“No reason,” he mumbled and silently recited the e-mail over and over and over again. Who had sent it? What did they know? And were they coming for him?
Ashbot lowered her head as they walked, her vivid red hair falling slightly in front of her face. Gideon had a weird urge to brush it away but thought, Nope, nope, nope.
“I’ll figure it out,” she said, still chipper but sounding more melancholy than the regular, empty models he’d grown up with. Sort of like, just because she wasn’t programmed to use a melancholy tone, that didn’t mean she didn’t feel melancholy. But he reminded himself that even though she seems like a she, even the most technologically advanced “she” is still an “it.” He recited, in his head, his dad’s old pitch: She’s not . . . real.
*
There was a rapidly growing club at Pembrooke: the Anti-Ordinaria Society. They would organize! They would make change! They would force administrators to listen! Or at least they would once they got their shit together.
The problem was that they were from the exact opposite camps. Half of them were girls who didn’t shave their armpits and wrote term papers with titles like “Every Sentence Is a Rape.” The other half were girls—and a few boys—who wore monogrammed cable-knit sweaters and were insanely jealous of the robots. Mostly they just stayed after school in an empty classroom, ordered pizza (guess which faction of them blotted it), and argued.
That all changed when Anonymous began to mass e-mail them.
Nobody saw her or knew who she was (they assumed it was a her), but since everybody wanted to be in on the secret, everyone insisted they did. Delilah Johnson said she was a faculty member but had sworn not to say whom. Hailey Kissel said it was a friend of hers from another Miss Ordinaria–infested prep school. This is how Anonymous remained that way. If they weren’t all so busy tangling their gossip together, they could have tracked her down easily through her e-mails. That was the only way she ever contacted them.
Anonymous sent out e-mail blasts.
You may think you have nothing in common, but you do.
You have the best intentions, pure hearts, and senses of social justice.
If this goes on, it could escalate.
It could kill the entire human race!
We all know how stupid guys are.
They can’t be trusted to make good decisions themselves.
That’s how every war happened!
Even the Trojan War, which they tried to pin on Helen of Troy. What dicks.
Assemble in the common room at approximately seven P.M. tomorrow.
That is when varsity football practice lets out.
Let’s yell at them.
Bye.
These e-mails were massively effective. Very soon, Sumner Ruiz, who had a shaved head and pins through her ears, was walking through the halls chatting excitedly with preppy Betsey Halsey, an old-money heiress to her family’s stretch-pants fortune. It was sort of lovely. But it proved abrasive to everyone who wasn’t on their growing team.
*
Gideon knew it was just a matter of time before they got him. In fact, he wasn’t sure why they hadn’t already, considering he was the son of the CEO and appearing to openly squire a Miss Ordinaria around school. He was like JFK in the convertible.
But he wasn’t concerned with angry mobs. The only thing on his mind was that e-mail. He just couldn’t figure it out. He’d scoured the Internet. He’d gone over to Ordinaria Inc. and poked around through some files until a seventy-year-old executive secretary caught him. He had even asked his dad, over a rare “family dinner” at their enormous dining table.
“So . . . is there anyone who, like . . .” Gideon asked tentatively as he watched their maid carve up the too-large roast chicken. “Would want me to know something about myself that I don’t know?”
His dad glanced up as he took a sip of his Scotch.
“Not that I know of. Helen?”
He looked at Gideon’s mom. She shook her head. She barely spoke.
Then his dad turned back to him, a mean-or-jovial glint in his eye. “You’re not coming out, are you?”
Gideon elected not to answer. Instead, he said, “I got a weird e-mail.”
“What, like a ‘You are part of an unstoppable woman-hating behemoth that will destroy society’? Or one of those ones where some nut job writes to tell you he can fly?”
“Well, neither. It said—”
“Let’s not discuss it at the dinner table,” his mom said abruptly.
“I agree,” his dad said through a mouthful of chicken. “You’re a Maclaine. It’s part of the territory.”
*
Every time Ashbot was in the mall, she became a little girl skipping through the daisies. She’d point out the same stores every time as if they were brand-new modern marvels.
“Look, a Talbots!”
Gideon rolled his eyes.
“Ashbot, that was there two days ago. And last week.”
She beamed. “I know; it’s just so exciting!”
“Why? Why is it so exciting?”
“It’s like being with my friends!”