IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You (6 page)

You have a million follow-up questions and you’re having trouble picking just one.

“So where are we going?” you ask.

Kim turns toward you and waggles her eyebrows. “Well, Miss File Decrypter, that’s what you’re going to tell us.”

YOU WAKE UP
the next morning, calmly, easily. You are in a small twin bed in a room that’s otherwise empty. The shades are drawn, but you can tell from the color of the light that it’s late morning.

There are no other noises in the house, and for a brief moment you panic that you’ve been left here. That Kim and Kendall have ditched you in this random house in the middle of nowhere. They’ve realized that you are boring and dumb and useless and you’re on your own, forever. But then you hear voices, kitchen noises, Kendall yelling at Kim about something, and you relax.

You push back the covers and see you’re still in your Best Buy uniform. Gross. And you don’t even really want to know about your hair situation. You quietly wander out of the bedroom and down the hall toward the kitchen. You smell something heavy and oppressive. Is it gunpowder? Is gunpowder even still a thing people use? The smell is burny and metallic, anyway.

You arrive at the kitchen/eating area and find Kendall and Kim hunched over a laptop. You watch them for a moment. It’s so weird to see them together, just being themselves. They’re looking at something on the screen, and you can’t hear what they’re saying, but there’s a casual gracefulness to their interaction. A comfort. Kendall says something and Kim points to something on the screen, and then Kim starts to say something and Kendall is already tapping away, bringing up another screen, and Kim’s saying something else.

Kim looks up, her eyes instantly finding yours. “Hey, you. Good morning,” she says, smiling.

“Is everything okay?” you ask. “I smelled something burning.”

“FINE. OKAY, I AM NOT THE BEST COOK!” Kim says in mock outrage.

Oops. Whatever you smelled, it definitely had not occurred to you that it might be food.

“Sorry!” you say.

Kendall waves your concern away as unnecessary. “Kim has other skills. Like eating.”

“I heard that!” Kim says. “And I completely agree.”

Kendall motions for you to sit on a stool at the counter and puts a plate of something that looks vaguely breakfast-y in front of you. “Maybe scrape off the black parts?” she suggests.

“So, like, all of it?” you say.

Kendall smiles.

“We’re looking at the file again,” Kim says. “Can you show us what you figured out?”

You nod and push away the alleged plate of breakfast. You lean in over the computer, and Kim moves away, staying close enough to be right next to you but not get in your way. You can feel her hair just barely grazing your skin. Which is distracting. But you give the sisters a quick tutorial, going back over the steps you took to decrypt the file.

“See? So it’s a time and a location. And if we put it into Google Maps . . .” You pause, waiting for the internet to do its thing. The map comes up, and the location pin indicates a psychiatric hospital.

“That’s only a few hours from here,” Kendall says.

Kim nods. “And the time on the encrypted file was like . . .”

“Tomorrow night,” Kendall answers.

“Whoa,” Kim says, a look passing between them. “Okay. It’s all happening.”

“What’s all happening?” you ask. “Why is the location a secure hospital? What’s happening tomorrow night?”

“That’s when Kylie is breaking out of jail.”

“Um,” you say. You have questions about this. But Kendall interrupts you before you can start expressing them.

“Hey, speaking of,” she says to me, “I think we can find some clothes that fit you in the stuff we brought for Kylie, unless you want to continue to demonstrate your fierce brand loyalty to Best Buy. I have been thinking of investing in a new microwave oven, if you want to help with that.”

“Ugh, yeah, no,” you say, horrified about your appearance. “Please, different clothes.”

Kendall nods understandingly and walks back toward the bedrooms.

Kim is still hunched over the computer, clicking around. “Awww!” she says, looking disappointed. “You didn’t take any selfies while you had the phone. I thought you would have at least tried it. Weren’t you tempted at all?”

“No, I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it.”

Kim shrugs. “You’re so beautiful, though. If I looked like you, I’d be taking selfies all the time.”

“Um, you
are
taking selfies all the time?” Kendall says, sailing back into the room with a pile of clothes in her arms. She arranges them on the back of a chair for you to look through.

“Shut it, Kendall,” Kim says. Then she turns to you. “Selfies are important. And you’ve got plenty of access to cameras now.” She unplugs the phone and holds it out to you. “You should take a selfie!”

You can feel your cheeks flushing. You’re wearing your smelly and gross chain-store uniform, standing next to two of the most beautiful women of all time. You are not about to embarrass yourself by trying to take a selfie in front of them.

“Ummm, I would rather die,” you say.

“WHAT!” Kim says. “Come on!”

“I mean, I probably shouldn’t? They’re illegal?” you say, mortified at how dumb the words sound as they’re coming out of your mouth.

“Selfies are not illegal,” Kim says, very seriously, very patiently.

“Yes, they are. Do you not remember my boyfriend and his task force shooting at us? Selfies are very illegal.”

“Nope,” Kim says, shaking her head. “Look. Take this phone.
Go into the bathroom and take a selfie. We won’t watch, and we won’t look at it afterward. Just go do it. Just take one picture of yourself.”

“I can’t,” you say.

Kim nods understandingly. “Exactly. Because why? Share what you’re feeling right now.”

Kendall and Kim are both watching you, and you feel like you’re about to die under their scrutiny.

“Embarrassment?” you say. “Like I would look dumb. Like it would remind me how ugly I am.”

“That is exactly how they
want
you to feel,” Kendall says.

“It was never really about selfies,” Kim says. “Selfies aren’t illegal. Your self-esteem is.” Kim comes to you and puts her hands on your arms, gently but firmly. She looks into your eyes. “It is okay to look at yourself. It is okay to think you are beautiful. It is okay to think that you have flaws, but you also have to be mindful that flaws are a construct. It is okay for you to form your own independent feelings about your appearance. And it is not only okay but right, and important, and good, to feel good about yourself.”

“They tried to shame us for taking selfies,” Kendall says. “They tried to make us feel like we were wrong for having positive opinions about ourselves. And when they couldn’t stop us, when they couldn’t change the way we thought about our bodies, our appearances, our selves, they made selfies illegal. So they could keep trying to control us.”

“They do not want us to see how amazing and powerful we are,” Kim says. “They know what we’re capable of, and it terrifies them. They can make it the law that you have to hate yourself, but they can’t prevent you from loving yourself. But it’s okay if you’re not ready. I’m not going to pressure you into anything you don’t want to do. Except change out of that uniform. No offense, but come on.”

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.”