Zeera stepped into the center of the circle. “We’re going to code the App to take care of that issue.”
Parvda’s eyebrows arched. “But what if it doesn’t work? We need to be there to help them, especially if something goes wrong.”
“Of course.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the small rectangular tablet Zeera gave me before we met this afternoon. “And with the help of a little old-school technology, we will be.”
That same afternoon we distributed the tablets to the seventeens at the compound.
To the Keepers with us.
To everyone.
People oohed and aahed at the way the metal shined in the overhead lights. How you could see your face reflected in the surface, a silver shadowy self.
Zeera, Rain, Adam, Parvda, and I had prepared for the meeting by moving aside the targets and the knives and the obstacle courses and training mats in the gym, replacing them with rows of chairs for everyone to sit. We shifted and relocated and restructured until the place nearly looked like App World school, except without the holograms and download pods and, well, all the virtual reality.
Zeera was holding up her tablet at the front of the room. It gleamed next to her ear as she explained how it worked. “Most of the devices are fairly similar, though you’ll notice slight differences. If you find this little button,” she said, pointing to the spot along the center bottom of her screen, “the tablet will turn on. It may also be located on the side. Now let’s everyone look for it and try it. Then we’ll see what happens!”
There were murmurs among the rows as people ran their fingers along the edges, searching for the magic button that would transform their tablets into living things. Some of the seventeens worked in groups and pairs, helping those who couldn’t find the on switch.
But soon came sighs of delight.
“It’s beautiful!”
“Look at the colors. So sharp!”
“When I press my finger to it, it ripples like water!”
Only Lacy sat there looking bored, her eyes seeking Rain’s as he hovered along the edge of the room.
The shouts and cries continued until Zeera called everyone to order. She went on with her lesson about messaging, as well as how to understand the earliest version of the Apps each of them saw on their screens, explaining that no matter what they did or how hard they tried, these Apps would never download into their brains and bodies.
This provoked a few murmurs of disappointment.
A message popped up on my own tablet.
Rain.
How do you think it’s going?
Rain was only a few feet away from me, but his eyes were elsewhere, on the rows of seventeens. I nearly laughed out loud at the sneakiness of it all, how he was talking to me in full view of everyone—in full view of Lacy—but at the same time he was acting like he wasn’t even aware we were in the same room.
Such is the benefit of these devices, I supposed.
They allowed a person, two people, to act like they had no connection whatsoever, while in truth, they were connecting intimately in plain view. It reminded me of private chatting to people’s minds in the App World. How clever that these tablets made secrecy like that possible.
This would be to our advantage.
But I also began to see how these things could cause division, or at least, conflict.
Betrayal, even.
Was it a betrayal for Rain to talk to me without Lacy knowing?
He was standing in the same spot as before. His fingers twitched along the edge of the tablet as he stared down at it, like it might hold the answers to the future, like it was the most interesting thing he’d ever seen.
Was he that anxious for my response?
My gaze slid to Lacy.
She no longer seemed bored. She, too, was fixated on the little screen in her hands, eyes glued to it. A small smile slowly emerged on her face. She hadn’t looked up. Not even once.
Maybe the smile was because of Rain.
Had he messaged her too? Had he messaged us both?
A little something in me caved inward at this thought.
I decided right then I wouldn’t answer him. Things might be improving with Rain, but Rain was with Lacy now and I really didn’t want to be in the middle of whatever was going on between those two. As I let my attention expand beyond him, beyond Lacy, beyond whatever drama was unfolding between the two of them and the three of us, I saw something rather chilling.
The normally loud, raucous seventeens had grown silent.
There wasn’t a comment or a peep or even a sigh of delight as before.
The only sound came from the tap, tap, tapping of fingers on little screens.
Everyone was sitting together, sending each other messages I imagined, but no one looked at one another. No one shifted or turned or leaned in to their neighbor. They stared at their tablets, enraptured, their eyes glazed over with fascination. Some people held them high in front of their faces, others were bent over in their chairs to get a closer view. Palm after palm cupped their new devices lovingly, as though they held a delicate flower or a tiny living creature, easily crushed.
I swallowed.
Was the Keeper right? Had this been a mistake? Would we come to regret our decision to pass out such weapons? Had we been too cavalier about their power?
My eyes went to Adam and Parvda, who were sitting off to the side. Even they were hunched over their devices, their full attention on the little screens in their hands. Adam leaned away from Parvda, studying the tablet, and Parvda had a broad smile on her face as she looked down into the glow in her palm, the kind of smile she usually reserved for Adam.
Did we, as humans, fall in love with our technology just as we did with one another? Easily and quickly and wholeheartedly? Could we learn to regard the devices that delivered it to us with as much care as another body? Would all of us soon depend on these hunks of circuitry and metal for our happiness? Or even our survival?
As I took in the rapture on everyone’s faces, I thought to myself:
This is really how it started, isn’t it?
