Cure for the Common Universe (26 page)

“Yeah. Sorry. Take your time.”

She put me on hold.

Fezzik gave me a kindly smile.

I wanted to think about anything other than what I was doing. The desperation of it. The neediness. And then I remembered. Mine wasn't the only broken heart in the Nest.

I covered the phone. “Were you and the Silver Lady . . . y'know, a couple?”

Fezzik opened his mouth. “It's complicated. Or maybe it isn't. She just doesn't have any room in her life for someone like me.” His shoulders deflated, but he still managed that giant smile.

The hold music jumped to another track. My heart jumped with it.

“I know I shouldn't give up on love altogether,” Fezzik said. “You don't quit when you get killed in
Dark Souls
for the hundredth—”

The strings music stopped, and I held up a finger.

“You still there?” the hostess asked.

I covered my eyes. “Yeah.”

“She's not here. Sorry.”

I exhaled. “Thanks.”

I looked at the phone. It was 7:48. The screen went black.

“Maybe something came up,” Fezzik said, taking his phone.

“No. She was too good for me.”

“If you think a girl who stands you up is too good for you, then you're just cranking up your own difficulty setting.”

“Maybe,” I said.

I sank back into the bed.

“I'll give you some time alone,” Fezzik said.

The Nest door closed behind him. All I wanted then was video games. Video games and the Wight Knights. Just give me a computer and an axe and a wave of clockwork chipmunks.

That sounded like the perfect thing.

The only thing.

I
decided to stay in bed until I wasted away to nothing.

But then my stomach started to rumble.

I sat up to go to the Feed and stuff my face with as many zero-point foods as possible. But then I felt nauseous and yet too tired to lie back down. I did anyway.

Nothing was comfortable. Everything sucked. Starvation could not come quickly enough.

Meeki was right. I'd never had a snowball's chance in hell with Gravity. The truth was, I didn't know a damned thing about that girl. I had no idea how she had spent the last four days. Maybe she had mud wrestled. Maybe she had built a homeless shelter. Maybe she had smoked crack and drunk chicken's blood.

It had felt so good talking to her at the car wash, though. I should've realized a girl that pretty and interesting was out of my league. Or maybe Fezzik was right. Maybe she did suck for standing me up. I didn't know.

Every point I'd earned that week had felt like a step closer to her. And it hadn't been. Just because I thought about a girl—constantly, every minute of every day, dreamed of what I would do with her, for her,
to
her—that didn't mean I was leveling up with her, getting further along with her like she was a video game.

But it had kinda felt that way.

I wanted out of my skin. I wanted to quit this character called Jaxon and start a new one. One that was handsomer, stronger, faster, nicer, better at girls. One who didn't give a damn about scoring points.

I rolled onto my side, then back onto my back, and then onto my other side. Maybe I could go steal that iPod Touch from G-man's office to pass the time with video games while I died. I could deal with the iPod's ass smell.

Something floated up in the corner of my vision. I rolled my head to find a cup of horchata and a piece of toast on a napkin. My mouth watered against my will.

I sat up and took them from Aurora. “Thanks.” I bit the toast and washed it down with milky sugar. “I thought you'd be out of here by now.”

“Command and Conquer are running late,” she said, her strange eyes peering up over the bed.

I scooted over. “You wanna join me?”

She let her head rock shoulder to shoulder.

“I only kill clocks,” I said. “I promise.”

She climbed up the ladder. We sat in silence while I finished
the toast and horchata. She and I had had such good conversations on the roof, about moms and boyfriends and video games. Why hadn't she jumped in and saved me from Meeki?

When I finished the toast and horchata, I stuffed the napkin into the cup and dropped it off the bed for the Dust Fairy to take care of.

Aurora dragged her pointer finger along the base sheet. Again. And again. And again.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Just wondering what thread count these are,” she said.

“Did you read the tag?”

She kept dragging her finger. “I'm trying to train my fingertip to figure it out.”

“Weird,” I said.

She didn't look at me, just ruffled up her nose a little.

