Feral Youth

  I’m still trying to understand what happened to her. Maybe you can help me figure it out. But first, let me ask you something: Do you believe in ghosts and aliens and things that go bump in the night?

  * * *

  So how did my sister, a popular A student and a model Christian daughter, end up as a viral video? End up the sexual fantasy of millions of strangers, the soundtrack for thousands of lonely, horny losers getting off every day? Worse: How did she end up mocked, bullied, bitter, and ultimately missing?

  As with most tragedies, as for most of us here right now on this survival trip, it was all an accident. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  See, I didn’t build my YouTube following with spy cameras and voyeurism and good intentions. I made short films, videos that no one watched, that ironically were planned to have the best chance at being the next viral sensation. But that’s not how these things work. The next Internet meme is the video that no one saw coming.

  Sorry, didn’t mean that pun. Really.

  It’s the video that should never have existed, that some people later wished hadn’t been recorded. It’s the video that was never meant to be seen by anyone, let alone two-and-a-half billion someones. Certainly not by your parents. Especially not your sister, the unsuspecting subject of said video.

  It began in the middle of the night. I was up late editing a short film starring my friends Ryan and Tony. Ryan’s a girl, and Tony’s a guy. Kind of confusing, I know, but gender can be complicated, and speaking of complicated: I’ve slept with both of them. No, not at the same time. Technically, it was just blow jobs with Tony, once when we were drunk. And while you might call Ryan and me “fuck buddies,” no strings attached, the truth is . . . There are a lot of strings. Tangled, messy strings. I’m in love with that girl.

  The film is a little comedy piece about the last slice of cake in the cafeteria. In the story it turns out it’s all happening after the apocalypse, and the cake is really a brick, and Ryan’s character is dead, and Tony’s character has been trying to survive in the high school eating the remains of his friends and hallucinating the whole thing. Dark comedy, okay? It needs work.

  It was taking longer to edit than usual because I was distracted watching Ryan and Tony interact, especially during outtakes when they thought the camera was off—when I told them the camera was off. I was trying to decide if there was something going on between the two of them because they had been acting chummier than before, and awkward around me.

  The three of us have starred in all my videos, sometimes with Allie. That was kind of my thing, my signature, the way Tim Burton always works with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, and Joss Whedon is always going to find something for Amy Acker, and Christopher Guest films are all basically the same movie with the same people. It makes it a lot easier to work with your best friends. Less drama. Or so I thought.

  I’m editing and watching Ryan and Tony, and for some reason I start getting really turned on and wondering if they’re fucking now and if there’s a chance at a threesome and if they’d let me film it. Soon I’m jerking off, thinking about Ryan’s perfect little breasts and Tony’s warm mouth on my dick, and Allie—

  Whoa. Allie? And I pause the video and realize that I’m thinking about sex because I hear moaning. Not on the recording; it’s coming from the other side of my bedroom wall.

  Did I finish? What do you think?

  Another thing you need to know about my sister: she’s fifteen. She was thirteen then. And I’m not saying that’s too young to be fooling around and having a good time. I’m the last person to suggest that, believe me. But she’s my little sister, and I know her better than I know myself. Specifically, I know three important facts:

  She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. She barely has any friends, to be honest.

  She’s a virgin. She doesn’t have time to think about that kind of stuff. Sex stuff. Relationships. People.

  She doesn’t masturbate.

  Forget what I said before about how everyone masturbates. There are exceptions to every rule, at least there are when it’s a thirteen-year-old girl and she really really really believes in God the way that I believe in Sasquatch, and our parents would be murderous if they could hear the way she’s carrying on. Fortunately, they’re on the other end of the hall—Dad’s a loud snorer and Mom’s a heavy sleeper. I think that’s the only reason they’re still together because it’s the only way they perfectly complement each other.

  But my sister. My sister! She’s doing the heavy panting thing and the whimpering and the grunting and holy shit what the fuck, it’s my sister. I think maybe she’s watching porn—that would be a first too, and almost as shocking—but no, I’m pretty sure it’s all her.

  And I can’t help but be weirded out and a little turned on, and I don’t know what’s going on, so I do what I always do when I face something unbelievable: I start recording. My expensive, awesome microphone gets the whole thing while I sit there listening for ten minutes, completely conflicted over what my body is doing and my brain is telling me and wondering whether I should storm over and . . . do what?

  Here’s another weird thing I noticed that I didn’t think much of at the time: when she was done, she just . . . stopped. Like someone flipping a light switch. I crept to her room and listened at the door, but I could hear her snoring lightly; she gets that from Dad. No voices from her room, and only one person breathing as far as I could tell. She was alone.

  The next morning her alarm went off seven times before I heard her get up and go to the shower. When she came down to breakfast, she dragged herself to the table, like her limbs were weighed down. She slumped into her usual chair across from me and splashed milk into a bowl of cereal. I kept watching her until she looked up.

  “What?” she said, dribbling milk down her chin.

  “Sleep okay?” I asked.

