“You don’t look bad yourself,” I said, my voice airy. I could still feel the path his finger had made, and it wasn’t hard to imagine him tugging my straps down, unzipping the back of my dress. I’d kissed only one boy before North, and now I was picturing myself topless with him. I suspected both Lux and the voice in my head would reel this one in, but I wasn’t consulting either of them right now. I gripped the edge of my plastic chair and reminded myself where thoughts like that had gotten my mom.
“So there’s a nine-fifteen and a ten-oh-five train back,” North was saying. “If we take the later one, we won’t get into the Theden station until eleven fifty.”
“That’s not enough time,” I said, although the truth was I had no idea if ten minutes was enough time to get from Theden Central Station back to campus on North’s motorbike. Using Lux for so many years had completely destroyed my ability to assess travel times. Lux told me when to leave, which way to go, and what time it would be when I arrived. How little attention I’d paid to the details, trusting Lux to get me wherever I needed to go. And invariably, it had.
“It’ll be tight,” North said, “but if we have to, we can make it. Still, we should aim for the nine-fifteen.” He glanced back at his handheld. “We’re the next stop.”
My heart started drumming in my chest. Oddly, I was more worried about getting into the party than I was about confronting its famous host. I wasn’t expecting the ambush to go well, necessarily, but I knew he’d at least believe I was who I said I was. Even dressed like this, with all the makeup, I bore an uncanny resemblance to my mom.
“You ready for this?” North asked as the train pulled into Back Bay Station. I nodded. I had to be. And with North by my side, maybe I was. He slipped his hand in mine as we made our way onto the platform and through the building to the taxi stand outside.
“Copley Square,” North told the cab driver. “The Boston Public Library.” The man grunted and we were off. The station was only half a mile from the library where the party was being held. Walkable if I hadn’t been wearing three-inch heels. So the cab ride didn’t give me much time to collect myself. Two minutes after getting in, it was time to get out.
We’d pulled up in front of a massive stone building with arched windows that occupied an entire city block. It looked more like a palace than a library, and nothing like Seattle’s glass and metal Central Library back home. It didn’t hurt that it was lit up like a castle, with warm, yellow spotlights illuminating its stone face. Above the lights and the row of arched windows was the word GOLD projected in 3D. There was a red carpet on the front steps and a velvet rope and throngs of photographers hovering on the plaza out front. This was an odd place, as it were, for a tech launch party, considering Gnosis had made public libraries irrelevant when it started offering e-books to borrow for free. None of the old buildings even housed books anymore—not paper ones, anyway. They were basically just big tablet terminals, with rows and rows of desks with screens built in, and public media rooms where you could surf the Web and watch TV.
With shaky hands, I pushed open the taxi’s door and stepped out onto the pavement.
“Here,” North said in a low voice, pulling a second handheld from his pocket and slipping it into the small purse on my arm. “When they scan it at the door, it’ll pull up the name I added to the guest list. Jessica Sizemore. She’s an undergrad at Harvard. Her dad’s a shareholder.”
“What if she shows up?” I hissed. We were approaching the edge of the crowd waiting to get in.
“She won’t. She RSVPed no the day after invitations went out, and according to Forum, she’s still on campus right now.” He put his arm around my shoulders. “Just act natural. Once we’re inside, it won’t matter.”
I leaned against his shoulder and tried to relax. We blended in easily with the well-dressed twenty-somethings milling around us, immersed in their screens as they waited to get in.
The girl taking tickets smiled as we stepped up to the red carpet. “Welcome to the future,” she said, reaching for our handhelds. I held my breath as she scanned them. “Enjoy the party, guys.” She handed them back to us and lifted the velvet rope.
We were in.
The main event was in the open-air courtyard in the center of the building, which Gnosis had transformed into a metallic garden. The fountain in the center was lit up from under the surface of the water and seemed to be pouring liquid gold. Servers in black ties were circling with shiny gold trays of champagne, and there were tiny gold Gs projected on the stone walls all around us. There were high tables constructed out of shiny gold Legos and standing chandeliers made of bright gold coins. “Wow,” I breathed, taking it in.
North grabbed two flutes of champagne off a server’s tray and handed me one. “Props,” he said. The next server had some sort of ahi tuna cupcake with avocado “icing.” I reached for one.
“Snacks,” I said, biting into it. “Ohmygod, this is amazing. You have to try one.”
“Focus, Jessica Sizemore, focus. We’ve got an hour to find your father.” But before the server stepped away, North grabbed a tuna cupcake and popped the whole thing in his mouth.
Now that we were on the other side of the velvet rope, I was calmer. No one was paying any attention to us, and it was easy to move along the periphery of the party, along the walkway that encased the courtyard, subtly scanning the crowd for Griffin. As we made our way along the eastern wall, walking slowly so as not to draw any attention, I let myself pretend for a second that we hadn’t snuck into this party, that we’d been invited like everyone else. It struck me that it probably wasn’t a far-off fantasy. Not anymore. This was the kind of stuff that came with a Theden diploma. Parties like these, people like this. If I stayed on track, I wouldn’t have to lie my way into these places. I’d belong.
I was between North and the wall as we rounded the corner at the southeast end of the courtyard and saw her. A beautiful black woman in a winter white pantsuit standing by the fountain. There was no one between us. If she turned just slightly to her left and looked up, she’d see me.
North heard me gasp.
“What is it?” he asked in a low voice, inclining his face toward mine.
“Kiss me,” I whispered. “Right now.”
I didn’t have to ask twice. His hands came to my hips as he pushed me gently against the wall, the edge of my crystal flute clinking against its polished surface. I wrapped my free arm around his neck, pressing my body into his as if I could disappear against him, closing my eyes as his lips touched mine. Had she seen me? I didn’t think so, but I wasn’t sure. North’s elbows were on the wall now, one on either side of my face, somehow holding his champagne glass without spilling it as he kissed me. For a second I got lost in the sensation, thinking nothing and feeling everything, from the flutter in my chest to the static in my stomach to the tingle in my tongue every time it touched the tip of his. But then Tarsus’s face came slamming back into my brain and my whole body tensed up. North felt it and pulled back.
“I sense that kiss served a purpose beyond the fulfillment of about five of my fantasies,” he said, his face still inches off mine.
“She’s here,” I whispered. “Dr. Tarsus.”
“Shit. Did she see you?”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “You hid me.” My arms were still around his neck, so I traced his earlobe with my thumb, careful to keep my body behind his as I shimmied along the wall behind a column.