“You see those girls over there?” I continue. “They might be able to help us both. The more cameras that are on us, the closer you and I get to what we want.”
He thinks it over. His breath goes fluttery with anxiety. “So what do we do?”
What would Lola do in this situation?
No, I don’t think I’m up for what Lola would do. I’m not that desperate.
Well, not yet. I’ll see what I can come up with on my own first.
“You could start by unraveling the mystery. Why no profile? Are you a young presidential hopeful trying to keep your reputation unsullied? Or maybe a modern-day vampire—you’ve got a reflection but no camera presence?”
Michael lowers his head and peers up at me. “Try something weirder.”
“Weirder?” I get a feeling like soda fizzing up through a flavor foam mold.
He glances at the girls tittering nearby with their e-frames held out. “Touch my arm again,” he tells me.
I give him a questioning look but slide my hand over his forearm. His skin has the warm, dry feel of someone who spends his days in the sun and takes his dinner on the veranda.
“No,” Michael says. “I mean touch it.”
“I am.” The soft grit of lake silt left over from a morning swim, the tickle of downy hair.
Michael shakes his head. “You’re not. You think you are, but you’re not.”
I look at my hand on his arm and then glance at the cameras. What exactly is he going for?
“Michael, my hand is right here on your arm.” But even as I say it, I realize he’s right. There’s my hand and there’s his arm underneath it, but now I don’t actually feel anything. No silt, no sun-warmed skin. Nothing. It’s like my fingers are hovering a millimeter above his arm. I press down, hard. Still nothing. We’re magnets with repelling poles.
“What the hell?” I say. “What’s going on?”
He pulls his arm away. He huddles in his corner of the booth. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all.”
I frown at him, frown at my hand, flex my fingers. What just happened?
As quickly as my confusion spikes, it recedes, like a flame suddenly smothered with a blanket. His arm is not repellent. That was an illusion. Chalk it up to the power of suggestion.
He hunches like a wounded animal. I reach to touch him again, to show him there are no hard feelings about his weird trick. He leans away. Boy, he’s moody.
“I’ll go get some soda,” I say, and slide out of the booth.
The cluster of girls has thickened; I have to elbow my way past them to get to the kitchen. Another flicker of confusion distracts me as I’m filling the cup at the root beer dispenser. Was I touching Michael’s arm or wasn’t I?
Lola bounds into the kitchen and says, “That guy is gold. Did you tell him to say all those weird things?”
“He came pre-loaded with a script,” I joke.
“Here, take this.” Lola holds up Dylan’s notebook—she must have swiped it from Michael’s table. “Tell him he can only have it back if he pays you for it and then let him decide how to pay you.”
“Uh . . .” says the Other One from where he’s fixing the jammed dishwasher.
I yank the notebook away from Lola. “Very classy.”
“And find a way to bring me into this,” she says. “Tell him I’m willing to pose as his sister. Tell him I can cry on cue—I’ll just stick some hot chili flavor gel in my eye.”
“Uh, that’s not a great idea about the hot chili gel,” the Other One says, circling his eyes with an index finger.
I walk out before they can give me any more suggestions. As I head back to Michael’s booth, I riffle the pages of the notebook with my free hand. I notice a passage underlined in red ink.
“Here you go.” I hand the root beer to Michael. “More sugar, to calm your nerves.”
He takes a long pull from the straw. I swear he’s putting out misery and guilt like radio signals. I open the notebook to the underlined section, then backtrack a bit to figure out the context. It seems a boy has discovered his lost pet rabbit in a magical wood and is pretty unsettled by the changes it’s gone through. It had been an ordinary rabbit, but now it can talk and think and appreciate clever riddles and can’t very well be a pet anymore.
“I may not be your kind of rabbit anymore, a tame, huddled kind of rabbit. You might not like me as I am, a wild one who knows the smell of leaf litter and the give of pine needle carpets. You cannot understand a rabbit that will not shy from cold, open, loud. Who will not be touched by human hands. No, I am not your garden-cage rabbit anymore. Is it enough to know me from a distance, since that is the only way we can meet? Or will you leave me now and never return?”
Pretty heavy for a story about a magic rabbit. “You underlined this?” I ask Michael.
He nods, twists away so he doesn’t have to read the writing.
This is why he wants to return the book. So Dylan will read this part. “What’s the deal with the rabbit? He changed, and the boy couldn’t handle it?”
“Something like that,” Michael mumbles.
“What does that have to do with Dylan?”