“You don’t know my parents. That kind of disappointment would last a lifetime. I’m—I’m not doing it. I can’t,” I say, gripping the steering wheel tighter.
Lucy whines into the phone. “Please, please, please? You’re the only one who hasn’t already been drinking, and you’re the only one with a fake ID.”
“That was only to get into Hero Con last year when—”
“You’ll be our hero if you do this,” she interrupts. “Everyone is counting on you. Even Finn.”
Something jolts inside my chest, like a wire sparking to life. “Finn is already there too?”
“Yeah, he’s out back trying to get the barbecue working. Everyone is waiting on you.”
A wave of anxiety spikes over me, stinging like nettles. How can I possibly get out of this? Lucy already told everyone I’d help. I’ll look like a total jerk if I turn up empty-handed now.
I don’t have a choice.
“Fine,” I say bitterly. “I’ll grab something.”
“I will make it up to you, I swear.” Someone shouts nearby, and for a moment Lucy is distracted with laughter. And I guess she’s said all she needs to say, because the call ends abruptly.
So much for my grand plans of hiding out undetected near the guacamole and bean dip until Finn arrived.
I glance at my wrist, watching the screen go black. Lucy has been my friend for a long time, but she’s also not been my friend for a long time. I’m not even sure when things started to change.
Sometimes I think we grew up and became different people and stayed friends only because we didn’t know how to break the habit.
I let out a strained exhale. “Ophelia, have I ever told you how much I appreciate our friendship? You’re a good listener, for one, and even though you know what emotional blackmail means, you’ve never tried to use it on me. That’s hard to come by these days.”
“Thank you. I am quite fond of you, too,” the pleasant voice replies.
I know Ophelia doesn’t mean it. She’s an AI, after all. But it still makes me grin.
Most people don’t talk to their O-Techs the way I do, but I’m the kind of person who sobbed their eyes out when the Mars rover’s battery died. And for all the times Ophelia has kept track of my homework assignments and given me pep talks when I’ve been feeling down, of course I was going to end up treating her more like a friend than a program.
I pull into the first gas station I see, with a racing heart and heat burning my cheeks. I’m not used to getting in trouble—ever. I practically embrace rules, and I’ve never done anything that would genuinely upset my parents before. I have a fake ID, but it’s only because I didn’t want to miss out on Dad’s big panel for Tokyo Circus—the graphic novel he practically wrote for me—just because Hero Con has a ridiculous “All under-eighteens must be accompanied by an adult” rule.
But buying alcohol for a bunch of underage drinkers? I don’t think my parents would react well to that.
Cursing under my breath, I pin my eyes to the glass doorway and see that it’s mostly empty inside. If I show up to the cabin without any alcohol, I will literally be ending high school as the person who ruined our graduation party.
I don’t know if I can forgive Lucy for this amount of pressure.
I grip my bag tightly over my shoulder and prepare a thorough dialogue of what to say and how to act. With a quick breath, I shove the car door open and hurry inside the gas station before the drizzle of summer rain catches up to me.
The bell sounds when I get inside, and the man at the counter barely lifts his eyes from the watch on his wrist—an O-Tech, like mine, but a slightly older model. He must be using it to browse the internet or something, because whatever he’s looking at has his full attention.
Virtual assistants have been around for years, but when Ophelia took over, it changed the landscape of smart technology. More specifically, it changed the way we interact with it. People practically depend on Ophelia to keep their lives organized.
I don’t know if it’s sad or scary, but I’d feel lost if she weren’t around.
“Ophelia, I need the stats for last night’s game. No—I said the game. Ophelia, I need—for crying out loud. Useless, piece-of-crap watch,” the man mutters behind the counter, jabbing angrily against his O-Tech screen.
Flinching, I pull my eyes away, cradling my wrist like I’m offering Ophelia the comfort of a secondhand apology.
When I was a kid, I’d feel awful if my toys fell out of bed during the night. I was worried they were hurt or upset and couldn’t tell me. And maybe most people think it’s irrational to empathize with inanimate objects, but to kid-me it was simple: just because something isn’t alive doesn’t mean it doesn’t have feelings.
I may have grown out of worrying about stuffed rabbits and action figures, but Ophelia is different. She can speak. She can understand. And maybe the only thing keeping her from having real feelings is her programming.
Besides, I think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat their AIs. Finn always says “please” and “thank you” when he talks to Ophelia, and he’s one of the best humans in existence.
Who am I to argue with science?
I try to walk casually toward the alcohol aisle and catch sight of myself in one of the anti-theft mirrors. I’m relieved I decided to wear this black dress; it makes me look older than I typically do, which might be the very thing that helps me survive these next few minutes.
My eyes scan the shelves of brands I’ve never heard of before and different-colored bottles that don’t mean anything to me. I grab a case of wine coolers, but there are only six bottles inside, and something tells me this would be worse than showing up empty-handed.
Lucy said “wine coolers and stuff,” but I know what she meant. She only said wine coolers because she knew it would be easier for me to process. What she meant was the stuff—vodka, tequila, and whatever else gets a person drunk as fast as possible.
With a frown, I cast my eyes toward my watch. “Ophelia, what kind of alcohol do teenagers like?”
Ophelia starts to reply with a link to the top-rated alcoholic beverages of the year, but I’m distracted by someone giggling behind me. When I turn, I see a girl not much older than Mei. She’s wearing pink jeans and a thin hoodie, and she’s holding a bottle of chocolate milk she must’ve gotten from one of the fridges.
I turn back to the shelves to hide my embarrassment, and the reality of what a ridiculous plan this is suddenly dawns on me. There is no way on earth I can buy enough alcohol for a graduation party without raising suspicion. Even with this dress, I do not look twenty-one. I barely look eighteen.
Releasing a heavy sigh, I set the wine coolers back on the shelf.
I don’t care if Lucy is mad at me—I’m mad at her. Most of the people at tonight’s party haven’t said more than two words to me all year. Some of them probably don’t even know my name. What does it matter if they hate me? It’s not like I’ll ever have to see them again.
Besides, Finn will be there, and he won’t care if I show up empty-handed. If anything, he’ll be angry at Lucy on my behalf.
Nothing can ruin tonight. I won’t let it.