Oh, shit. Right. Meeki had said that Aurora had been trying to avoid that word her whole life.

I needed to recover. To prove that Meeki was wrong about me. That she had misunderstood everything I'd said and done. That I
was
a good guy.

“I . . . I mean it, Aurora. That's really weird.” I said this like I'd meant it to be ironic the first time. “I don't know when that word became associated with anything bad. I guess it was taken over by popular kids who wanted to make sure that everyone else believed they were normal. But some of my favorite things are weird.”

Aurora stopped dragging her finger along the sheet. She rested her chin on her palms and extended her red, raw fingers so they covered her eyes. “Like what?”

“Like . . .” I didn't even have to search my brain this time. “Did you know that H. G. Wells pretty much invented the atomic bomb?”

I told her all about it, with more confidence than I'd had at the car wash.

Aurora vibrated her lips. She was still wearing her eye mask. “Max called me weird a lot. Never in a good way.”

“What way does he think of it?”

“I don't know. The way he looks at me sometimes, I'm pretty sure he's imagining the Elephant Man.”

“Is that the deformed guy from a long time ago?”

She gave this adorable little nod, lips squished between her hands.

“You're kind of the opposite of deformed, Aurora,” I said. “You're actually really pretty.”

She uncurled one set of fingers so I could see one of her eyes. “Thank you.”

I stared at the uncovered half of Aurora's face. Her beauty had come to me slowly, like an eclipse . . . or the graphics in
Minecraft
—her interesting weirdness, her alien prettiness, the way she noticed the little details of the world, her philosophy on unhealthy relationships and improvement through pain. . . . And hell, she
played video games
. Even with my computer disassembled, I could play at her house.

I'd been so hung up on Serena that I hadn't noticed how awesome Aurora was. She was probably the nicest person I'd ever met.

Serena
was
an asshole.

“Gravity stood me up,” I said. “Fezzik let me call the restaurant with his cell phone.”

Aurora removed her hand mask altogether. “I guess we're both obsessed with people who suck.”

The AC kicked up, and I felt a cool gust against my ankles. I scooted closer to Aurora but tried to make it so slight that she wouldn't even notice it.

I could be better than Max. I wouldn't ignore her and play games all day. I'd talk to her about the universe and flies and anything she wanted. I'd hold her hand and help her forget about her skinny arms and her eyes and her torn-up fingers. I'd help her escape her asshole boyfriend, and she could help me escape my dad's house. I could make her laugh the way I'd made Serena laugh.

I took in the Nest's surroundings. The stars above were fake. Zxzord snored in the bunk below. The demented Felicia Day portrait stared at us from the wall.

“Well, it isn't as romantic as the roof,” I said, “but . . .”

I leaned in.

This was it. I'd finally get to kiss someone. Someone beautiful. Someone awesome. Someone who liked me.

Aurora leaned away.

We froze like that.

Her four pupils searched mine. “I am not medicine, Miles Prower.”

My stomach sank. “Oh, no . . . I was—”

She quickly climbed down the ladder. My skin ran cold.

“Are you doing this because of Meeki?” I asked.

Aurora was already at the door. “You haven't learned anything, have you?”

“I have!” I said.

“How will you ever love someone when all you can see is yourself?”

And then she left. I hugged my knees and let my head fall between them.

“Smooth, dude.”

“Shut up, Zxzord,” I said.

Fezzik's voice came down the hallway. “Hey, young lady. Guilding's about to start if you're interested before you head out.” He tromped up the stairs and poked his head into the Nest. “C'mon, Miles. Let's go watch other people be humiliated.”

I could already imagine Aurora in the Hub, whispering to Meeki about what I'd done. I could already feel Meeki's scowl burning through me.

I kept hugging my knees. “Not really feeling it right now.”

“Sorry, adventurer,” Fezzik said. “It's mandatory.”

“I just . . . I need a minute.”

Just because I hadn't kissed Aurora didn't mean I could walk right that moment.

