With a curt “Have a nice life,” Ivy left. And although I was supposed to count until twenty before I turned, I spun around after “one” and watched as Ivy reattached her Eden tie and name tag, then slumped onto a stool behind a help desk at the front of the market. As I walked past her, a grandmother with her three wailing grandkids approached and asked to “borrow a phone” for help “calling a cab.”
Karma, baby.
No sooner had I left the market floor than my Doc lit up with messages from Audra. Not How was the meeting? or What did you learn? No, the latest read:
audy Dinner at six, betch.
Dinner was always at six. The timing of the Rhodes meal was as predictable as the intense dreadfulness of it. Normally, among us girls, dinner at Audra’s was the standard against which all other instances of torture were measured. Example:
Me: “I can’t believe Linkman is making us watch Transcending Transgender again. That’s four years running. Doesn’t he get it? There’s a reason the film’s dated. Nobody cares anymore.”
Fawn: “Unconscionable. I’d almost rather have dinner at Audra’s.”
Audra: “Yuk it up, ladies; it’s only my abysmal home life you’re laughing at.”
I’d been planning to go home, take a long bath, and then have a hot fudge sundae on the couch with Kyle. Then I was going to shirk my homework and reread the new installment in the Suicide Games series. Just proving how desperate I was for my friends’ companionship, dinner with the Rhodeses actually sounded nice.
moi Still in the city. Might not make that in time. Can you believe I just ’d that?
audy HA! Like I’d let you off that easy. I already hailed you an Elite. It’ll be waiting for you out front by the time you get there.
When Audra pinged an Elite to drive us to Sharma’s the day the video dropped, I figured she was splurging because it was dire circumstances. Nobody except the uber-wealthy took them. Not only were they self-driven vehicles—assuring utter privacy and no unnecessary messy human interactions—but their minimum fare was fifty dollars. An Elite to Brooklyn? That was at least a hundred-dollar ride. Apparently girlfriend was as desperate for company as I was.
Suddenly, I felt kinda good. Fine, I wasn’t making monumental (or any) progress, but I was in the coolest store in the world, it was slathered in Christmas green and red, hologram snowflakes twinkled in the air like stars, and my best friend wanted to be around me so badly that she’d pinged an Elite for me.
Before the video I’d always known I had a good life. Maybe I still did.
As if echoing my joyous thoughts, the atrium filled with laughter. On the hour, Eden did a Christmas show. Tourists from all over the world trekked to NYC to watch it. When I looked up from my Doc, I expected to see hologram Santa and his crazy-realistic hologram reindeer rocketing around the atrium dome. But people weren’t looking up at the dome. They were looking at me. Not in the pretty-girl-in-a-short-skirt kind of way, either. In like a naked-guy-in-the-subway kind of way.
A father, there with his small children, shouted, “Turn it off, already.”
More people stopped, scanned the room with their Docs, landed on me, and simply stared.
A boy in a glammy fake-fur coat and sparkly blue eyeliner tapped my shoulder and nodded behind me. At any given moment there were thousands of people shopping at Eden. I should have expected it. It was simply a matter of mathematics and technology. Apparently, Lucy Helen Banks had left the building, because now I had the most popular G-File in the place, and the certified largest wall screen in the entire world was showing my most popular clip. It couldn’t have been on for more than twenty seconds before whatever safeguards they had against exactly this happening caught it and the feed cut out. But it was long enough.
“Do you have a safe way to get home?” the boy asked.
“My friend called me an Elite.”
“Fancy. Well, lock the door when you’re in, honey, because I do not like the pervy eyes that man has been aiming at you. He’s been watching you since even before they played your debut. Trust me, I notice these things.”
The man in question wasn’t much older than me. College or shortly out of it. When our eyes met, he opened his mouth like he was about to speak. Maybe it was the unblinking way he was watching me, or that he kept fidgeting with his belt, but I’d Bet a semester of early registration that whatever he wanted to say wasn’t G-rated.
“You get out of here now, sister, and for heaven’s sake don’t share that ride. This world is filled with not-very-nice people.” Then, disproving his words entirely, the boy in the fake fur walked up to the creeper and created some interference. “Excuse me, sir, I think you dropped something. No, look, this gum wrapper. I believe it’s yours.”
I hurried off into the crowd. And maybe this will sound na?ve, considering the video had been playing on a football field–sized screen, but right then, I finally got how huge it was. Never mind my college apps or my ruined reputation at school. With this many views, the video would never be pushed down in my profile. My children would see this. Their children would see it (even considering my whole not-till-I’m-thirty-eight agenda). If I didn’t take down the video, it would forever be the first thing anyone knew about me. If I didn’t take down the video, I wouldn’t be able to escape it for the rest of my life.
I was finding it hard to breathe. A guy wearing tight pants and white sunglasses nudged me and said, “Yo, girl, you famous. Can I get your autograph?”
“Can I get your digits?” His friend laughed.
I pushed past them. To calm myself down, I thought about what President Malin would do. She’d say, “I will not mince words. This is a nearly insurmountable problem. But we will roll up our sleeves and try to fix it, because we have everything to lose.” Just like she did in her October web address about the challenges of reversing our escalating environmental collapse.
Me?
I ran.
The Elite Audra had pinged me honked when I went outside. I was wondering if having a fully automated car identify me officially made me the most recognizable girl in the world, when the back window rolled down and a petite platinum blondie waved at me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, running up to the car.