“The house rules say come as you want,” CeeCee answered sulkily.
“Probably some pimply-faced little high school twit who wonders what it’s like to be
Matt stared back and forth between the two young women. This had to be the real Courtney Vance — and boy, was she in a bad mood!
CeeCee’s face was red with embarrassment — and anger. “I’d call it more borrowing for a night. And I came as Alicia Fieldston.”
That was the character Courtney portrayed, Matt remembered.
“You know,” CeeCee went on. “The character with the improvements the studio adds, so I wouldn’t look like this…” Suddenly, CeeCee’s eyebrows became heavy and ragged. “Or this….” Her perfect nose went a little off center.
“Why, you little…” the real Courtney Vance growled.
But the girl in the virtual copy had heard enough. CeeCee suddenly swung, her fist catching the veiled figure in the side of the jaw.
Matt winced as he heard the impact of knuckles against flesh and bone. That had to hurt!
The real Courtney Vance vanished like a popped soap bubble.
Matt stood where he was, the thought still echoing in his brain.
He turned to the girl, who was shaking out her fist.
But before Matt could speak, they were joined by a figure that towered over them both. It was roughly in the shape of a human, if humans came nine feet high and were constructed of glowing crystals. Instantly, Matt christened the intruder Mr. Jewels.
The crystalline figure lumbered up to CeeCee. “Can’t leave you on your tod even for a couple of minutes, can I?” The words came out in harsh, clanging tones.
“On her what?” a confused Matt started to say.
A big, glittering hand stretched out to clamp onto CeeCee’s arm. Although the finger-crystals glowed softly, Matt knew they must be hard as stone.
CeeCee merely looked at Mr. Jewels in silence, her face a mask of fear — and pain.
But before he could move, CeeCee and her big, jeweled friend both vanished from Maxim’s.
Chapter 4
Matt yawned as he rode the autobus to school the next morning. He’d spent a sleepless night going over what he’d learned from his virtual visit to Maxim’s.
Not that it amounts to all that much, he thought as he walked onto the academy campus.
During Prep period, he pulled Andy and David Gray aside. “Leif got me into a rich kids’ virtual hangout last night,” he reported. “I think I may have met some of our friends from Camden Yards.”
“Which ones?” Andy immediately asked. “John Dillinger, or the cute blond?”
“I can’t be sure,” Matt admitted. “They were in different proxies, of course. One was a guy made up of crystals — I called him Mr. Jewels. The other was a girl named CeeCee. She came as Courtney Vance.”
“You mean the actress who plays the doctor on
“I didn’t know you watched the holo-soaps,” Andy teased.
“Come on,” David said defensively. “Her image is all over the Net.”
“It sure is.” Andy thought for a second. “Very pretty, and very blond.”
“It might be a clue,” Matt said. “If CeeCee is the same girl from the stadium, she likes to appear as a blond — maybe she has blond hair.”
“Or maybe she’s a wannabe-blond,” Andy shot back. “I came across a dictionary of old-fashioned slang — Valley Speak, they called it. They had a couple of names for girls with blond hair — loxies and boxies.”
Matt and David glanced at each other, baffled.
“A loxie is like Goldilocks — she gets her blond hair from Ma Nature,” Andy explained with a grin. “Other girls got their blond hair from a box. Nowadays, they can play proxies who look the way they want to. Your CeeCee may weigh three hundred pounds and have a shaved head.”
“Got any other clues for Sherlock over here to trash?” David asked.
“The real Courtney Vance turned up,” Matt said. “CeeCee hit her — and hurt her.”
Both of his friends stopped kidding. “What happened then?” Andy asked.
“Then this jewel-guy came lumbering over. He complained about not being able to leave CeeCee on her tod.” Matt smiled, proud of himself. “I tracked down that expression on the Net — it’s British slang for leaving someone alone. So Mr. Jewels may be British — maybe somebody from the diplomatic community.”
“Or maybe it’s someone pretending to be British,” David objected. “Have you heard about that new proxy program, Idiom Savant? It instantly translates whatever you say into any of a dozen other languages. The only giveaway is in the lips of the proxy. There’s a slight delay between the lip movements and the sound as the program processes the translation.”
“Oh, perfect,” Matt groaned as the others laughed. “This jewel-guy didn’t have any lips at all!”
Sandy Braxton caught up with Matt that day at lunch. “So? Have you read any of the information on that datascrip I gave you? I found a big file about how many Civil War generals were officers together in the Mexican War. Hancock and Armistead both served together in Winfield Scott’s army. Lots of the officers who were in Pickett’s Charge were also in the attack on Chapultepec Castle — including Pickett and James Longstreet.”
“That’s really interesting,” Matt said nervously. With his visit to Maxim’s, he hadn’t even looked at the scrip. “Maybe we can make that the opening of our report. Can you tell me some more?”
Sandy glanced over to one of the tables in the cafeteria. “I was going to sit with some of my friends….”
Matt followed his eyes. Of course, it was a group of Leets — and there were three blond girls. “Well, maybe we can do it in between bites,” Matt suggested.
Sandy shrugged and led the way to the cafeteria line, where they loaded a pair of trays. Then Matt followed his new friend to the table full of Leets.
One of the girls looked ready to say something as Matt took a seat, but Sandy quickly spoke up. “This is Matt Hunter from my history class. We’re working on a project together.”
The girl muttered something to her friends. All Matt caught was “—could’ve taken the geek to another table, then.” The rest was drowned out by a wave of laughter and one girl’s “Lighten up, Tricia.”
Matt did his best to control his expression, ignoring Tricia’s nasty comment, pretending to be interested as Sandy rambled on about ancient history, while forcing down cafeteria mystery-glop and keeping an eye on the three blond girls. It was like juggling four things at once. Matt could only hope he didn’t drop one.
For instance, he had to listen to enough of what Sandy was saying to say something himself every once in a while. And he couldn’t make it obvious that he was checking the girls out. As far as he could figure, any of them could be the mysterious CeeCee.
Each girl seemed to hold her head at an angle and laugh as they joked and teased one another. And all of them, blond or brunette, twirled their hair around their fingertips as they talked. Some of the stuff they said he didn’t even understand. They either had their own in-group lingo, or they were using slang that hadn’t caught on yet with the rest of the mere mortals at Bradford.
“So, you going to the VIP-VP at Lara Fortune’s on Friday?” Tricia asked.
Apparently her slang was too advanced for one of the girls. “The VI-who-what?” she asked.
“VIP, very important person; VP, virtual party,” Tricia explained with a toss of her head.
