by Rae Mariz
I got angry. “What’s your problem? Ari’s, like, my best friend. Why are you down on her all the time?”
Mikey held up his hands defensively. “I’m just saying, guilt by association is not a game. Accusing people of stuff without evidence, just based on who they were seen hanging out with? What if the administrators end their game and it’s not them?”
“You think they’d get Game Over for a stunt like that?”
“Just…I’d hate for my name to show up on a suspect list without a chance to explain myself, you know?”
Mikey was zapping all the fun out of my spy game. Maybe I should’ve asked Swift to play instead; he seemed to at least think it was exciting.
“Hey, how long have you known Swift?” I asked, trying to remember how much I’d confided in him about my Unidentified search.
“Why? Do you like him?” Mikey teased.
“No, I just—I don’t know.”
“He’s a jerk.”
“What? He’s your friend. Why are you friends with him if you think he’s a jerk?”
“All my friends are jerks. It doesn’t mean you should date any of them.”
“I’m not going to date Swift,” I said, embarrassed now. “Besides, what do you care? What makes you think I’m even interested—”
“Boring,” Mikey said, interrupting me the way he usually did when he didn’t want to continue a conversation.
The light on the door flashed green and Ari sulked in. I was weirdly relieved to see her.
“Yay! We’re all here,” I said, getting up to give her a hug. “Listen to this.” I played the bird-wing drum track from the other day. “It definitely needs your analog touch. Something woodwindy?”
Ari listened, a little distractedly.
“It’s too weird,” she said.
“What?”
“The beat is too weird. It’s too random. Have you heard this?” She played an Idol band’s latest track with a relentless and deeply monotonous rhythm. “It should be more like that, right?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It sounds a little too Pathetechno…”
“That’s what people want to listen to. Something—”
“We’re not an Idol band, Aria.” Mikey said her name like the opera solo, the way her parents intended.
“Ar-ee-ah,” she corrected. Pronouncing it like Maria but without the M. “And no kidding we’re not an Idol band. You guys keep changing our band name so no one’s even heard of us.” She pressed Play and the Background Checks track I was going to ask them to help me with started up. “We’re never going to get any airplay with this kind of weird sound stuff.”
“But what’s the fun in sounding like everything else?” I asked her. “Or just sounding the way people expect us to sound?”
She just sighed dramatically.
“You gonna start breaking glass, diva-style?” Mikey screeched out a note.
I covered my ears. “Mikey, stop!”
Mikey shut up. Then he put down his drumsticks and got up to leave.
“Wait,” I said, frustrated that he was taking off when we were finally all together.
“I’ll be in the DIY Depot,” he mumbled, before leaving.
Ari mouthed the word Diva and checked her intouch®.
I was so disappointed that we didn’t get anything done. I loved both Mikey and Ari, loved who they were and what they could do musically, but it was so frustrating that we couldn’t work together to make something amazing. I mean, I could already hear what the music of all of us together would sound like. I just needed them to play it.
“Hey,” Ari said, “the Craftsters are going shopping. You don’t want to come, right?”
Behind Ari, I saw Mr. Levy walking down the corridor with a man who had the calculated casual look of a cool hunter. Was that the Hit List cool hunter, Murdoch West? I didn’t want to talk to them, and definitely didn’t want to have the conversation with Ari in the room.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go!” I said, gathering up my stuff at record speed.
“Really? You never—” she said, moving too slowly.
“Come on,” I said, holding open the door for her. Mr. Levy caught sight of me and waved me over. I waved back like I didn’t know what he meant, and hurried Ari out of the Studio.
13 BULLY BUYING
Ari, Avery, Kasi, Tesla, and I all piled into Tesla’s car. Rocket decided to hang out with Palmer and some of the other kids from Generation Triple-A instead. I could tell Ari was in a bad mood because she was being louder than usual. More forcibly joyful. She flipped through the music stations, demanding something unrelentingly upbeat.
“What’re you doing?” Ari asked me.
