The Unidentified

by Rae Mariz

  “Aw, I think they look cute together,” Tesla said. “I mean, I know he’s technically a meatpounder and therefore deserves no praise from any self-respecting Princess, but full points for that pull, Kid.”

  Ari just continued sewing.

  “I always thought you and Littleton had something going on,” Avery said, breaking the yarn of her knit project with her teeth. “Showing up at After Hours with his best friend is quite the dagger-twist, don’t you think?”

  “What? No,” I said louder than I meant to. The scene from the Kiss Off® contest flashed like a subliminal blip. “Jeremy’s not his best friend. I’m his best friend.”

  Ari shook her fashionably too-long bangs and muttered, “Best friend. Right.”

  She released a slip of brown material from the torture of the sewing machine, held it against her body and admired the reflection of her newly fashioned slip dress.

  What was I going to wear to After Hours? “Can I get a ride home to pick up some stuff before I come over?”

  Ari didn’t take her eyes off the mirror when she answered. “Oh. Sorry. I have a lot to do before tonight. Can’t.” She fake-pouted. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. It’s okay.”

  I guess I would have to take the shuttle home, then try to convince Mom to take me to Ari’s. I’d say I was counting down the weeks until I turned sixteen, but I wasn’t deluded enough to think that I’d be getting access to a car for my birthday.

  “I can take you, Kid.” Tesla was packing up her project.

  “Thanks,” I said. Tesla was always a sweetheart, but I was still surprised she volunteered to chauffeur me around all afternoon. Maybe it was just another hidden perk of being branded now.

  Tesla held her card up against the dash and the motor purred to life.

  “I still can’t believe your folks didn’t activate any restrictions on your ride.”

  “Just because the technology is available doesn’t mean they’ve got to use it,” she said, checking her mirrors. “Besides, I think they secretly like it when I come home and tell them about my day without GPS spoilers. If they’d preprogrammed my routes, all my adventures would have no entertainment value.”

  She maneuvered her car out of the massive parking lot, singing unselfconsciously to herself. Her singing voice was huskier than her speaking voice. It was a nice surprise.

  “So. How’s branded life?” she said casually.

  I’d suspected it, but was a little disappointed to have it confirmed that Tesla was being friendly because of a change in my record.

  I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know how to answer. A lot had changed, but I still felt the same.

  “Did you know they wanted to brand me?” she said, signaling left. “A couple times, actually.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t want to name-drop,” she said. “Doesn’t really matter.”

  “Why didn’t you click OK?”

  “Did you read those terms and conditions?”

  “Almost?”

  She laughed. “Yeah, no one does. But I didn’t think it was a good deal. I didn’t want to give away the rights to my content and inventions, for what? Some free shit? To hang out in the VIP Lounge or whatever?”

  “I should introduce you to Tycho Williams.”

  “Damn. Yes, please.” She honked the horn in three short bursts for emphasis. “If I knew getting some branded boys would be part of the deal, I probably would’ve reconsidered.”

  I didn’t answer at first. I didn’t really want to admit how big a factor Jeremy had been in my decision to get on the It List.

  Then her tone got serious. “And if I had known that the sponsors I declined would challenge every new design I came up with…” She punctuated her sentence with a frustrated animal growl. “Sore losers, for real.”

  “Is that why you’re getting harassed for your flipstreams?”

  “Indeed. If I drove over to their corporate headquarters and spent the night nailing all the office furniture to the ceiling to really flip their shit up, would you be my alibi?”

  She laughed. But I froze at the word “alibi.”

  “Tess,” I said quietly. “About Alibi…there’s no, um, contaminated code in that program or anything, is there?”

  “No way. Elle crafted that app. It’s sparkling sterile. Completely safe for consumption.”

  I told her about Protecht and their investigations into Alibi. “Just tell her to be stealthy. And to watch her back.”

  “You too.”

  I smiled, “I’m protected by the Protech logo. What do I have to be worried about?”

  But Tesla still looked unconvinced. “There’s been talk around the Sweatshop.”

