by Yvonne Woon
“I was at a party, and I do remember talking to a boy there that might have looked like you, though the lighting was dark and I’d had too many shots, so I can’t say for sure. I did run into a boy the other day though. He was carrying a nice piece of Tupperware and introduced me as his colleague to his dad and asked me to do nothing on Friday. Was that you?”
Mast winced. “That doesn’t sound very romantic. It must have been a look-alike. I never would have called you my colleague, and if I had, it would only have been because I was nervous, and I would apologize and ask if we could start over.”
He was looking at me so earnestly that it felt like I had simultaneously known him forever and was just meeting him for the first time. Was it possible that I was staring at ObjectPermanence in the flesh?
“I’m Mast,” he said, and held out his hand.
I touched his fingers gently, cautiously, like they might shock me. “Xia.”
He curled his hand around mine and held on just a moment longer than he had to. “I guess I’ll see you around then.”
“I guess I will.”
I grabbed a piece of toast and walked to class with Amina, who was complaining about how hard Kowalski’s assignment was. I tried to sympathize with her, nodding occasionally and throwing in a few yeahs and ughs, but I was too buoyed by my Mast encounter to worry about school.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Amina said, stopping me in the hallway. “Normally you’re the one complaining about our homework, but today you’ve barely said a word. Am I missing something obvious in the assignment? You don’t have to humor me.”
I hesitated, not wanting to admit the real reason why I was being so quiet. “I didn’t finish it. I barely started it.”
“What?”
“I was too busy with Mitzy, and then I learned about ObjectPermanence, which ate up even more time, and then when I started, it was too overwhelming, and I don’t know, I just figured I’d do it later. I doubt Kowalski will mind.”
“So what did you pass in?”
“I uploaded a barely finished document.”
I’d been trying to tell myself that it wasn’t a big deal, that plenty of people passed in half-finished work, but saying it out loud only renewed the shame I felt about not focusing on school. Back home, I was at the top of my classes and never passed in assignments late or partially done.
Amina studied me like she was discovering a new angle of my face. “Oh.”
“At least he doesn’t go over assignments in class anymore. I’ll be spared the humiliation.”
“Yeah.”
I waited for her to retort with a witty remark but instead she said nothing.
We walked in silence the rest of the way and took seats in the third row. Seema complimented my shoes, and I glanced at Amina, who had to have heard it, and felt stupid for spending my weekend shopping instead of doing my assignments. By the time Kowalski put his bag down on the table and asked us to open our laptops, all of my excitement over Mitzy and my stock and Mast had dissipated and I was left with the stark realization that unlike everyone else in the classroom, I had nothing to show for my weekend other than a few excellent blazers and a new haircut.
A few desks away, Mast sat by the window taking notes on Kowalski’s lecture. He was wearing a gray T-shirt, and beneath it, his shoulder blades shifted as he wrote. Though I knew I was supposed to want him to look at me, I liked that he wasn’t, that he was staring so intently at the board. It felt intimate, watching him that way, like I was peering at him through a crack in the door.
I didn’t want him to find out that I hadn’t finished my assignments or that I hadn’t been able to follow along in class because I hadn’t done the reading, so I spent the rest of the period trying to catch up.
The day passed slowly. More classes, more handing in unfinished assignments, more trying to keep up with lectures that I didn’t follow. All the while, my phone kept vibrating. More likes, more comments, more followers.
I was in sixth period when I got the notification. It was from Squirrel. Someone had invited me to a map they’d made, along with a time:
6:00 p.m.
I felt a flutter of excitement and glanced at Mast, whom I assumed had sent it, but he was focused on his screen, a pencil tucked behind his ear as he listened to the lecture.
Just before six, instead of going to dinner, I hurried to the starting point on the map: the front door of the girls’ dormitory.
Following the path on my phone, I walked around the building, past the garden toward the back of the Foundry grounds. I’d never actually explored that part of campus; there was no real reason. All the classrooms were in the front.
It led me past a gardening shed, through a field dotted with fruit trees. When I walked by a particularly productive lime tree, a notification popped up on my phone.
Pick two limes, the app told me.
Amused, I did as it said. I turned the fruit in my hand as I walked.
The map culminated in a vast yellow field flanked by eucalyptus trees, their leaves swaying in the breeze. In the shade of the largest tree, Mast sat on a picnic table, reading a book.
Seeing him made me nervous in a good way, the same way I felt every time I saw a new message from ObjectPermanence in my inbox. It was the feeling of possibility.
I sat next to him, our arms almost touching, and admired the view. “I’ve never been here.”
“The grove,” he said. “I know I said Friday, but I figured why wait four more days to do nothing when we could do nothing tonight?”
I watched him brush his hair back and felt so sure that he was ObjectPermanence that none of the doubts Amina had voiced seemed to matter.
He pulled a brown paper bag out from the bench. “I hope you like tacos.”
“Who doesn’t like tacos?”
Mast pulled out his phone. “Olli, what do you think?”
“Tacos are the great unifier, the food everyone in the world can agree upon,” Olli said.