  “I guess.”

  “Any strange dreams?” I asked.

  “Not that I remember.” She put down her spoon. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I said hurriedly as Mom entered the kitchen. “Probably nothing.”

  * * *

  “That’s not nothing,” Ryan said. She pulled my earbuds from her ears and fanned her face exaggeratedly. “Can I have a copy of this?”

  “Ryan!” I said. “It’s Allie.” I shoved my iPod back into my pocket, wondering if I’d made a mistake playing it for her. But I needed to share it with someone and figure out what to do.

  “Uh-huh. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that? She’s my sister.”

  “I know, but . . .” She shrugged. “She’s cute. I wouldn’t blame you for noticing, as long as that’s all you do.”

  “Ew. You must have me confused with Tony,” I said.

  Ryan glanced up and down the hallway. “Have you seen him today?”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “You going to play that for him too?”

  “Any reason I shouldn’t?”

  “No, I just want to see the look on his face when you do.”

  We caught up with Tony at lunch. His eyes widened when I played the file for him.

  “This is Allie?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Damn, girl,” he said. “She must have been in a good mood this morning.”

  “She was exhausted,” I said.

  “I guess she would be,” Tony said.

  “So what do we do about it?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s her business,” Ryan said.

  “You know what you have to do, bro,” Tony said. “Hide a camera in her room. Find out if she’s sneaking someone in at night or going it alone.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Ryan said. “Aside from the fact that it’s unethical to record someone without their knowledge, it’s almost certainly illegal. Definitely illegal since she’s a minor.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And she’s my sister.”

  Tony snorte
d. “I’ve seen you check Allie out.”

  “I have not!” I glared at Ryan. “Did you get him to say that?”

  She held up her hands and shook her head.

  “Relax, Day. No judgment. She’s hot,” Tony said. “If she were my sister—”

  “She’s thirteen,” Ryan said. “Here’s an idea. Before you lie and break the law, how about you try talking to her?”

  “That’s gonna be an awkward conversation,” I said.

  “Don’t be a coward, Day. Be a good big brother.”

  You know in cartoons, when someone has a crisis of conscience and a little devil shows up on their shoulder to tell them the naughty thing to do? That’s Tony. The angel on my other shoulder, always guiding me true? That’s Ryan.

  I was worried something was going on with them and I would either be left out or lose one of them as a friend. Devil or angel, I needed both of them, or who knew what kind of a mess I would get myself in?

  * * *

  There are a few stages we go through when we hear something we don’t want to be true. You’re probably experiencing them right now.

  Stage one: shock and disbelief. When I confronted Allie in her room after school, it took me a while to get around to what I wanted to say. But after small talk about her school project and her next swim meet, after trying to talk around the question by asking her if she was interested in anyone at school—which got me the standard-issue thirteen-year-old’s eye roll—I finally came out with it.

  “Did you have a, um, friend over last night?” I asked.

  “What?” Allie asked. She was concentrating on building a collage on poster board for her social studies class. She had cut images out of magazines in the shapes of each of the fifty states and was building a map of celebrity faces and ads for expensive cars, gizmos, and gadgets. One of them caught my eye: a fancy, bullet-shaped vibrator.

  “Whoa, is that . . . ?” I pointed.

  “Oh!” It took Allie a moment to understand what she was looking at, bless her pure, innocent heart. Then she grabbed it, her face blushing. She turned it over to hide it, and Kim Kardashian stared up at us.

  “I didn’t notice that on the other side of the page!” she said. “I just took a bunch of old magazines and newspapers from the school’s art supply room.”

  “It was probably just a mistake,” I said, unsure whether I was referring to the magazine scrap or what I’d heard last night. That kind of thing could cause a scandal at St. Elijah’s Preparatory School, the kind of thing that could get someone expelled or fired.

  “David, I have homework.” Allie blew her bangs away from her eyes in frustration. “So much homework.” Her voice was high, the way it sounded when school was getting to be too much. Maybe she’d finally found a healthy way to relax from all that stress. Better than taking drugs, right? This really wasn’t any of my business, but I needed to know she was safe, and that included not letting our parents find out about whatever this was.

  “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Last night I heard, um, sounds coming from your room. Kind of, um, sexual sounds?”

  You know me, I’m not too shy to say whatever comes to mind, no matter how dirty or disgusting it might be. But not with her. Not with Allie. And maybe that was the problem. I didn’t want to have this conversation with her.

  “You’re wrong,” she said.

  “Nope. Like, maybe you were dreaming?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe you were. Why would you think I . . . ? How could you . . .”

  I held up a hand to stop her. “Hold on, Allie. First of all, sex isn’t something to be embarrassed about.”