  “There’s always talk around the Sweatshop.” I sighed.

  “I know.” She hesitated. “And I don’t really want to add to the talking-behind-people’s-backs…But Ari and Rocket?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re talking. So just be careful.”

  Ari lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. I’d been in this nice house so many times over the years that I knew everything about this place.

  I knew the exact blooming schedule for the synthetic seeds in the front lawn. Mrs. Knowland made sure the grass was purple this time of year because she could. She was proud of how her landscaping made the natural oranges of the neighbors’ oak trees look cheap. Not that Mrs. Knowland spent much time personally enjoying her yard. She always selected the “English garden in spring” view on her touchscreen kitchen window.

  Everything was familiar at Ari’s place, but never really comfortable. My cheeks always hurt a little bit from my strained smile. I can almost understand why Ari went around looking for drama and tragedy. It was painful to be perfect all the time.

  Ari opened the door when I rang. She had a huge smile on her face that shrank a little when she saw me.

  “Oh, hey,” she said, not exactly unfriendly. “I thought you were Rocket. Hey, Tesla.”

  “Hello, Kid,” Mrs. Knowland called from the kitchen. “Congratulations. We saw your name on the It List updates. Imagine our surprise.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “I was planning on redesigning Merilee’s front room in opulent eggplant on Tuesday,” she continued. “Please tell me you can get the workers to deliver the stone work by seven.”

  “I…don’t,” I stammered.

  “She’s not talking to you,” Ari said, impatiently maneuvering us toward the staircase, past the showcase of all the gifts Mr. Knowland brought back for Ari from his conference trips.

  “I don’t care,” Mrs. Knowland said to the phony flowers in the hall. “They need to get it done.”

  I followed Ari upstairs.

  The walls of Ari’s bedroom were wallpapered with posters and magazine pages. The layer was so thick that the room was probably completely soundproofed by now, which was good because the girls had the music up loud. Ari never took down old posters, she just put her new interests up over them. Imagine the history you could read on those walls, like growth rings on a tree.

  The latest layer on the surface now looked a lot like her Network profile page: Ari’s favorite Idol band, manga drawings from her Japanese e-pal, crafty fashion spreads, the cover of Times featuring the vice president and her “controversial” hairstyle.

  And speaking of controversial hairstyles, I soon found myself sitting on the bed while Ari tugged and twirled my limp and lifeless hair. She had bobby pins between her lips, so her voice was kind of muffled.

  “OK. Now there’s no escape. You are going to get made!”

  “Yeah, you could be so pretty, Kid,” Kasi said, looking wide-eyed at herself in the mirror. All I heard was You’re not pretty now.

  “Do you think they’ll be done in time?” Ari asked Tesla distractedly as she pulled on my hair. I turned my head to see what Tesla was doing. She was on the floor soldering wires or something.

  “Hold still,” Avery said, blocking my view of Tesla. She had a tub
e of way red lipstick in one hand, and tilted my face up to her with the other. My natural instinct would’ve been to protect myself, but I felt Ari’s hands tighten in my hair, holding my head back.

  I figured I’d play dead and just wash it off later, but it turned out to be that Kiss Off® crap that Eva Bloom had been pimping. Something squirmed uncomfortably in my stomach when I thought of her with Mikey.

  After more tugging and twisting, Ari managed to sculpt a ‘do with a couple of strategically placed braids. I looked at myself in the mirror. Wearing the dress and leggings I’d bought with the whole hair-and-makeup thing, it looked like I was wearing a costume, or a disguise.

  “Well, aren’t you a pretty little bitch,” said a voice muffled by a ski mask. Avery snuck up behind me and wrapped her beefy arms around my shoulders.

  “Avery, let go!”

  She laughed and released me from her hold. She was wearing this kind of hypervintage 1920s mobster-bitch dress, with rhinestones along the hem. She looked menacing in her jewel-studded ski mask.

  “They’re not going to let you in with that mask, Ave. Security’ll think you’re a minor mobster,” Kasi said, flirting with herself in the mirror.

