AVERY
AVERY’S STOMACH TWISTED nervously as she and Atlas pulled up to the Coles’ apartment. Through sheer force of will, she’d managed to turn Atlas and Leda’s date into a big Augmented Reality group game. She told herself it was fine, that she hadn’t done anything all that bad, but deep down Avery knew she was being selfish.
She glanced up at Leda’s doorstep, suddenly remembering the first time she and Leda had gotten drunk. Well, tried to get drunk; they’d just been giddy and ridiculous, only slightly buzzed off the spritzers Cord had given them. But they had decided they shouldn’t go inside until they were totally sober again, in case Leda’s parents heard them. They’d ended up spending half the night sitting together on the Coles’ front step, telling stories and giggling at nothing in particular.
“Want to tell Leda we’re here?” Atlas asked.
“Oh. Sure.” We’re outside, Avery flickered, realizing as she sent it how sparse their message thread had become. Normally she and Leda were in constant communication, sending each other selfie-snaps, complaints about school, messages from boys to analyze. But over the past couple of days, they’d barely messaged each other at all.
“Thanks for picking me up,” Leda said as the hover door slid open. She had on a navy silk top and white jeans, with red-soled espadrilles. Avery moved aside to make room for her, glancing down at her own outfit, all-black artech and her comfy turquoise sneaks.
“No worries.” Atlas smiled.
“Are you really wearing those to AR?” Avery blurted out, looking at Leda’s shoes.
“You’ve seen me run in heels.” Leda gave a brusque laugh.
“Right.” She felt a sudden urge to diffuse the tension, to pretend this had all been everyone’s idea to begin with. “I’m so glad we decided to do this,” she gushed, lamely. “I haven’t been to AR in forever!”
“Get ready, because we’re gonna kick your ass, Aves.” The light danced in Atlas’s warm brown eyes.
“Avery,” Leda interrupted, “how was shopping with Eris? Did you get anything?”
Avery felt a stab of guilt. When Leda had flickered her yesterday morning she’d said she was shopping with Eris, knowing it would put Leda off. But Eris hadn’t answered any of her flickers, and Avery had stopped by her apartment only to find that no one was there.
“Oh, um, I got some jeans,” Avery fumbled, naming the first thing she could think of. “At Denna.”
“Don’t you have those in pretty much every color?” Leda asked. Avery faltered, caught off guard.
“Like that’s ever stopped either of you,” Atlas joked, oblivious.
They pulled up to the ARena, which sprawled over a corner of the 623rd floor, just as its massive walls shifted from army-green camouflage to a depiction of a dark stone dungeon. Risha, Jess, and Ming all stood outside, dressed like Leda in cute jeans and impractical shoes. Avery refrained from rolling her eyes. She wished Eris were here; she could use a dose of her irreverent sarcasm right about now. Though come to think of it, the last time they’d all done AR Eris had shown up in a black leather catsuit, just for fun.
“The guys are inside,” Risha offered as they gathered in front of the doors, which now showed a dragon swooping over an icy mountain peak.
“Probably arguing about whether to play cowboys or aliens,” Atlas said, holding open the doors. Avery fought the urge to stay back, walk with him, reach for his hand.
“I heard that,” Ty Rodrick called out from the ticket counter. A group of middle school boys all clutching the special-edition lightsaber accessory stood in line behind him. “The cowboy arena is old news, Fuller. We’re playing Alien Invasion. Who’s on my team?” Ty typed into the 3-D printer, which spit out electronic-coded game tickets for each of them, four black and four white. Each was shaped like a tiny miniature alien head, unique to the game and impossible to counterfeit. Apparently there were people so obsessed with AR that they collected these tickets, even though they were useless once the game was over.
“Aren’t we doing boys against girls?” Avery said quickly. They’d played a lot of boys-versus-girls games here, back in the day. And the last thing she wanted right now was to imagine Leda and Atlas on the same team, together in the adrenaline-fueled darkness.
“That’s uneven, though,” Maxton Feld pointed out. “Five versus three.”
Avery silently cursed Cord for not showing up. “Maybe we randomizer it?” she suggested, pulling up the dice-shaped icon on her tablet.
Leda jumped in. “Atlas and I already said we’d be on a team.”
Avery stayed quiet as the teams were sorted out: her, Ty, Ming, and Jess against Maxton, Risha, Atlas, and Leda. She kept on saying nothing as they went to their respective team locker rooms to gear up. Ty was babbling about strategy, explaining his plan to “swarm and surround,” but Avery wasn’t listening. She just nodded, gripped by a strange and sudden apathy.
Finally the four of them stood assembled in the staging area, haptic vests fastened around their torsos, their plastic radar pistols holstered to their belts. Avery pulled on the thin mesh gloves that would track her hand movements for the master computer. Her virtual reality headset gave a loud beep, clamoring for her attention: it wanted her to select her avatar, the image that all her competitors and teammates would see once they entered the arena itself. Everyone else was waving and pointing, adding hair and armor and facial features. But Avery just selected the base avatar, with no defining characteristics at all. People paid too much attention to her real-life appearance for her to bother customizing a virtual one.