Page 19 of Amethyst Flame
I smiled, the day already looking brighter, figuratively and literally.Can you meet me at Q-Mart? I’m on the run
Again? Be right over
It took me five minutes to walk there and while I waited, I got a couple of cheap coffees and added way too many flavored creamers. When I emerged, Swann waved from the open window of one of those nice-but-not-ostentatious BMWs.
We hugged over the coffees, commiserating about how life could suck sometimes but laughing at the new flavor of KitKat I’d grabbed on impulse. God, it felt good to have my best friend back.
Except…
As she parked in the single line of shade from a towering palm, I swiveled toward her with a ferocious frown. “Now why the hell are you back here?” I demanded. “You can’t take over the fashion world from Arbolito. What happened to your showcase?”
She wrinkled her nose under her fancy Gucci sunglasses. “I woke up and realized I hated everything that I’d created, so I lied and told my mentor that I had a family emergency. I mean… why bother with sundresses when you’rechangingthe world.” Grabbing my left hand, she peered at the pale X where the hive had breached my skin. “Wow. Just…wow.” She laced her fingers through mine. “I’m holding the hand of the future.”
I yanked on her grip. “I know your work, and it’s amazing. You’re just scared, and that’s okay, but not a good reason to run away.”
We both returned to our coffees while she brooded. I gave her that silence because she needed more time to process than me. It was one of the reasons we’d always balanced each other so well: her all “measure thrice, cut once” and me more “look what the cat dragged in.”
And it seemed I had my answer about what to do too. Crap.
Finally she huffed out a breath. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s all just…more than I thought it would be, you know? But also less. A lot less.” She gave me a helpless little smile, acknowledging that contradiction.
I nodded. “I always thought we’d get to a place where everything would come together, and we’d finally seize our destiny.”
She gave me a look. “That’s your video games, Mojimo, not life.”
“But you’re most of the way there,” I said doggedly. “You’vealwaysknown where you were going. What happened?”
Crumpling the empty candy wrapper, she grimaced. “Where was I going? Dreaming up avant-garde looks for a city with much crazier problems? In a world where microscopic robots can springboard right past 3D printing to shield our bodies any way we dream? And five minutes after that, we’ll be uploading our consciousness past the cloud and won’t have bodies at all?”
“Well, that escalated quickly.” I wanted to tease her out of the funk, but her funk was partly my fault. Of course the world is always changing, but finding out about molecular tech was the kind of discovery that made everything before it seem less relevant. And now knowing that BantaMatrix and other companies were innovating past eventhat… Yeah, I could understand her fear of irrelevance before we’d had our chance to make a mark. I rubbed the X on the back of my knuckles.
Existential dread was only silly and self-indulgent when the endwasn’tnigh.
I swallowed hard. “You’re not…giving up, are you?”
Her jaw flexed. “No.” The word wavered a little bit between statement and question. “But my brother called for moral support because he’s going to propose to his girlfriend, and since I needed the break, here I am.”
I could’ve given her the empty platitudes that it would all work out, but they would’ve sounded false. I really didn’t know if anything would.
So I whistled between my teeth. “Your brother and the theoretical physicist?”
She nodded. “And you know how my parents feel about the soft sciences.” With a snort, she reached down for the trash she’d thrown. “I’m helping him with the decorating for when he pops the question. Finally, he sees the value in those design classes you and I took.”
“If you need any help with the digital or computer stuff…” I let the offer hang. It’d serve Jacob and Dane right if I donated some of their services to a romantic proposal.
“Thanks, hon.” She peered at me over the top of her sunglasses, her dark eyes piercing. “So your turn. Why’ve you been sending me too many smiley faces? You know I can smell a lie through text.”
I winced. “Can’t we talk about theoretical physics and bouquets of quarks or whatever?” When she just lifted one perfectly plucked eyebrow, I sighed. “I got an internship. At BantaMatrix. Starts in”—I checked my phone—“about an hour.”
She didn’t look happy for me. “The same BantaMatrix that created the robots that infected you? That BastardMotherfucktrix?”
I choked on a laugh. Swann didn’t swear except when it mattered. “Yeah, them.” Suddenly reluctant to trap her deeper in my shit with a bunch of explanations about Dane and Jacob hacking my way in, I shrugged. “I’d be beyond silly to go, right?”
And my usually bold, fearless Swann, who’d always seen the path forward—clear and decisive as honed scissors through tulle—didn’t answer. She looked out the windshield, twisting the candy wrapper between her fingers. “What if we moved to Kansas together?”
I stared at her. “Really?”
“Fine, St. Barts.”
