Away We Go - Emil Ostrovski Page 0,19

Clearly, someone’s forgotten his obligation to the people.”

Just like that, he had everyone laughing; everyone’s faces, it seemed, were fixed in orbit around him, even the girl with blue highlights had softened, and I felt cold and distant and free-floating, like a feather on Pluto—why had he invited me here, only to ignore me?

I brought my mug to my lips and drank. I went from cold to hot, my forehead sweaty, my shirt sticking to my back. Why did Matt have to bring up that shit about becoming a lab experiment? I’d read on AwayWeKnow about scientists from places like Harvard and MIT trying to save kids by preserving their memories, their identities in code, ones and zeroes. There was an AwayWeRead book, The Peter Pan Project, about a scientist at UC Berkeley who uploads one infected child’s memories into a robot which can then answer simple yes or no questions about the dead boy’s childhood, his favorite candy (Twizzlers), his favorite sport (soccer).

On the AwayWeRead Peter Pan Project discussion forums, anonymoose had speculated about digitized memories being sold to the highest bidder, any adult on the outside who wanted to relive their adolescence, while latexluvin added that PPV was an Illuminati population-control plot. Kyle2.0 asked if androids dream of electric sheep.

I thought of a robot Zach, answering my questions.

Did we meet at Westing? Yes.

Did we share the same bed? Yes.

Do you love me? . . .

Are you still in there? . . .

Zach? . . .

I couldn’t breathe. Every moment I spent with Zach I wanted to both be nowhere else and anywhere else. I wanted to feed him strawberries and jump out the nearest window. I was almost at the exit when he caught me by the arm. I wasn’t expecting the touch and briefly experienced a mild form of cardiac arrest.

“Hey,” he said, “didn’t know there were going to be so many people tonight. Maybe because we have Earl Grey this time?”

I tried to play along. “That’s why I came.”

“To watch me drink Earl Grey?”

“Yes,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to lie.

He frowned in thought. “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

It hadn’t occurred to me till now. I thought to apologize for not coming to his defense.

“Groups,” I started. “Groups aren’t really my thing. I get lost in them.”

A girl heading for the exit cleared her throat. Zach and I stepped out into the hall to let her pass.

“I don’t know who to be in a group,” I went on, staring after her. “I know who to be when it’s one on one. Or when someone’s written the lines. I just think we’re the most ourselves when we’re alone.”

He bit his lip, glanced inside where people were still milling. Our spots on the sofa had been taken.

“How ’bout a game of pool?” he offered.

So we took the elevator down to the basement. In the game room’s poor light, Zach assembled the balls into a neat triangle.

“None of that stripes and solids polarizing factionizing nonsense,” he said. “Why divide the balls into opposing groups? God, why create false dichotomies? They’re all balls. Let them be united in their common ball-dom. Let’s just hit them in. But if you hit the eight ball in, we both lose, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said, with zero idea of the actual rules.

So I aimed for the eight ball. After I’d hit it in three times, he asked me if I was okay.

I leaned against the table, regarding Zach’s silhouette in the half-light. “I was thinking about what Matt said. And about Polo. Do you think something’s going on at Westing?”

What I wanted to ask, but didn’t: Why did you invite me to Polo, and not Matt?

For a time, Zach didn’t speak. “There’s got to be, Noah,” he said, softly. “It’s terrible, but I want there to be. Is that terrible?” He spoke more quickly, grew more excited. “I’d rather have my head sliced open and my memories extracted and sold on AwayWeSellTheDeepestMostIntimatePartsOfYourSoul than just, nothing. There’s too much secrecy for nothing. Am I terrible?”

“Only a little,” I said.

“I just think—there’s this girl I know, Addie, who lives in Violet. This isn’t the way I thought I would bring it up, but I’ve kind of wanted to talk to you about this.”

My throat constricted. “About what?”

“I was just thinking last night about what if she disappeared, you know? And I saw her name on AwayWeGo and wouldn’t know where she went. If we figure out what’s going on, we could save her, kid. We could