THE APP

J. Elliott

        I love Keri. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve been bffs since forever; we know each other’s secrets and can tell each other anything and everything. She’s cute and perky and bubbly and most people adore her—especially parents—but between you and me, she can be a bit exhausting. Always has been, but she’s a good friend. And I feel guilty as hell to say this, but recently, I feel like we’ve grown apart or I’ve outgrown her.

Overbearing. Intrusive. Kinda manic. She can be so embarrassing in public. We’ll be eating at the food court, and she’ll be talking loudly about something like her period cramps or her dog puking, and even though it’s always loud in the food court, people will turn and stare and look embarrassed for me.

She talks with her hands, too, which means that they’re always flapping around and on more occasions than I can count, she’s swatted her drink or my drink or a fork and it goes flying—

And God! It’s really not safe to be a passenger if she’s driving. In fact, it was a major miracle that she passed her driving test the second time. The first time, she had to drive with a grumpy old man who probably failed her on everything even before she bumped up over the curb. She got lucky the second time! She got a woman who couldn’t miss her soaps. “Nuh-uh, never miss my soaps!” Keri mimicked, swishing her index finger sideways.

This meant that while Keri was driving around town, her passenger, her test master,  was glued to a miniature television, only looking up and paying a modicum of attention at the commercial breaks.

Keri’ll just blab-blab-blabber away like she’s jacked on espresso while she’s punching radio buttons or playing with the visor. Her hands flutter around the steering wheel like seagulls over a fishing boat—hovering but not quite touching down, you know?

And it’s not that I mind if she borrows my clothes, but it’s the way she does it. She just starts pawing through my closet or my drawers as if she’s in The Gap. “Oh, this is fun, you don’t mind if I wear it tomorrow, do you?” And before I can say anything, she’s nodded and is tucking it in her hobo bag as if I’d said, “Oh, please, help yourself.”

If it weren’t for that we’ve been friends for so long…it was so much better when we were coloring together or playing with dolls, but now that we’re older…I love her but, dang. Sometimes she gets on my last nerve.

No surprise that when I got my new phone, she pounced on it like a kitten on a jingly ball and was soon fiddling with it.

“Oh, let’s add some cool apps,” she said, fingers flying.

“But I don’t really—”

“THIS one. OMG. This is so fun! It’s a horoscope app. You’ll freak.”

“I don’t really read horro—”

“You hold up the phone to someone so it can capture their face. It will put cartoon features on the person, like, my little sister got kitten ears or a unicorn horn and an aura of rainbows while my dad got a big fat mustache and a cigar—he looked like the Monopoly dude. It’s so fun. Here we go…”

“I don’t really c—”

“Here! Aim it at me and see what happens. Come on. Try it, Becks! It’s so fun. I bet I get a witch with a green face and a big nose and a broom or, Oh my God, that purple dinosaur, what was his name?”

She thrust the phone at me. It was in photo mode with a dotted square focus box. I settled the box around her shoulders. There was a tiny click sound as the box solidified. Then a burst of animated stars erupted from her chin with a magic chime sound effect. Tiddle-liddle-LING!

“What is it? What is it?” she asked, bouncing.

Keri sprouted cartoon hummingbird wings and a beak. The wings blurred behind her twitching left and right. Her cartoon face flipped left and right. Her eyes remained her true eyes, but she had a thin beaky three-dimensional nose that threatened to poke me.

“Oh!” I reacted, pushing the phone farther away from me.

“What? What?”

“You’re a hummingbird with wings and a long beak.”

 “A hummingbird?” she asked, sounding deflated.

“Yup. Listen, is this a free app, I hope, or did you—”

“Huh. Oh, well. Let me try it on you!” She grabbed the phone away and aimed it at me.

 “—buy it?”

Tiddle-liddle-LING!

“Oh, that’s so perfect!” she said, laughing in a full guffaw, slapping the phone down on her thigh before holding it up again. “You’re a librarian with nerdy glasses holding a stack of books!”

Hilarious. “Look, um, if we’re going to the movies, we need to get going.”

