By Luke Rolfes
Val comes downstairs, upset. It’s late. The stars are out. Her iPad is giving an alert that an unidentified Airtag has been moving with her for the past day. I don’t know what an Airtag is. Trackers or something that you keep in your wallet or your phone so you never lose them. Apparently, bad people will slip these quarter-sized sensors into people’s bags, coat pockets, or behind license plates. A sinister way to isolate a person or a vehicle. I go out to the driveway. One of the safety functions of the Airtag is that if you click the alert button on the device picking it up, the Airtag will beep. When I’m standing next to my cars, the iPad says “playing sound.” When I move closer to the house, the iPad says “can’t connect.” But there is no beep. No music. The neighborhood is silent. I wonder: Could this be real? The internet says a bad person will sometimes disable the sound by dismantling the Airtag and prying off the speaker coil. The night contains no answers. In the dark, I search inside and outside the cars. Something small. Something I’ve never seen. Something impossible.
Luke Rolfes is the author of the novel Sleep Lake (Braddock Avenue Books), and the short story collections Impossible Naked Life and Flyover Country. He teaches creative writing at Northwest Missouri State University and edits Laurel Review. He is the winner of the Ironhorse Discovered Voices Award, the Acacia Fiction Prize, and the Georgetown Review Press Short Story Collection Contest.
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