“But I like you too.” He kept his eyes on the road, refusing to look at her.
She blushed. “Yeah . . . but . . . I mean, we’re half 1.0s. Which is just half, but a much older model. Ashbot is a 2.0. Cutting-edge.”
They sat there for a minute, both thinking the same thing, until finally she said it in a tiny voice:
“Maybe she’s more human than we are.”
Gideon didn’t respond—he just turned off the main road and merged onto the highway, heading to Scarlett’s house.
When they arrived at Scarlett’s, though, Ashbot was nowhere to be found.
“At the very least, the rental place is gonna charge my dad a small fortune,” Scarlett said, glancing frantically under the sofa’s dust ruffle.
“I’m not going to let her be rented out,” said Gideon. “I’m just not going to. I don’t know if I want to keep her forever, but—”
At that moment, Scarlett’s Ordinaria mom came home. She was an older model but a classic bleach-blonde, round-faced and buxom, her fan whirring loudly from overwork—a sound that used to bug Scarlett, but now she didn’t mind it. She passed Scarlett and Gideon and sprawled on the sofa. Her battery, as usual, was at 10 percent.
“Are you two talking about that beautiful Miss Ordinaria? Red hair?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Oh, yeah, she was with me for a bit, and then she left. I guess your dad thought you needed a friend.” Scarlett’s mom rolled her eyes, then nudged Scarlett and side-eyed Gideon. “But clearly as long as you’re running around with this hunk of man . . .”
“Mom, do not.”
She turned to Gideon fondly. “I remember you when you were just a little toddler playing in the backyard kiddie pool naked, waving your—”
“Okay, thanks, Mom. Do you know where she went?” asked Scarlett.
She shook her head.
*
Sheila answered the door to find an exquisitely beautiful redheaded teenage girl on her stoop, playing with her hair.
“I’m really sorry,” said the girl, “but I was hoping I could use your phone? Mine is dead, and I need to call my rental place.”
“Um . . . where’d you park, sweetie? Do you need to get triple A?”
“No, I mean, I’m the rental.”
And then she laughed exactly like her. Exactly.
Sheila felt her face tingle and got dizzy and placed her palms flat on her thighs while bending over slightly, something she’d been taught to do in the frequent moments she felt she might faint. The girl went on.
“’Cause, I think I want to quit, but I don’t know if they’ll let me. I don’t like being a rental anymore.”
Stunned, Sheila let her in.
“Do you want me to get you some water?” the girl asked. “I’m really sorry if I did something.”
“You didn’t.”
The girl anxiously filled a glass from the tap and handed it to Sheila.
“Why would you come here just to use a phone?”
“Oh.” The girl points to her head. “We have a chip in here with an address, for emergencies. Steve Mullen, VP of Ordinaria Inc., 428 Donovan Lane—”
“Would you like anything to drink?” Sheila asked faintly. “Please help yourself.”
The girl smiled and nodded, then got herself a Diet Coke from the fridge. “Thank you.”
“So—you’re a Miss Ordinaria rental?” asked Sheila.
The girl nodded.
“What’s your name?”
She opened her mouth, then cringed. “I don’t like it.”
“Can’t you just ask for a new one?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m lucky I even have one, even if it’s dumb. Most of us just have a product ID. Hey, d’you have a straw?”
Sheila handed her one from the junk drawer and watched as the girl sipped from the straw just like her daughter had—an odd quirk everybody used to make fun of her for. This girl looked nothing like her daughter, but she just was her, somehow, in a way Sheila couldn’t quite grasp.
Sheila took a deep breath. She couldn’t help herself.
“How do you feel about Megan?”
*
Once Scarlett and Gideon managed to break into his dad’s records, Ashbot was easy to track down. She had been purchased by Steve Mullen, the VP of Ordinaria Inc., and his wife, Sheila.
“Whoa.” Scarlett made a yikes face. “Is that like, ‘rich dude and his wife get a teen sex slave’?”
Gideon suddenly remembered that Steve’s daughter’s funeral had been around this time of year.
“Oh, shit.”
*
“So what’d you do today?” Sheila asked through a mouthful of bruschetta. The pasta was still boiling, but they’d already all sat down to eat. Steve was on his computer, as usual.
“Put that away!” Sheila nudged him. His glasses slid down his nose as he reluctantly complied, crunching into his bread in silence. Sheila smiled.
Megan shrugged. “Uhh, I went to class. Soccer practice. We got pizza after.”
“What!?” Sheila spread her arms wide. “But I made all this.”
“And I’ll eat all this. And so will Dad.”