Unless they were right, Dad and Hunter. Unless it was all in his head.
Dylan suddenly couldn’t catch his breath. He thought he could feel his vorpal like an extra organ, churning next to other worthless organs—appendix, gall bladder. But he was afraid to use it, afraid that if he tried, it wouldn’t be there, that he was fooling himself after all.
Hunter still loomed over him. “All of this crap you’re pulling—getting kicked out of school—can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?”
“Can’t you,” Dylan pleaded, “can’t you just admit that you remember where we went when we were kids?”
Hunter’s jaw tightened. His vorpal ground like stuck machinery. “You know what I remember?”
Just say it. Tell me you remember. I didn’t make it all up. Please.
“I remember you pretending.”
Dylan thought his lungs might be going flat. He searched Hunter’s face, trying to figure out whether to believe him. He couldn’t decide.
He turned toward the stairs.
“Dylan?” Hunter said. “Stay away from Chess.”
Dylan couldn’t help himself—he sneaked out of the house and went to the film club that night.
“Klaatu barada nikto,” he said to Chess at the door to the auditorium, just like in the movie. He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets. Why did he always have to be so weird?
“Aren’t you clever—a line from The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Chess still wore her uniform, plus a fleece cap that made her eyes seem bigger and brighter, even in the low light. The bracelet peeked out from under her jacket sleeve, but Dylan hardly thought about it: Her vorpal was pulsing candy colors, making halos tremble at the edge of his vision.
He knew he was ridiculous for thinking about vorpals at all. But he couldn’t help it. He could swear her vorpal was radiating happiness, reaching out to him with fingers of heat.
“You do this every week?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s fun. Let’s grab seats.”
She led him to the front row.
After they sat down, she leaned close. “Besides, Tuesdays are the nights my parents always render due benevolence, so I’d rather not be at home to see them flirting.” She rolled her eyes.
He turned the phrase over in his mind, then shoved his hands in his pockets, embarrassed. “What’s that from, Shakespeare?”
“King James.”
“Right, that’s a Shakespeare play.”
She laughed. “You’re funny.”
He realized his mistake—the King James Bible, dummy. But she thought he was funny. Someone passed him a bowl of M&M’s. “Does Hunter ever come to these things?”
“Robots don’t appeal to him.”
“Not even Blade Runner? Acid rain, shady corporations?”
“He thinks it’s weird that Harrison Ford falls in love with a girl who’s not real.” She elbowed him. “He’s your brother. Shouldn’t you know?”
Dylan cracked an M&M between his teeth.
“I think Blade Runner’s romantic,” Chess went on. But she was giving him that slow smile, so he didn’t know if she was being serious.
Someone started up the projector.
“What would you want with a guy who can’t appreciate Blade Runner?” Dylan asked.
“I don’t date him for his taste in movies,” Chess said.
“So why do you date him?” Dumb question—Dylan had seen how all the cheerleaders crowded Hunter after a game, how girls fawned when Hunter did something as mundane as order a cheeseburger.
But Chess took a second to think about it. She looked up at the ceiling. “In the movies, the best guys to fall in love with are always a little sad.”
Dylan snorted. “What does Hunter have to be sad about?”
“Don’t know. But he always seems like he’s trying to make up for something, you know?”
An image came to Dylan’s mind of Hunter jabbing at the old radio, sweating over something that would never work again. “No, I don’t know.”
Chess shrugged. “Like he lost something.”
Dylan got a weird feeling in his stomach.
“Speaking of—what happened to your uniform?” Chess gave him a playful smirk.
Dylan ducked his head. He still hadn’t explained to her why he’d been at Hevlen today. “I realized they can’t actually dock me points if I’m not enrolled here, so I figured it was safe to stop wearing it.”
She looked at him sidelong. “Why did you come tonight? If you’re not enrolled here?”
“You bought all the good movies from the shop, so now I have to come here to watch them,” he joked.
Her smile went crooked.
She thinks you’re weird, Dylan told himself. She probably heard about you sneaking into philosophy class.
The movie started. Dylan trained his eyes on the screen.