Michael Molitch-Hou
The Network
Ch. 4: The Network
Septic dreams invited Harvey into the ethereal works beneath her conscious mind. There was a jail cell. Not like you’d see in a federal penitentiary, but a small-town sheriff’s department. The deputy guided her into the cell without clarifying what her offense was. At the center of the square slab of concrete was an interdimensional whirlpool, a churning chasm. Harvey bent over to look into the tumult and felt herself being sucked into something with no space or time. The walls around her began to pulse. The significance of the gateway began to dawn when she suddenly woke up.
Wednesday was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it opened with a visit to Harvey’s academic counselor, which was never fun. On the other hand, it closed with Zoology, during which she would get to see Kinzly.
Harvey wondered if students in public school got this sort of one-on-one attention or if kids at the Great Schools were just lucky. Her advisor was the wavy white-haired, jaundiced Dr. Brett Dinghy, who received a doctorate in counseling from Northwestern University, according to the paper hanging behind his head—unless it was forged or something.
“And how are the extracurriculars?” Dr. Dinghy asked, deep-set eyes expressing empathy above a hooked nose and thin lips. “The Haven Maven gig going well?”
“Yeah, sure,” Harvey said with a smile, feigning optimism and glancing at Dinghy’s face and then looking off somewhere at his bookshelf.
“That sounded like a bit of hesitation. Anything you want to talk about?”
“Nope. All good, Brett.”
“Well, you know you can talk to me about these things, right? I mean, there is student-advisor confidentiality in here and, anyway, if you’ve got any issues, I’d really like to know about them so that we can help resolve them. Even if it means getting you out of the paper and into something you’d enjoy more. Personally, I’d recommend being an assistant in my psychology lab, but I’m obviously biased. Whatever it is, though, know that I can pull those kinds of strings.”
“Right, I know. Nothing happening that I want to talk about right now, but if something does, I’ll let you know, okay?”
That seemed to satisfy Dinghy for the moment, as his look shifted from one of calculated concern to carefree relief.
“What about friends?”
“Yep. I’ve got a couple,” which wasn’t a flat-out lie, but more of an exaggeration.
“Well, that’s great. I know that transfer students can have a hard time, it being their first time away from home and all,” he paused, hoping for a reaction. “And, well, that’s great. Again, if anything comes up, just let me know!”
“Will do, Brett,” Harvey said ineptly.
“Ok, well I’ll see you next week! Thanks, Harvey!”
***
After the meeting, she had a free period during which she headed straight for the library in the pouring rain.
Digging through the periodical section on the second floor of the facility, Harvey wasn’t sure what she was looking for exactly. She thought maybe the Haven Maven might have recorded some interesting events during the busy semester Hack Klein described, leading up to the assassination.
As luck or fate or just the unfolding of events through time and space would have it: there was a police blotter with some strange information. After poring through the January and February archives from 2024 for what must have been at least a couple of hours, Harvey found a surprising article from the February 15th issue of 2024.
The story read:
PIPE BOMB SEIZED
Probe of John Judge Hall Case Continues
A pipe bomb was seized Wednesday by Office of Discipline officers in a student’s room in the John Judge Hall dormitory building.
The Office of Discipline had, according to the story, seized the pipe bomb as part of an investigation of a “planned attack on a school within the Great Schools Association,” which was obviously a violation of school code, and probably state and national law. It struck Harvey as odd that the report would leave out such details as which school had been targeted. There was also no reference to any disciplinary action or the involvement of local authorities.
Harvey looked for any follow-up reporting on the topic. There was another story in the following day’s paper, dated February 16, 2024. It read:
PIPE BOMB DORM LOANED TO NEWLY-ARRIVED TRANSFER STUDENT
Owner’s Girlfriend Says He Did Evader Student Favor
The girlfriend of the student resident of a dorm room in John Judge Hall where a pipe bomb was seized said Thursday that the room was loaned to a newly-arrived Evader Academy transfer student three weeks ago. Ms. Julia McLaney said that neither she nor her boyfriend, William Jeps—who volunteers for Moorehaven’s Equine Society—had knowledge that the munitions were stored at the dorm until officers of the Office of Discipline questioned her boyfriend Wednesday before making the seizure. She said that the place was loaned to an Evader student they knew only as “Flip Skipply” as a favor to friends of theirs at Evader. Jeps had trained horses at Evader but came to Moorehaven in 2023 “because Castaneda made things impossible there.”
Harvey recalled the videos with Lanning, first building a bomb and the second discussing Evader’s student union group. She then made the link with Klein’s mention of the fact that some random students and adults had been around Lanning’s Crisis Management office.
“And what about Twill?” she thought. Were those flyers for other Great Schools? Was he handing out Fair Play for Launderie Academy pamphlets? Were they Fair Play for the Camen School pamphlets? No, they were Fair Play for Evader Academy pamphlets.
She would have to chew on that as she chewed on some food. Harvey took pictures of the newspaper articles with her phone and headed off for a respite at the cafeteria.
