Down the Rabbit Hole

He could see her grinning from the corner of his eye.

“Have you learned anything today, young man?”

He frowned, staring sightlessly at his email inbox. “Actually, no.” He turned toward her, and looked up, up, up to her broad, maniacal face. The tiara twinkled in the fluorescent lighting.

“And why not?” Her tone gained a harder edge.

“Because, here’s the thing. We’re supposed to find a real relationship, right? That’s the point of iLove? Well, that’s what I was doing.”

“Is. That. Right.”

“Yeah, it was. Not with Gina, of course, but Macy. You know, the one whose phone I get to wander around in upstairs? So I must be here to get back together with her, right? Or else why would one entire floor of this building be dedicated to my accessing her cell phone?”

“Upstairs?” she scoffed. “There is no upstairs. Whatever you think is up there is in your very own head, young man. And I guess it doesn’t surprise me any that what you got up there is nothing but another cellular phone.”

Could he be so crazy that he was crazy even here? Or was the place just built to make him think so? “Okay, sure. But listen, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Macy is the girl for me. I’m not going to find anyone on iLove unless it’s her. So if you let me out of here I will build a relationship with her, a real relationship.”

“Just let you out, huh?”

“Look, you took away all of my tools to make this right. I can’t see her, I can’t talk to her, even on the phone. I can’t even find her on iLove, at least not the way things are set up here. So I had to resort to . . . something else.”

“We didn’t take away your tools. You have all of your tools.” She swept a hand toward his array of screens. “You have everything you thought you needed when you were out before. What’s different now?”

“What’s different? I could see people before, touch them, have face-to-face relationships.”

“Honey,” she said, leaning an elbow on the top of his cubicle wall, “that is exactly the point. You saw people, touched people, had face-to-face relationships, but all you were facing was your smartphone.”

“I get that now,” he said eagerly. “I do. I swear I do. Look, if you let me email her, let me get out of here for a date with her, I know I can make everything right.”

“You want special rules, just for you?”

He exhaled in frustration. “All right, then, just tell me how to find her on iLove. If I make a date that way can I get out and see her?”

“Sure, you know the rules. So that’s what you want? Me to tell you how to find her on iLove?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes!”

“And you’ll do everything else the right way?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I promise.” He gave her his sincerest smile, then held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“What a load of BS, mister. Here you are asking me out of one side of your mouth to break the rules, while out of the other side you’re promising to do everything the right way. You’ve got to get your head on straight, that’s what you’ve got to do. And start paying attention!”





CHAPTER SEVEN




Macy picked up her phone for the dozenth time and looked for the little red 1 that would tell her she had a text or an email or a voice mail. She even checked her Facebook page to see if Jeremy might have messaged her there, but there was nothing.

Two days ago, right after she’d seen him at the restaurant, she’d called him. His voice mail had picked up immediately and she hadn’t wanted to leave a message. Then she’d tried again the next day. Same thing. She tried once more yesterday but she figured by then he must have seen her in his missed call list and was simply not calling back. The many possible reasons for this made her want to cry, but that didn’t stop her from hoping he’d get in touch.