Hungry (2 page)

“Should be called waste-of-time shopping,” Mom says and chuckles at her own dumb joke. “If you don’t like what I put in your box, then design your own.”

“But I don’t know what I want until I see it and touch it.”

She stops what she’s doing to look at me. “Seriously, what century are you from?” This is her favorite question. One she’s asked me since I was little and preferred to look at real books than have tablet time. “But if that’s how you want to do it, fine. Just do it. Get something decent and make a good personal impression.”

“I like the feel of cotton,” I tell her as I sit down to browse my message center on the main screen.

“Chemically, Cottynelle is virtually the same,” she says.

“Virtually,” I reiterate. “But not really.”

“Don’t start.”

“Your clothes are grown from bacteria and yeast in a lab.”

“Enough.” She gives me a warning glance. “Why don’t you let Astrid cull the news for you?” she asks, motioning to how I’m manually going through headlines.

“That would necessitate finding my Gizmo.”

“You don’t know where it is?” She looks at me as if I’m missing an appendage.

“Around here somewhere.”

“You’re as bad as Grandma Apple.”

“How bad am I?” Grandma Apple bops up from the basement, her gray curls bouncing. She carries a ball of string and two pointy sticks.

“Never mind,” says Mom and goes back to her conversation with Gretchen.

“Gizmo,” I mouth to Grandma, who twirls her finger in the air as if to say whoop-de-do.

I snicker, which makes my mom’s back straighten, although she pretends to ignore us as she pockets her Gizmo then announces, “I’m off to the lab again.”

“But it’s Friday,” says Grandma.

Mom glances up. “So?”

“Family time,” Grandma says hopefully, but I see her shoulders slumping in anticipation of defeat.

“Did you schedule it?” Mom asks.

“But Lily, it’s every Friday,” says Grandma.

“Well if you don’t schedule it…” Mom trails off. “It’s not hard, Rebecca.” Mom has a habit of speaking to Grandma as if she’s talking to a small child who doesn’t understand the great big scary Interweb. “Thalia or Max could teach you in two minutes. You just tell your PCA, what’s her name?”

“Annie,” Grandma says dryly.

“Just tell Annie one time to coordinate all our calendars with a repeating event. Then we’ll be synched up, and when Gretchen checks my daily calendar to generate my to-do list…”

“I know how to do it,” Grandma clarifies. “Just seems unnecessary.”

I blink off the main screen. “We can do family night without Mom,” I tell Grandma, hoping to avoid another awkward conversation about family life between the two of them.

Grandma smiles at me, but I see the tiredness around her eyes. “Of course, lovey.” She holds up the ball of string. “I’m going to teach you how to knit.”

I catch the tail end of my mom’s eye roll as she swings her black Silkese jacket around her shoulders. Before she leaves, she says, “Schedule family night. We’ll do it next week.”

“Sure thing,” I call after her, knowing full well that will never happen. “You, me, and Dad?” I ask Grandma after the door wheeshes closed.

“I doubt it,” she says, pointing to the flashing video-message indicator on the main screen with my dad’s network photo.

I accept and Dad pops up on the screen. He’s in his office, slouching at his desk, surrounded by gently buzzing blue walls. “Hey, you guys, sorry I can’t make family night. I’ve got to work late.” Then he sits up tall and smiles. “But wait until you see what we’re working on! It’s almost done and you’ll be the first to have it. Promise.” I close Dad’s message and ask Grandma what she thinks the surprise will be.

“A robotic head for when you’re tired of thinking for yourself.”

“The latest craze,” I tell her. “You should have been a designer.”

“Missed my calling, huh?”

“Oh well, not everyone can change the world one nanoprocessor at a time.”

We both giggle at our stupid jokes, mostly because no one else would appreciate them.

“Let’s go knit,” I say. “With these.” I hold up my hands and wave my fingers like my mom did earlier.

“Subversive,” Grandma says with a chuckle.