“Turning off my intouch®. My mom’s been checking up on my GPS all the time lately.”
“Here. Gimme,” Tesla said, holding her hand out, but keeping her eyes on the road. “Force-quitting your intouch® is a newbie trick.” She synched my intouch® with her car’s GPS. “Elle finally launched the Alibi app she’s been working on. Where do you live?”
I recited my home coordinates, and Tesla programmed in a route to my house on her dash.
“You can also use the mapping software on Archive to set coordinates,” she said, passing it back to me. “There you go. Evidence that would hold up in a court of law.”
“Cheater,” Ari said, grinning. She pounded on the back of the driver’s seat. “Thanks for driving the getaway car, Tess.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Tesla,” I said softly. I held tight to my intouch®, feeling strangely weightless. Invisible.
Free.
I thought about the Unidentified list and felt like I understood their misleading card-swiping better. It wasn’t fair of me to suspect them of trouble just because they didn’t want administrators keeping track of their every move. Sometimes a little deception was necessary to get out of being watched all the time.
“How did you hack the ignition?” Ari asked Tesla. “My parents put a lock on my car so I can’t drive out of the Game before four.”
“Oh, my parents didn’t set driver controls,” she explained.
“Really? And no one called Child Protective Services?” Ari joked. “I wish my parents trusted me. It’s not like I’m going to quit out of the Game early and drive off.”
“Um. We kind of are quitting out of the Game early and driving off.” Kasi laughed from the front seat.
“Wooo!” Avery called out the window.
I liked being squeezed together with these girls. Speeding down a highway with the music up and windows down. I wished it always felt like that, like a FreshFlash® commercial for pinky-sized digital cameras with extra-memory for raw image enhancement to keep the colors bright and smiles genuine.
We drove into the city, Tesla completely keeping her cool in the insanely merging and stopping traffic thanks to all the hours she logged on the Urban Driving simulator in the Game. When we got close to the Boulevard, Tesla pressed the button on a parking locator she had been developing with some Modgeeks and Gearheads in the DIY Depot. Since the new parking meters allowed mobile payment options, she had been working to isolate the frequency given off by a receptive meter to indicate non-occupied spots.
A few blinking dots appeared on her GPS mapping screen showing her the location of free spaces.
We spilled out of the car and gaggled toward the shops. Ari grabbed my hand and pulled me along.
“Let’s go. Hurry. I want to get to Trendsetters. I saw some shoes there that are mine.”
I smiled. A determined Ari was a happy Ari.
I didn’t come downtown very often. There wasn’t anything to do. Practically all the shops had NO ONE UNDER 17 ALLOWED signs illuminated in their storefronts. Everyone said it was for our own protection, that they couldn’t guarantee the content of the stores were safe for underage consumers, so it was best if we were locked out. But I had seen how shopkeepers watched us when we passed. Like we were criminals for just being there.
Kasi was demonstrating a combo move for
a two-person fighter game while we walked down the street, against the salmon flows of adult commuters. They frowned at us as we moved forward, laughing.
“But you should see how Lexie does it,” Tesla said. “She’s one of the skillest players I’ve ever played with.”
“What’s she like?” I asked, thinking maybe her teammates could help me sort out the truthful inaccuracies of her Network profile.
“I don’t know. Quiet?” Tesla said, focused on her intouch®. “She’s got scary dead-on aim.”
“I think it’s because she’s filled with rage,” Kasi joked.
“What?”
“Just don’t bother trying to be friends with her,” Kasi said. “I mean, everyone always tries to buddy up with her to get close to Palmer. It won’t work.”
“I wasn’t going to. I—”
“Oh come on, Kid. You’re a fame whore like the rest of us. Don’t play.” Ari let go of my hand and demonstrated an alternative kick-punch combo and managed to direct-hit a lady’s oversized gray leather handbag.
“Sorry!” she squealed after her, then muttered, “I wouldn’t have hit your bag if it wasn’t so ugly and elephantine.”
