“Jesus Christ!” Melissa’s nose was practically smushed against the monitor. “Are you literally trying to kill us?”
“He can’t hear you, Fabes,” Daniel said. Melissa snatched her phone from the desk, and her thumbs went to work. Daniel imagined her texting Are you literally trying to kill us?
“Five bucks,” Christina muttered. She was leaning forward in her chair, practically folded in half with tension.
Melissa set her phone down and used both hands to adjust her bra straps, a little upward tug on each side. Daniel cataloged the movement. His girlfriend was an outfit adjuster, accessory fidgeter, tortoiseshell hair clip unclipper. She reminded him of a baseball coach signaling the catcher, transmitting signs by tapping hat brim and belt buckle and shoulders in rapid succession. “And now he’s just sitting,” she said.
William’s performance had sent them all coiling inward, and they had yet to relax and exhale. Someone had to be the first to break the spell with a hearty HE WON! ROAD TRIP, YOU GUYS!
Daniel opened his mouth but couldn’t form words. The proper tone eluded him. He should be hugging Melissa, rocking Christina in her chair, flipping out; instead he just stared at the screen, slack-jawed and moronic, as the camera zeroed in on William’s blank face.
The atmosphere in the room made Daniel feel like he was frozen at the very top of his jump shot right before he released the ball, gravity and fundamentals intertwining to suspend him in the air, plastered to the void.
“Oh my God, he’s trending.” Melissa pointed at the screen on the right side of Christina’s triple monitor setup. Daniel’s eyes followed. William Mackler had joined the ranks of such nationally trending topics as #ATVfails and #GoatVideoGames.
“He’s in good company,” Christina said. Her right hand moved to the top of her head. “There really is something seriously wrong with him.”
Melissa stood on her tiptoes and stretched her arms straight up, fingertips scraping the low stucco ceiling. Her armpits were perfectly smooth. Daniel wondered if she’d shaved them at some point during their all-night internet vigil. “I can’t even with him,” she said, dropping her arms.
“That had to have been staged,” Christina said. “They wouldn’t just let him get run over. Right?”
On the central screen, the drone zoomed out so viewers could see a blandly handsome man and willowy woman in formfitting black outfits reach out their hands to help William to his feet. He gazed up at them, dumbstruck, as if experiencing an alien visitation.
“It’s so weird that everybody knows who William Mackler is now. Like, our William Mackler. From Fremont Hills. Jessa Park knows his name.” Melissa intertwined her fingers with Daniel’s and glanced at the screen on the left. Jessa Park was speaking directly to the camera, but Christina had long ago cut the audio from that particular feed. A sign on the wall behind Jessa said CREATIVITY + PASSION + SWEAT + DREAMS = JESSPIRATION.
The faint electric thrill that his girlfriend’s touch never failed to deliver made Daniel supremely conscious of his heartbeat. It didn’t seem quite right, thumping too high in his chest, each beat radiating into his upper arms, leaving him disturbingly achy. Melissa smiled at him. He tried to smile back, but he could tell by her eyes that he’d twisted his face into something grotesque.
The sleepless night had left him wrung out. He hadn’t gone for a run or hit the gym for Leg Day. Now he’d have to turn what should have been Arm Day into a makeup Leg Day, like a total scrub.
“Moonshadow, here we come,” she said. “Remember to pack a bathing suit.”
I’m actually gonna skinny-dip the whole time, he thought about saying. Just say it, he urged himself. Speak. Make words.
Would Melissa think that was funny? It would depend on his delivery. Movie Daniel would absolutely nail it.
“The Moonshadow Festival’s in the middle of the desert,” Christina said. “But hey, now William owns a Driverless prototype car. Which is insane. Maybe that’s a thing we should talk about.”
Melissa squeezed Daniel’s hand. “He really did it. He’s famous.”
Daniel returned the squeeze. He should be lifting Melissa up, spinning around, laughing. His best friend had just done something incredible in front of millions of people! But living in the moment was the unattainable holy grail of consciousness. Nobody could really do it, everybody’s thoughts pinged back and forth mindlessly, stupidly….
William was on his feet, and the two black-clad models were ushering him to the shoulder of the highway, where reporters were jockeying for position. He shuffled like a sedated patient toward the makeshift press conference. Melissa dropped Daniel’s hand and leaned over the desk. Christina shrank away as if Melissa smelled, which was impossible. Daniel had been in extremely close proximity to every inch of Melissa Faber for the past two years, and she always gave off the freshly scrubbed air of a girl perpetually stepping out of the shower.
Melissa reached for the keyboard, and Christina blocked it with her forearm. “What’s CB Lounge rule number one?”
Melissa tried to snake her fingers around the blockade. Christina added a second forearm, hiding the entire keyboard.
Melissa sighed. “Nobody touches the computer except me.” She shook her head. “You.”
“So what the hell?”
“I just want to see your music.”
“William’s about to talk.”
“So we should cue up something good for after, like a Moonshadow kind of song. We’re supposed to be celebrating here.”
“It’s hard for me to celebrate when that puddle of nasty corporate energy drink is soaking into my carpet.”
“You can’t say corporate like the things you have don’t come from big companies too.”
Christina plucked a hand towel from the drawer and handed it to Melissa. “Dab, don’t wipe.”
Melissa examined the towel’s tag. “Martha Stewart Collection!” she cried triumphantly.
As Melissa turned her attention to the carpet, Daniel lost himself in the central screen. His gaze swept past William to the runoff ditch that ran alongside the highway, into which Natalie Sharpe