  “I know, it’s a ‘beautiful thing that two people do when they’re in love. And very married.’ Direct quote there from Mom when she gave me ‘the Talk.’ ”

  “I got the same thing from Dad, except he phrased it as a beautiful thing I was absolutely forbidden to do if I want to continue being his son. But it’s almost completely wrong. Sex is kind of ugly and messy and gross, if you want to be honest, but it’s worth it because it feels so good! And it can kind of be beautiful if you’re with the right person, and definitely if they are particularly beautiful. Just being honest here. Also, love is entirely optional, and it’s more accurate to say ‘two or more people,’ and maybe some toys.”

  Allie looked stricken.

  “Which is to say, I know what sex sounds like, and I heard it coming from this room.”

  “No,” she said. “Impossible. You’d think I would be the first to know about something like that.” Her cheeks flushed.

  “I have, um, proof.”

  Stage two: denial.

  “That isn’t me,” Allie said when I played the file—low, so our parents wouldn’t hear it. “You faked this.”

  “That’d be the first time a guy faked a girl’s orgasm,” I said. “Why would I do that, anyway?”

  “You make stuff up all the time to get people to click on your videos.”

  “Allie,”  I said.

  “I didn’t mean that.” She covered her face. Then she covered her ears while the moaning went on and on and on. “Turn it off! Please!”

  Stage three: anger.

  “You pervert!” she shouted. “You thought it was me, and you started recording?”

  “Shhh! I only recorded it because I couldn’t believe it. And you’re lucky Mom and Dad didn’t hear you too.”

  “And they never will. Delete it,” she said.

  “Sure. Whatever you want.” I deleted it.

  “And the backup?” she said.

  “Okay. Come watch me do it if you want.”

  She followed me into my room and watched over my shoulder as I pulled up the file on my computer, deleted it, then emptied the trash. As far as I was concerned, I hoped that would be the end of it. If she was lying about it—because she was embarrassed or whatever—then she would try to be quieter next time so she wouldn’t get caught.

  Allie sighed with relief after I deleted the audio file. A moment later she said in a low voice, “You really heard that last night?”

  “Allie, I have no reason to lie about something like this.”

  She nodded. “If you hear it again, come wake me,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Promise me, okay?” Her voice shook.

  Stage four: fear.

  “I promise,” I said.

  Lucinda threw a rock at David that hit him in the arm. “I told you what would happen if it was a sex story.” She looked at Tino. “Give me the knife.”

  “That’s really messed up,” Cody said. “She was your sister.”

  David rubbed his arm where he’d been hit. That rock was definitely going to leave a bruise. “It wasn’t like that!”

  Sunday and Georgia had returned while David was telling his story, and they’d sat with Cody, still whispering to each other. I kind of wished I’d been able to hear what they’d talked about in the woods.

  “Anyway,” David said, “you didn’t let me finish.”

  Jaila motioned at Tino, who’d fallen asleep and was snoring on top of his sleeping bag. “Yeah, I think we’ve all heard enough. We should get some sleep.”

  As we each laid out our sleeping bags, Jenna and Lucinda kept forming a wall that forced David to lay out his pack away from the rest of us. Neither said anything, but they made it clear he wasn’t welcome near the fire.

  When we’d all settled in, Cody asked, “Do you think we’ll make it back to camp on time?”

  No one answered. The Bend might have been built on a philosophy of teamwork and strength through unity, but we were no team, and we definitely weren’t unified. If I had to guess, I’d have wagered most of us were wondering if we’d manage to make it back to camp at all.

  DAY 2

  BREAKFAST WAS A MEAL of grouseberries that Jaila assured us definitely weren’t poisonous, though we were each so hungry that I doubt it would have mattered if they were. Striking camp was a quiet affair. T
ino and Lucinda gave each other a wide berth, and Cody clung to Georgia, except when she went off to take care of business. No one wanted much to do with David, and he wandered around with a hangdog expression on his face that might have earned him sympathy if he hadn’t started telling us a story about how he recorded his sister doing something no guy is supposed to want his sister doing.

  David hadn’t actually slept much, which I knew because I’d followed him when he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to walk into the woods alone. I thought at first that he was going to take a leak, but he wandered a good ways off and then stood by a tree talking to himself for a while. He kept saying how he knew they were there and it was okay if they took him too. Then he cried for a while before finally returning to camp. I don’t think he noticed me watching.

  “Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” I overheard Jackie asking Jaila when I came back from taking care of my own business.

  Jaila shrugged. “Think so, but it’s hard to be sure. Doug got me all turned around driving out here. I’m pretty sure the Bend is northeast, but we could walk right past it and never know, so . . .”

  I wasn’t the only one eavesdropping. “You don’t know where we’re going?” Lucinda came out from behind a tree, speaking loudly enough for the others to overhear.

  Tino, who was sitting with his back to a tree and had looked like he was trying to catch a few more minutes of sleep, opened his eyes. “That fucking figures. I knew we shouldn’t have listened to you.”

  Jackie frowned at Lucinda and clenched her fists. “Is that what she said? Maybe you need to clean your ears out and listen better.”

  “Can we not do this so early?” Georgia asked.

  “No,” Tino said, rising to his feet. “I want to know if we’re lost or what.”