by Jon Skovron
The audience burst into applause, most of them jumping to their feet again. Ruthven took a single bow and left the stage. The audience stayed on, applauding at the empty stage for a little while.
“Well, thanks, guys.” I hopped down from the stool.
“Where are you off to so suddenly?” asked Laurellen.
“Hot date?” asked Mozart.
“Oh, uh…” Sometimes I wished I was quicker at responding. “Not really.” And better at lying.
The two of them grinned at each other.
“An almost date?” asked Laurellen.
“Just getting coffee,” I said.
“With who?” asked Mozart.
“Um, Liel.” I knew I was blushing. And they were totally enjoying it.
“That is so sweet!” said Laurellen.
“My advice is be assertive,” said Mozart. “Troll girls love that.”
“Really, we’re just friends!” I said. “It’s just coffee!”
They looked at each other again. Mozart rolled his eyes.
“Would you like a spot of glamour?” asked Laurellen. “Nothing obvious, of course. Just a subtle bit of a lift?”
I thought about it for a second. A little faerie charm might be just the thing to get Liel to see me as something more than a friend.
“Better not,” I said sadly. “My mom would kill me if she caught me with glamour on.”
Laurellen sighed. “Well, if you’re sure…”
Mozart poked him in the shoulder. “He doesn’t need it, anyway. Anyone with half a brain can see the kid’s got a heart of gold.”
“Thanks,” I said. “But being nice isn’t exactly something that scores with the ladies.”
IF I HAD to name one place in the entire theater where I felt the most clumsy, it would be standing outside the women’s dressing room. They were all out of costume by this point, so the door was open and I could see into the long, narrow room. It was lined with mirrors and bright, uncovered lightbulbs, and packed with beautiful, graceful, chattering females. It didn’t matter that they were all wearing comfy clothes like sweats and tights and that their makeup and glamour were all wiped away. I still felt so big and stupid, standing there with my big, stupid hands hanging at my sides. But it wasn’t that strange “monster” feeling like when I was talking with that human girl in the thrift store. It wasn’t anything so special or powerful. No, it was the feeling I knew really well. The one that reminded me exactly where my place was in The Show: at the bottom.
And there she was, at the far end, her green face tilted up a little as she pulled her sweat-damp, white, silky hair back into a ponytail with a thin leather strap. The tight muscles in her arms, shoulders, and back flexed as she tied the strap. She turned her head in my direction, inspecting the ponytail in the mirror. Liel caught me in her glittering, diamond gaze and I wondered if she regretted inviting me out tonight. I realized that here, in front of the other females, she could just turn away, pretend she didn’t see me, and I wouldn’t say a damn thing.
But then she smiled and held up a finger like “one minute.” She tossed her makeup, brushes, and other things into a little case on the counter in front of her. Then she grabbed her bag and wove her way through the narrow center aisle toward me.
“You want to go to the Cantina?” she asked when she got to me.
“Sure,” I said, grinning like a maniac.
As we walked through the tunnels and corridors up to the Cantina, I was so conscious of her walking next to me that it felt like that whole side of my body was on fire. I wanted so badly to just reach out and take her hand. But then I looked down and saw my meaty, stitched-up excuse for a hand so close to her long, thin, graceful one, and I just thought, Don’t screw this up already.
There were a couple of places for the company to hang out after The Show, but the Cantina was the most popular. It was also the closest thing to “going out” that a lot of the company could have, since it was the bar out on the mezzanine level of the lobby. Like the rest of the lobby, it was tricked out in a swirl of color and fabric that was supposed to give the audience an international carnival feeling.
Liel and I plopped down on a couple of overstuffed chairs in the corner. One of the dryad wood nymphs immediately came over to take our order. Like all the nymphs, she was pretty in that standard Hollywood human way, although they had hair that was green like leaves and skin the color of tree bark. As near as I could figure out, the group of them shared some kind of hive mind, like bees. So individually they were kind of dumb, but as a group they could accomplish amazing things. Like serving drinks to a thousand audience members in a single ten-minute intermission with enough time left over for the audience to actually finish them.
“Liel, you were so great tonight!” the nymph gushed, completely ignoring me.
“Thanks, Meadow!” said Liel, gushing right back at her. “New number, so I was totally nervous.”
“No, no, you were fantastic,” said Meadow, patting her arm. “Now what would you like?”
“Can I get two Cokes with the extras?”
“After a night like tonight, you deserve it.” Meadow gave her a wink. Then she was gone.
“Extras?” I asked.
“Oh. It’s a rum and Coke.” She shrugged, like it was no big deal.
“Right,” I said, trying to match her tone. “Of course.”
She raised a thin, white eyebrow at me. “Haven’t you ever had a rum and Coke?”
“Um. No.”
Okay, it’s not like I’d never had a drink. My dad usually busted out a bottle of some old French wine on holidays, and the past few years he would give me a glass. But Ruthven enforced the twenty-one-and-over rule for drinking pretty strictly, and in a community as small as ours, it was hard to get around that. If I had tried to order like Liel just had, Meadow would have laughed in my face. That is, assuming she would have asked for my order at all.