  Avery shrugged and slipped a cigarette between the mouth-slit of her hand-knited vandal headgear. “Oh, please. Look at me. They’ll know I’m major.”

  “If you’re going to smoke, do it out the window,” Ari said, raking her fingers through her bangs so they fell even more in her face.

  Avery leaned out the window as she lit her cigarette. “You all know that hip-hop gangsta is out and Cosa Nostra is popping now, right?”

  “Whatever,” Ari said. “On a scale of one to ten—ten being love it, one being hate it—this new style of glorified violence rates an…eh.”

  “An eight?” I asked.

  “No. An eh. Total apathy,” Ari clarified.

  “Oh.”

  Avery mumbled something vaguely Italian and made like she was going to put out her cigarette on Ari’s freshly glittered cheekbone.

  Ari took a kickboxing stance and laughed. “Try it, bitch.”

  Rocket came in then and broke up the fight with a “Ladies, please.”

  All the Craftsters squealed. Rocket looked stunning. Her dress was simple and stylish, but she was wearing false eyelashes that looked like iridescent butterfly wings that fluttered when she blinked. I stared at them until my eyes started to water.

  “Hey, I know,” Ari said. “Let’s see how we rate!”

  She started snapping pictures. Rocket opened her eyes wide. Kasi posed playfully against the mirror. Avery knelt on the bed, holding her hands like a pistol aimed at the camera. Tesla brushed the braids out of her face and flipped off the camera irritably. I don’t know how my picture looked, I was too surprised to pose.

  Ari thrust her intouch® over to me. “Here. Take my picture,” she said. She bit her finger seductively, but I laughed because I thought it looked like she was trying to get something out from between her teeth.

  “Now time to show the world what luscious bitches we are.” She uploaded the pictures somewhere. “I’ll send you guys the links to our entries.”

  Tesla stood up. “Well, they’re done. Who wants a heartthrob?”

  Tesla’s new invention was a kind of high-tech jewelry with diodes inside frosted-ivory beads backed with a conductive plate sensitive to pulse-point electricity. I couldn’t follow along with all the technical details, but they were incredible, these heartthrobs. She held one of the moon-colored beads to her wrist and it began blinking to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

  “Imagine how great they’ll look in low lighting. And after dancing? No doubt we could get those flickers flashing.”

  She clasped the necklace around her neck, and the little bead jumped to life. Then she went around the room and bejeweled everyone. Avery’s light pulsed from an armband buckled to her bare upper arm.

  Tesla tied a belt around Kasi’s waist, the firefly light winking just below her belly button. She gave Rocket a ring, and slid the headband on Ari, pushing her carmel hair out of her eyes. It looked like she was crowning a queen.

  I got the bracelet. It blinked lazily against my wrist.

  Ari and Rocket were flipping through the photos on Ari’s intouch®, whispering and giggling. I started to get paranoid about what they were saying.

  I thought about what Tesla had told me in the car, and the flickering light on my wrist started to speed up.

  23 CORPORATIONS THROW THE BEST PARTIES

  It was dark when we pulled into the parking lot, but lit like a film set. The whole front of the Game was bright and flashing sponsor names. Halos of blue and yellow colored the air around the building. The darkness kicked back to the edges with flashing red.

  Kids huddled in groups out front to share a cigarette or just escape the biomass of the Pit for some autumn night air. The yellowy exterior lighting reflected off the mica flakes in the asphalt, making tiny diamonds on the sidewalk, tiny diamonds in kids’ eyes. It made me think of the nature documentaries I’d watched in Cosmonova about nighttime safaris in Africa. Hyenas and pack animals. Everything was glittery and wild. That was my first impression of After Hours.

  We stepped up to the glass entryway. The place looked closed, except for the disco-ball fireflies zooming around inside. But we just flashed our IDs and the automatic doors opened with the same wheezy motor whirr like they always did. There was added security at After Hours events. Protecht security guards were checking retinas at the door, looking for the wide-eyed signs of deception and mischief.