I smirked and peeked in the bag. “What kind?”
“I can’t believe you even asked,” Mast said. “There’s only one kind. Al pastor.”
“I’ve never had it.”
Mast gasped and feigned falling off the bench.
I laughed and rolled my eyes.
When he sat back up, a look of melodramatic solemnity overtook his face. “I’m honored to be the one to introduce you to the life-changing revelation that is al pastor. I promise, I won’t take this responsibility lightly.”
“Shut up,” I said, laughing.
Past fellows had carved their initials into the worn wood on the picnic table. Mast pulled a napkin from the bag and dusted the leaves and debris off. It was sweet, how he arranged all of the salsas, resting each on their little lid.
“What?” he said, feeling me watching him.
“Nothing.” But I proceeded to admire how he carefully tore the paper bag down the middle to make us a shared plate.
“What?” he repeated, amused.
“I just like what you’ve done with the place.”
“If you’re going to take a date to a picnic table at school, you have to at least make sure it looks nice. Did you bring the limes? They never include enough, in my opinion.”
I tossed them to him and he cut them open with a pocketknife. “May I?” he said.
“Please.”
He juiced them then handed me a taco and watched as I took a bite. He was right, it was incredible: a tangy crunch giving way to a tender bite of charred deliciousness, followed by the sweet taste of grilled pineapple.
“You like it?” he asked.
I licked the corner of my mouth. “I love it.”
He looked pleased.
“Check it out,” he said, and wiped a bit of dust off a metal nameplate on the picnic table. Location of Original Farmhouse, 1925.
“This whole place used to be an almond farm,” he said. “This was where the farmhouse first stood.”
I gazed at the ye
llow grass swaying around us. The sun filtered through the eucalyptus leaves, making Mast’s face glimmer in the light.
“Can you imagine?” he said. “This whole place, just almond trees.”
I could almost picture it, a worn wooden farmhouse surrounded by rows and rows of trees.
Sitting there next to him, I felt time compress, as if the past, present, and future were all happening at once, layered together to create this one perfect moment. I felt then that I had known Mast for a long time, that I’d always known him and always would.
I watched the last rays of sun dapple his face and felt like it was all too good to be true.
“What?” he said, glancing at me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just can’t believe I’m really here. I’m really in California.”
“Why can’t you believe it?”
“I’ve just wanted to come here my whole life. I never thought I’d actually be able to do it.”
“You do realize people come to California all the time. All it takes is a plane ticket.” He gave me a teasing look.
I nudged him. “I mean coming to the Foundry. Being part of it.”
“I know. I’m just giving you a hard time.”
“You’re from here. You grew up surrounded by tech people. It’s normal to you. It wasn’t like that for me. This place felt unreachable.”
“What makes you think I didn’t grow up wondering if I would ever make it to Woolster, Massachusetts?”
“Worcester,” I corrected with a grin. “There is no Woolster. But okay, sorry, I shouldn’t make assumptions.”
The sun was setting and the sky was saturated with pinks and purples.
“So is this what you do with all your first dates?” I asked. I’d meant for it to sound like a joke, but it came out sounding awkward and insecure.
“No,” Mast said, taking a bite of his taco. “Just you.”
I wasn’t sure what to say then, now that we were being serious. He must have sensed how I was feeling, because he leaned over and bumped his shoulder to mine. “Though I’ve always wanted to share a lime with someone.”
I blushed. It was something I could imagine ObjectPermanence saying.
“I like how undiscovered this part of campus is,” I said. “Sometimes it feels like with the internet, there isn’t anything left undiscovered.”
“People are still undiscovered,” Mast said. “I’ve never met anyone like you, for example.”
“Haven’t you heard? I’ve been discovered, too.”
“I don’t think a person can ever be truly discovered.”
My breath caught in my throat. ObjectPermanence had said something almost identical in his last message to me. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
There was a chill in the air when I turned to Mast. He looked beautiful then, his face lit up by the last rays of the sun.
“Sometimes it feels like I’ve known you forever,” I said.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?”
His eyes searched mine like he could look at me for hours and still find more to see. I inched my hand toward his and touched his fingers.
“It’s you,” I whispered, still unable to believe that I had found him and he was just as perfect as I’d imagined, and though I wasn’t sure he had any idea what I was talking about, he leaned toward me and gave me a sloppy kiss, half full of taco, his mouth warm and sticky and sweet. And for a moment I wasn’t thinking about school or Mitzy; I was there with Mast, feeling his fingers lace through mine as we watched the sun drop behind the trees.
Seventeen
When I made it back to my room, I flung the door shut and collapsed in my bed, grinning like an idiot. I should have gone to bed, but instead opened my laptop and read all of ObjectPermanence’s messages as if they were from Mast. It felt so natural. I could almost hear his voice reading the messages to me. I closed the window and curled up in bed, imagining the glow of the computer illuminating Mast’s face in the dark as he reached through the screen and touched my hand.
“You’re looking awfully buoyant today.”