“So funny! Let’s see what it says about you. See, first you get the image, then you get a bit about your personality, then you get your fortune.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Here we go. It says you are bookish and introverted, a planner, you are neat and organized in most aspects of your life…mature, but lack confidence in love matters—”

“We really need to go—”

“…need to be more open to new experiences and trust—”

“I’ll drive,” I said, hitching my purse over my shoulder.

“Wait…here’s the last bit, your fortune: You must open your heart to access the doors to success and happiness. BUT be cautious. Don’t go into a new situation blind. Trust your guts.”

“Uh-huh.” I said, grabbing my phone back and pushing the off button. “Let’s go.”

It’s quite possible that I owe my life to Keri and that damn app. I’d forgotten all about it, to be honest. I’m not like most people. I don’t take pleasure in games or apps or quizzes that tell you your personality traits. I don’t need to find out which flavor ice cream I am, or which wild animal is my totem, or which hairstyle I most resemble today.

Recently, I’d been begging off meeting up with Keri. We were both busy with college and part-time jobs, so I didn’t think she realized the truth: I was inching away. It’s not like we had a big fight or anything had changed. Well, maybe I was changing…

Though not tech-dependent usually, I did sign up for an online dating group. I know, I hear you, what was I thinking?

At first, it was out of curiosity to discover if my crush, Davis Gissing, had a profile, if he had one out there. I’d heard he’d recently broken up with his girlfriend, my former classmate, Karen. I was curious about his profile. What were his likes and dislikes?

Well, no such luck. He hadn’t joined. It had been a longshot.

But then there was this bad boy, Rock Grayman. Yeah, I know, I wondered too, was that even his real name? In his profile pictures, he wore a blue and black checked flannel shirt with emerald-green lines running through it, that set off his black hair and made his brilliant-green eyes just jump out of the picture.

Hobbies: hiking, trailblazing, woodworking.

There was nothing listed where more comments would go, you know, that corny stuff about romantic evenings and walking beaches or whatever. Just a picture of him holding up a rough-cut wooden heart. The wood was possibly mahogany or cherry—a natural red.

Cheesy, right? Yeah, well, have you ever seen The Breakfast Club? Rock had that John Bender look about him. Edgy. Haunted. Vulnerable. Challenging. It was as if holding the heart like that…his hard heart was there for the taking by the right one.

Silly, right? I know, I know, I see it now.

How many times did I close out but come back to that photo?

I know, I’m the poster girl for Smart Girls Who Make Really Dumbass Decisions.

I caved. We were matched. And the next thing I knew, we were texting and deciding on where to meet up.

When he picked a retro diner, and I mean a real metal 50’s style boxy diner, I was impressed. Cool choice. Casual, quirky, creative. It was one town over. No way was I going to get in a car with a stranger. I insisted we meet there. I wanted to be able to leave on my own, too, if things went sideways.

He had offered to pick me up, making it sound all chivalrous…and that should have been a red flag. No, okay, let’s be honest, it was a red flag, the first of several that I drove past heading full tilt to a full on, blazing, dumpster fire.

The diner was moderately busy, not packed.

Standing on the faded welcome mat just inside, my feet partially covering the question mark in the logo

Y’un to?

Established 1968.

Odd name perhaps, it refers to redneck verbiage:

“Didjeet yet?” [Did you eat yet?]

“Naw” [No.]

“Y’un to?” [Do you want to?]

I looked around for the familiar black hair. All of a sudden there was a voice in my ear and the feeling of a large presence just behind me, closer than my own shadow, “Becky?”

I felt a large hand on my shoulder and whirled around.

Okay, first impressions:

1) He was taller than I imagined. Looming. Slightly stooped posture.

2) Fabulous hair, just like in his photos. Wow.

3) He smelled…good…in a woodshop varnish kind of way.

4) His hand on my shoulder was powerful…like a bear paw.

5) His smile was…with his teeth, but not his eyes. His teeth were straight but not sparkly white, they were smoker’s teeth—yellow—gray and strangely worn down like an old dog’s teeth. Eww…

6) Behind a veneer of peppermint breath was a yeasty beer odor.

7) His nose. I hadn’t noticed it in his photos, but his nose was peculiar. Angular and predatory, making me think of a coyote sniffing the wind for the scent of fresh blood. This will sound absurd, but his nostrils seemed over large. He was otherwise quite handsome, but that nose…

And even as I wanted to pull away from him, to distance myself, his hand remained on my shoulder.

