by Cameron Jace
The video feed on the iAm is from my parents. Mom, dad, and Jack are saying happy birthday to me in their new house. This is a live feed, and it’s totally illegal for them to do that with me.
There is a cake that has the number 10 on it with seventeen candles. My heart sinks to my feet. The happiness and surprise are overwhelming. Leo is risking himself being downgraded doing this. I am not supposed to be interacting with my parents since they cleared my name. The rain stops outside but starts falling here, inside, from my eyes. This is the birthday present of the century, I guess. Or so it feels to me.
Even though I miss my family, the conversation turns a little bit flat. It’s all, ‘How are you?’ ‘We miss you’ and ‘Happy birthday’ I guess somewhere along the year we lost each other. I can’t say I’m not glad, and I can’t say that the tears in my eyes aren’t genuine, but it feels a little awkward. The real winner who deserves to be praised in all that is Leo, not them, for doing this for me. The boy keeps making it harder for me, trying to hate him.
At the end of the celebration, my dad imitates Inspector Gadget and instructs me to destroy the phone so the Summit won’t find it. Leo opens the door and gets rid of the iAm then gets back in the car.
“I have to go to sleep, Leo,” I say, almost yawning. Yes. I am pretending to want to sleep because I feel like he deserves the biggest smoochy kiss right now, and I am still stubbornly fighting the urge.
“Do you want me to tuck you into bed?” He bestows his charming smile on me again. Gosh, this is so hard to resist. I find myself grabbing for the door’s handle without commenting, not even with my eyes. “I really mean it,” he insists. “No sneaky moves, I promise,” He raises his hands in the air. “You need someone to take care of you,” He just doesn’t stop, and I am weakening from inside with each word. It would be really nice if he tucked me into bed, but just that. “Come, on. I think I brought you the best birthday present in the world,” Now he’s pushing my weakness button, the one that reminds me that I usually want to be fair. That stupid, kind side of me that feels obliged to reward whoever does something good for me. “How about I just walk you to the door?” He finally proposes.
“Why not?” I say. The door should be OK. We get out.
At the door, I hear a rumble inside my house. What could that be? It’s true I don’t have bodyguards, but everything in the mansion is guarded electronically. It’s impossible to have thieves inside.
“Did you hear that?” I ask Leo, turning my magnetic key in the lock.
“What? I heard nothing,” he says.
I push the door open, then skim for the light switch. Before I reach it the hall blazes with candles and buzzy sounds and I hear a big, ‘yeaaaah!’
“What’s going on?” I wonder.
When the light turns on, I see Vern, Bellona, Faustina, and Pepper holding a cake with seventeen candles in the middle of the hall.
“Wow,” Leo steps in, pretending he didn’t know about this. “Looks like someone’s birthday. I really can’t resist a birthday cake. I guess I’m going to have to tuck you into bed at the end of the night after all.”
15
Friends
The birthday cake is the shape of a Decagon with a candle on each corner instead of a city. It makes me look like it’s my tenth birthday. According to Pepper, Tens should get ten candles on their birthday cakes. It’s ironic how I am still treated as a number after fighting for my identity in the Playa last year. Can’t we really just forget about grades and scores for a while?
Unwilling to spoil the awesome birthday party with my real friends, I wash my dimmed thoughts away. The Summit doesn’t permit Monsters out of the Playa, but since each of my friends was ranked today, they are finally free of such obligations. Still, Pepper and Bellona insist that they want to go back to the Playa before midnight because Woo – who is absent – said so.
“Don’t you dare eat the cake!” Leo stands by the door, imitating Bellona’s attitude, waving her machine gun in his hand. It’s the first time I’ve seen him with a gun since last year.
“Give me that.” Bellona purses her lips, pulling her machine gun back.
“She needs to get a boyfriend,” Pepper whispers in my ear. “I am like dead serious, or she is going to shoot one of us soon.”
“I heard that,” Bellona says over her shoulder, still trying to pull her gun from a smirking Leo.
