Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

“They aren’t your friends,” I say. “None of them even like you. I don’t know why you’d want to save a single one of them.”

says nothing. Her eyes get pink.

I say, “They’ll find us eventually.” We’ve both got implants, of course. Implants to keep the girls from getting pregnant, to make us puke if we try drugs or take a drink. There are ways to get around this. Darius is always good for new solutions. The implant — the Entourage — is also a way for our parents’ security teams to monitor us. In case of kidnappers. In case we go places that are off-limits, or run away. Rich people don’t like to lose their stuff.

“This chamber has some pretty interesting muffling qualities,” says. “I installed the hardware myself. Top-gear spy stuff. You know, just in case.”

“In case of what?” I ask.

She ignores that. “Also, I paid a guy for three hundred thousand microdot trackers. One hundred and fifty have your profile. One hundred and fifty have mine. They’re programmed to go on and off-line in random clusters, at irregular intervals, for the next three months, starting about ten minutes ago. You think you’re the only one in the world who suffers. Who’s unhappy. You don’t even see me. You’ve been so busy obsessing over Tara and Philip, you never notice anything else.”

“Who?” I say.

“Your Face and my Face,” says. “You freak.” There are tears in her eyes, but her voice stays calm. “Anyway. The trackers are being distributed to partygoers at raves worldwide tonight. They’re glued onto promotional material inside a CD for one of my favorite bands. Nobody you’d know. Oh, and all the guests at ’s party got one, too, and I left a CD at all of the false doors at all of the pyramids, like offerings. Those are all live right now.”

I’ve always been the good-looking one. The popular one. Sometimes I forget that is the smart one.

“I love you, .”

falls in love all the time. But I was curious. I said, “You love me? Why do you love me?”

She thought about it for a minute. “Because you’re insane,” she said. “You don’t care about anything.”

“That’s why you love me?” I said. We were at a gala or something. We’d just come back from the men’s room, where everybody was trying out Darius’s new drug.

My Face was hanging out with my parents in front of all the cameras. The Olds love my Face. The son they wish they had. Somebody with a tray walked by and ’s Face took a glass of champagne. She was over by the buffet table. The other buffet table, the one for Faces and the Olds and the celebrities and the publicists and all the other tribes and hangers-on.

My darling. My working girl. My sister’s Face. I tried to catch her eye, clowning in my latex leggings, but I was invisible. Every gesture, every word was for them, for him. The cameras. My Face. And me? A speck of nothing. Not even a blot. Negative space.

She’d said we couldn’t see each other anymore. She said she was afraid of getting caught breaking contract. Like that didn’t happen all the time. Like with Mr. Amandit. and ’s father. He left his wife. It was ’s Face he left his wife for. The Face of his daughters’ best friend. I think they’re in Iceland now, Mr. Amandit and the nobody girl who used to be a Face.

Then there’s . Everybody knows she’s in love with her own Face. It’s embarrassing to watch.

Anyway, nobody knew about us. I was always careful. Even if got her nose in, what was she going to say? What was she going to do?

“I love you because you’re you, ,” said. “You’re the only person I know who’s better looking than their own Face.”

I was holding a skewer of chicken. I almost stabbed it into ’s arm before I knew what I was doing. My mouth was full of chewed chicken. I spat it out at . It landed on her cheek.

“What the fuck, !” said. The piece of chicken plopped down onto the floor. Everybody was staring. Nobody took a picture. I didn’t exist. Nobody had done anything wrong.

Aside from that, we all had a good time. Even says so. That was the time all of us showed up in this gear I found online. Red rubber, plenty of pointy stuff, chains and leather, dildos and codpieces, vampire teeth and plastinated viscera. I had a really nice pair of hand-painted latex tits wobbling around like epaulets on my shoulders. I had an inadequately sedated fruit bat caged up in my pompadour. So how could she not look at me?

Kids today, the Olds say. What can you do?

I may be down here for some time. I’m going to try to see it the way they see it, the Olds.

You’re an Old. So you think, wouldn’t it be easier if your children did what they were told? Like your employees? Wouldn’t it be nice, at least when you’re out in public with the family? The Olds are rich. They’re used to people doing what they’re told to do.

When you’re as rich as the Olds are, you are your own brand. That’s what their people are always telling them. Your children are an extension of your brand. They can improve your Q rating or they can degrade it. Mostly they can degrade it. So there’s the device they implant that makes us invisible to cameras. The Entourage.