“The FBI or someone.”
“The FBI won’t believe that an alien could want a human. Aliens and humans aren’t even the same species. Only high-con fans believe crap like this.”
He was right—I knew it firsthand. Aliens didn’t fall in love with silly fourteen-year-old girls or even glammed-up seventeen-year-old girls. “The aliens, then. They’ll be mad. They don’t like to draw attention to themselves.”
“If they didn’t want attention, they wouldn’t wear those bright red bracelets.”
“They have to.” My younger sister had inched close again and stood inspecting the way Cole’s sweat-dampened clothes stuck to him. “The government said so.”
Cole went to the a/c and tried to override the peak-usage sensor. “Anyway, the aliens can just go ahead and kiss it; they’re not the ones whose egg is in the frying pan.”
For the next few days, CelebriFeed cycled our photo through a hundred times, each with a different headline. Close Encounter Leads to Illegal Love . . . Vorpal Abuse: He’s Under Her Spell . . . Does She Have a Tail? Cole and I hid out in the township and let our mystique build. Then we flew out to L.A., city of camera angles.
I found out what heat was. The heat of the desert, the press of the crowds, heat from the tailpipes and the gleaming hoods of cars. The heat from Cole, coming close for a kiss in direct sight of a streetlamp camera. The burn of humiliation at realizing he was only mooning over me because he’d spotted a line of camera lenses embedded in a shop awning. It was the same game over and over: Pull close, pull away. Disappear around a corner, into a waiting car, to leave Cole feigning heartbreak. All for the cameras, for the act.
By the third week, when the cat-and-mouse thing started to get old, our new fans made it easy for us to evolve our act. When Cole went out, they’d swarm him like flies. I’d appear at the right moment, cutting a wide swath through the frightened crowd. Is she really? they’d whisper. Or, Save him from her! Later, Cole would get me alone with the cameras and try to tell me he didn’t want those other girls. I’d tell him he should be with them, that it’d be better for him. A few tears on my part and then I’d leave. We kept it short. We always kept it short. They couldn’t get enough.
When the temperatures soared, the rolling blackouts were a relief. The power to the city’s cameras went out, giving Cole an excuse to be offline for a couple of days. He ditched his flexi-screen so no one could track him and we drove out to Santa Monica. From Ocean Avenue, we took in the sight of the storm-wrecked pier still in splinters, the Ferris wheel motionless above the dark water like a giant eye peering over the edge of an abyss.
“Don’t care how they see you, I’ll never leave you.”
“I’ll keep us together, stay with you forever.”
Cole and I took turns singing over a thumping beat, crouched in an abandoned warehouse whose cameras couldn’t be traced. The same building Warehouse Burn often used, according to our producer.
“Stay with you forever.” Cole whispered into my ear, “Or at least until I get feeling back in my legs.” He shifted into an easier crouch, flashed me a quick smile. I hoped the mic hadn’t picked up his joke.
Our producer stood out of sight, flapping his arms at us and mouthing, More effing intensity!
“Stay with you forever!” I belted. Then the breakaway wall crashed in and I slipped out of sight, leaving Cole to gape at vaguely threatening forms. The dark, hulking men could have been FBI or some kind of alien task force but were really day laborers in black turtlenecks. The cameras went dead on cue. The producer checked his flexi-screen and reported that we were already number forty-three on FeedBin.
“Intense as heck,” the producer said of either our performance or the ad revenue.
Forty-three didn’t sound great to me, but he seemed confident we’d topple the teen mini-shows and the clips of skateboard tricks. I figured he knew better than I did.
He pointed a thick finger at Cole. “We need to talk before you go.”
I started to follow them but the producer waved me away. “No, Epony. Just Cole. Vocal issues,” he said, pointing to his throat. “Don’t worry about it. Separate cars out of here, and if you two are going to meet up later, for eff’s sake make sure you’ve disabled any cameras. You’re completely offline until prime time.”
I swiped Sheetrock dust from my shoulders and shook it out of my hair.
Cole was standing frozen, a spray of white dust turning half his face pale. I gave him a questioning look.
“Cole, did you hear me?” The edge in the producer’s voice made me look up. Cole snapped out of whatever spell had held him, jerked his gaze away from me.