of people talking about you when you’re not around, but you also want to be famous for your sciencey stuff.”
I opted to ignore that she’d called my work sciencey stuff. “All people are contradictions, Arden. That’s what makes them so unstable.”
And frustrating.
And terrifying.
Give me rocks. Give me water or air. Give me elements that could be broken down into things that made sense. Things that would always be exactly what they seemed.
“Okay,” Cass said. “This conversation is getting a bit heavy, and I can’t deal with that right now. Let’s talk about something fun. Gideon, are you excited for your date?”
“That’s, perhaps, the least fun topic you could have chosen.”
Cass grinned. “Not for me.”
“Is the guy cute?” Arden asked.
“I have no idea.”
Cass and Arden both leaned forward like I’d said something appalling.
“How do you not know?” Cass asked.
“It’s a blind date.”
“Yeah,” Arden said. “But you didn’t look him up online?”
“No.”
“Trust me, he’s looked you up,” Cass said.
“There wouldn’t be much to find.”
I avoided social media like the plague. There were probably photos of me online somewhere—on my parents’ social media accounts, or Cass’s. But those weren’t attached to my name.
“I wonder if that creeped him out,” Arden said. “Can you imagine looking up someone online and finding nothing?”
“Personally, that would make me respect a person,” I said.
Cass rolled her eyes.
“What do you know about this guy?” Arden asked.
“Not much. Mother knows his mother. She said he’s handsome, which, coming from her, could mean anything.”
Cass swung around to the desk and turned on my computer. “Let’s look him up now.”
“Let’s not.”
“Come on. It’ll be fun,” Cass said.
Arden nodded in agreement. “Aren’t you curious?”
I wasn’t, for two reasons:
1. There was more to a person than their looks.
2. It wasn’t a real date anyway.
“Please?” Cass said.
“Pretty please?” Arden chimed in.
I sighed. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to do a quick search. I gestured to my laptop. “Fine.”
“What’s his name?” Cass asked, pulling up a search engine.
“Alex,” I said.
Cass looked exasperated. “Um, are you aware of how the internet works? I need more than a first name.”
“Spiro or Spiros or something like that.”
Cass typed away. A second later she said, “Holy crap.”
“What,” I asked, moving to peer over her shoulder. “Is he awful?”
Then I saw the picture Cass was looking at. My stomach sank.
My blind date was gorgeous. Not handsome-for-an-acne-riddled-teenager gorgeous. Not cutest-boy-in-school gorgeous. But model gorgeous.
“Oh god,” I said in horror.
“Oh god,” Arden breathed reverently.
“Are you sure this isn’t an actor or model or something?” I asked.
“His profile says he lives in Pittsburgh.”
“There could be more than one Alex Spiros.”
Cass scrolled through the pictures on his profile. Most of them were selfies. (Let the record state that, in my lifetime, I have taken exactly zero selfies.)
“Not only is his name Alex Spiros, his hometown is Pittsburgh, and… Yep, here we go.”
Cass stopped scrolling on a picture of Alex with a middle-aged woman, presumably his mother. She wore a myTality™ T-shirt.
“Godammit,” I said.
“How can you possibly be disappointed right now?” Cass asked. “This guy is hot.”
“But look at the pictures,” Arden pointed out. “He’s at, like, clubs and concerts. Not exactly Gideon’s type.”
“With looks like that, he’s everyone’s type,” Cass argued.
Arden frowned and shook her head. “Gideon, you don’t need to like him just because he’s cute.”
I sighed. “Thank you for that vote of confidence, Arden, but I’m not sure if me liking him is the issue we’re facing.”
Cass made a huffing sound. “Don’t even go there.”
I looked around dramatically. “Go where? Where am I going?”
“That low-self-esteem crap.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let me break this down for you. I do not have low self-esteem. I esteem myself just fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m objectively not attractive.”
“See,” Cass said, “to me, that’s exactly what constitutes low self-esteem.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, though,” I said. “I genuinely don’t care if I’m attractive or not.”
“How can you not care?” Arden asked, bewildered.
Cass rolled her eyes for what must have been the twentieth time. “If you don’t care, why are you grumbling about this Alex guy being too good-looking for you? You have plenty to offer him. Yeah, he’s conventionally attractive. And no, you’re not exactly the underwear model type. But there are lots of different ways to be attractive.”
“I guess.”
“Look at me and Arden,” Cass said. “Do you agree that we have radically different looks?”
I looked at Cass in her hippie costume and Arden hiding behind her hair.
“Yes.”
“Right,” Cass agreed, “but we’re both hot, aren’t we?”
Arden’s face reddened. “Well, you are—”
“Hey,” Cass interrupted. “That