“Well, this should be totally fun, then,” said Liel. “I can’t imagine you after a few drinks!”
“Yeah.” I hoped I wouldn’t make a total ass of myself.
“Here we are!” said a different nymph as she placed two tumblers of ice and dark, bubbling liquid on the small table between us. “Two extra Cokes!”
“Thanks, Iris,” said Liel.
That was the secret of the nymphs’ speed. When you told the order to one, you told it to all of them. They just coordinated their traffic pattern in the most efficient way possible, simultaneously taking orders, making drinks, and picking them up, using whoever happened to be closest to each station. Honestly, I didn’t know how Liel could tell them apart. They all looked and acted the same to me.
I took a swallow of my drink and winced, the alcohol burning my throat.
Liel snickered a little. “Yeah, you can’t drink it like it’s a regular Coke. Tiny sips. Especially if this is your first one ever.” She demonstrated with a quick little tilt of her glass.
“Thanks,” I said hoarsely, trying not to cough.
She laughed again. “Don’t worry. Soon you’ll be knocking them back like a trowe.”
“Well, thanks for getting me to try one of these,” I said, taking a careful sip. “They really are pretty good.” Maybe if I kept saying it, it would become true.
“Hey, no big deal.” She stirred her drink with a little red straw. “So? I’m dying to hear about your adventure outside.”
“Oh, yeah, well, I mean, it wasn’t like anything unusual happened. We walked down to a thrift store to get clothes and—”
“Through Times Square? Was it just like in the movies?”
“Kind of. It was really loud. And there were humans everywhere. Like waves of them, all swarming into stores and restaurants. It was crazy at first, just to see them, so many of them. And then to be that close. A couple of times, one even bumped into me a little.”
“Wow.” Liel shook her head. “And nobody noticed that you were different?”
“Well, some people did. But si
nce everyone assumed I was just a human with a lot of injuries, I guess it would have been rude to stare. The girl who helped me pick out your outfit—”
“Yeah! What was she like?”
“She seemed nice.”
“What did she look like?”
“She had red hair. And everything about her was soft and gentle. Her voice, her face—”
“White skin?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah. But not all humans have white skin.”
“Of course, I know that.” Then she looked down at her empty drink, frowned, and flagged a nymph over for another one. I wasn’t even halfway finished with mine.
“Anyway,” I continued. “The whole time she was helping me, she must have been wondering, but it wasn’t until the end that she asked me about it. The stitches, I mean. Like she had to work up the courage.”
“Like she was afraid of hurting your feelings?” she asked, like it was totally ridiculous. “About stitches?”
It didn’t feel ridiculous to me. Not anymore. To her, I had looked ugly. “She was kind, you know? And I guess—”
“Thanks, Sequoia,” Liel said as a nymph brought her another drink. Then she turned back to me. “So what did you say it was? Your stitches, I mean.”
“An accident,” I said. “With a thresher.”
She was in mid swallow and choked on her drink. Her cough turned into a laugh. “A thresher? Do you even know what one looks like?”
“Sure,” I said, laughing a little in spite of myself. “It’s like some big farm machine thing, I think.”
“That’s so awesome.” She shook her head. “The next human who asks, you should tell them you got mauled by a lion or something. That would be hilarious.”
I tried to imagine myself saying something like that and couldn’t help but laugh along with her. I hadn’t even considered trying to mess with them. God, why did I have to be such a goody-goody? Just like my parents, doing what I was told, trying to keep out of trouble.
I took a bigger sip of my rum and Coke. Maybe it was time to stop being such a good Boy.
“So, do you think there will be a next time?” Liel asked.
“Ruthven didn’t promise or anything, but he said maybe this could become a regular thing we do. And everything went fine, so I don’t see why not. He even introduced me to one of his business people. The guy who sells us rats for the Diva. Said I was his nephew and he was showing me the ropes.”
“Really? He said that?” She looked down at her drink, which was mostly gone already, too. She suddenly seemed kind of sad.
“What’s up?” I asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah, no, everything’s cool.” She smiled. But I’d been watching Liel smile my whole life. I loved that smile. If there was one thing I could spot, it was when she was faking it. We sat there in silence for a moment while she just stared down at her drink, swirling the ice with the red plastic stir stick.
“Hey.” I nudged her. “You know what he called me?”
“No, what?” she asked, still not looking up.
“Frank.”
She stopped stirring. “Shut up, really?”
“Yep.”
Her real smile came out. “Oh my God, that is so ridiculous!” She reached out and squeezed my forearm. She probably didn’t even notice, but whenever she did something like that, I melted inside.
“How come the boss isn’t funny like that all the time?” she asked.
“I don’t know. He was definitely a little different out there. A little more…I don’t know. Open, I guess. Like a real person.”
“Seriously, Boy.” Her hand was still on my forearm. “It is really awesome that you got to do something like that.”
“Yeah.” I stared into her eyes and soaked up the heat from her hand on my arm. “I just—”
“Oh, shit, what do we have here?!” Shaun’s voice came from directly behind me.
Liel’s hand immediately let go of my arm and slipped under the table. She leaned back, a weird, trapped look on her face.
