Melissa worked on the Red Bull spill while Christina cycled through mentions of William online. GIFs came and went, little flashes of animated clips and cats being acrobatic. Daniel felt like he was watching an art installation behind a smeared pane of glass. He picked at one of his thumb’s fresh hangnails.
Melissa’s fanned-out fingers moved up and down before his eyes. “Yoo-hoo! William’s alive, Daniel. He won. We’re going to Moonshadow!”
He attempted a laid-back grin. Melissa placed a cool palm against his bare shoulder. “You look exhausted.” She moved her hand down to squeeze his biceps. “No offense.”
He nodded as eagerly as he could. “I am exhausted. You look very un-exhausted and hot.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the knuckle of her middle finger.
“William’s up,” Christina announced. She unmuted the main livestream, and the basement room was filled with the crowd’s soft murmur.
There was William, his sweat-plastered hair sticking to his forehead. Someone handed him a fancy water, a cylindrical bottle from a brand called Purifique, which Daniel had never heard of. William swigged, and water ran down his face, soaking his shirt. He looked as if he were just beginning to reinhabit his body after a long absence.
Daniel stood with his arm across Melissa’s shoulders, a position he’d jokingly assumed a million times as an excuse to let his hand flop casually against her left breast. During the first Derby bathroom break, William had texted him about the car’s privacy setting. Apparently you could wrap yourself up with another person in some kind of soundproof cocoon.
The livestream abandoned the drones in favor of a head-on shot from a stationary camera. Sunlight flashing in William’s sweaty hair gave him an airbrushed quality. Behind him, Autonomous was parked where it had come to a stop, perpendicular to traffic’s normal flow, a silver barrier that gleamed impassively. The car’s tinted windows, lustrous paint job, and eerie stillness gave Daniel the impression of a military vehicle from an alternate universe. It looked like the kind of car that should have NEO-TOKYO POLICE emblazoned on its side.
He had a flash of walking into Mr. Marczewski’s seventh-grade science room after school to find the chairs arranged in a circle. Sitting across from him was a skinny wisp of a girl in an Avenged Sevenfold shirt with a comet-tail streak of crimson in her hair: Christina Hernandez, Anime Club Treasurer and Fanfiction Editor in Chief. She held a fireproof lockbox in her lap, petty cash and Neo-Tokyo Police stickers….
That was five whole years ago! Since joining and quitting Anime Club, he’d piled up ribbons and certificates and plaques, drawers full of awards for citizenship and attendance, prizes for essays he barely remembered writing. There were tough morning runs, predawn slogs through his wintry neighborhood, snot flash-freezing above his lip, just Daniel and the paperboys and the occasional dreamy run-in with the Fremont Hills Jesus, the long-haired guy who rode a bike with a tie-dyed flag and collected cans from trash bins. Unauthorized evenings in the high school weight room after basketball practice, alone and unspotted on the bench press. Late nights pounding his dad’s old heavy bag that dangled on its chain from the basement rafters, his bare feet stuck with bits of kitty litter that escaped the corner where his sisters’ cats, Taylor and Swift, did their business.
Varsity basketball, National Honor Society, Yearbook Committee, Future Business Leaders of America, Leo Club, Mock Trial, Habitat for Humanity, Stock Market Club.
On the screen, William was joined in front of the car by a reporter from a local Indiana news station, a petite woman whose tan skin glistened in the heat. She stuck a microphone in his face, and his head darted back sharply.
“Whoa, there!” She beamed at him. “I don’t bite, I swear! So, William, you just won your very own Driverless car! That’s gotta feel pretty good.”
William stared at the reporter, who gave him a quick nod to urge him on. He glanced over his shoulder at Autonomous, as if to remind himself what they were talking about. The reporter tried to draw him out. “Hey now, are you even old enough to drive?”
“Uh, I’m seventeen,” William said. He turned his head to look directly into the camera and seemed startled by its presence.
“Deer, meet headlights,” Melissa said.
Come on, buddy, Daniel urged silently. Get it together. He had the absurd notion that his own mental state was linked with William’s, and if his friend would just snap out of it, he’d provide salvation for them both. He wished there was something he could do to kick-start William’s default setting, obnoxious overconfidence. If only that reporter knew how much William loved biting the ends off a Twizzler to make a straw and using it to drink soda. A Twizzler-Coke would perk him right up.
William gazed deeply into the camera. His face slackened, and Daniel was concerned that his friend might simply collapse. But William’s eyes flashed in sudden recognition, as if he’d seen something familiar in the lens. He leaned toward the reporter as if he were letting her in on a little secret.
“And I’m pretty sure you don’t need a license to drive a Driverless car.”
The reporter laughed. “Right, you just sit back and enjoy the ride.” William grinned. Abruptly, he seemed flushed with personality rather than oppressive heat. “Now let’s talk about your strategy here today,” the reporter continued. “Did you have a game plan coming in, or did you
