M. T. Anderson by Feed Read Free Book Online Page B

weather blimps in front of us. They were all yellow in the sunset that was spreading over the Clouds™. We flew between them. We could barely see the silver of their blimp-hides through the color of syrup. They were like a herd.
    She asked, “Do you think things are going to be different?”
    “From what?”
    “From the way things were before.”
    I looked at her. She looked serious, suddenly. I shrugged. I said, “It’s good to have people again, like all these people, talking to you in your head.”
    “We’ve all been through this big thing together,” she said. “It’s got to change us somehow.”
    She rested her arm along the back of my seat. I leaned my head back. I could feel my hairs rub against her arm.
    Even to my hairs, her arm felt soft.

We got to the party and it was a pretty good party, but low-key.
    When we got there, for a second we stood in the entryway, because Link and Marty were playing each other at this game,
The Cranky Tumble of Dark House,
one of the ones with zombies and mutants, and they were all spinning around and shooting their fingers like guns. They couldn’t see anything, just the gamefeed, so when Violet walked in, Marty almost whacked her in the stomach with his fist. He and Link were swearing and hopping up and down on the marble tiles.
    “Unit,” said Link. “Just get out of the way.”
    Marty was like, “Out of the fuckin’ way! We’re — Oh, shit! — We’re — oh . . . Unit!” He was all shouting at Link, who was like missing some shot at a spine-leech.
    We went into the living room and over to the table where Quendy had all the drinks and beer. People were sitting around drinking, and some of them had music on their feeds and were sitting around talking to it, and some others had imported a feedcast of
Snowblind,
a comedy about a young man who nothing ever happens to, until one crazy day when he crosses the mob at a ski resort and finds out what’s really buried in those moguls — and then all hell breaks loose! (NC-17)
    Violet looked kind of timid, now that we were there. She took a deep breath and went over to say hi to Calista. I stood around and talked with Quendy for a few minutes. Quendy was at first really nice and normal, talking about how it was good to see that we were doing okay, and how she was okay, and everything was fine. Then she started this glaring at Calista, and she was chatting me like,
Do you think Calista and Link are doing it?
    I shrugged and was like,
Yeah. I bet.
    He’s such a pig. He did it with me like — Oh. Never mind.
    Quendy glared at Calista and popped a popcorn shrimp into her mouth from way down below, with her thumb.
    She was like,
I’m tired of just being the friendly one who everyone like steps all over.
    Yeah,
I chatted.
How do you do that, with the shrimp and your thumb?
    Okay. I’ll show you. Hey, are you going out with Violet?
    Yeah.
    That’s great. I think she’s meg nice.
    Yeah.
    Calista says she’s kind of stuck-up? But I don’t agree at all. Like, Calista’s the one who’s stuck-up.
    Calista said that?
    Yeah. You want to try the shrimp on your finger?
    She showed me how to pop the shrimp. As she did it, I looked across the room and saw Violet talking to Calista, and both of them were frowning. I was worried that something bad had happened, so I m-chatted her, like,
Hey, beautiful. What’s doing?
    Heyyyyy, handsome. Just talking with Calista. Having a nice little chat. I made the mistake of saying we were back to the picayune grind. Now she keeps going, “‘Picayune’?!? ‘Picayune’?!?” and pretending I’m French. I wish I hadn’t said anything.
    I looked around me. Everyone was nodding their heads to music, or had their eyes just blank with the feedcast. It was just a party. Nothing but a party.
    From one direction, I heard a kid say, “I think the truffle is like completely undervalued.”
    And from the other direction, a girl was saying, “But he
never
pukes when he chugalugs.”
    It was like