“I didn’t know they served motor oil at the Cantina,” said Ernesto’s squeaky voice.
I turned slowly in my chair. Shaun the Faun stood there with his tanned, muscular arms folded across his chest. Ernesto stood on his shoulder in almost the exact same pose. He was flanked on either side by Aello and Celaeno, the harpy sisters. Oob wasn’t allowed in the Cantina.
“Oh, hey, guys!” said Liel, like she was glad to see them.
“You tired of listening to Robo-geek talk about computer stuff?” asked Shaun. “We’re getting a card game going in the corner booth.”
I stood up slowly, staring at the smirk on Shaun’s pretty-boy face. A hot, thick anger boiled up inside me. I thought about my new resolution not to be such a good Boy. My hand balled up into a fist.
But then Liel said, “Oh, that sounds like fun!” She jumped to her feet and moved over to him, like she couldn’t wait to get away from me. Shaun led her and his entourage over to the corner booth. I stood there, watching them settle in. Liel laughed at something Shaun said and punched him playfully on the shoulder.
Seeing that squashed the anger out of me. Had I really convinced myself that I had a chance with Liel against someone like Shaun? And then I was going to start a fight in the Cantina, make my family look like the big, dumb robots everybody thought we were?
“Are you still here?” asked Meadow, or Sequoia, or Iris, or whoever the hell it was. She wasn’t all smiling and perky now.
“Was I ever?” I asked.
She pursed her lips like she’d just eaten something bad. “Huh?”
“Never mind,” I said. Then I walked out of the Cantina.
6
Rage for the Machine
I PLUGGED MYSELF into my computer, into limbs and eyes better than my own. I dove into my project, burying myself under layers of code. I didn’t belong chatting up girls in the Cantina. This was where I belonged.
I didn’t write code in flat, two-dimensional text files like other programmers. Because input and output were parsed by my nervous system, I was able to create a true virtual reality, three-dimensional, with textures, smells, and tastes to complement the visual and audio.
That was a good thing, because I needed all of my senses to wrangle this code. It wasn’t static text in a line, but distinct operations that wrote and rewrote themselves constantly. It was to the point where I was less of a code writer and more of a ringmaster, trying to bind this piece to that, separate one from another. You could almost think of each chunk of process as a living cell and I was making a body of code.
But I couldn’t really concentrate tonight. Right in the middle of some crucial binding, I’d remember seeing Liel laughing with Shaun, and it suddenly felt like I had this hot fist in my stomach squeezing so tight it made me nauseous. Then the code would slip away and I’d have to chase it down again. After a while, I decided I wasn’t accomplishing anything, so I switched over to my chat client.
poxd: well finally somebody’s here
b0y: where r the others?
poxd: surelee is UK, so it’s crazy late there. or early, depending on how you see it. no idea about s1zzl3
b0y: what u doing?
poxd: trying DDoS to take down this stupid porn site that canceled my membership
b0y: how’s that going 4 u?
poxd: it’s not. their firewall’s pretty tight. so how’d your not-a-date go?
b0y: shitty. jock guy came and took her away
poxd: i’m serious, dude, some day you gotta just punch that guy in the mouth
b0y: ha, yeah right! i’d get in so much trouble
poxd: whatever. it would be worth it.
b0y: maybe…
poxd: even if he kicks yer ass, at least u might get a couple good shots in and how good would that feel?
b0y: well, i don’t know if he could kick my ass. i’m actually bigger than him
poxd: ha, yeah, me too, right, but fat doesn’t help much in a fight
> b0y: no, i’m not fat. i’m just really big.
poxd: really? that’s not how i picture u at all.
b0y: how do you?
poxd: *shrug* some skinny little goth kid, i guess. the way you talk about monsters and vampires like some fking expert.
b0y: nah, that’s not really me. i don’t even wear black
poxd: so if you’re bigger than jock guy, why don’t you just kick his ass?
b0y: i don’t know…everyone here knows each other…
poxd: right, right, that weird communal living your parents are into…freaky hippie shit. so?
b0y: so everyone would know. my parents, my boss, the girl…
poxd: yeah. they’d know you finally grew some balls and stood up for yourself.
b0y: *wince*
poxd: i just call it like i see it
“Boy. Come eat.” It was Mom.
b0y: gotta go. dinnertime.
poxd: aren’t you east coast? kinda late for dinner
b0y: i told you, my family works for a theater. they don’t get off until midnight.
poxd: weird life
b0y: u got no idea. l8r
I unhooked myself from the computer, then trudged out into the family room.
“Here.” Mom put a plate of spaghetti on the table.
“Thanks.” I sat down and started to eat. She just stood there and watched me. Sometimes it annoyed me when she did that.
After a few minutes of silence, she said, “You saw the Diva tonight.”
I stopped chewing. “Who told you?”
“Stage manager.”
That made me feel a little better. It would have hurt if Laurellen or Mozart had told on me.
“So?” she asked.
“She wanted me to watch her act. I was worried that if I didn’t, she’d do something bad. I was just trying to keep her happy. Like everybody else.”
“Not everybody,” she said. “Why did you talk to her at all?”
“I had to deliver the rats we got at the pet store.”