She rummaged through the car’s refrigerator and came up with a bag of frozen peas.
“Hold this on your eye.”
Daniel took the bag and gingerly pressed it against his swollen face while Melissa dabbed at the blood around his mouth with one of his sleeveless running shirts.
“Thanks, Hernandez,” he said. “Why would anybody want to cook peas in here?”
“They wouldn’t,” Christina said. “Those are face peas.”
“Shhh.” Melissa attended to him with fussy care, but her voice was strained with barely suppressed fury. “Your lip is split pretty bad. Don’t speak or it’ll bleed.”
The chorus of No Doubt’s 1996 hit song “Don’t Speak” played softly from the speakers.
“Quit it, Otto,” William said wearily. He was watching out the back window to make sure the cops weren’t on their tail as they hugged the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a vast black emptiness pierced by the lonely lights of the causeway.
The song faded to silence.
William’s shirt had been stretched in the melee, and now it looked like one of Melissa’s slouchy tops. There was the tendon where his neck met his shoulder, upon which Christina could now officially confirm under oath she’d placed her lips. Even in the wake of their chaotic exit from Riverbend Shorty’s, with her heart making unpredictable leaps (she really needed to exercise more often), she couldn’t help but marvel at the jittery warmth that buzzed between them. They had just kissed on a dance floor in public. Right now even Dierdrax’s Otto-assisted suicide didn’t seem so bad. Christina told herself that she had no business poking around ARACHNE in the first place. Dierdrax’s demise was actually a relief, if she looked at it from a certain angle; now she could sit back, admit that Otto had won, and let whatever was happening with William unfold.
Daniel grinned. “Face peas.” The midpoint of his lip was a weeping cleft. Melissa tossed the bloody shirt to the floor, and Otto whisked it out of sight.
“Hey, you know what’s not funny?” Melissa said. “Any of this.”
The car filled with a grainy 3-D projection of Riverbend Shorty’s balcony area. The crowd scattered at glitchy half speed. Daniel charged a massive potbellied guy in a tank top.
“Security camera,” Christina said. She watched the combatants crash through a table, catapulting an entire crawfish feast into the air. She’d been down on the floor dancing with William, stealing kisses, when the commotion started. Somehow, William had known instantly what was going on and rushed upstairs, even though they couldn’t see anything from their spot on the packed dance floor. The spilled food turned into dozens of animated crawfish that swam through the air while Daniel absorbed a vicious right hook from the big guy on the ground.
“That was moderately funny,” Daniel said.
“Really?” Melissa rolled her eyes. “It’s like this every time with you guys. Something serious happens and everybody jokes around like it’s no big deal, except for me, so I get to be the road trip’s bitchy mom by default.”
Christina watched Daniel intently. For a guy who’d just gotten his ass kicked in a bar fight, he seemed remarkably sober and composed. The skin around his eye was turning a pretty shade of plum.
“Kill it, Otto,” William said, and the projection vanished. “I think there’s somebody following us.” Christina turned to the back window. The streets of suburban Kenner were empty at this time of night, except for a pair of headlights a few blocks back.
“From the bar?” Christina asked.
“I don’t know,” William said. “I didn’t think anybody was behind us when we left. We’ll see if they’re still there when we hit the highway.”
“Look at me,” Melissa said to Daniel as he pulled a thick paperback from his backpack, like he was going to settle in for some quality reading time. “Look. At. Me.” Melissa squeezed her hands together in her lap. Her knuckles were the color of frostbitten lips.
Daniel did what she asked. They regarded each other in a way that made Christina want to put on her headphones.
“What are you on?” Melissa asked finally.
Daniel held up his book, The Collected Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. “Literature.” He cracked it open to a page at the midpoint. “I’m on literature.”
The window glass behind Daniel’s head took on the pale buttery glow of an app screen that looked familiar to Christina. At the top of the screen was the app’s logo, a pair of lips bisected by a vertical finger: the universal symbol for shhh. Dialogue bubbles began to blink into place.xoxoPixieDustxoxo:I got a surprise for youDB837651:I gotta take a napxoxoPixieDustxoxo:Mmm sounds niceDB837651:Then I’ll come byxoxoPixieDustxoxo:Bring SNACKS. See you later alligatorDB837651:Something something crocodile
All Christina could do was stare openmouthed at the bizarre tableau of William and Melissa puzzling out the Epheme chat while Daniel, oblivious to the screen behind him, kept his eyes lowered to his book.
Looks like Otto’s been doing some eavesdropping of his own, she thought. Well, of course; ARACHNE reached into the dark web with complete and utter ease, so encryption was no obstacle. Her sense of relief kicked up a notch. Otto had been toying with her since the first hours of the trip, when she’d spotted Dierdrax passing through the LIDAR map. Now it was Daniel’s turn. She felt like she was watching hidden-camera prank videos, which always took her from That really sucks to Glad that’s not me to That’s kind of funny to That guy probably deserved it.
“Who the fuck is PixieDust?” Melissa said.
Christina’s emotional state settled somewhere between Oh shit and Somebody make popcorn, this is gonna be good.
Daniel closed the book on
