He left to go down to find some fans who could crowd him, crowd out his thoughts, while I watched his feed on the wall monitor.
At eight, I showed up at his place, right on schedule. I knew what scene I’d find on the other side of his door: Cole crushed and lonely, afraid we’d never be together because the FBI was watching us now. They weren’t really watching us. But our fans believed what they wanted to believe.
What’s next? I wondered while I waited for him to answer the door. We’d given our fans forbidden romance, underage lovers, police in pursuit. And we were only a month into the act. What else would we have to do to hold their interest?
Cole yanked the door open, surprise registering on his face. Not the good kind of surprise, not relief. A moment of confusion on my part while I waited for an embrace that didn’t come. And then I saw her. And thought, Those bastards.
“It’s better this way,” Cole said. “Better for you.” Then he stepped close, close enough that I could see the transparent mic clipped under his chin. “They’re watching us,” he said in a stage whisper.
I pulled out of his grip, stumbled back. What the hell? Nobody had told me about this new direction. Why hadn’t they told me?
Because they wanted this reaction. Genuine shock. Hurt, humiliation.
I fled down the hallway, downstairs. I heard him loping after me in his soft boots, shouting some line they’d fed him.
I barreled down the street and finally into a cafe. Every table monitor was playing Cole’s feed. He was already back inside his air-conditioned den, reveling in the new girl’s method of consoling him.
“Fake kissing is still real kissing,” I shouted at the screens.
I shot back out into the street. The late-night traffic crawled past, weary drivers peering out at the girl with bare arms and tear-streaked face. The thrum of idling engines was nauseating, the streetlights sad, dirty yellow.
Visions flicked through my head of Hayden. He’d sat next to me on the bed while I was reading, and I’d leaned into him, thinking he might kiss me. I pictured now the puzzled tilt of his head. “I couldn’t ever feel that way about you,” he’d said. “Don’t you know? The way you look, the way you are, it’s nothing like what I could ever want.” It was the last time I’d seen him. Even now, I could feel the stifling heat of the attic room that had been my hideout those final sweltering weeks of September.
One of the cars in the line of crawling traffic had stopped altogether. The driver craned her neck to get a good look at me. A horn blared. The woman went on staring. Had she seen Cole’s feed? She was too old to care about high-con.
Her gaze was fascinated, piercing. Her arm resting on the steering wheel was encircled with a red bracelet.
When I was fifteen, cancer made Grandpop’s skin dull, his eyes bleary. I felt like I was always seeing him through fogged glass in those days. His hair grew in patches. I could never get a good look at him. He cowered.
I didn’t realize it was indecision weighing on him. The cancer was just one more stone on the scale.
Grandpop showed me a map with a red scrawl encircling a large area of Washington State, including the Cascadia parks. “Almost time for me to head out.”
I slumped in the backseat of one of his junkers, legs dangling out in the long grass. “Why are you going?” It was my way of saying Don’t.
The insects buzzed as if to lend sound to Grandpop’s wry smile. “The world has already started saying its good-bye. Time I caught up.”
My heart crumpled.
“I won’t be able to come back to you.” He squeezed my chin. The bugs made the evening air sizzle. “Maybe someday you’ll follow me.”
I looked up, finally, unsure of what he meant. But the two of us only ever exchanged questions, never answers. I tried to hand him the map but he pushed it back toward me, and this time I noted the million red dots concentrated mostly in the circle he had drawn. Pinpointing locations. Locations of what? Before I could ask him about it, he loaded his old, failing body into the most serviceable junker. A minute later, it coughed away down the road.
For two days after I saw Cole kissing someone else, I refused all calls: Cole’s, the producer’s, the rep’s. I think our songwriter even tried once.
I lived off room service and watched newsfeeds and willed my heart to stop sinking like a stone. I tried to put it all together: Grandpop’s map with the red dots, and the way people from the Other Place sometimes stared at me—on the street, and in the coffee shop in Woodbury, where I’d thought the alien there was staring at Cole.
I watched Cole’s feed, like all his other fans did. Admired the clever love triangle they’d set up, even while I fumed over the betrayal.