*   *   *

Since it’s just the two of us, Grandma Apple and I cozy up in her living room, which is in the basement of our house. I love her place with all the fluffy throw pillows, warm quilts, and soft worn rugs, the old-fashioned wooden furniture, and best of all—the books. Mom can’t stand to come down here. She says all the microbes in the natural fibers make her sneeze. Not that that should surprise anyone. Sometimes I think my mom would rather live in her lab where every surface is smooth, cold, hard, and antibacterial.

I curl up next to my grandma on the sofa with my feet tucked beneath a hand-crocheted blanket her mother made a hundred years ago on their family farm.

“Used to be you could get yarn made out of natural fibers like cotton or wool,” she tells me as she loops the slate-gray string, the same color and texture as her hair, around a knitting needle.

“What’s wool again?” I ask, trying to mimic her motions with my own ball of red yarn and silver needles.

“The hair from sheep. But there were lots of other animals that people used for yarn, too. Goats, alpacas, rabbits. Each one had its own texture, and some of it was so soft and warm, you wouldn’t believe it now. Real yarn was nothing like these synth fibers.” She frowns down at the rows she’s knitting.

“Which did you raise?” I ask.

“Goats,” she tells me for the millionth time, but I can never remember the difference between a goat and a sheep. “Not the woolly one that said baa. The ornery one that would eat anything.” She laughs at some memory I’ll never understand. “But ours ate mostly sweet hay and clover, so their milk was delicious. And the cheese! There was nothing better than fresh goat cheese. Except for warm bread to put it on.” She sighs. “Ahh, the smell of fresh-baked bread. I keep telling your father he should make an app for that! Then I’d have a reason to use my Gizmo.”

I chuckle, then we’re quiet for a few moments while she corrects my yarn. Once I get the hang of the knit stitch, I say, “Tell me about dinner again.”

Grandma draws in a deep breath. “Well,” she says, thinking back. “That was the real family time, you know. Not for everyone, I guess, but in our family, since we were farmers, we wanted to sit down together and enjoy the food we’d raised.”

“That was before the wars.”

“Yes, but even during the wars, we did the best we could from what little we were able to grow, even if it was just bitter greens and a few chicken eggs.”

“And you had lots of people who came to eat with you, right?”

“At first,” she says. “But when things got scarce, like everyone, we hid what we had.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to hear that part. Tell me about when dinner was good.”

Grandma grins. “Alright.” She lays her knitting in her lap and thinks for a moment with her eyes closed. “I’ll tell you how to make a roasted chicken.”

Grandma takes her time, as if she’s back in a kitchen, preparing each ingredient. She tells me about melting butter in the microwave and pouring it over the chicken. Then sprinkling on salt and pepper and fresh herbs that grew right outside her back door in a little pot filled with rich dark dirt. She explains how her mother put the chicken in a pan with onions and carrots and potatoes dug from her garden, and then stuck it all in the oven for hours, only opening the door to brush the juices over the chicken’s skin every once in a while. I close my eyes when she talks about food, and I try to imagine how it was. My mind drifts and blurs through vague images, but it all fades into words because I have no idea what she’s really talking about. And, to be honest, some of it sounds gross. Like the part about eating something dead.

“The fragrance of that roasting chicken would permeate the whole house, and you knew when it was done the skin would be brown and crispy and the meat would be tender and juicy.”

As she says this, a sound, like a yowling animal trapped beneath my rib cage, roils up from deep inside of me. “Oh my god!” I say, sitting up straight.

Grandma blinks at me.

“That keeps happening,” I tell her. “It’s so embarrassing! It happened the last time I was at a PlugIn with Yaz. Luckily most people had on their Earz so not too many heard. And the ones who did thought it was a weird ringtone.”

Grandma laughs.

“It’s not funny!” I clutch myself around the middle as if that will stop the noise from coming out again. “This doesn’t happen to anyone else I know. Something’s wrong with me. I’m a freak.”

