Michael looks down. “I’m not the person he thought I was.”
“Want to tell me what happened between you two?” I ask quietly, but not so quietly the mic can’t pick me up.
Michael bends the end of his straw back and forth, sucks in a long breath. “He showed up in the woods behind our house nine years ago and immediately decided he was in love with my older sister. I think she liked him too, really liked him.” His gaze flicks to the girls watching him. He turns away from them but they just shuffle into a better viewing position. “I thought he was fascinating. He could make a fort out of anything. He made up stories I only half understood but could listen to for hours. He said, This is how brothers should be. Then it all started falling apart. He started to realize . . .” His voice falters. He clears his throat.
“What?”
The straw’s going to break the way he’s bending it. “Do you ever feel like you know things about a person you couldn’t possibly know? That you can . . . sense something about them?”
You mean like if a guy’s planning his future with you but you get the sense he’s really going to leave you to learn how to paint perfect circles around other girls’ belly buttons? If only.
“Look at me,” Michael says.
I drag my gaze to Michael’s face and see only worry—that I won’t understand him, maybe. It makes lines around his eyes in an intricate pattern I’d like to transcribe.
“With me, you see what you want to see,” he says. “Attractive, harmless, whatever. But this isn’t what I really look like. It’s all an illusion.” His voice cracks. “Dylan figured that out and he couldn’t get over it.”
I try to follow what he’s saying, but I’m flooded with confusion again.
“I can influence the way you see me,” Michael says, and I lift my eyebrows. “I can influence the way you feel.”
I think back to the way I felt a minute ago—utterly confused and then suddenly not. But that wasn’t Michael’s doing. That was me, sorting things out.
I’m pretty sure that was me sorting things out.
“So you can make me attracted to you even if I’m not?” I ask him with a teasing smirk.
“If you’re hoping to have an attractive customer, then that’s how you’ll see me.”
I lean back and study him, trying to figure out if he’s just having fun with me or if he really believes what he’s saying. It’s true that he’s everything I’d expect from a rich out-of-towner. The golden complexion, the wind-tangled hair. But the eyes are all wrong—not enough boredom, not enough arrogance. Not nearly enough eagerness to look down my low-cut shirt.
I cross my arms. “What do you really look like, then?”
“I could show you, but you wouldn’t understand.”
“Why not?” I say with a disbelieving snort.
The cluster of girls has turned into a horde, all hanging on Michael’s words. Michael notices. He looks to the door.
“Because I’m too different from you.” The lines around his eyes get deeper. “I’m not from around here.”
A teenage girl steps past our booth and brushes her hand along Michael’s shoulder. He flinches at the touch. She scurries on, staring at her hand, no doubt asking herself if her fingers truly made contact.
“Where are you from?” I ask Michael.
Another girl walks by and whisks her hand through his hair, giggling. Michael blanches and I want to shout at the girl.
“I don’t want to do this,” he tells me. He braces to scoot out of the booth and my heart seizes. “I’m sorry—I know you need money. I’ve heard about debtors’ colonies.”
Who hasn’t? Anyone who’s ever browsed FeedBin has seen inside one.
The TV screen cuts to a new feed—my face fills the frame. A younger, more plaintive version of my face. Mr. One, master manipulator, is controlling the feed from the booth. Michael freezes, eyes on the replay of my Flavor Foam training. I look panicked and desperate, clenching the trigger of the flavor foam gun like I’m hoping dollar bills will shoot out.
“You want Dylan to come here, don’t you?” I ask Michael, trying to lay it on thick so he’ll stay. “You want him to see that you’re here waiting for him?”
Michael sinks back into the booth. He turns to me, sad-eyed, and nods. I force down a wave of embarrassment at his pitying expression.
Michael fidgets with the cover of the notebook. “Dylan could do what I can do—influence people. And he could see things no one else saw. He figured out how to use this special ability that not many people can use. A vorpal, he called it.”
“A vorpal?”
“He said it was from a poem.”
“‘Jabberwocky.’” That crazy mess of a poem—written by a mathematician, so maybe there’s hope yet for my poetry skills.
“He used it to find the place where I’m from.”
“The place where you’re from,” I echo, utterly lost.