So Yesterday - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,13

of the shoes."

"Damn," she agreed.

We were silent for a moment, thinking of that perfect balance of understated style, slow-burning desirability, and coffee-spitting, jaw-dropping eye candy that was the shoes.

"They can't be as good as we remember," I said.

"Nice try. They were."

"Crap." I checked my pockets again. Still empty. "No phone, no shoes, no Mandy. This is a total disaster."

"Not quite, Hunter."

Jen held up what looked like my phone, except it was the wrong color.

Of course. It was Mandy's. She had the same model as I did (but with the red translucent clip-on cover). She was a fierce Early Adopter, and, like me, she used the phone for business. Just the day before, I'd phoned her my picture of Jen's shoelaces.

"Well, that's something."

Jen nodded. There's a lot you can find out from someone's phone.

She began to poke her way through the menu, squinting at the glowing screen. The little beeps gave me a creepy feeling, like going through someone's pockets.

"Shouldn't we call the police or something?"

"And tell them what?" Jen said. "That Mandy missed an appointment? Don't you watch cop shows? She's an adult. She can't be a missing person for twenty-four hours."

"But we found her phone. Isn't that suspicious?"

"Maybe she dropped it."

"But what about the guy who chased us? What about the shoes?"

"Yeah, we could tell the cops about that. About how we broke into an abandoned building and saw the world's most amazing shoes. And then a crazy bald guy appeared, and we ran away. That story should do wonders for our credibility."

I was silent for a moment, out of arguments but still not comfortable. "Jen, Mandy's my friend."

She turned to me, thought for a moment, then nodded.

"You're right. We should try the cops. But if they do listen to us, they'll take Mandy's phone away."

"So?"

Jen turned back to the little screen. "Maybe she took some pictures."

We stopped the cab, paid for it, and found a coffee shop of the musty-living-room variety: old couches, high-speed Internet access, and strong coffee, which came in cups the size of bowls.

Even before we walked through the door, I noticed Jen's bracelet sparkling.

"What's that?"

She smiled. "It's a Wi-Fi detector. You know, so you don't have to boot up your computer to see if there's wireless in the house."

I gave the Nod. I'd seen them in magazines, useful for detecting which coffee shops and hotels offered wireless service, but wearing the gadget as jewelry was pure Innovator.

We claimed a couch and huddled over Mandy's phone, our heads almost touching to align our eyes to the pixels of its little screen. Not really designed for two viewers, that phone, but I wasn't complaining. That close, I could smell Jen's hair stuff, a hint of vanilla cutting through the musty couch and ground coffee. Her shoulder was warm against mine.

"Something wrong?" she asked.

"Uh, no." Memo to self: It's uncool to be overwhelmed by casual contact.

I brought up the camera software, my fingers gliding over the cruelly familiar interface. (Maybe the Finlanders would send me another one.) The menu showed five pictures, displayed in the order they were taken. One thumb click later, a fuzzy orange face filled the screen.

"That's Mandy's cat, Muffin. He eats cockroaches."

"Useful beast."

Next click a young Latina woman appeared, smiling and fending off the camera, breakfast in the lower third of the screen.

"Cassandra, her roommate. Or girlfriend - no one's sure."

"That would be girlfriend," Jen said. "No one bothers to take a picture of their roommate."

"Maybe not, but when I first got my phone, I was taking pictures of my sock drawer."

She gripped my arm. "How will you live without it?"

"I don't call it living."

I clicked again. A guy wearing a black beret, maybe a little floppier than the last beret craze. A cool-hunting picture.

"Logo's too big, band's too tight," Jen said. "And no berets in summer."

"And that shirt looks way Uptown," I said. "Not the sort of thing you'd see in Chinatown." I checked the picture's time stamp. "She took it yesterday."

The next picture brought a small gasp from Jen. It was a shoe, Jen's shoe, the rising-sun laces instantly recognizable. I could even see the hexagonal pattern of the East River Park promenade.

"Is that...? That's the picture you - "

"Uh, yeah, I sent it to Mandy," I confessed.

She pulled away, turned to me with narrowed eyes. I felt the musty-couch intimacy that had built up between us swirling away.

"You're not still confused about what I do for a living, are you?"

"No. But it's just sinking in." She looked down at her