Andrew Smith: Rabbit and Robot

The only two members of our group who’d been with us since the beginning, when Billy Hinman and I were four years old, were Katie St. Romaine, who was my girlfriend for nearly a year, and a boy named Justin Pickett.

Katie and I had never had sex, although we did come close a few times. It was always me who’d be the one to chicken out. And where did that get me? Stuck on the Tennessee , alone, with Billy, Rowan, and a couple thousand v.4 cogs. Ridiculous.

Whatever.

Billy Hinman did have sex with Justin Pickett. Billy told me everything. He was one of those guys who, according to him, didn’t like to be pinned down by expectations regarding his sexuality.

Billy Hinman called himself “fluid,” which sounded incredibly foreign to me. I just thought he was horny all the time. And, yes, Billy Hinman did ask me more than once if I’d like to fool around sexually with him, to which I answered that if I was too afraid to try anything with Katie St. Romaine, I was definitely too afraid to do anything with him.

And we left it at that, because nothing could really get in the way of our friendship, especially because of how honest and sometimes sad Billy Hinman was. Also, we needed each other. We were the only real human beings either of us truly knew.

All our fake friends were on Woz. They all went to school, so this was natural. All schoolkids had prescriptions for Woz. It helped you learn things. Billy never had Woz once in his life that I was aware of, but I was pretty much an out-of-control addict ever since I was about twelve. Still, I felt like I’d learned plenty of stuff. Rowan was also my tutor; Billy’s, too, when he’d pay attention to stuff.

You couldn’t really tell much of a difference between Wozheads at school. The doses they received were perfectly adjusted to help future coders concentrate, or to cull out the obvious future bonks. It was guys like Charlie Greenwell and me who were the unfortunate casualties of the culture of Woz.

I did it for fun, and I had too much fun.

The party was awkward, to say the least. For one thing, it was at Paula Jordan’s house, and Mrs. Jordan was there, which meant that I’d probably have to stay around and “wait” for Billy Hinman after all the other kids left.

I had only broken up with Katie St. Romaine two days earlier, and she was there, sitting as far across the room from me as she could possibly get and still qualify her parents for payment for her attending this week’s “normal kids” group.

Such fun.

Katie looked unhappy. It kind of made me feel drawn to her, and simultaneously sad, too, because I worried that I may have hurt Katie St. Romaine’s feelings, and nobody likes to do that, right?

I sat on a couch, next to Billy and Justin. There were four other teenagers with us: Paula Jordan; Stuart Michelson; Dani, who was Stuart’s twin sister; and another kid who had just joined our play group a few weeks earlier. His name was Craig or Ken or something. Whatever. Craig or Ken tried too hard to talk to me and Billy. He acted like a fucking v.4 cog that was stalled out on friendliness or something. But he was definitely a human. I could smell pee stains in his underwear. Oh well, I’m sure Craig/Ken’s parents were beyond thrilled that their boy got to hang out with a couple of kids like Billy Hinman and me.

“Don’t mess up the game, Cager,” Justin Pickett said.

“I’m not even really playing. I don’t care about the game,” I said.

I leaned forward and dropped four Woz tabs on the table screen in front of the couch. We were all supposedly playing a game with our thumbphones. The playing field rose up in three dimensions from the table. The game was called Hocus Pocus, and it was one of those trendy party games that was supposed to get people to talk about all kinds of personal stuff, but none of us was really talking that day.

It was Paula’s turn. She had to either make a sacrifice to one of the other players, or she had to get up and change something on someone. She decided to change Billy Hinman’s hairstyle. So she walked around the table while I worked at grinding up my drugs, then Paula began combing his hair back from his forehead. It was easy enough for Paula to do; Billy was always loose and relaxed, and his hair was long and hung down in front of his face.

“I like my hair down in my face,” Billy protested.

“Nonsense,” Paula said. “And you look better this way, besides.”

“Nonsense right back at you,” Billy told her.

Katie St. Romaine looked sad. I think she’d told everyone else bad things about me. I’d imagined she’d told the other kids things like Cager Messer doesn’t like girls, as it turns out ; or, Cager tried to force me to have sex with him, and then he got scared when I told him I wanted to , or dumb shit like that. Whatever. The truth is, I broke up with Katie St. Romaine because how could a guy like me trust anyone who was on my dad’s payroll?

But for the record, and now, in light of me being stuck up here on the Tennessee , I do sincerely regret having broken up with her, and especially not having sex.

No one wants to die a virgin, unless you really, really believe in God, and, well . . . whatever.

I pulverized my Woz tablets into a small mound of blue powder at the edge of the game field while Paula finished fixing Billy’s hair. She was right. Billy Hinman did look good with his hair combed back, but Billy was exceptionally handsome anyway. He would have looked good if she shaved him bald. Some guys get all the breaks. And they’re the ones who generally throw most of those breaks away, too.

I snorted the Woz.

I sighed.

“That’s too much, Cager,” Billy said. “You’re going to get sick and puke in the car going home.”

Billy put his arm around me and hugged me close. I knew what he was trying to do. Distraction.

I said, “I’m sorry in advance if I puke in Rowan’s car, Billy. You know I love you.”

And that’s about how thrilling our real-kids parties got. Kids got their hair combed, or ended up dressed in new outfits, or had to give away something they liked as a sacrifice to one of the others until our next session of Hocus Pocus.

Also, I passed out, unconscious on the couch beside Billy and Justin Pickett. So I was in a terrible mood, and physically unmanageable, when Billy tried to wake me up and take me to Rowan, who’d been waiting in the car for us for the past five hours.

Mrs. Jordan was disappointed. Nobody got what they wanted that day, I suppose.

“Sometimes you’re disgusting,” Billy said.

He could say stuff like that to me. I wouldn’t put up with it from anyone else, though.

And I said, “And the rest of the time, when I’m not disgusting, what am I?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fabulous?”

“Whatever.”

I leaned all my weight onto Billy’s shoulder. He nearly fell over.

“I need to pee before we go,” I said. “Come with me and hold me up, Bill, so I don’t bust my head open.”

“No.”

“What do you think I could do to get Cager off this shit, Rowan?” Billy asked from the backseat.

I sat right next to Billy Hinman. He knew I was awake. It wasn’t like he was trying to keep any secrets from me.

“You should get hacked up with me sometime, Billy. Rowan too. That would be fun,” I said.

“No,” Billy answered.

Rowan drove. He said, “Perhaps a birthday vacation is in order. Maybe that would help. You know, take some time away. Take Cager up on the Tennessee with you.”

My father’s ship the Tennessee was as big as a midwestern city, staffed by hundreds of v.4 cogs, and affordable only to people like us—or the people who ran the government and military.