In the Trendsetters store, we all flashed our Game IDs to the shop assistant and the lady’s suspicious frown morphed into a servile smile. Trendsetters clothing had been a Game sponsor since the beginning. Thanks to the partnership, we were welcome here.
“What are you girls shopping for today?”
“Shoes,” Kasi said decisively.
“A jacket,” Tesla said, already checking the racks.
“Skinny jeans,” Avery answered.
“Whatever!” Ari gushed.
They all turned to look at me. I wasn’t really planning on buying anything, I just came for the social activity of it all.
“We’ll help her,” Ari said knowingly.
The lady went over to the jeans section with Avery since she was going to be requiring the most assistance getting her thighs into skinny jeans.
I flipped through things on the rack. I liked the colors, liked looking at the styles, but I couldn’t imagine myself in any of them. Especially when I scanned the barcode with my intouch® plug-in. I couldn’t afford anything in here.
The Craftsters were going to mod their purchases once they got back into the Game, put their individual handmade touches on their new clothes, but the whole place reeked of Fashion Fascist. Sometimes I really didn’t get the clique wars.
Ari bounded up beside me, hangers clothed in sweaters and dresses gripped in each hand.
“Did you find anything?” I asked.
“Yep. These are for you,” she shoved one collection of hangers into my arms. “Come on. Let’s go try them on.”
We shared a large dressing room and pulled off our clothes. I turned around and saw Ari was wearing matching yellow satin bra and panties. On the ass of the underwear there was a silk-screened handprint. It looked like a greasy man-hand had grabbed her butt.
“Are those new?” I asked.
She turned around to view her ass in the mirror. “Yeah, aren’t they dirty?”
I nodded, not really knowing how to answer. I looked through the clothes Ari had chosen for me. The legs of the pants she got me were nearly twice as long as my own now-seemingly-stubby legs. And none of the shirts seemed quite up to the challenge of covering up enough skin to qualify as a garment.
I pulled the eggplant-and-lime-colored too-tight shirt off over my head.
“What do you think of this?”
Ari was wearing a button-up-the-front dress with a dramatic collar. The collar looked kind of good with her short-styled hair, but the overall impression was of an evil galactic overlord.
“It’s definitely a look,” I said, not daring to offer an opinion.
I pulled an army green tank dress on over my head and turned to look in the mirror. It really was cute. There was a tangerine racing stripe down the side. And the skirt had a flirty little flip to it. I kind of liked it.
“Oh! You should get that! Kid, you look adorable.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty grab, but when would I ever wear it?”
“All. The. Time,” she said enthusiastically.
I scanned the barcode to check the price.
“Ari, I can’t afford this.”
“What do you mean? You can just put it on your Game card.”
Our Game IDs doubled as credit cards inside and outside of the Game, something my mom discovered after the bill came during my first year in the Game. All the swipes to get tokens for the Vending Machine snacks and drinks at the cafés and Culture Shock meals really added up.
“Why can’t you put it on your Game card?” Ari said, zipping up some Dance Riot-inspired pants. The whole right hip area was shredded and discolored like she had been dragged across the floor.
I didn’t really want to explain it to Ari. Her parents were happy to pay the bills on whatever she wanted. She didn’t have to explain to them how important it was to have the right things in a place like the Game—they already knew the price of success.
“My mom would be pissed,” I said, looking in the mirror again.
“Put it on your Game card,” she said, like a command.
I laughed and turned to face her.
“Buy it,” she said seriously.
I rolled my eyes and started to take it off. Ari stepped forward, close, entering my space. “Come on, you have to get it,” she said, her face close to mine. Her face melted into her charming smile. “It looks so prize on you,” she said sweetly. And stepped back into her corner to finish trying on her things.
I felt a little sick handing over my Game card to the lady, and refused to even look at the printout of how much I’d just charged. Thanks to added peer-pressure purchasing, I walked out of there with silver-and-black-striped leggings and red slip-on flats to go with the dress. When Tesla dropped me off, I ran in to hide the shopping bag in my room before Mom got home.
