“I should go,” Watt said before she could answer.
“Watt—” Leda swallowed, not quite certain what she was about to say; and perhaps he knew that, because he shook his head.
“It’s fine. I’ll see you later.” His footsteps echoed on the way out her front door.
Leda collapsed back onto the couch with a defeated sigh. Her eyes drifted toward the bag of takeout, and she reached for it listlessly, only to realize that there was another box at the bottom, still sealed shut. She pulled the box onto her lap and peeled it open.
It was a slice of chocolate cake, with thick cream cheese icing smeared all over the top. Her absolute favorite, the cake that Leda’s parents ordered every year for her birthday. But she hadn’t ordered it tonight.
Watt. She shook her head and reached for the tiny foldable fork with a private smile.
RYLIN
AS SOON AS the three-tone chime sounded the end of the school day, the Berkeley hallways flooded with students. Everyone herded toward the main front doors, where they would pour themselves into waiting hovers or pause at the edge of the school’s virtual tech-net, muttering furiously into their contacts as they replied to their queue of messages. Standing there, they looked like the edge of an undulating human bubble.
Rylin walked into the mounting tide of students, toward the science building. She had missed psychology class earlier and needed to make up the lab if she didn’t want to fail.
This morning she had messaged Berkeley to tell them she wasn’t feeling well. She had her tampered mediwand all prepped and ready to use—she and Chrissa had rigged it years ago to mark them sick whenever it scanned—but the Berkeley administrators didn’t even request proof of her supposed illness. They just took her word for it, which sparked a feeling of guilt Rylin hadn’t anticipated. She did her best to push that guilt aside and focus on Hiral.
She hadn’t seen him since last weekend at the mall—which had gone much better than Rylin expected. Hiral had stayed to help her and Cord run the experiment, and then they had all gotten milkshakes together at the famous blend-bar in the food court. To Rylin’s surprise, and delight, it had seemed as if Cord and Hiral were getting along. Or at least they were pretending to, for her sake.
But since that day, Hiral had been mysteriously absent. He kept saying that he was busy, that there were “things” he needed to “take care of,” but he didn’t volunteer any details, and Rylin didn’t press for them. She didn’t get the sense that he was angry with her about Cord. Actually . . . Rylin couldn’t help being unpleasantly reminded of his behavior the last time they dated, when he’d started dealing drugs with V.
He wasn’t doing that anymore, she reminded herself. She knew that he wasn’t. What Chrissa said last weekend was just messing with her head.
So today Rylin had decided to take the morning off and steal a few hours with Hiral before his late work shift. She’d cooked breakfast tacos and curled up with him in bed, her arm thrown across his chest, her head nestled into his shoulder. And even though he’d smiled and said all the right things, Rylin still couldn’t shake the sense that he wasn’t wholly there with her, in the moment, but somewhere far away.
She turned now into the psych classroom, where Professor Wang was standing behind her desk, shuffling a few items into her forest-green shoulder bag.
“Hi, Professor. I’m sorry I missed class earlier; I wasn’t feeling well.” Rylin’s eyes roved over the equipment arranged on her lab console, patches and wires covered with the little red hearts that marked them as medical devices.
The professor brushed aside her excuse. “Another student missed class today as well, so you won’t have to perform this lab alone. It’s much better when these questions come from a human instead of a computer program.” She gave a brisk nod. “Here he is now.”
Cord strode into the room, grinning even wider when he saw Rylin at their usual station. “Rylin. I guess we’re both stuck doing penance this afternoon.”
Professor Wang snapped her bag shut with a decided click. “Yes, the irony wasn’t lost on me, that the two of you missed class on the same morning,” she said coolly.
“Lucky us,” Cord said lightly. “I guess it’s true what they say, that timing is everything.”
The professor glanced impassively from Rylin to Cord, and Rylin couldn’t help feeling that in that single moment, she’d grasped their entire history. After all, she did study people for a living. “You two know the drill by now. When you’re finished, submit your results electronically. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” She crossed the room and pulled the door shut behind her.
Cord immediately rounded on Rylin. “So, Myers, spill. Where were you this morning?”
“I was sick.” She didn’t exactly want to tell Cord that she’d been in bed with Hiral. “What about you—were you playing hooky?” She tried to deliver the phrase the way Cord always did, but couldn’t quite manage his insouciance.
“I was,” he said levelly, his gaze fixed on her. “You should come with me next time. It’s been a while.”
Rylin flushed and tapped quickly at the tablet to avoid having to answer. “Playing hooky” was what Cord called it when he went to his dad’s old garage in West Hampton and raced illegal driver-run cars along the Long Island Expressway. He’d actually taken Rylin there once last year to show her just how heart-stoppingly fast those cars could go. They’d ended up driving to the beach and building a sandcastle like children.