Mitzy was sitting next to me in a white leather armchair while a woman crouched over her toes. We were in a luxury spa called Epiphany, where Mitzy had a standing reservation for a massage twice a week. It was her third appointment this week, this time for a mani-pedi, which she insisted I join.
“The last few weeks have just been really good,” I said. I’d mentioned Mast to her once, but she didn’t seem interested. Men were of little importance to her—they were accessories that she could swap when they suited her outfit—and boys were of no importance at all.
“Don’t tell me it’s about a joystick,” Mitzy said.
“Partially a joystick,” I admitted. “But also just everything. It feels like my life is finally coming together.”
The aesthetician who was massaging my feet glanced up at me and gave me a serene smile. It was my first pedicure and though I’d initially thought it would be weird to have someone slough the skin off my feet, I was actually enjoying myself.
It felt nice to walk into the salon and have the receptionist offer me tea and a steamed washcloth to “refresh” myself with. I liked how sweet the room smelled, like vanilla-scented flowers. I liked the vaguely Celtic music playing in the background and how it immediately calmed me, making me feel like everything was going to be taken care of. I liked the wall of nail polish and how it glimmered in the light. I liked how everyone smiled at me and asked if I needed anything, like I was important, like I was an honored guest. I could get used to being treated that way.
Mitzy nudged me, interrupting my thoughts. “Do you prefer pearl or ivory?”
She held up her phone, which had two different color squares on it that looked virtually the same.
“The one on the right, I guess?”
“Pearl. Me too.”
“Give me your Vault.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
“See what?”
“Just trust me.”
My instincts told me not to share my Vault account with anyone, but Mitzy was looking at me so impatiently, like my Vault was actually hers that she had kindly lent to me, that I couldn’t bring myself to say no. Besides, she’d already put so much time and effort into supporting me. Why should I assume the worst now? She was rich; she didn’t need my money. I handed it to her reluctantly and watched as she typed the account number into her phone.
I was seeing Mitzy pretty frequently then. Lunches, coffees, dinners where we met to ostensibly talk about plans for Wiser, though so far we’d only gotten as far as planning “my brand.” None of the meetings she’d mentioned at the Warbler’s Room had materialized, either, but that was okay. These things took time.
She would text me, usually in the morning, and ask me if I could meet to talk business.
>It’s important, she’d say, which I’d come to learn meant that she was bored and wanted company.
>I have class!, I’d write.
>Screw class. Did class boost your stock or did I?
She had a point. Plus, I didn’t really mind. I liked having meetings; it made me feel legitimate and important. Mitzy always picked expensive restaurants where we’d be seen and could see others. It was an integral part of creating a “Founder’s Aura,” she’d said. If people thought I was Founder, I’d more easily become one. I paid with my Vault account and tried not to look at the receipts too closely. They were business expenses, after all, and that was what the Vault money was for.
“So is this joystick cute?” Mitzy asked while her pedicurist applied a second coat of cherry-red polish.
“Pretty cute.” I tried not to blush.
“Where’d you pick him up? The mall?”
“He’s at the Foundry.”
“A programming joystick,” Mitzy said, impressed. “Be careful of those. They’re still competition.”
“It’s not like that.”
Mitzy raised an eyebrow. “Joysticks are for fun
only. Remember that and you’ll be fine.”
I wanted to tell her about ObjectPermanence and how it made Mast different, but how could I tell her that I was in love with my online pen pal, whom I was pretty sure I’d finally met in person, without sounding naïve and ridiculous?
At the counter, Mitzy grabbed two tubes of fancy lotion, one light blue and one lilac, and a pink vial of some kind of serum—all so beautifully packaged that they looked too pretty to use.
“These, too,” Mitzy said, handing them to her.
“They’re miracle products,” Mitzy said to me. “You’ll thank me when you’re thirty.”
I handed over my Vault, and the woman at the counter smiled before wrapping them in tissue paper and tucking them away in a fancy bag. They looked like perfect little gems. I had never bought anything like them before, and though I knew they were frivolous, I couldn’t help but feel a little thrill when the receptionist handed me the bag.
SENT MESSAGE FROM U/ARRAYOFLIGHT:
Please don’t ever regret sending a message to me. Drunk or not, I like hearing from you. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because we’ll never meet that we can talk the way we do. Maybe if we met in real life it wouldn’t be the same. Or maybe it would be . . .
I decided not to leave school and things are actually going really well. I haven’t told you this, but there’s someone at school who reminds me of you. You’re both so similar that sometimes I wonder if he is you.
I have a proposition. The next time I’m with “you,” I’ll trace the letter A for my username on the back of your hand to let you know it’s me, and if it’s you, then trace the letter O for ObjectPermanence back to me. What do you think?
I clicked send before I could change my mind. Then waited.
A week passed. I checked BitBop every morning to see if he responded, but every day my inbox was empty. Had I been too bold? Had I offended him by inching my toe across our invisible boundary? Or maybe he didn’t really want to meet me in person. Maybe I had misconstrued our entire relationship.
“Is everything okay?” Mast said, interrupting my worry spiral.
We were doing our homework together in a coffee shop in downtown Palo Alto, though I had barely made any progress.