The divide between worlds. Between people.
Between the virtual and the real.
I glanced at the clock on my own little screen. Soon it would be time to head to New Port City with the Keeper. I crossed the room on my way to the door, and when I reached Zeera, I leaned in and whispered, “I don’t know about this. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to give these out to everyone.”
Zeera shook her head. “Don’t worry. It’s just the initial fascination.”
“I hope you’re right.” Before I could walk away Zeera pressed another two tiny flat screens into my hand.
She eyed me. “Just in case anyone else will be needing one.”
I shrugged, wondering who she was thinking about. Trader. Or Kit. Both maybe? “Thanks,” I said.
I was nearly to the door when she called out to me one more time. “Stay in touch, Skylar. That’s what these are for.”
I was shoving things into an overnight bag when I heard footsteps approaching my room. I thought it would be the Keeper, pressing us to leave, but it was Rain.
The door was already open and he leaned against the frame. “You’re really going away again.”
I zipped my bag and slung it over my shoulder. There came the sound of glass clinking inside. “I’m leaving to find Trader. You knew that.” Rain’s eyes were mostly unreadable, but I could detect at least a trace of sadness. “I won’t be gone forever,” I added.
He crossed his arms. “Why don’t I come with you?”
“What about Lacy?”
“What about her?”
My bag was getting heavy. “She wouldn’t like it.”
“She would deal.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You’re sure about that?”
“Skylar—”
“I’m going to be fine. I’ll be with my Keeper.”
Rain laughed softly. “Will you, though?”
“Yes,” I said.
He shook his head. “You’re going to see him, aren’t you. You just left that part out.”
Warmth spread to my cheeks. I pushed past Rain into the hall. “I’ll be back before you know it,” I called over my shoulder.
“Skylar,” Rain said behind me softly.
I halted a moment and considered turning around to hear what else he had to tell me. But instead I hoisted the bag higher onto my shoulder and continued on my way.
21
Kit
tattoo, artist
I WENT TO my room and pulled out a flat wooden box from under my bed. Skylar had unearthed most of what I kept in this cottage—a few books, my stash of homemade whiskey, the jar of sea glass I’d collected during walks on the beach. Even the single photograph I had of Maggie hidden under my clothes in a drawer. But she had not found this, or if she did, she didn’t mention it.
I think she would have mentioned it.
The box was gray and battered, the grooves in the wood deep, some of them jagged and sharp. I’d made it for Maggie with driftwood I found washed up on the rocks. It was rectangular and fairly large, though not deep. Big enough to store a few of the old kind of magazines inside.
Big enough for my sister’s books.
Maggie was an artist. If we still lived in a world where artistry mattered, she would have had a long and illustrious career as one. She was always with a pencil in her hand, bent over whatever sheets of paper she could find—or that I could find for her. Paper was scarce in the Real World these days.
“What are you working on?” I’d ask Maggie each morning.
She always looked up at me with a dreamy smile. Drawing took her to another place, another world, one that she created from her very own imagination.
Well, sort of.
“My novel,” she’d tell me.
“Novels are made of words,” I would say back.
“Not mine,” was her perennial reply.
Maggie’s novels were made of pictures, long thin panels that stretched across the paper before her like stripes on a flag. They were filled with intricate scenes, detailed portraits of the people she loved most to write about, telling the stories of their lives according to her own hopes and dreams for them; her own hopes and dreams for herself, since Maggie loved to insert herself amid the drama she was always creating.
I took out the thin bound books now and opened the one on top.
The face that met me provoked a grimace.
Rain Holt stared back from the very first panel. He stood there with his hands shoved in his pockets, shirt half untucked, eyes wide and full of contempt. Or, more like, he floated in the center of a blackened sky. Tiny App icons hovered around him. In the next panel he was reaching out to one of them, or maybe it was reaching out to him, melding with his mind.
I closed the cover again.
My sister’s stories were about life in the App World. The famous people there were famous here, too. There were citizens throughout New Port City who were obsessed with them. People like my sister.
The worlds weren’t quite as separate as people thought.
We spent time connecting to them ourselves.
We couldn’t seem to help it.
The Holt family was top on everyone’s list, of course, especially their son, Rain, who made all the real girls swoon. So were politicians like Emory Specter. Mean girls like Lacy Mills and her wealthy friends.
They became the stuff of legends around here.
People like my sister made them legendary by imagining their charmed virtual lives, by fantasizing about all the adventures they must be having on the Apps and penning them on pages like the ones I held in my hands. Tidbits about them, brief snapshots of gossip, would slip through the cracks between worlds, trickle down to us in a slow but steady drip, drip, drip. The annual unplugging of the seventeens was a major source of information, of course. But other news would reach us occasionally, stories about App World citizens and their activities, their minds, their parties. No one knew how, exactly, but reach us it did.
Maggie soaked it all up like a summer rain.
I nearly laughed at the simile I chose.
Rain. Rain Holt.