A waitress appeared clutching large menus to her chest. “Two?”

“Yes,” he said.

She smiled and turned to lead us to a booth. He guided me ahead of him.

I sat down with a thud. The old cushion was missing most of its support; I landed hard on what was left of its padding. “Oh, geez!” I said, with a nervous laugh. I set my phone and my keys on the table and pushed them to the side towards the salt and pepper shakers.

“You look younger than your pictures…are you really twenty?” he asked, staring.

“Almost. My birthday is next month.”

“You live with your mother?”

Wow. I thought this was a date not a police interrogation.

“Uh, yeah.” I looked around. “This place is so cute. Have you eaten here before?” I asked, glancing down at the menu.

Burgers, liver and onions, country fried steak, pot pie…

“No.”

“Oh.” I looked up surprised. He wasn’t looking at the menu, he was staring at me. “So, what made you pick it?”

He cocked his head a little and shrugged his shoulder in slow motion. 

What is that? You don’t know why you picked it or you won’t say?

I felt a chill on the back of my neck.

I will say here that yes, I’ve read some Edgar Allan Poe, and I felt a sudden sympatico with his stories involving the obsession with certain body parts—the beating heart, Berenice’s teeth… I found myself fixating on his nostrils and their twitching movements.

“You’re very pretty.”

“Uh, thanks.” I said, running a hand through my hair as the hairs on my arms rose.

Keep it simple, Becks. Order something like a burger and leave as soon as possible. You’re safe. Plenty of people around…

The waitress came back. “What’ll you have to drink?”

“What kind of beer do you have?” he asked.

“We don’t have a liquor license.” She pointed to the bottom of the menu. “We’ve got soda, lemonade, coffee…”

“No beer, eh?”

She shook her head.

“Coffee then. Black,” he grunted.

“Lemonade for me,” I said.

“And are you ready to order or do you need a min—?”

Rock cut her off. “Steak and fries. Rare. Bloody rare.”

He turned his hungry gaze from the waitress to me. I swear his nostrils flared.

God, get me out of here. Beer? Bloody rare?

I had intended to order the burger with blue cheese but somehow couldn’t get the words “black and blue burger” to form properly. I swallowed and, feeling a bit panicky, blurted my second choice, “fish and chips”.

“Want tartar sauce?”

No, I want to get the hell out of here, I wanted to say. “No, thanks.”

“Got it.” She ripped the ticket from her book and headed to the order window.

He was still staring. And there were tiny lines at the creases of his eyes. I blurted, “So, uh, are you really twenty-one like you said on your profile?”

“Of course.”

The hell you are.

“You said you liked woodwork. Is that a job or a hobby? What kind of stuff do you make?”

He took a deep breath, puffing out his broad chest. “Oh, all kinds of things. Tables. Chairs. Bookshelves. Lamps. Whatever.” He pressed his hands into the tabletop and slid them slowly back towards his lap. The gesture seemed proud, yet at the same time, he didn’t care to elaborate. But just as I was about to ask another question, he added, “I’d like to show you sometime.” He finished with another hideous nostril flare. And he was staring again.

My eyes darted to my phone. I felt a wild urge to call for help. To talk to someone safe. Someone to tell me that my imagination was running away with me and all would be fine.

And somehow that’s the moment that the crazy idea came to me. The oracle app.

I reached for my phone and hunted for the app.

“Hee-hee,” I said, trying to sound light and bubbly, “there’s this app my friend put on my phone… it, um, does this oracle thing, tells your fortune… let’s see what yours is.”

He raised an eyebrow in disgust as if to say, “You aren’t taking my picture, are you?”

“No, it’s just the app…facial recognition.”

His eyebrows seemed to get hairier as he scowled. “No pictures. I’m very private.”

“Yeah, no. Fine. No pictures.”

Whatever, dude. You’re in a dating group.

The app opened. There was the dotted box. I settled it over his shoulders.

Tiddle-liddle-LING!

Let me say now that I expected something cutesy and stupid. I hoped it would be an ice-breaker, a distraction, a talking platform…I did not expect devil horns, lascivious eyebrows and a three-pronged fork. And I certainly didn’t expect the wicked grin as he became aware of what I was seeing. He knew. He had to. His evil grin was just too much.

