So Yesterday - By Scott Westerfeld Page 0,43

meet you, Emily."

She stopped sifting and sighed. "Sorry if I was kind of rude before, Hunter. I just get sick of playing mom sometimes."

I had a brief vision of what it would be like to have an Innovator in I the family: your little sister always acting like a weirdo, getting all the attention (negative and positive), stealing and reconstructing your toys and later on your clothes, and finally, unexpectedly, turning out much cooler than you. I guessed that could get annoying.

My own relationship with Jen was costing an average of just under a thousand dollars a day, so my shrug was sympathetic. "No problem."

Emily looked at her sister's closed door. "Is she okay?"

I nodded. "Just tired. It was a crazy party."

"So I gathered." Her eyes locked onto my purple hands and narrowed, but she said nothing.

I stuffed them into my pockets. "Yeah, crazy. But Jen's fine, or will be tomorrow."

"She better be, Hunter. Good night.

"Good night. Uh, nice to meet you.

"You already said that."

Walking home, I got a final burst of energy. My lips were buzzing from the kiss, from the taste of free Noble Savage, and from one simple realization: purple hands or not, anti-client or not, older sister or not, I was going to see Jen again tomorrow. She liked me. Liked me.

I even had my cell phone back. But with that thought, I saw again the last gesture of the woman on the museum steps. "Call me," she'd signaled.

How was I supposed to do that? I pulled out my phone.

Remembering that the bald guy had called my phone in the meteor room, I checked the incoming numbers. The call was listed and time stamped, but he'd blocked his ID.

Maybe they'd put something in the phone's memory while they'd had it. I scrolled through familiar names, looking for anything new.

When I reached Mandy's number, I stopped. They had her phone now, of course. If I wanted to find them, to find Mandy, I could always call.

My thumb hovered over the send button, but I was too exhausted. I! felt thin and transparent, like chewing gum stretched to breaking between teeth and fingers. The thought of another encounter with the anti-client was seizure-inducing.

So for the twentieth time that day I followed Jen's lead and went home and to bed.
Chapter 22
Chapter 22

"DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?"

"Yes, I washed my hands." (For ten solid minutes. Still purple.)

"I'm glad to... Good God, Hunter, your hair!"

Mom and I smiled at each other across the table as this morning's terrifying graph slipped from Dad's fingers.

"Yeah, I decided to go for a different look."

He took a breath. "Well, you managed that, all right."

"And he was wearing a tuxedo and bow tie last night," Mom said, then added in a stage whisper, "It's the new girl."

Dad's mouth closed, and he nodded with the insufferable expression of a parent who thinks he knows everything. Which I was glad he didn't.

"I thought you just met her two days ago."

"I did?" I asked. But he was right: I had known Jen less than forty-eight hours. A sobering thought.

"She's an impact player," I admitted.

"Are your hands purple?" Dad asked as I poured coffee.

"Retro-punk thing. Plus the dye kills bacteria."

"You kids," Mom said. "So, what did you two do last night? You never told me."

"We went to a launch party for this magazine, then we, um, went and watched videos at Tina's house."

"Oh, what did you see?"

"'Computer Warrior Polygon. " I sipped my first coffee of the day.

"Is Kevin Bacon in that?"

"Yes, Mom, Kevin Bacon is in that. Oh, wait, no, he isn't. It's animated and Japanese." I named the franchise.

My father spoke up, disconcertingly looking at my bleached hair instead of my face. "Aren't those the cartoons that cause epilepsy?"

I fought my way through this coffee-spitter. "How did you know about that? Is epilepsy contagious now?"

"Well, in a way it is. Most of the reactions in that case were sociogenic."

Okay, if there's anything sadder than your dad using the word sociogenic at the breakfast table, it's knowing exactly what he means.

Dad tells this cool story:

There was a garment factory in South Carolina back in 1962. One Friday one of the workers there got sick and said she'd been bitten by bugs while handling cloth from England. Then two more workers had to be hospitalized with fainting and hives. By the next Wednesday it was an epidemic. Sixty workers on the morning shift fell ill, and the federal government sent in a team of doctors and bug specialists. They discovered