Girl Parts (4 page)

“What happened last Friday?”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell us?”

David did a quick inventory of all the rules he’d broken. Smoking, speeding, staying out past curfew . . . He shrugged.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Did you watch that girl kill herself?” Mr. Sun’s voice crackled on the small speaker. “Did you?”

David hadn’t thought about the suicide vid since Friday. He swallowed. “How did you know . . . ?”

“That’s not really important,” Dr. Roger said. “What’s important —”

“I read about it on G-news and checked your browser history,” Mr. Sun said.

“You went on my computer?”

“What did he say, George?” Mrs. Sun asked.

“
Your
computer?” Mr. Sun said. “Paid for it with your paper route, did you?”

“I think we’re getting off point,” Dr. Roger said, his smile tight. “David, what’s important isn’t that you watched
it. It’s natural to be curious about death. It’s that you didn’t intervene.”

David started to defend himself but trailed off. Intervening had simply never occurred to him. He felt a vague shame, the way you would if you got to school and realized you’d forgotten to wear underwear. But that made you a spaz, not a bad person. And that seemed to be the implication, that he was bad.

“What was I supposed to do?”

“What about calling the police?” Dr. Roger offered. “Or her parents? You knew the girl, didn’t you?”

“Well, I know she went to Saint M’s . . .”

“So why didn’t you
do
anything?” Mr. Sun crackled.

It
was
an ambush.

“Hey, people do weird shit . . .” David started. Dr. Roger scowled. “Stuff,” he continued, “on the Internet. There’s probably another sad chick mixing herself a death cocktail right now.
I
didn’t make her depressed.
I
didn’t force the pills down her throat. Why are you all acting like it’s my fault?”

There was silence on the telephone. Dr. Roger folded his hands.

“David, how much time would you say you spend on the Web per day?”

“What does
that
matter?”

“Just estimate.”

“Like, maybe six hours?”

“Is that counting school?”

“My classes are online,” David said. “What? Am I in trouble for
that
now, too?”

David felt his skin grow hot. He loosed his tie.

“I keep telling you, David. You’re not in trouble.” Dr. Roger leaned forward, his features softening. “We ask because your parents and I feel you’re too removed from real life. We’re worried you didn’t think to help that girl because you’re disassociated.”

“Disassociated?”

“Disconnected.”

“I think we lost Evelyn. . . .” Mr. Sun said.

“I’m here, George, but I can only hear your half of the conversation.”

“OK, so I didn’t do anything,” David said. “But neither did anybody else! If there’s something wrong with me, there’s something wrong with everybody.”

“If everyone you knew jumped off a bridge, would you too?” Dr. Roger asked.

David had heard this before, and knew you were supposed to say no. But was that really true? If everyone jumped off a bridge, maybe there was a good reason. Maybe the bridge was on fire. If anything, the guy who didn’t jump was the crazy one.

He crossed his arms and scowled. Mr. Sun went on about “responsibility” and Dr. Roger kept repeating “our modern age.” Finally, Dr. Roger said, “David, if I were to recommend a treatment, would you be open to trying it out?”

“You mean like drugs?”

“No. More like a learning tool. It’s very new, revolutionary in fact. It’s designed to help young men like yourself learn to reconnect. It will help you forge strong human relationships.”

“I already do that,” David said. “I have mad friends.” It was true. His Friends List was the longest at Saint Seb’s.

“I’m talking about a more substantial, empathetic connection.”

“So what is it?”

“Show him the catalog,” Mr. Sun said.

Dr. Roger pulled a magazine from his desk. David flipped through the glossy pages. There was a photo of a guy and girl walking hand-in-hand into the sunset. There were graphs and charts and a schematic of intersecting lines.

And then it hit him.

“You’re shitting me,” David said.

“Does he love it?” Mrs. Sun asked. “Hello? Am I still on? Oh, damn it. I think I lost them.”

Because instant messaging was forbidden in class, the boys passed notes. Charlie’s desk was in the center, and a hub. Justin Hoek, who sat behind Derek Fini, was best friends with Sean Lafferty, who sat two seats ahead of Charlie. Justin never folded his notes, so Charlie knew what percentage of Justin’s virginity was lost from week to week. Orson Orlick, who was, according to Justin’s notes, “the biggest fag this side of Horizon Lake,” passed notes of his own to
Paul Lampwick (Rebecca’s little brother), though these were folded and Charlie didn’t snoop. He’d given up trying to ignore the taps on his shoulder and now mutely passed communiqués without looking up.

When David Sun was pulled from class, the disruption inspired a barrage of notes, clogging the pipes, so that John Thomas’s note went to Mark Curley and Mike Butkus’s note wound up with Artie Stubb, who boldly flipped Mike the bird and said across the room, “Why don’t you mind your business, fat ass?” The class’s adult moderator looked up from his newspaper and gave Artie a week’s detention.

Orson tapped Charlie on the shoulder. He’d neglected to fold, and Charlie read without thinking:
Hey, Lampwick.
Do you think Nuvola banged your sister?