“I'll wait,” Fezzik said.

Zxzord stumbled out of his bunk.

Fezzik stepped out of his way. “He lives!”

“He goes to die,” Zxzord said, and stumbled down the staircase.

A couple of awkward minutes later, Fezzik and I headed down the hallway, his hand on my shoulder.

“We'll have fun during your last week,” he said. “Eat some good food, build some sand castles, talk
Arcadia
when G-man isn't listening . . .”

He was trying to cheer me up. He didn't realize how miserable my remaining time would be. I was trapped in a facility where everyone except him hated me.

The players filed into the Hub. I collapsed into a beanbag chair and sank low. I didn't want to see Meeki or Scarecrow or Dryad or Aurora or Soup or anyone. Maybe Zxzord and I could become bunk buddies.

“Huh,” Fezzik said, searching the players. “Where's Soup? He was at the Feed. . . .”

“I dunno,” I said.

He got up and left the Hub.

Aurora sat two beanbags over, forcing Meeki to sit next to me. Neither of them looked my way, but Aurora didn't say anything to her. That was nice, I guess. It would've been nicer if she hadn't humiliated me in the first place.

“Okay, everyone!” G-man said from the stage. “We have a new player starting today. Everyone give a warm welcome to . . . Toffette!”

Command led a girl to the stage. My heart did a somersault. I blinked hard, trying to make sense of what I was seeing.

Gravity. Gravity was standing in the Hub.

There was a weird moment when I wondered if I had wanted to see her so much that my subconscious had magicked her across the desert to Video Horizons.

“You look like you just shit your pants,” Meeki said to me.

My shock was quickly replaced by the warmest fuzzies I could imagine. Gravity hadn't stood me up. She had been committed to V-hab! She had been kidnapped by Command and Conquer just like I had been.

“It's her!”
I whispered to Meeki. “You were so wrong! Everything between us at the car wash
was
real. It's Gravity!”

Meeki looked at the stage. A grin crept across her face that made me immediately regret speaking Gravity's name aloud. My face sank.

“Should I tell her you just put the moves on Aurora and totally got rejected?” Meeki asked.

I couldn't hide my horror. I scowled at Aurora, who quickly shook her head.

“It wasn't her,” Meeki said. “Zxzord told me.” She gave me the biggest grin I'd ever seen her give, and sang,
“Somebody's fu-ucked.”

G
ravity sat in the chair onstage. She looked pissed, refusing to look anywhere but at her nails. God, she was even prettier than I had remembered. I still couldn't believe I was actually looking at her.

But how could I talk to her? She could not, under any circumstances, meet the rest of my guild. They'd try to convince her I was a complete asshole. Also, I needed to change my stupid outfit. I sank even lower into my beanbag chair and willed her not to look in my direction. Right then I needed the Gravitational pull between her and me to drop to zero.

Onstage G-man placed both his hands on Gravity's shoulders, like some kind of mossy-toothed vulture. “We want you to think of Video Horizons as a magical place. . . .”

Meeki continued to smile at me. Aurora avoided my eyes. Dammit. Why hadn't I been just a little nicer? Why had I tried to kiss a girl when I was supposed to have been on a date with someone else?

G-man introduced the three guilds. Fortunately, Gravity wasn't having any of it. Her nails got all of the attention. She glanced up once for a second, but her eyes passed right over me.

“Which guild will lead you to success?” G-man said, and shook the Box of Fate in her face.

Please don't be Burds, please don't be Burds, please don't be Burds.

“I'd rather not,” Gravity said, pushing the box away.

“Well, you have to be in a guild,” G-man said.

“I really don't,” she said.

She was such a badass. Why hadn't I tried that?

“O-kay,” G-man said. “I'll pick for you.”

He fished around in the box.

Please don't be Burds, please don't be Burds.

“Toffette,” G-man said, unfolding the little piece of paper. “You— Sorry. Hold on, players.”

Command was signaling G-man from the door. He jogged up onto the stage, and they spoke quietly behind Gravity.