Maggie sure loved Rain.
So did Skylar, apparently.
How was it that one boy could capture the attention of the only two girls I’d ever cared about? If I’d known that Rain was the person Skylar talked of making jealous, I would have hesitated good and long before I made her that promise. Before I jeopardized my sister’s life on behalf of her own.
My heart hurt just thinking about Skylar.
Maybe she’ll come through whispered a voice inside of me.
Maybe, despite everything, she would.
Besides, it was also true, hard as this was to admit, that Maggie plugged in fully aware she was abandoning me. And she went anyway.
I shook my head. It was all for nothing. All that waiting, all that hoping, all that money, all that drama. She wasn’t even plugged in anymore.
Maggie was as real and awake in this world as I was.
I put the book back into its box and returned it to its hiding place under the bed. I should have been more honest with the Keeper who’d come to take her through the gate. I should have told her the painful truth:
That a little part of me hated Maggie for leaving.
That something in the bond between us broke when she walked away.
I wished—I wished with all my heart—that I had known that day in New Port Station that the woman who watched our good-bye was the head of a new political faction in the Real World, a woman on the cusp of becoming the most powerful leader people had seen since Marcus Holt invented the App World.
How I wished I’d known then that my sister’s Keeper was Jude.
Later on that afternoon, I went outside to stare at the sea.
I thought about Skylar. I thought about Maggie.
I wondered what to do next. Who I owed more.
When Skylar asked for my promise, I chose not to tell her that taking down the Body Market wouldn’t necessarily get Maggie back.
Why hadn’t I told her?
I’d said, early on, that this was to be an exchange: a body for a body. One sister for another.
Skylar assumed it was about money.
I didn’t correct her. I let her think this was true.
But a hostage for a hostage was the more accurate way to put it.
The Body Market’s status as opened or closed would have little effect on what happened to Maggie. I didn’t know where she was. And I wouldn’t know until I handed over Skylar.
When the sun drained from the sky I went into my room and crawled into bed. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. The hours passed and I tossed and turned, without the relief of rest. I’d yet to sleep since I said good-bye to Skylar. Guilt claimed me as its hostage just as Jude claimed my sister as hers. And it refused to release me.
The next time I saw Skylar, I wouldn’t let her out of my sight.
22
Skylar
between worlds
“WHY IS IT you need to be in New Port City?” the Keeper asked. “Can’t you just tell me?”
We were nearly to the mansion where she lived. The car bumped along the broken road, and skidded occasionally on the lakes of ice that covered over the biggest of the potholes. The Keeper took every back road she knew. She was worried someone would see me in the passenger side, even though it was dark out.
“Neutral ground,” I said, not realizing that this was how I wanted to answer her question until the words were out. The tension I always felt with Rain, and now between Rain and Lacy . . . it was just too much.
She harrumphed. “Neutral ground?” She sounded astonished by my answer. “You think being in New Port City, where half of Jude’s people are looking for you, is neutral?”
I looked at her. “I meant my old room. I think it will be good for me to stay there for a night. If that’s
okay with you?”
The Keeper turned the wheel slowly. “You can stay as long as you like. You’ll always have a room at my house, Skylar.” She kept her eyes on the windshield as she said this.
I could hear the affection in her tone. It reminded me of those moments after I’d first woken in this world and her actions toward me were like those of a parent. I reached out and put a hand lightly on her arm. She gripped the wheel so tightly I worried about disturbing her careful concentration, but I wanted her to know I was grateful. I suddenly wanted to return her affection. “Thank you. That’s nice.”
The Keeper turned onto a long narrow drive. Soon the mansion loomed ahead, ghostly and dark in the snow and the starlight. “Here we are.”
We went inside. It had been many months since I’d been to her apartment. It looked the same, as always, neat as a pin and in stark contrast to the opulent decadence of the rest of the gigantic house.
The Keeper gave me a quick hug. “I’m exhausted. See you in the morning?”
“I might be gone early,” I said, and waited for her to tell me no, for her to express worry, for her to make me regret coming here or even remind me about the downside of staying with someone who felt parental toward me. “And I might be back late. Or not at all,” I added.
The Keeper only nodded. “Just be careful,” she whispered. “And cover yourself up,” she added. “There’s a coat for you with a hood.” She turned away and disappeared through the doorway that led to her room with tired, heavy steps.
Then I went to the bed where I had spent my first days in the Real World, when I’d been barely able to get up, barely able to speak, when I was barely aware of when I was awake and when I was dreaming. Before I lay down, I took out the jar of sea glass from my bag and set it on the nightstand.
Before there was even a sliver of light in the sky, I set out into the city, cloaked with the coat the Keeper left for me on the couch. The hood was lined with a thick layer of fur, and when I pulled it over my head and around my chin it came nearly to my eyes and covered the edges of my face.
It was perfect.
And it was warm.
I tugged at Kit’s scarf around my neck.
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