“Terra’s picking me up in five,” Zo said. “Is that a problem?”
Like she cared. “No problem.”
She looked like she wanted to say something else. But she waited too long, and I was out the door.
Walker’s car was in the driveway.
“You’re early,” I said, slipping in beside him. “You’ve just been sitting out here?”
He nodded. “It’s okay.”
“If I’d known you were out here…”
“It’s okay,” he said again, and put an arm around me. His pupils were wide; he’d obviously gotten an early start on the night, tripping on something or a lot of somethings. But it didn’t matter. Not if he was going to put his arm around me again.
“You ready?” He leaned forward, keyed in Cass’s address, then paused, waiting for permission, like the old days.
I wondered what would happen if I told him that we should skip the party, that when he’d said he wanted to go out, I’d thought he meant the two of us, alone.
Before, I was the one who dragged us to parties. Again? he would whine, like a little kid, and it would be cute, but not cute enough to change my mind, so we would spend another night surrounded until the waiting got too intense, and then he would squeeze my hand or I would squeeze his ass and—signal sent, message received—we would sneak off together to one of the extra bedrooms or a closet or that spot between the trees or once, after everyone else had passed out, the glassed-in pool, our bodies glowing in the eerie blue of the underwater lights. It was tradition, and keeping it tonight had to mean that he wanted to go backward. I wasn’t about to risk a change.
I thought he might kiss me as we sped along in the dark; that was tradition too. But he stayed on his side of the car and I stayed on mine, and his arm rested on my shoulders, a dead-weight that might as well have belonged to some invisible third passenger.
“Want to play Akira?” he asked.
“Not really.”
“Mind if I do?”
“No.”
Sometimes it felt like the body took over. That the body wasn’t the stranger, I was—just a passenger, carried along wherever the body wanted to go. Because that wasn’t me, letting Walker disappear into the network when I just wanted him to be with me—or, more to the point, wanted him to want to be with me. The strange voice that poured out of the strange mouth told him he could do whatever he wanted, I would go wherever he went, I didn’t care, I was fine, everything was fine, it was all good. That wasn’t Lia Kahn.
The car stopped in the usual place, at the bottom of the curving driveway that sloped up to Cass’s guesthouse. Walker grabbed my hand before I could get out. He leaned close, and when he spoke, his stubble scratched against my ear; it didn’t hurt. “Upstairs?” he said. “Later?”
“Definitely.” I turned to face him, my cheek scraping against his, but he pulled away just before our lips made contact. Even in the dark, his eyes were closed. “Later.”
Inside, things were the same as always: bodies sprawled on the couches and across the greenish-gray carpet, writhing in the throes of whatever new b-mod mix Cass had cooked up; walls pulsing in time with the music; couples tangled up in each other; lonelyhearts on the prowl; screens encircling the room, set to flash up Cass’s favorite vidlifes and a rotating selection of random zones; the lost dancers, gyrating to music that played only and forever in their heads; and in the glassed-in pool, girls with swanlike bodies skimming through the water, giggling, sputtering, chasing boys, chasing one another, the shifting patterns of their solar bikinis fading as the light disappeared.
The bikinis weren’t the only tech. Sonicsilk, LBDs and LCD tees, net-skirts, girls in microminis smartchipped to grow—or shrink—when they bent over, gamers in screenshirts that broadcast their kills… Almost everyone was in something lit up or linked in, everyone, that is, except for me. And Zo, of course, who didn’t count.
Bliss met us at the door, wearing a dress I’d seen before—a transparent fabric made opaque by the careful patterning of glowing light, but always, in its shifting translucence, offering the promise that if you watched closely enough, a glimpse of milky skin would slip through. She raised an eyebrow at my dead black shirt. Then leaned forward, voice lowered and fakely kind. “You should know, that retro look is totally wiped.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I got that.” I turned to blast Walker for letting me walk in blind, not that he could be trusted on the subject, being barely able to dress himself, much less me, but I was decked out in freakwear and needed someone to blame. Too bad: He’d already slipped away, probably off to join the gamers or get zoned.
Terra drifted over, her face—like everyone else’s—cosmetic clear, her shirt whispering melodies with every move. She stopped dead when she saw what I was wearing.
“Nice, uh… outfit,” she said.
“You could have told me.” It’s not like we made some big announcement about which looks were in and which were out. But things got old fast, and when they did, either you knew—or you didn’t.
Terra shrugged. “Since when do you need me to tell you what’s wiped?”
Zo found me later, sitting in a corner, head tipped back toward the ceiling as if I were zoned. Anyone who knew anything knew that I wasn’t in the business of getting zoned anymore, but it saved me from having to stare blankly at a wall or, worse, to make conversation.
Finally someone I could blame. “I can’t believe you let me leave the house looking like this.”
“What?” she asked innocently, perching on the side of the couch. “Like me?”
“You knew better.”
“You’re right,” she said. “So why didn’t you? Lia Kahn always knows what’s cool, right? Lia Kahn decides what’s cool. So what’s your problem?”
I wanted to slap her.
“What’s yours?” I asked instead. “If you knew retro was over, why come here like this?” I jerked my head toward her clothes, which were only slightly less gross than my own. But she was acting as if she didn’t care that the look was wiped, and no one else seemed to care either. Like the rules were somehow different for her.
“Because maybe Zoie Kahn decides what’s cool too,” she said.
“You can decide whatever you want. It doesn’t count if no one agrees. There’s no such thing as a majority of one.”
“Yeah, one’s the loneliest number, so I heard,” she said. “Two is working out a lot better for me these days.”
“Two?” I scanned the room, as if Zo’s new guy, if he really existed, would bear the mark on his face. “Who?”
She mouthed a curse, as if she’d broken something. “No one.”
This was getting interesting. “Who?” Zo and I had never been the kind of sisters who stayed up all night, giggling in the dark about pounding hearts and stolen kisses. But she’d ruined enough of my dates with her tattling, her teasing, and, as she got older, her eavesdropping and clumsy stabs at blackmail. She was, and always had been, addicted to information about my personal life; the more personal, the better.
Karma’s a bitch.
“I told you, no one.”
“I’ll find out eventually,” I said. “You might as well tell me.”
“Instead of wasting your time on my love life, maybe you should focus on your own,” Zo snapped.
“Meaning?”
Zo tapped her wrist and I noticed that, like Auden, she was wearing a watch. Maybe he was her mystery man. Lame and lamer—they’d make a good match. “It’s one a.m.: Do you know where your boyfriend is?”
“He’s around.” But nowhere I could see. I wondered if he’d gone upstairs without me, if he was waiting for me to find him. Or if he wasn’t alone.