He looked at the place on his desk where he’d once kept pictures. He had photos of the girls in a box somewhere. He should unpack them before they came over.
“I just don’t understand,” he wrote. “All this glee in driving people out.”
Anonymous 1 had uploaded a file. “My Slideshow,” it was called. William clicked it.
“What do you think?” Anonymous 1 wrote. “Should I be a model?”
“It’s still loading,” he wrote.
A box popped up. Are you sure you want to continue? William clicked Yes and watched the progress bar.
“Have you ever been wrecked like this?” he asked Anonymous 1. “It’s like my insides have been stolen. My heart’s not broken. It’s just gone.” He hit Agree on the screen. “But I’m an emblem of progress. By existing in this spot, I am improving the city.”
The file opened, but it was just a document. “The Ten Rules of Forestswarm,” it said. His web browser opened forestswarmisreal.net.
“I think you sent the wrong file,” he typed.
The webpage was only a photo. In it, a forest of tree people looked out at him. Their bodies were gnarled trunks and scabbed bark, and they had narrow, dark eyes, blacker than the river. Their hair churned with vines and branches. They glared and snarled, their mouths full of splintery teeth. “We’re coming for you,” the caption said.
“SWF my ass,” William wrote, but Anonymous 1 had gone offline.
He talked his sister into driving him by the other new house. He’d moved to the hill and he didn’t know where they had moved, but he imagined something down in the valley with a creek and a series of bridges. His wife had given Sara the address, which he thought was a way of giving it to him, too.
“So, the idea is, what?” he asked Sara. “They want to relocate lower income people. But they’re not overlords; they can’t just drive people out of their homes. So, what is the plan? Increased rents? Vigorous homeowner associations?”
“You’re not getting out of the car,” Sara said. “We’re driving by slowly, and the seatbelt is staying fastened.”
“It’s bullying,” he said. “It’s the rich kids in the eighties movies. But good things never happen to those kids. The movie is never their story, you know?”
“This is a stage in the process,” Sara said. “You see that she’s moved on, and you can move on, too. You are not under any circumstances to come back here.”
The neighborhood was packed with homes that were all alike in that they were minimally different from one another. He recognized Hannah’s bike with the Le Tigre stickers plastered across the frame. She’d left it leaning against the basketball hoop, which was very, very straight.
“Those tires look low,” he said. “I hope she’s not riding that to school.”
“Your job,” Sara said, “is to stay in the car.” She nodded out the window. “Look, there’s the lilac bush she moved from the old house. And also, their names are on the mailbox.” The front walkway was all flagstones, perfectly flat and even.
“It’s a strange world,” he said, “where buying a house is making a statement.” He’d been talking for a few minutes, he realized. What had he said? What did he say when he wasn’t paying attention? “How are you?” he asked Sara. “How have things been in your life?”
Sara shook her head and put the car in drive.