on the beach. No moon. So this was what it was like, she thought, to feel abandoned. Marlow loved her parents—she did. She loved her father with ease and loved her mother with effort. But from a young age, perhaps from the first time she had seen how disappointed they looked when she stole out of bed and slipped into their parties, she had understood that both of them, as parents, topped out at half-functioning. She was able to love them anyway, because she knew there was a third thing keeping her safe: the network. Her followers. When Floss claimed to be stopping by a thing and came back two days later with a yacht-front sunburn, or when Aston got a message that he claimed was from his mother, but grinned in a way Marlow felt she shouldn’t see, she felt like the cameras were there, standing with her. It was the same at night, when her parents were usually gone; it was up to Marlow to put herself to bed, to shut down the house, and she never figured out a way to do it that didn’t mean she had to pass through some rooms in the dark. But she was never really afraid, the same way, when she got older, she was never afraid to walk down an empty street or to be caught, at a party, with the wrong boy on the wrong side of a closing door. Her whole life, Marlow had been sure that if she got into trouble, the network would protect her. But here she was, tied up in a drowning car, and no one was doing anything.
She told herself the cameras weren’t working. They couldn’t be. If the network knew, they wouldn’t leave her. They prized drama, but not at this cost. She was sure. They’d have a placeholder card splashed over her feed, brightly claiming technical difficulties, as they tried to figure out how to help her.
There was the sound of something landing on the roof.
The others stirred but didn’t wake. Marlow listened. Whatever was on top of them was crawling the length of the car now. Two legs? Four? She counted. No, five. She looked up just as the thing dragged its silver belly over the moonroof. There was the toonk of glass on glass, and Marlow saw it then: an eye, all inky pupil, looking in at them.
Suddenly, there was blinding light. Marlow saw everything she couldn’t see before: the way Taylor’s and Honey’s hair, nearly the same shade of blond, wove together and shone. The way Grace’s face had dried pink and brown, as if she had cried for hours. The way Angel’s hair rose, like a shadow, over the headrest.
The thing on the roof had a voice that boomed through the glass. “This car has been identified as stolen,” it said. “Get out of the vehicle. Put your hands in the air.”
The others were wriggling, turning pale, untangling themselves. But Marlow saw that Honey was frozen still, terrified. “Whatisitwhatisit,” she screamed, covering her eyes. “Police drone,” Taylor was saying over and over, until he was shouting it, furious. The explanation only seemed to scare Honey more. The drone slithered down the driver’s side window, looking for a culprit, and the next thing Marlow knew, Honey had hurled herself into the back seat. She huddled next to Marlow, shaking.
“Get the fuck off me,” Marlow said. The swear word felt good, a small pocket of pressure deflating, and she let herself have another one—she was that sure she wasn’t being broadcast. “Untie me, bitch,” she snapped at Honey, knocking her with her shoulder, but Honey only screeched and burrowed deeper into her. The others were tumbling out at the drone’s command, were wading with their arms up toward the human cops moving toward them, rifles raised. More cops skimmed the sand in a tank, its looped tires flattening the beach beneath them. Behind the tank, struggling mightily, was Aston’s low-slung red Porsche. Marlow watched as the car spun its wheels and gave up. It was still on, headlights shining, when her father got out of it. The sea breeze and the wind of the drone whipped his hair straight back from his face. A moment later, the Porsche’s passenger door opened, in several tentative movements, and a woman stepped out. Marlow couldn’t see her well, but she could tell that she was thin and staying out of things. So it definitely wasn’t her mother.