But the noise is doing much more than distracting me from reading my father’s copy of Walden—it’s pushing the anxiety I’ve been pinning down inside me right to the surface. I even put one of my hands on my stomach to settle the acidic feeling that hasn’t left me since last night.
When I saw my father inside Elusion.
When Patrick tried to take my tablet away from me.
I shake my head, hoping to dislodge those thoughts from my mind and focus on the book again. Three girls behind me jack up the volume on their WAV files, and the music is so loud I’m having a hard time concentrating. I wind up skimming through the small printed text and when I reach the end, I flip back through the first few chapters, my finger trailing down the side of the page. I’m just about to put the book away when my finger stops on a line that gives me a sudden case of tunnel vision. I can no longer see any other words on the page. It’s like a spotlight has formed around this one sentence, so I read it over and over again.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
That’s how they seemed yesterday. Both my father and Patrick.
Desperate.
You’re not safe. No one is safe. You need to find me. . . .
Just don’t use the app on your tab anymore, okay? And don’t tell anyone what happened . . .
Their voices are a constant loop in my head, triggering an avalanche of questions that threatens to bury me alive. Why did Patrick seem so suspicious and strange yesterday? How could those visions of my father have felt so real? What really happened at the beach in Elusion?
I’m distracted from my thoughts by a collective murmur that sweeps through the crowd, followed by a dozen or so catcalls and whistles.
I glance down toward the front of the auditorium and see Zoe Morgan, talking to Mr. Von Ziegelstein and gesticulating like crazy. Her jet-black hair flows loose around her shoulders, and she has on a pair of patent-leather stacked heels that make her at least four inches taller than she really is. At first I wonder why she could possibly be in here. Zoe’s an honors student and senior class president, and she has most of the teachers wrapped around her finger. Then I notice the length of her cargo skirt—midthigh is definitely not acceptable—and how she’s cut a sexy slit up the side of it. That’s at least seventy-five demerits. Pretty puny when compared to the even thousand I received for my little altercation with Avery, but still enough to earn her a brief stint in this zoo.
I shut my book and stick it back into my bag, catching a glimpse of Zoe as she makes her way into the crowded room, totally out of her element. She clutches her tab in her hands and scans the hall for an empty seat. Since there’s one next to me, I stand up a little bit and wave my arms above my head, hoping that she’ll see me. Our eyes lock and a smile lights up her face. As she climbs the lecture hall’s steps with long, purposeful strides, I can see how naturally pretty she is. Unlike at Patrick’s party, there isn’t a drop of makeup on her mocha-colored skin, and even so, her cheeks are a delicate shade of dark rose. When she finally reaches row GG, Zoe is huffing and puffing, like she’s just finished a race.
“I am. So out. Of shape,” she says through halting breaths.
I pat the chair beside me and laugh. “Those steps are the reason I don’t take bathroom breaks.”
Zoe sighs and scoots past me so she can park herself in the seat to my left. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a kid aiming a stinkball at her and shoot him a death stare that stops him in his tracks. Surprisingly, he responds with a nod of respect and slips the pellet gun back in his pocket.
“Funny, I didn’t know you were a regular here,” she says.
“Yeah, well, I have a pretty impressive tardy record,” I reply.
“And a fight under your belt,” she adds. “Can’t forget that.”
“It wasn’t much of a fight,” I say with a shrug.
“But it was a major infraction, right?” Zoe touches my arm, her lips slowly slipping into a straight line. “Did Caldwell say it was going to show up on your transcript?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “He InstaCommed my mom, though. And gave me a thousand demerits.”
“That’s so unfair.” Zoe’s eyes narrow and she scowls. “Avery deserved every bit of what you gave her and more. I can’t believe all that shit she said about Elusion and the Simmons family. She couldn’t be more off base.”
And just like that, I feel queasy. When I confronted Avery in the cafeteria, I sounded just as confident as Zoe is right now. But that was before I went to Elusion and everything I thought was certain and irrefutable was chipped away in a matter of hours.
“I bet Patrick was glad you stood up for him.” Zoe rifles through her messenger bag and pulls out a bottle of pink watermelon-flavored protein water. She takes a long sip, and I’m reminded of how Patrick loves the artificial watermelon flavoring in that drink so much he has his personal driver stock the minifridge in his stretch town car with it.
“I guess,” I say, my thoughts tripping into last night, remembering Patrick’s reaction when I told him about my showdown with Avery.
All he seemed to care about was her video and the possible PR damage it could do. I cared about that, too, obviously, but when visions of my father came back to haunt me, for a moment I actually contemplated the idea that the Elusion app might have some real flaws. Maybe not the one Avery is suggesting, but something that could be just as frightening.
“Do you mind if I ask you something? About Patrick?” Zoe asks.
My attention snaps back to her. “Sure.”
“Does he . . . not like me or something?”
I give her a reassuring smile. “That’s ridiculous. Of course he likes you.”
From the way her forehead wrinkles with worry, I don’t think I’ve convinced her.
“It’s just that . . . Patrick and I were supposed to go out last night, but he canceled on me at the last minute. When he texted me, he didn’t even say why.”
My eyes shift away as I wring my hands together in my lap. Patrick was with me, but he didn’t tell Zoe where he was and why he had to cancel their plans. He also never mentioned to me that he was supposed to see her.
Why is he being secretive about this, too?
“It gets worse. I went to his office.” Zoe slouches in her seat, a shadow of embarrassment floating across her face. “I know. Totally lame stalker move, right? I just thought he was working late and I’d bring him some dinner. Cheer him up.”
“That’s really sweet,” I say.
It was also a move straight out of Patrick’s good-person playbook. I can think of a hundred things like that he has done for me, including a recent trip to the depository. Which begs the question: Why am I so hung up on the five or so minutes he wasn’t acting like himself? Why can’t I let it go?