  “You here to have fun?” a Protecht guard asked me, blinding my right eye with a light.

  “Yeah,” I mumbled. He paused, not entirely convinced by my reading. He scanned my ID again and must’ve seen my sponsorship. “Hey, new recruit. You on assignment, then?”

  I nodded and he let me pass.

  I waited for the other Craftsters. Avery was holding up the line because she kept winking and flirting with the guard.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim energy-saving lighting. A purple phantom globe-shadow hung in my vision from the scan. I tried to blink it away.

  At the other line, Cayenne Lewis was arguing with a guard who wouldn’t let her in. I don’t know why, but I walked over to them. “Hey, she’s with me,” I said, holding up my Game ID again for scanning.

  The guard scanned my card.

  “Harrison’s going to be pleased to know how well those retina scanners are working,” I said, name-dropping shamelessly, suddenly worried that I overestimated the amount of privilege Protecht sponsorship gave me.

  The guard just waved us through with a little salute.

  I smiled at Cayenne, exhilarated by our little deception.

  But she snapped, “Don’t think this means I owe you anything.”

  It was the first time I’d heard her speak and I was surprised at how vulnerable her voice sounded.

  “Yeah, whatever. Just stay out of trouble,” I said to her back as she disappeared into the crowd.

  The Pit glowed an eerie kind of blue-green, and the night sky pushed claustrophobically on the glass ceiling. With metal grates clanked down over the entrances to the rooms and all the other areas closed off, the entire mass of student bodies were crowded into the Pit. The white noise chatter that usually filled this space was all bashed into the shadows by the pulsing music of the Deep Beat DJ from Bangladesh.

  For a second I had the feeling that we were all doing something illicit and daring just by being there. Like rave kids throwing parties in warehouses or meatpacking plants in the ‘90s, or urban explorers finding abandoned malls and hospitals and stuff. But that was totally stupid. The sponsors knew about After Hours—hell, they organized them. They were huge promotional events. Corporations threw the best parties.

  Someone grabbed my arm and slapped a wristband around it, cinching it up tight. It was decorated with a black-and-white barcode.

  “What’s this?”
I shouted to Ari.

  She was holding up her wrist to get her own band. A girl came along and fastened it to her wrist.

  “It’s like…you scan it and see if you won anything. At the booths.”

  “Which one?” I asked looking around at all the tables and displays ringing the Pit.

  “All of them. You scan them at every booth.” I stuck my arm under the crisscrossing red lights of the scanner at the nearest booth. A message flashed up saying, “Sorry. Try again.”

  Tesla squeezed past me and rushed the dance floor, geeked to test out her new toy and get her heart rate to match the DJ’s beats per second.

  Ari held on to Rocket’s arm and watched the scene. The moon-colored bead flashed steadily against her temple. The light from her heart rate lit up her face, then hid it in blue-green shadows, and again.

  “Ooh! Giveaways!” Ari squealed and tugged Rocket’s arm. I followed them.

  Ari, Rocket, and I went around and crowded into all the booths to scan in. I had no idea what anyone was selling. It was all a blur of excitement and frenzy.

  Ari stopped at one of the booths. This one was for like toothpaste. Glow-in-the-dark toothpaste. The promoters at the booth were encouraging kids to brush their teeth with the product and then spit the glowing foam onto a screen, thus creating a canvas of splattered “art.” It was pretty gross.

  I turned around and saw Ari with a toothbrush in her mouth.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “Wha? ‘ts cull.”

  Luminous drool started to form in the corners of her mouth. She did a shy kind of spit toward the wall, but most of it dribbled down her chin. The crowd applauded anyway and someone handed her a napkin.

  “It’s cool,” Ari said again, wiping her chin. “Look at this.” She shoved a brochure in my face so I could read their marketing copy. My eyes glanced over it, not taking a word in.

  “It’s a really sexy idea.” She read the tagline to me: “When you’re ready to fade to black. And look how white and shiny my smile is.” Ari grinned wide and took Rocket’s hand again. I thought her teeth looked kind of blue.