“What?”
He smiled. His teeth were perfectly aligned. He probably went to TOOTHGUY. “You really don’t remember.”
“I guess not.”
“Mr. Marczewski’s room. Seventh grade. You had that red streak in your hair back then.”
Startled, Christina touched her head as she studied his face, trying to conjure up a memory of seventh-grade Daniel Benson. There was nothing. But Mr. Marczewski’s room? That meant…
“You came to Anime Club.”
He grinned. “Once or twice.”
“Why’d you drop out?”
“There was this modified ninth-grade basketball team for kids who were probably going on to JV but weren’t quite big enough yet. I made the team as a seventh grader, so I sort of had to do that.”
“Yay sports,” Christina said. Daniel’s smile faded and she was immediately sorry. “I just mean a lot of kids came and went. Shit happens.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes I wish it happened differently, you know?”
Christina laughed. “Anime Club doesn’t exactly blow ’em away over at Princeton Admissions.” At the same time, she felt out of sorts, as if she’d slipped into an alternate universe in which Daniel Benson routinely opened up to her about his feelings and regrets. What was going on with him? His jaw was working like he was trying to chew something tiny. Then his nostrils flared.
“You smell that?”
Christina sniffed the air. “Smells like Ohio, I guess.”
“Smells like a barbecue.”
She detected the faint smell of burning coals. “Probably the crematorium. We seriously need to get back in the car before I lose my shit—Daniel, hey, horror-movie rules!”
But he was off and running, leaving her alone with the chapel building and Nelly Krebs and I AM THE NEW FLESH. He was fast, but there wasn’t much ground to cover, and half a minute later she joined him on the crest of a hill.
“Holy shit,” he said.
“Agreed.”
The hill presided over several rambling acres of a valley that hadn’t been visible from the chapel, where dirt roads formed a grid split in half by a wide thoroughfare. The buildings along this main street had once been ornate, with the ivy-covered porches of stately mansions. Smaller streets were lined with boxy houses and low structures that resembled army barracks. It was as if she were looking down upon the ruins of a Typical American Small Town from the 1950s, some Life magazine centerfold complete with a charming little plaza, a circular clearing midway down Main Street where a headless cherub crumbled into a dry fountain.
Two massive propane grills were set up on the cobblestones of the fountain bed, sending heat-shimmer haze into the air. Twenty or thirty people milled about the cherub in little groups. Christina could just barely make out the paper plates and plastic cups in their hands. A dozen cars were parked around the perimeter. She was no expert, but they were obviously on the sporty side, all tinted windows, chrome rims, and spoilers.
“Probably the leftover inmates,” Christina said.
Daniel pointed toward the cars. “That’s a Tesla Predator”—he slid his finger to the left—“and that’s one of the new Camaros, and I think that bright green one’s an Audi R8. These are serious car people.”
Now it was Christina’s turn to point: Otto was cruising slowly up Main Street, the fading day giving his silver finish a dull matte sheen. People from the gathering put down their cups and plates and began walking toward the Driverless car. Otto stopped at the edge of the plaza. “I think we’re about to meet them.”
“I’ll tell you right now,” Daniel said, “I’m gonna house, like, seven of those burgers.”
Christina sighed. “Let’s go get the ghost hunters.”
“We were starting to worry you wouldn’t show up.”
Eli, the lanky trust-fund kid who’d exited the Driverless Derby just before Otto pulled out into traffic, chomped an Altoid. Iridescent vapors issued from his 3-D smartwatch. Christina suspected the device was grafted to his wrist; there was no visible band, and the screen was bordered by skin. He crouched in the dusty fountain bed while the #AutonomousRoadTrip team sat on the cement rim and scarfed burgers and kabobs. Soft grilled tomatoes dripped from Christina’s skewer.
“When Rainmaker told me that you guys PaySlammed her the entrance fee, I honestly tripped out. I mean, we’ve been following you since the Derby.” He tilted his head toward William. “No hard feelings, by the way. You kicked ass.”
“Soft feelings from my end too,” William said.
“So when I heard we’d get a chance to see that baby up close again”—Eli nodded at Otto—“I was so stoked. Rainmaker was stoked too. A general feeling of being stoked, like, permeated us.”
Christina chewed her kabob’s last pepper, thinking, Otto paid our admission without asking. She scanned the group around the cherub for someone who could possibly be named Rainmaker. Such a person should be easy to spot, but here all the girls looked beamed in from Burning Man. Dreadlocks and blue-tinted cyberpunk sunglasses abounded. Rainmaker could be anybody.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” William said. “And we’ll be playing for charity instead of keeping the prize money.” He tapped Melissa’s knee. “Make sure you put that in your tweet.”
“Righteous,” Eli said with a sparkly grin. He was wearing a gem-encrusted grill. “But you gotta win first.”
The game, as Eli explained while they ate, was irresistible. Probably the closest Christina would ever come to a real-life MMORPG raid. It would be a chance to test Otto’s abilities on a bunch of randoms who gave her NPC vibes—Non-Player Characters of dubious artificial intelligence who populated a video game’s landscape. She realized it was problematic to think of human beings this way, but there was one glowstick-twirling guy among the NPCs who was just asking for a little in-game punishment.
More intriguingly, the game involved splitting their team in two, which meant that she’d have another chance to be alone with William. She was determined to make it count, even if they were preoccupied with wrecking other people’s shit. They would just have to multitask.
Eli stood up. “I’m gonna get your weapons kit from Rainmaker. You guys keep eating.”
Weapons kit! Christina felt her
