“Muffins, anyone?”
Solo enters, rolling the coffee cart.
“My point exactly,” Aislin says, motioning him over.
I have several long, long seconds to wonder which is more embarrassing: a giant image of an Adam with a number of missing parts? Or an Adam with those parts?
“How’re you feeling, Aislin?” Solo asks. He doesn’t glance at me.
“I’m better now,” she says, giving him an up-and-down. She grabs a cruller.
“Heard you moved out of the clinic,” Solo says, looking at me for the first time.
“No point in staying,” I reply flatly. “I’m a freak of nature, as you know.”
“Yeah, well. I’m on food-cart duty for one more day,” Solo says, as if I’d just told him I had a hangnail. “I thought I’d come by and see whether you need anything. Chips? Snickers bar?” He pauses, surveying our incomplete Adam. “Hot dog?”
Aislin leans forward, very serious. “Do you have anything heartier than a hot dog? Say, a kielbasa? Italian sausage? A whole salami?”
She is making hand gestures as she goes along.
Solo’s face goes red. He’s only good for about one round of flirtation with Aislin. After that he loses his way.
“He’s shy,” Aislin reports to me as if Solo isn’t there. “I don’t know: Should we make Adam shy? It’s kind of cute.”
“I’ll take a sandwich. Not salami,” I say. “Turkey.”
Solo pulls a turkey sandwich off his cart. He hands it to me and snags a napkin. The napkin drops to the floor. I automatically reach for it, but Solo’s already down on one knee. He grabs the napkin and hands it to me.
Except that when I reach for it, he’s got my hand in his and the napkin is only part of what he’s giving me.
Something small, maybe an inch long, hard and rectangular.
Our eyes meet.
He stands up.
“The other night, I noticed you had your laptop in your room,” he says quietly. “MacBook Pro. A little old school, huh? Still has a USB drive.”
And I know right then what he’s slipped me. A thumb drive.
I can pull it out, notice it, hand it back to him. I can stop whatever he’s up to right now.
I crumple the napkin in my lap in a way that Aislin won’t see. I glance down and confirm that it’s a flash drive. There’s a small Apple logo.
Solo escapes from the room before I can say anything. Before Aislin can say anything else.
Aislin watches him go, enjoying the rear view with the practiced eye of experience. “If you don’t, E.V., I just may.”
I have a quavery, uneasy feeling in my chest. I don’t know what’s on that thumb drive. But I know it’s a secret.
I know it’s a secret from a boy who hates my mother.
Just a little longer and I can go home, I tell myself. I will have kept the deal with my mother.
And I’ll be safe from Solo.
“I’ve got to pee,” Aislin announces. “I’ll be right back.”
As soon as she’s out of the room, I pull the flash drive from the napkin and examine it. Nothing special. And yet somehow, I’m afraid of it.
I wrap it up and shove it into my sweater pocket.
Adam hovers before me, glowing and gorgeous. My unfinished masterpiece.
Suddenly, I feel this explosive restlessness, a craving for the fog and steep streets of San Francisco. I want out of this place. I want to run until my brain shuts off, my legs scream with exhaustion.
Before I can lose my nerve, I cast a quick glance at the screen and randomly tap some options. I don’t think about it; I just do it.
Aislin returns just as I hit the last button:
A hum, a flicker, and there he is. My perfect man, with nothing—and I do mean nothing—left to the imagination.
I tilt my head, squinting. “What do you think?”
Aislin executes a flawless wolf whistle. “Girl,” she says, “I like your style.”
– 24 –
I slip the thumb drive into my computer. The icon pops up on my desktop. Now all I need to do is click on it.
All I need to do.
It’s late. Aislin is snoring softly. I faked sleep to get her to go to bed. I’m in the bathroom, in my pajama bottoms and T-shirt, sitting on the toilet with the seat down. The light is pretty awful for this time of the night. It’s a no-secrets light.
The icon shows the Apple logo.
A click of the mouse or the touch of a finger on the screen is all it takes. Here’s the thing, though: You can’t un-know something once you know it. Once you know, you know. Once you know, you may be compelled to act. Once you act…
You’re overthinking, I tell myself. Overworrying.
And yet…
Why is this so hard? Didn’t I come in here for the purpose of seeing what is hidden within Solo’s drive? Isn’t that why I’m sitting on a hard toilet seat in the middle of the night?
I stick out my index finger, hovering over the screen.
Touch.
The file opens. It contains three other files. One is a video. The other two seem to contain documents or pictures. The video is labeled “#1.”
I take a breath. I find my earbuds—they’ve fallen to the tile floor. I plug them in and stick them in my ears.
The video is of Solo. He’s standing, kind of bouncing back and forth with energy. He’s nervous.
“Eve. It’ me, Solo.”
I smile a little, in spite of myself. Like I wouldn’t know that without him telling me.
“I don’t know if you’re going to watch this. I don’t know what your reaction is going to be. You were never part of the plan. But… well, here you are. And I guess you’re involved now. Now.”
He seems to be losing his way. He starts to reach for the camera, as if he’s going to turn it off. Changes his mind.
“Anyway, you’re part of this because you are who you are. It’s just that before, I didn’t know you. I mean, I knew you existed. I knew about you, but then you became a real person. A person I liked.”
He looks down at his feet. “A person I like a lot.” Pause. Shuffle. “A lot.”
I glance nervously toward the locked door, as if someone might overhear. But I’m the only one hearing. The only one feeling.
“So, anyway, you’re Spiker as much as she is, I guess. So I’m laying this out for you.” Long pause. I sense he’s arguing with himself, regretting this. “I feel like you deserve to know everything.”
Solo clears his throat. He reaches toward the camera and the video ends.
I’m in this deep. I click on the first file.
There are a dozen individual documents in the file. The first ones I open look like budget spreadsheets.
I don’t really have any interest in budgets and I don’t really know how to read a spreadsheet. Maybe they’re incredibly meaningful, but I’m not the person to figure that out.
