“No need to waste time with false humility, right?” I hold back a laugh. “So where is this friend?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in ages. He once told me he comes to this sandwich shop every summer. Longest day of the year, he comes here with his brother, Hunter, and they eat the spicy peppers until one of them throws up. And it’s always him—Dylan—who throws up, so his brother gets to be the one who goes out in the kayak first. But as long as I’ve been coming, Dylan has never showed.”
I pause, trying to take that all in. “Are you serious? You come here every summer hoping to run into him? And now it’s not even a sandwich shop.”
“In his defense, he has no idea I’ve been trying to get in touch with him. I just figure he must be missing his notebook. It was important to him.” He uses his fingertips to straighten the cover.
“Why don’t you look him up on your e-frame?” I pull mine out of my pocket. “I can type in his name and you can send him an instant message.”
“I don’t know his full name. Just first name. Dylan.” His shoulders sink. “I don’t know where he lives. I don’t know his e-frame ID.”
“Sounds like you two are close friends.”
His shoulders drop farther. “He was in love with my sister.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I ask, because he seems a little mopey about it.
“It didn’t really work out well, in the end.”
“But no hard feelings?”
“I hope not.”
I meant for you, dork. “Hey, happy endings are overrated. I mean, unless you’re in a movie.”
He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, like he doesn’t agree.
I fidget with my e-frame. “How’s the banana foam?”
He points his spoon at what’s left. “I really like it. I can see why this place isn’t a sandwich shop anymore.”
“Sandwiches aren’t as photogenic.” I point to the little camera mounted on the napkin dispenser. At the same time, the giant screen over the mold bar cuts to a shot of us sitting together. I lean farther into the frame. Gosh, we make a cute couple, what with my endearingly bedraggled appearance and his broad Your Troubles Fit On My Shoulders shoulders.
“I’m on your TV,” Michael says, frozen.
“Our TV and everyone else’s. Well, anyone who’s tuned to my feed.”
He’s still frozen, his spoon poised like an exclamation mark.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Until an ad pops up, you know nobody much is watching. Takes a few thousand viewers for that to happen.”
“Hey, Pretty-Face!” calls a boy from a crowded booth. In my section, crap. “How about we order now?”
I slide out of the booth. “Don’t go anywhere,” I tell Michael.
He shovels the last spoonfuls of Oreo crumbs into his mouth. Like he’s getting ready to leave. And darn it if I don’t want to raid his wallet and figure out his story.
“I’ll get you another Banana Split,” I tell him. “Just don’t leave.”
The boys in the booth wear varsity jackets from the school I briefly attended when I first moved into MyFuture. I recognize one of them from my old math class. He leans back in the booth to look me over. He has a nice haircut—Brandon would look good with that haircut.
“Didn’t you go to our school?” he asks me. “What happened to you?”
“Solving quadratic equations doesn’t pay as much as it used to.” I smile so the sarcasm will go over easier.
He doesn’t match my smile. In fact, he looks genuinely concerned. He scratches his shoulder self-consciously, showing off an unfortunate T-shirt tan—stark white underneath his sleeve. The sight of it makes me relax. Here’s a guy who isn’t trying for perfection. He probably wouldn’t mind if I swam in the lake in cutoffs and a T-shirt instead of the swimsuit I don’t own.
Would he care that I live in a debtors’ colony?
I train my eyes on the table. “How about ordering?”
His friends have their e-frames out and are browsing feeds.
“Whose pants are on my head?” one boy says.
“Excuse me?” As far as I can see, there are no pants on his head.
“Tell your dog to stop laughing at me!” another boy says, and they all break into guffaws. “Tell him to shut up!”
“They’re quoting feeds,” the boy from math class explains, pointing at the sleek, silvery e-frames in their hands. “Seriously, why don’t you go to school anymore? Didn’t you win that Math Bowl? Yeah, I remember my friends all used your feed to cheat off your algebra homework.” He smiles sheepishly. Adorable. But what am I supposed to tell him? I dropped out, I’m a dropout.