“I didn’t mean you,” Pepper said, not wanting this fabulous evening to end up with blood and cakes smeared on the walls. “I was talking about Vern.” She lies.
“I heard that!” Vern yells from another room, playing with my new XD video game console.
“I thought he needed a girlfriend. Now it makes sense. He needs a boyfriend,” Faustina says, checking her thin eyebrows in the hall mirror.
Pepper rolls her eyes at that. You can’t stop Faustina from insulting someone every now and then.
Vern stands by the door, pointing his gaming device in Faustina’s direction while he hits the fire button. “Die. Monster. Die.”
“I was never a Monster.” Faustina sticks out her tongue at him and grabs Leo’s arm as if reminding us that Leo wasn’t a Monster as well. Leo, in his sweetheart mode, pulls his arm away from her and walks toward Vern. He cups Vern’s mouth with his palm and pretends to kiss him while kissing the back of his own hand. Pepper giggles.
“So gross,” I mumble.
“Actually I am in love with Vern, Faustina,” Leo says, acting as if he is mesmerized by pretending to kiss Vern. “So buzz off Teen-Gene.” A little tension hisses in the room. Even though Faustina never hesitates to humiliate anyone, we’d rather go easy on her. She’s been too vulnerable about being a Teen-Gene since Sam, her ex, left her when she was downgraded.
“Leo is awesome,” Pepper whispers to me again. “I can’t believe everyone finds him charming but you.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to the cake. Do I have to apologize to the world for turning down the hottest guy in town? What kind of crime is that?
“Stop it,” Leo says before entering the gaming room with Vern to play a new game called Xongy Xong in Africa.
“Stop what?” I ask, picking up the knife to cut the cake.
“No cake before we eat pizza,” Leo says.
“You ordered pizza?” I raise an eyebrow. “This is a birthday, not a boy’s night out.”
“Pizza is food, Sunshine,” Leo says, taking his shirt off. I can already hear Faustina and Bellona sighing as Leo shoots them an exasperated glance before continuing, “Birthday cakes are dessert, which is what you eat after your actually eat food. If we’re hanging out for the first time this year, we get food in our system and then eat the cake and blow the candles.”
“You ain’t blowing no candles,” I say with my hands on my hips, imitating some fifties movies. “They are mine!”
“Oh,” Leo says. “Didn’t know you eat candles. Good for you. I’ll tell you what. You eat your candles and we’ll splash the cake on your face.” Leo can be really childish when he is without a gun.
“I wish I were like you,” Faustina says. “It’s easy for you to eat pizza without gaining weight. How come you look so slender?”
“Are you jealous of Leo?” Bellona wonders.
“I am not having this conversation,” Leo waves his hand in the air and throws his t-shirt in my face, trying to turn it up a notch by teasing me. His t-shirt smells fruity-good. “I feel like I am in the girl’s bathroom so I really am not having these kinds of conversations.” He disappears in the gaming room.
“Is he really going to spend the night here without a shirt?” I ask the girls who look back at me as if saying, ‘This is your house, why don’t you tell him that?’
“I am going to watch Twilight,” Pepper jumps off the couch and turns on my air-screen. Thanks to Leo, I owned a secret library of forbidden movies that no one in Faya seemed to know about. Pepper was really fond of these movies.
&nb
sp; “Not again.” Bellona puffs.
“Come on, Bellona,” Faustina says. “You need to give up on that machine gun and start remembering that you’re a girl.”
“She is only joking,” I tell Bellona before she smashes Faustina’s beautiful face. “So did you order pizza already?” I yell over to Leo in the other room.
“Yes, Sunshine,” He yells back. “Shoot, Vern. Shoot!”
Pepper giggles again when he calls me Sunshine.
“Can you please stop calling me Sunshine. I have a name.” I yell over.
“Damn!” Vern screams. “You’re totally busted, Leo.”
“OK. Sunshine,” Leo says. “I promise I’ll never call you Sunshine again, Sunshine.”
“Charming,” Faustina muses, brushing her purse gently as if patting a pet before putting it aside.
