He noticed he was jiggling his leg nervously and stopped. Usually these things were incredibly boring, and he went only because his parents made him. Not this time. He’d gotten another e-mail from Anonymous last night: I’ll be at the donors’ ball. Black dress. We need to talk.
It was the first he’d heard from Anonymous since the original e-mail. Black dress! So it was a woman (probably). He was determined to get to the bottom of it. He just hoped there weren’t too many women in black dresses—he really didn’t want to go up to someone cool-looking and ask, “Are you Anonymous?” like a noir blind date.
He sighed, audibly.
Jason was slumped insolently in his chair checking his phone, with his legs spread much wider than they needed to be. He glanced at Gideon, then broke into an Ol’ Boy grin and slapped him on the back.
“You’ve got it made, dude! Lighten up.”
“Nah, it’s not chill.” When he was with them, Gideon slid into colloquialisms he’d never use normally. The other day in AP Philosophy, he actually heard himself say, “Proust was dope.” Everyone laughed, even the teacher. With him, though. Not at him. It gave him a proud rush.
Dylan Dinerstein, usually the quietest, piped up: “I get it. You don’t want to settle on one. You want to rent a little first, and now you’re stuck with—”
He jerked his head toward the stairs.
“It’s not even like that,” Gideon mumbled.
“You won’t even feel, like . . . obligated to put a down payment on her once she’s got a lot of miles on her.”
“Miles?”
“Hi!”
Ashbot stood at the top of the stairs, flanked by the other three guys’ dates, who were all wearing black. Ashbot had finally found her clique: the sort of girls who dated guys like Jason and blotted their pizza and wore Miss Ordinaria–brand lingerie. Still, of course, Ashbot looked hotter than all of them. She was wearing a white dress that flattered her pale, creamy skin. Then they glided down the marble stairs, their four-inch heels clacking perfectly in time with one another.
Gideon held out his arm and Ashbot took it, smiling brightly at him and tossing her hair, accidentally showing the on-off switch on the back of her neck. He fixed her hair to cover it again.
She zeroed in on his yellow tie. “Oh, you have to change that. Quick, we’ll be late.”
“What’s up with that? They look like they’re going to a funeral.”
Ashbot rolled her eyes. “God, did you even look at the invite? It’s a black-and-white ball.”
Gideon groaned. “Goddamn it.”
*
Since it was also the year of the Miss Ordinaria test run, and press would be there, the celebration this year was bigger than usual. Fancier. A crowd of people clustered outside the gates in cocktail attire, trying to fake their way in by saying some invented relative was a dearly departed donor.
“Laaaame,” Peter sighed, barely looking up from his game app.
“Baby, stop,” whined his girlfriend, tugging at his tux sleeve.
As their driver handed the limo keys to the valet, Gideon made his way toward the ballroom with Ashbot, wincing from the flashbulbs of press and paparazzi that usually followed a Maclaine at a social event. It didn’t faze Ashbot, naturally, and the photos would end up looking great, which was the reason so many actresses were Ordinarias passed off as real by their managers and agents: nary an unflattering candid shot in sight.
The grand ballroom was huge, white, and full of sparkling decorations. A live jazz band played tasteful standards under the conversation, with a few couples dancing and chatting on the dance floor. Expensive seafood was draped over a giant avalanche of ice on a long marble table, and a fountain burbled in the center of the room. Caterers, all in white, drifted from one side of the expansive room to the other, offering hors d’oeuvres to the millionaires and investors and Silicon Valley boy-geniuses. They were too busy invasively prodding and examining the new Miss Ordinarias, awestruck by their seeming so real.
It felt, all in all, more like a wedding reception than a donors' ball. A wedding reception at a gigantic doctor’s office. This was both excellent branding work and a weird vibe that made Gideon even more nervous.
Ashbot didn’t look fazed, because “fazed” was not a setting. She looked at him and smiled—he watched the glittery green makeup on her eyelids appear and disappear when she blinked. (They didn’t need to blink, but the feature was added when the company realized the lack of blinking made people uncomfortable.)
“Why don’t you go talk to them?” Gideon gestured toward the guys’ dates, clustered in a tight circle in front of the bar.
“Okay!” She practically skipped away.
Gideon scanned the crowd. So, a black dress. It was impossible. They were on everybody, from eleven-year-old heiresses to seventy-year-old matrons. He could just give up. Maybe she would find him.
That’s when he saw her.