Kim picks up a top from the chair and holds it against your body. She crinkles her nose, then chooses another. “Hmm!” she says, nodding, looking to Kendall for confirmation, who nods approvingly, impressed.
You take the clothes into the bathroom and undress. You wash up and put on the new clothes that Kendall and Kim picked out for you. It’s just jeans and a T-shirt, but they fit, and maybe it’s just the relief of knowing you’ll never have to put on the uniform again, but you feel amazing. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror and you don’t flinch. You don’t stand there staring at yourself or anything, but you don’t immediately look away either. You throw your uniform in the trash, grab your bag from the bedroom, and start walking back to the front room. Suddenly you hear a helicopter overhead, like right overhead, impossibly close, its rotors whirring loudly.
“What’s going on?” you say, racing back to the front room.
Kim is standing to the side of a window, peering cautiously up. Kendall is hurriedly packing up the laptop in the kitchen.
Kim turns to you. “Your boyfriend is driving me up a freaking wall.”
“He’s here?”
“Well, his friends are, at least. He must have bugged your bag,” Kim says, slipping the bag off your shoulder. “Kendall?” she calls, and instantly Kendall throws a device at Kim, which Kim smoothly catches. She uses it to scan your bag, and it bleeps around one of the pockets. Kim reaches inside, finds a small metal object, and crushes it beneath her Balmain boots.
“What do we do now?” you ask.
“We run,” Kim says.
“Is that it? Should I, like, I don’t know . . . talk to my boyfriend?”
“Talk to him? About what?”
“I don’t know. . . . He’s my boyfriend—shouldn’t I try to reason with him or something?”
“Your boyfriend works for the people who made selfies illegal, and you want to try to reason with him? Tell you what: let’s run for now, and that can be a backup plan later. Kendall, are we all set?”
“All set,” Kendall says. She kicks over the kitchen table, slides back a small area rug, and lifts a hidden hinge in the floor that opens a trapdoor. Inside there’s a ladder leading down to a tunnel that runs underneath the house. Kendall shoulders her laptop bag, starts climbing down, and disappears.
“Come on,” Kim says, ushering you toward the ladder. “Stick to the plan.”
“There’s a plan?” you ask as you start descending the ladder.
“Of course there’s a plan,” she says, climbing down after you and then sliding the trapdoor shut. Just as it closes, you hear the front door being smashed in, booted footsteps tromping into the house, and Kim saying, “Overthrow the patriarchy.”
LATE THE NEXT AFTERNOON you’re sitting in a black Mercedes SUV in a parking lot a block away from the psychiatric hospital where Kylie is being kept. This SUV doesn’t have satellite radio either, but it does have an aux cord, so Kim is happy. Not that she’s playing DJ, anyway. It’s the golden hour, the sun will soon set, and the light is gentle, warm, and soft. Kim is taking full advantage of it, sitting in the backseat next to you, tilting her face so that it catches and absorbs the best light possible, taking selfie after selfie.
Kendall turns to you from the driver’s seat. “This is new; normally she only gets to take selfies when we’re dropping our sisters off at prison.”
It’s so weird to just be sitting here, doing nothing, in a car with Kendall Jenner and Kim Kardashian. Everything is weird. Not just the last twenty-four hours, the running from the government, barely escaping from the house, running through the tunnel that led out away from the house to a backup car Kendall had waiting. And now possibly being at least somehow tangentially complicit in breaking a known felon out of a psychiatric hospital. Everything about life is very weird. You tap your fingers anxiously on the door to keep from freaking out.
“You okay?” Kim asks, putting away her phone.
“So what do we have to do to break Kylie out of the hospital? What’s involved? Is this super illegal?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Kim says. “We’re just sitting here. We have some friends on the inside. Women who are sympathetic to our cause. They’ll make sure Kylie gets out safely without anyone knowing until we’re far away from here.”
“We’re part of a whole network of women who are working on this plan with us,” Kendall says. “It’s how we survive. It’s where our safe houses and vehicles come from. There’s no way we would be able to do what we do without the support of other brave women.”
Kim nods in agreement. “We’re much better organized than the government gives us credit for. It’s part of why we’re going to win, in the long run.” She checks the time on her phone and then looks out the window, scanning the quiet street. “Should be any minute now.”
You think back to the video of Kylie being sentenced. It had taken ten men to hold her down, to control her, to subdue her enough to get her out of the courtroom. She’d looked like she was in the full throes of a complete demonic possession. Like she would have torn down the entire courtroom with her bare hands if she could have.
“So, when we see Kylie,” you begin, not totally sure how to phrase your concern delicately, “is she going be, like . . .”
“Completely batshit insane?” Kendall says, laughing.
Kim joins in laughing, shaking her head no. “That whole thing about her being driven insane by not being able to take selfies anymore—that was just her cover story.” She looks at you sympathetically. “You know that can’t really happen, right?”
“We needed to get Kylie into the psych ward because there are other people in there who have information we need,” Kendall says.
“Information about what?”
“About the software the government uses to find and delete selfies. The systems they use to prevent us from expressing ourselves.”
“We’re going to take their software offline and post tons and tons of selfies,” Kim says. “Not just us. Women everywhere. All at once. Flood the internet with positive validations of our selves.”
“That’s the plan?” you say. “But what will that even accomplish? It’s not really going to change anything, is it? They’ll just get their software online again and start deleting selfies again.”
“Probably,” Kim says. “And we’ll take it offline again. But in the meantime we’re sending a clear message. Not just to the government, but to women everywhere. We’re here, we matter, and we are allowed to think that we are awesome, because we are awesome. And we are incredibly, incredibly powerful.” She watches you closely, trying to gauge your reaction. “You’re getting there. I can tell you’re almost there. You’re still thinking of selfies as inconsequential because they want you to think they’re inconsequential. But nothing could be further from the truth. Self-love is incredibly, incredibly powerful. And every selfie out there in the world sends a stronger and stronger message. Every selfie scares them more and more.”
“Oh, hey,” Kendall says abruptly. She turns the engine over and the car hums to life just as a woman in hospital scrubs and a hoodie pulled low over her face opens the passenger-side door and quickly slides into the front seat. Kendall pulls away from the curb as soon as the door shuts, easing the SUV out into the road. The car has gone eerily silent, a delicate bubble of hope encasing its passengers for the next few minutes.
“Hi, everyone,” Kylie whispers from beneath her hood.
“Hiiii,” Kendall and Kim whisper in return. They both reach out and put their hands on Kylie. Kendall reaches over and touches her leg. Kim reaches up from the backseat and places her hand on Kylie’s shoulder. They both hold their hands on their sister for a moment, silently acknowledging her presence with physical contact.
The mood in the car remains tense and quiet as Kendall executes a few more turns, and then you’re on the highway, speeding away. No one followed you, no car chase, nothing bad happened. It’s done. Kylie removes her hood, and every
one instantly relaxes.
“We did it, yay, wooo!” Kendall says, laughing.
“OMG, that suuuuuuuuuucked,” Kylie says, slumping down into her seat.
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Kim says cheerfully. “But we reeeeally appreciate you!”
Kylie lightly punches Kendall in the leg. “Next time I get to fake my death and you have to eat hospital food and have group therapy about your egotism.”
“Hmm, we’ll see,” Kendall replies.
“That sounds awful,” Kim says. “We missed you so much; are you okay?”
Kylie sighs. “Yeah, just tired, hungry. I’m so relieved you got the message my contacts sent you. I was worried you wouldn’t be able to decrypt it.”