“He is a dork,” I say, trying hard to swallow that damn smile on my lips.
“I want stuffed-crust pizza, Leo,” Pepper yells over, having put Twilight on.
“No pizza for you, miss Mac-and-Cheese!” Leo says and bursts into laughter with Vern. Their voices are so loud we can’t help but laugh, too.
“One day in history someone will quote my words in a book or something,” Pepper puffs at us. “You ignorant ranked people.”
“Yeah, in a cookbook, I guess,” Bellona says and slumps down on the couch next to Faustina. I would never have imagined I’d see those two sitting side by side.
“Shut up, Pretty in Pink,” Pepper fires back at Bellona.
In the middle of watching Twilight, the doorbell rings. When I check the ringer’s photo ID on my iAm I see it’s a cute delivery girl.
“Pizza’s here, Leo,” I say, noticing Pepper almost crying when watching the movie. What’s wrong with her?
“Spoiler alert: he is a vampire,” Leo says casually, walking behind us to toward the door and pointing at the movie we’re watching.
“Are you going to spend the whole night shirtless like this?” I wonder, unable to stop my neck from twisting to look at him.
“It’s hot in here.” He says, walking to the door.
“No, it’s not hot. We have the air conditioning on.” I comment.
“I didn’t mean that hot. I mean my body is hot. I like to show off. What’s your problem?” He opens the door. I notice Pepper’s not giggling this time, totally engrossed in the movie.
“Bellona,” Leo suddenly comes back without the pizza. “Please?” He winks at her, pointing at the cute pizza girl standing with a pile of boxes in the middle of the hall.
“Is that Leo?” The girl asks, blushing red like the tomato in her pizza. Leo has already disappeared into the gaming room.
“No,” Bellona puffs, taking the pizza. “It’s Humpty Dumpty. He just had an extreme makeover.”
“Can I please just take a picture with him?” The girl bites her lip, and I feel I am going to shoot someone on my birthday. “Please?” The girl pleads as Bellona shoves her out. “Maybe a small peck on the cheek? My friends will be so jealous.” The girl insists.
“I will draw a hole with my gun in your cheek if you don’t leave now.” Bellona pushes her out after paying her and closes the door. “Sometimes, I feel I should have been a boy in this world.” Bellona murmurs as she sits back down with the pizza.
“Don’t worry,” Faustina says. “You’re close enough.”
“Thank you so much for the pizza, Bellona,” Pepper interrupts to save Faustina from getting killed for the second time today.
Leo and Vern come back into the room having one of their nonsense conversations.
“So how come Xing Xong was originally called King Kong?” Vern wonders as he gorges on his slice of pizza. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“Do you really think this enormous Gorilla that stands atop a building and swoosh’s planes away is called Xing Xong?” Leo wonders.
“It’s what I was raised to believe. It could be called Ping Pong for all I know.” Vern says.
“Seriously Vern, go bury your head in some jelly or something. You’re a hopeless case. I am not educating you anymore,” Leo says, licking his fingers. “So what’s with the Twilight drama?” He asks Pepper precisely.
“What’s with it?” Pepper shrugs her shoulders as if trying to hide her irrational tears. Leo just hit the jackpot. She is hiding something.
“Why aren’t you watching a badly dubbed Kung Fu movie instead?” Vern wonders.
“I mean it’s obvious,” Leo discards Vern’s comment. “When girls start watching Twilight again after more than a hundred years, there must be some emotional drama in the room,” Leo burps on purpose. No comment. “And since Sam broke up with Faustina when she was downgraded to an Eight, Decca sent Leo on the ‘let’s be friends road’, and Bellona killed her last six boyfriends with her machine gun, it leaves only Pepper, who’s supposedly in love with a dude named Woodsy Brown.”
“Stop being an ass, Leo,” I say.
“No. He’s right,” Pepper says, not looking back at us. “I broke up with Woodsy.”
“What?” I turn back to her. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.” She says.
“That’s not an answer,” Leo says. “That’s a Facebook status, and please don’t ask me what that is.”