Flames licked Charlie’s collar. He tore the note to pieces. An idea seized him. He scribbled a proposition, signed Orson’s initials, and passed it to Paul. The pale freckled skin of Paul’s neck turned pink. He turned, glared at Orson, and hissed, “I
told
you that was a one-time thing. Now leave me alone about it,
fairy.
”

Tears stuck to Paul’s blond lashes, and Charlie’s snicker died in his throat. Both Paul and Orson went home early with stomach cramps.

That night, David spent three hours on Stadium, an interactive virtual games arena. He met Artie’s avatar near the Doom Room. Artie was swinging a battle-ax at a family of terrified dwarves when David floated by.

AxHole1992 would like to chat with you,
David’s computer told him.

David didn’t want to tell Artie about the meeting. He wanted to talk about it, but couldn’t let the guys know that
his parents thought he was
disassociated.
He didn’t want to end up like Nick Smalls.

Nick Smalls had been part of their crew freshman year. Clay knew him through football, and he was quiet and amiable. Then something happened over Christmas break — Nick was in the hospital for a few days. It came out that he’d been in a mental institution. He’d suffered an “episode” and now had to take medication. Happy pills. The pills made Nick different, sometimes mopey and sometimes loud and obnoxious, like he was drunk. His moods were totally unpredictable.

He’d been Clay’s friend first, and it was Clay who’d always invited Nick to hang out. When Nick stopped showing up on Fridays, Clay said, “Yeah, I don’t know. I guess he couldn’t make it.” But he said it so Artie and David knew Nick
could
make it but wasn’t invited. David was relieved. It was hard being around a crazy. Also, it was creepy the way Nick just went nuts. It was like he’d been struck by lightning — at random. Nick was a conductor for misfortune, and standing too close was dangerous. So nobody was friends with Nick Smalls anymore.

Artie was talking about a bot they’d run into last weekend. Bots were simulated avatars created by Stadium’s
designers to make the site seem more popular. They were automated, without any real people controlling them.

David didn’t feel like watching. He set his avatar to auto-respond and watched some television.

David waited at the zenith of the horseshoe driveway. He was freezing, even in his leather jacket. His gloves were just inside on the hall table. The car would arrive any minute, and until then he could stuff his hands in his pockets.

Except that he wanted to smoke. Smoking would calm him down.

David heard a buzz as the front gates opened and an unmarked van glided up the driveway, the trees and bushes reflected in its inky surface. The driver, a slim man with glasses and wispy white hair, got out.

“David Sun?”

“Yeah.”

“Coleo Foridae. Sakora Solutions.”

“Right.” David’s gaze drifted to the back of the van. “Is it in there?”

“Could I see some ID, please?”

David handed over his wallet. A side door opened, and two technicians in gray jumpsuits climbed out. Their uniforms had pink patches the shape of blossoms stitched to the shoulder. One of the techs opened the rear doors. Together they pulled a sleek, lozenge-shaped box onto the drive, tipping it upright so that it gleamed like a rocket. Or an egg. Emblazoned at eye level was a pink flower — the Sakora logo.

The driver handed David a digital signature pad. David signed, and the pad beeped.

“So what now?” he asked, eyeing the seamless case.

The techs climbed back in the van and the driver got behind the wheel. “Now she wakes up. Enjoy, son.” The van rumbled back up the drive.

The Sakora logo protruded from the surface of the case like a button. David pressed it. Something hissed inside, and the panels of the box began to slide away. Steam rose from within, machinery turned and whirred, and the panels tipped outward so that now the egg was a padded pink flower blossom. The mist cleared, and she was standing there, eyes open.

This was how Rose was born.

When they were both five, Charlie and David asked their mothers where babies come from. Charlie’s mom folded herself
into an armchair, sat Charlie on her lap, and pointed to pictures in what Charlie had always thought was a book of sea creatures. She helped him sound out the scientific names.

David’s mother had a more whimsical answer.

“When two people make love, a little blue fairy leaps from the daddy to the mummy, connecting them like a ribbon of light. And sometimes, the fairy leaves a baby in the mummy’s tummy.”

Would the fairies leave any more babies in his mummy’s tummy? David wanted to know.

“No, Davie.”

Why not?

“Because Daddy’s fairies are lazy.”

She was unbelievably,
unspeakably
hot.

David had taken Sakora’s online personality test — favorite movie, most embarrassing memory, even really private stuff like “How many times a day do you masturbate (on average)?” But there’d been no “Do you prefer redheads?” or “Are you a tits man or an ass man?”

The Companion wasn’t just beautiful; she was
his
kind of beautiful. Tumbling red hair, pouty mouth, emerald eyes, and that small, soft body he liked. With his crew, David hollered after spindly supermodel types. But privately he liked girls round in all the right places. And this girl was round in all the right places.

This
“girl.”
There was a fiberglass skeleton under that creamy skin, and a CPU behind those eyes. But she stared
back at him, eyes fixed to his, lips slightly parted, as if
he
was the miracle of science. David was speechless.