The Unidentified (17 page)

“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 tube 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(r) 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(r) 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(r), 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.

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.

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 “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 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 cul .”

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.

“Nice,” I said, and looked around. Kids were laughing and talking, their bluish teeth flashing eerily in the dark.

Ari was still smiling. Then she screeched.

“Elan!” She started waving frantically to someone behind me. “Hey!”

A guy came over. He was definitely older, like twenty- three, I guessed. I recognized him from the VIP Lounge. He was catalog-cute: dimples, hair gel, the works. He came over and gave Ari a hug, held on a little too long, but she definitely didn’t seem to mind. Her heartthrob was flashing strong; she grinned up at him. She was glowing, literally and figuratively.

“Well, look at you ladies,” he said, putting his arm around her and turning toward us. He did that elevator-eyes thing, scanning our “look” from head to toe. He also had a glow-in-the-dark smile. This guy was so definitely a cool hunter.

“These are my friends,” Ari said. “They’re branded,” he added. “This is Elan,” Ari said, leaning her head on his shoulder.

“Hi, Alan,” I said, waving.

“It’s Elan,” he said, kind of annoyed, then he turned the charm back on. “From the old French. It means vigor and liveliness, a distinctive style or flair. Elan.”

Ew. I did not like Elan.

He turned back to Ari, tilted her chin up to him. He spoke softly to her, touched her hair. Ari giggled. Then he looked up and saw someone in the crowd. He kissed her forehead and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Ari spun around. “Can you believe it? Can you believe a brand is flirting with me? How do I look?”

“I believe it,” Rocket said. “I always said there had to be some kind of sneaky cheater business happening for you not to be branded already.”

“What brand is he scouting for?” I asked.

“He represents Aerwear shoes.”

I glanced over in the direction Elan took off to and saw that Ari wasn’t the only girl Aerwear shoes was flirting with.

“What’s wrong?” Ari said, looking at me.

“I don’t know. I feel like…I don’t know. There’s so much going on.”

“I know just what you need.” Ari told me to stay there and pushed herself through the crowd around the Pediafix(r) booth. I stood there awkwardly with Rocket, listening to the DJ mix Chinese opera, concert piano, and amplified insect noise over shaking bass and deep beat. It was pretty amazing.

“Ari told me that Mikey said that you saw Palmer with Eva in Cosmonova,” Rocket said out of nowhere once we were alone. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

She stared at me, but I didn’t know what to say. Mostly I was surprised that Mikey had been talking about it with Ari.

“I don’t know what you heard, but I didn’t—”

“You saw them together, right?” she shouted over the music.

“Together, but not, like…together. It wasn’t any of my business?”

“Well, at least I was betrayed by my enemy and not my
best friend
.” She said something else that I couldn’t really hear over the music, it sounded like “Jeremy Swift.” I scanned the crowd looking for him, but I didn’t see what she was talking about.

Ari came back a minute later, grin glowing.

“OK. Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”

I did.

She put a little pill in the palm of my hand.

“What’s this?” I asked, squinting in the dark at the pill. It said FIX in tiny type.

“It will help you relax and, you know, concentrate. It’s good for you.”

“Yeah, but what
is
it?”

“It’s not dangerous, if that’s what you’re worried about,”

Rocket said, irritated. “The administrators agreed it would be safer for the Game if kids had access to better sedatives and stuff.”

“I’m cool,” I said to Ari, handing the pill back to her.