“He doesn’t really love me,” She says and drops her slice of pizza.
“What happened?” I repeat. “What do you mean he doesn’t really love you? Your love story is an inspiration to everyone in Faya.”
“You both kissing is the fifth most watched video of all time,” Vern feels the need to add.
“We were Tattooed,” Pepper says, slumping back into the sofa.
“Tattoo—?” Leo wonders.
“Tattooed. It’s the Summit’s word for being matched by the iAm,” Pepper explains. “Sometimes the iAm tattoos a boy and girl if it finds them compatible. It’s a system that’s still under development by the Summit, but it works occasionally.”
“How does that exactly work again?” Bellona wonders.
“The iAm believes that a boy and a girl are compatible and could make a good couple so it releases a substance called Oxytocin through the receptor that increases the attraction.”
“Is that for real?” I wonder. “Did the Summit go that far?”
“As I said, it’s not finalized for usage, but they used it on me and Woodsy. That’s why he went crazy and risked his rank for me by coming into the game.” Pepper says.
“I don’t believe that,” I say. “His love for you is genuine. I can’t think of it any other way.”
“Me, too. I don’t see the problem,” Leo says. “You say that substance increases the attraction. It means you both were attracted to each other in the first place.”
“But not necessarily enough to risk your life for someone,” Pepper says. “It’s not real.”
“Well,” Vern interrupts reluctantly. “How is that still the case when the receptor was removed? All Monsters removed our receptors so the effect of that Oxytocin shouldn’t last anymore.” Vern has a good point.
“That’s not true,” Pepper says. “I asked and was told that the effect could last for years after the receptors are removed.”
“Who did you ask? Who even knows such a great secret?” I wonder.
“Woo,” Pepper says.
It reminds me that Woo is the only one missing today, probably refusing to attend my birthday. I pride myself on not asking anyone why he didn’t come over. I already sent him a message asking him why he was absent and he didn’t reply. Somebody, please hit me with a sponge hammer!
“Well, if it’s Woo then it must be true.” Leo rolls his eyes and takes a couple of steps back.
“He usually is,” I say to Leo.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Leo waves his hand in the air. “He is not God. He is just a kid like any of us.”
“You’re not quite a kid anymore, Leo.” Bellona remarks.
“So what�
��s really the problem here?” I turn back to Pepper. “I mean, you learned about some of the Summit’s many tricks to toy with us. It still doesn’t change that you and Woodsy are in love. You should only trust your heart, Pepper.” Ok. I am being preachy here.
“It’s what she is doing right now,” Faustina, the smart Teen-Gene, says. “Why do you think Woodsy didn’t come over tonight? They already broke up. Pepper already feels flat about him.”
“She is right,” Pepper nods then lowers her head. “I don’t feel it anymore. Something feels wrong with me and Woodsy.”
“Just like that?” Leo raises an eyebrow. “What’s with all that girl-breaks-up-with-boy thingy? In the Amerikaz it was always the boys breaking up with girls.”
“That’s why I don’t have a girlfriend,” Vern says. “So she doesn’t break up with me.”
“Shut up, Donkey Kong.” Faustina snarls at him.
“This is really strange, Pepper,” I say. “What do you mean you don’t feel it anymore?”
Pepper shrugs her shoulders as an answer. She has no idea what just happened. Did the Summit play her and Woodsy? Did we live a sweet but unreal love story? I refuse to believe that. You can’t fake love.
“Look who is asking,” Bellona wonders, looking sideways at Leo. “You had a change of heart yourself with Leo, so what’s not to believe?”
“That’s different—“ I try to explain myself.
“Tell you what. I thought this was a birthday,” Leo stands up in his cheerful way. “I am so into the birthday cake right now.”
“Me too,” Vern raises his hand as if we’re in a class.
“I really want that cake! Maybe I can’t stop loving someone when I eat. Didn’t they invent that already?” Leo says in my face and walks to the refrigerator as the rest let out sighs of relief before smiling.
“Please put your shirt on or you will get a cold,” I say over his shoulder.
