So Yesterday - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,42

before she pulled away. Passing headlights swept across us, and she turned her head away from them, as if suddenly shy. But the smile still waited on her lips.

"Remind me to say it again," I said.

"I will." Her hands joined across my back, pulling me closer.

After a while longer, we went inside.

When Jen opened the door to her apartment, we found her sister sitting at the kitchen table, a flour sifter in her hand giving off angry puffs of white. Her hair tied back, she wore a Yale sweatshirt with rolled-up sleeves and running pants, her hands white to the elbow. When she looked at us, I saw our black-tie finery spark a well-tended annoyance, possibly that of an older sister who works full-time and lives with a younger sister who doesn't work at all.

"Hi, Emily."

"Did I say you could borrow my dress?"

Jen sighed, her hand falling from mine. "No, that's why I left a note."

"Are you okay, Jen? You look like shit."

"Long night. But thanks for saying so."

Emily pursed her lips, looking at my torn sleeve, Jen's shorn head.

"Back to a buzz cut, huh? Where did you guys go, anyway?"

"A launch party."

"Are you drunk?"

"No, just tired. Hunter, this is Emily, my mother."

"Loco parentis. Nice to meet you, Hunter."

"Hi."

Jen pulled me toward her room. "See you later, Emily."

Emily's eyes narrowed. "Say hi on your way out, Hunter."

"Sorry about my sister," Jen said. "She hates it when I borrow her clothes. Which 1 frequently do."

I glanced at the door, expecting it to swing open at any moment. I could feel Emily's clock ticking away my time in Jen's room and wondered what exactly the rules were here. My heart was still beating from the kiss outside.

Jen followed my gaze. "Don't worry, I'll explain everything to Emily tomorrow."

"Explain what? How you needed her prom dress to solve a kidnapping?"

"Hmm. Maybe I'll just buy her a macaroon pan or something."

"She's already got one," I said. My head was spinning, exhaustion sinking in.

Jen sighed. "Emily also kind of hates it that I'm here at all. I mean, she doesn't mind living with me, but it annoys her that I got to come back to the city when I was sixteen. She didn't get this place until she was eighteen. She thinks I'm the spoiled one in the family."

I raised one eyebrow.

She swallowed. "That obvious, huh?"

I shrugged. Anyone who took risks like Jen did was definitely the spoiled one. For the last seventeen years someone had spent a lot of effort putting her back on the horse after she'd fallen off. Possibly a certain older sibling.

I glanced at the door again. "Maybe I should go."

"I guess." She flopped down on her bed. "But first let me tell you about my revelation. When I was spazzing out."

"You didn't see God, did you?"

"No, I saw Pikachu. But something hit me. I realized the obvious thing we've been missing out of all these clues."

"Which is?"

"Whoever the anti-client is, they know about a lot of stuff. But it's a certain kind of stuff: Wi-Fi, Japanese animation, launch parties, cool shoes, the latest magazines, and corporate branding."

"Yeah. That's the anti-client in a nutshell."

"So who does that sound like?"

I sat there for a moment, forcing my brain to work through exhaustion and paka-paka headache, trying to add up the pieces. The latest technology, the coolest-ever shoes, the party with the best gift bags, the secret mind-controlling effects of Japanese pop culture.

Then it came to me in a flash. Not in an epilepsy-inducing sequence of primary colors, but an old-fashioned monochrome flash of ordinary Hunter brain insight.

"That sounds like one of us."

"Yeah, Hunter. That's all your stuff, you and your cool pals, all put together into some kind of twisted marketing plan." "You mean...?"

"Yes. Somewhere in this city a cool hunter has gone haywire." She took my hand. "And it's up to us to stop them, or the world is doomed."

"Eh?"

"Sorry, I just had to say that." She smiled broadly. "I slay me."

Then she sighed, her eyes closed, and she tipped backward onto the pillow, suddenly and completely asleep, a princess from some skinhead fairytale in her scarlet dress and buzz cut.

I watched her steady breathing for a while, making sure no epileptic tremors visited her eyes or hands. But she slept as soundly as an exhausted ten-year-old. Finally I kissed her forehead, lingering for the vanilla scent of her hair.

Standing shakily, I went into the kitchen, where Emily sat at the table, still sifting flour.

"I guess I'm headed home. Nice to