“Kid!” I heard her call through my bedroom door a few minutes later.
“Yeah?”
“Did you feed Lump?”
“Yeah,” I said, even though I hadn’t. I felt bad about lying to my mom, but I didn’t want her to know I’d gone downtown. I felt worse about the hungry dog in the other room and vowed to slip him his food when my mom left the room.
“Look what I got you,” she said, opening my door. “I saw a show the other night that said how popular these are right now. On sale!”
I cringed, waiting to see what it was. She held up a pink plaid sundress that Eva Bloom would wear if that look hadn’t gone out of style seven weeks ago.
“Isn’t it cute? I’m going to have to take a few more shifts at Aunt Gillie’s to pay it off, but I want you to have the best.”
“Yeah. Thanks, Mom,” I mumbled. I wanted to feel grateful, I knew she tried. But she should realize I was not going to get any popularity points from something she got on discount. “I just need to finish up some schoolwork.”
“OK, Kiddie. Play hard.” She kissed the top of my head, then left my room, closing the door behind her.
I scanned the tag with my intouch®. The pink thing cost a pathetic fraction of what I’d just spent at Trendsetters.
I opened my notebook® to check Trendsetters’ return policies, but I got distracted by the little spying eyeball icon in the corner of my Network page. It was the tracker app I had installed in the Illegal Arts Workshop earlier today. I clicked it and scrolled through to see who had been viewing my page.
My privacy settings were friends-only, so I wasn’t surprised to see Mikey and Ari topping the list. My heart started bumping hummingbird style when I saw that Swift had checked me out a few times in the past couple days. I couldn’t wait to tell Ari.
I scrolled through to Recent Views and was surprised to see that apparently sponsors were an exception to the friends-only privacy setting. Protecht Securities and Trendsetter clothing had recently viewed my page. The Trendsetter spons
ors probably had a policy to look at a page after a Game purchase was made in their stores. But why would Protecht Securities be interested in my content?
Then, as I was logged on and watching, a new address popped up into the viewing field. Zeronet. I’d never heard of them, but they must’ve had sponsor status because they definitely weren’t on my friends list.
As the eyeball icon pulsed slowly, I got a little spooked that someone I didn’t know was looking at my page at the same time as I was. It almost made me feel like they could see into my bedroom, right now.
My notebook® pinged as a new private message appeared in my inbox.
They’ve got their eyes on you now. And so do I. by anonymous
The words jolted me deep like a static shock. I logged out quickly and closed my notebook®. I was too creeped out to know how to reply. I didn’t think it was even possible to create an anonymous account on Network.
Then I remembered the Illegal Arts Workshop.
Obviously there were ways to get around the Network security systems. Anonymous proxies to hide the identities of the viewer. But I’d seen who had been looking at my page.
Zeronet.
14 TRENDSPOTTER
“Why aren’t you wearing your new clothes?” Ari asked when I met her for breakfast in Culture Shock the next day. Our mornings there were kind of a tradition. Or they had been, until she got cliqued.
“I don’t know,” I said, taking a seat beside her. “It felt a little too dressy for school.”
“It wasn’t. It was totally the look you need right now to get noticed.”
I had been thinking about that anonymous private message all night, and I was pretty confident that I would prefer not to be noticed, thank you very much.
“Did you get me my cream cheese steamed bun?” I asked.
“No. I was there with you in that dressing room, and what kind of friend would I be if I fed you fat-filled steamed buns?”
“An amazing friend?” I pleaded. “I’m craving one so bad right now.”
She just shook her head. “Eat this. Much more healthy.” She pushed a plate with a green-tinged pastry over to me.
The World Languages Department required students to order foreign food in the native language. It was supposed to provide us with the “experience of travel,” which apparently meant being really confused and reduced to universal hand-gestures to express what you needed. Lucky for the Culture Shock program, the food was reeeally good, like worth-making-a-fool-of-yourself good. If you couldn’t learn the language, the alternative was making friends with someone who could order, that was another one of the “rainbow diversity” goals of the World Languages Department.