackie did a double take, feeling, for a moment, sorry for Jo.
“Do you see?” the voice continued. “Do you see how easy it is to fool you? But it’s not you who should feel foolish; it’s them.” The voice said “them” with all the bile it could muster.
“And that brings us to the point of tonight’s episode of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon. Jackie Stone never apologized; she never acquiesced. Everything you saw last night on Life and Death was a lie. You, America … no, not just America. You, world,” the voice grew in timbre and pitch, “have been duped.
“Jackie and her family are being held in a prison of the network’s making. It’s up to you to free them. Stop watching the show. Stop supporting the sponsors. Free Jackie Stone.”
The screen faded to black.
Jackie leaned back in her chair trying to take it all in. She looked down and saw that the view count on YouTube was 1,340,006.
“When did this go live?” she asked without looking up.
Jason smiled. “Forty-five minutes ago.”