He asked in a mocking tone, “Well? What does it say?”

I felt faint. Paralyzed. My breath caught as I watched the devil horns waggle comically over his head. The fork wiggled up and down. A long red tongue rolled out, its sharp tip crooking like a finger.

“What did I get? Ballerina? Pirate?”

“N-no. Um…”

The personality screen popped up.

Sociopath with a criminal history. Most likely to have a dungeon in your basement. You are a cold-hearted predator…

“Well, what?” he said, grabbing the phone from me.

I covered my mouth with my hands. I didn’t know what to do. Scream? Try to run? Keep calm and pretend it was all a joke? All I wanted to do was melt into the booth cushions and disappear.

His expression quickly changed to intrigued.

“Hmm. Sociopath, eh? That’s hilarious!” He threw his head back and laughed heartily.

Heads turned. 

Oh God, what’s he going to do, stab me to death right here with a dull knife?

“And here we go,” said the waitress, arriving with our plates. “Blood red rare…” she said, her upper lip slightly curdled in distaste. She plunked his plate down as he moved out of the way, still clutching my phone.

“And fish and chips for you, hon.” She caught my eye, widening hers as if to signal me. She rolled them to his plate.

I gave her a helpless look.

“You okay, hon? You look a little…peaky.”

I wanted to grab her arm and hold her tight. Beg her to stay close and not leave me here alone with him.

Such uncanny timing!

Just then, a waiter behind the counter picked up a television remote. He aimed it at a small television screen suspended over a storage closet. The volume grew louder. “…new evidence has come to light…a witness has described seeing a large man pushing the victim towards a car…if you have seen this man shown here in the police sketch, he is six foot four, muscular, age between twenty-five and thirty, with dark hair, last seen driving a white two-door pickup truck missing the passenger door side mirror…”

My eyes naturally swiveled to the window.

“I’m just going to use the rest room,” Rock said, maneuvering out of the booth.

“My phone!” I blurted.

He looked down to his hand as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. He let it fall to the table as he sauntered away.

I was about to grab it, had reached out my hand—almost grasped it, when something inside me said “fingerprints!” and I stopped myself. I reached for the napkin dispenser but rapid movement in the parking lot caught my attention. Rock was rushing towards a two-door white pickup.

“Call 911!” I yelled, getting to my feet.. “Someone call 911! It’s him!” I pointed out the window then to the television. “He was just here!”

Several people pulled out their phones. The waitress came over and put a comforting hand on my arm. “That was him? The wanted guy? You know, there was something about him that just gave me the creeps. That raw steak for one.” She pointed and shuddered. “Yuck.”  

I looked down at the table, first at the steak, then to at my phone. The app was still on the third phase of the oracle. “You will likely spend significant time in the confines of a penal system or a psychiatric facility.”

“My lord,” the waitress was saying, hugging herself. “I can’t believe he was right here…” She regarded the bloody meat on the plate again with a shudder. “What he did to all those poor women…I know it’s just a steak, but I don’t even want to touch that plate. I just can’t right now.”

Meanwhile, with shaking hands, I carefully swaddled the phone in napkins and waited for the police.

They caught him later that evening. Turned out he had a bunch of aliases, so my very first instinct about Rock Grayman was right.

Now, here comes the very bizarre part of the story: I had to tell Keri, right? I mean, it was because of her and that app that the killer got spooked and I didn’t become his next victim, right? Only, when I told her, she had no idea what I was talking about.

“The app you put on my phone.”

“What app?”

“This one,” I said, pulling out my phone.

I searched. And searched. And searched. “You know, oh, come on, where’d it go? That oracle app you put on my phone.”

She looked at me like I was crazy.

“Oh, come on, you remember. You were a hummingbird, and I was a librarian…”

“I was a what? A hummingbird? Yeah, r-i-ight.”

“Your little sister got kitten ears?”

“Well, she’s got all kinds of headbands…”

“No! No! On the app! You said she got kitten ears on the app.”

She stared at me blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

Of course, I hunted and hunted and hunted on the internet to find the app that she didn’t remember and that had magically disappeared from my phone.

I never found anything close to the three-part oracle I’d seen.