***
After lunch, there was Zoology, which meant that Harvey would get to see Kinzly and a boy named Panda Shepherd, who looked nothing like his name in that he was a relatively small human and could hardly get his shit together, let alone corral an embarrassment of pandas. Together, the three were lab partners.
The class was taught by the tall and gaunt expert German zoologist, Eva Koenig, whose stern demeanor only gave way to mild amusement when the class was tearing apart the tendons of frogs and fetal pigs.
While Koenig stood at the front of the class during lecture, the three would quietly pass written messages back and forth, doodling in each other’s notebooks about which video game characters were gay or trans. Of course, Harvey wasn’t really out, but she’d allowed Kinzly to tell Panda in confidence. Harvey also didn’t play video games, so it was mostly the other two making all the jokes.
Kinzly quickly scribbled a picture of an old Nintendo character wearing the iconic red and gold armor for which it was known and holding a red helmet with green visor, revealing a female head with a mane of flowing brown hair. A speech bubble read, “Samus is a beautiful woman with a big dick!” The three students chuckled as they slid the paper back and forth.
What happened next was a real step forward in Harvey’s social life: an invitation to hang out. As they exited Zoology, Kinzly asked Harvey and Panda if they wanted to come to their dorm after class that afternoon and chill.
Harvey felt a mixture of anxious gastric juices with butterflies. Imagine a beautiful, scenic garden courtyard populated by Monarchs and moths at the center of a nuclear waste disposal site.
Chilling consisted of listening to music and playing video games, it turned out. The three teens sat on Kinzly’s twin bed as though it were a couch, leaning their backs against the wall, with Kinzly in the middle, as they talked over bumping music.
Apparently one genre of trendy music was something called “ecocidal pop,” which was a lo-fi interpretation of pop music from the early 2000s and 2010s, but with lyrics about the planet’s ecological collapse. Synthesized sounds passed through many filters and popped, buzzed and woo’ed as a tinny fem voice sang:
Everything is a symbol of death
And I
Don’t think I can handle it
And if I
See one more brand new car
I’m gonna shoot
And take everything down with you
“What’s this band called?” Harvey asked with each new tune.
“A Million Dead Species of Bugs,” Kinzly replied, in this instance.
“I like it,” Harvey wavered. The lyrics were obviously very depressing, but the melody was actually palatable enough for Harvey to even comprehend it. She couldn’t say the same for everything else Kinzly played.
For instance, there was an emerging genre of hip hop with crunchy horns and off-beat guitar riffs Harvey was told was rap-ska fusion. Then, there were the oldies Kinzly was enamored with, Nu-Metal bands like Slipknot and Linkin Park. All of this was too dissonant for Harvey to really even wrap her head around.
Nevertheless, she was excited to just be socializing. “They have the production quality of early SoundCloud rap,” Panda said, “except with the earnestness and optimism of third wave ska.”
“Right!” Kinzly said. “And they look crazy as fuck.” They pulled up an image of a mixed-race kid who couldn’t be more than sixteen with a full face tattoo and rainbow mohawk.
“Yikes,” Harvey said.
“I know,” Kinzly said. “I don’t think I could pull off a face tat like that.”
“I would,” Panda inserted. “I just don’t know what I could possibly like enough to wear across my entire head for the rest of my life like that.”
Just then, some arena rock-style guitar started blaring before a goofy, auto-tuned voice started to sing-speak. “Oh my god,” Kinzly said, clutching their chest. “I love Lil Wayne. Rebirth is like my favorite album.”
Harvey picked up that this was another old song. Again, not exactly her cup of tea. She had a hard time contributing to the conversation, but was learning a lot either way.
***
By the time she left Kinzly’s dorm that evening, Panda had already gone and it was just the two of them. The toxic waste had been launched into the sun, leaving only the quiet courtyard of butterflies.
Without Panda, it was a little easier to get a word in and Harvey didn’t feel as intimidated. She found that her new friend was actually pretty easy to talk to and didn’t seem judgmental at all, which was a refreshing change of pace from her middle school.
“Are you on ZigZag?” Kinzly asked.
“Nah,” Harvey answered. “I try not to use social media too much because I don’t want their algorithms doing a number on my subconscious.”
“Definitely,” Kinzly concurred. “Me too. My dad does experiments with that stuff and says it’s awful for you, but I got to use ZigZag and Trop because that’s where all the good music is. How do you think I found out about Lil Danni Matich?” Kinzly then broke into a brief robotic dance, a personal rendition of the moves they’d watched earlier on ZigZag.
Harvey laughed, “Yeah. I don’t think I’d even know where to start with those.”
“Okay, well just add me on whatever you got: @abrownkinzkid,” they wrote on Harvey’s arm in pen.
Stepping out of their dorm, she turned to say goodbye, expecting an awkward wave and then quiet stroll back to her own room. Instead, she was met with a warm hug and a, “This was fun! Let’s do this again!”