“I don’t know about that,” she says calmly. “It sounds like your stomach is growling.”

I must look horrified as I picture some rampant parasites in my guts, shrieking for blood.

Grandma lays her hand on my leg. “It’s just what used to happen when people were hungry. Our stomachs would growl like that.”

“For god’s sake, don’t tell Mom!” I almost shout. “She would never forgive me.”

Grandma snorts. “Even the best inoculations can’t fight the power of a good roasted chicken!”

“That makes no sense,” I tell her. “I don’t even know what a roasted chicken is.”

“But someplace deep inside, your brain does,” says Grandma. “And my description was so powerful that it woke up the eater in you for a moment. I mean, come on, human beings ate food for hundreds of thousands of years before the inoculations. It’s a normal, natural response, Thalia. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Easy for you to say. It’s not happening to you.”

“Oh, you’d be appalled by what noises we used to make when we ate. Burps and gurgles and farts!” she laughs. “Your grandfather Hector could belch his full name after a few beers.”

“Disgusting,” I say.

“Actually, a well-timed, rip-roaring fart could be quite funny, if you ask me.”

I shake my head. “Oh, Grandma.”

“Anyway, Thal, I wouldn’t worry too much about that noise from your tummy,” she says with a wink. “I’m sure it will go away.” She looks down at the square of material I’ve knit. “In the olden days, this would have been called a pot holder.”

“What’d you do with it?” I ask, trying to figure out any use for something so small.

“You used it to pick up hot pots so you didn’t burn your hand.”

“I always forget that food was warm.” I size up the thing in my palm then laugh at how absurd the world must seem to Grandma. “Now it’d have to be a Gizmo holder.”

“What a good idea!” My grandma, ever the resourceful one, takes it from me and folds it in half. “Add a strap and it would be perfect.”

From upstairs, I hear pinging on the main screen. “Ugh,” I groan. “Probably Mom sending more VirtuShops. She thinks I need new pants.”

Grandma frowns. “I love your little skirts and jeans.”

“Of course you do—they were yours.”

“When I wore them, they were just farm-girl clothes, but you have such a wonderful independent sense of style.” The screen pings again. “Could be a message from your dad or a friend,” Grandma says. “You know it’s okay if you bring your Gizmo down here.”

“I like having one place with nothing yapping at me.”

Grandma nods, because more than anyone else, she gets me. Mom says that’s because I’m an old lady at heart, which I take as a compliment.

“I should probably go check it,” I tell her with a sigh.

“That’s fine, sweetie,” says Grandma. “Thanks for doing family time with me.”

“I’ll be back,” I say, but she just smiles down at the long chain of stitches gathering on her lap.

*   *   *

Upstairs, I see Yaz’s network photo blinking on the main screen, so I slide across the slick tile and accept the call. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“Where have you been?” she gripes. “I pinged you, like, a million times.”

“I was downstairs with my grandma. Are you on your PRC right now?” I point to her new HoverCam, which floats above her left shoulder.

“Not live,” she says. “Just recording. I’ll edit you out later.” She flicks the camera, which sends it on a lap around the room where half the contents of her closet are scattered on the floor.

“Did you change your eyes?” I ask, studying her face, trying to pinpoint what’s different today.

“Yes,” she says, blinking bright blues at me. “You likey likey?”

“It’s okay. I can’t remember your natural color anymore.”

“And my hair.” She fluffs the platinum blonde streaks that used to be two-tone blue and purple. “Hey.” She squints at me. “Are you on your family’s main screen?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“Why can’t you use your Gizmo like everybody else, so we can have a private conversation?”

“I’m not incapable,” I tell her, quoting my grandmother. “Just uninterested.”

“But that means I’m being broadcast into your family’s living room for everyone to see.” She spins and strikes a pose in black bra and panties then shouts, “Hello, Apples!” I see a new temp-i-tat of a multicolored double helix stenciled around her midriff.

“First of all, I’m alone. And second, you’re the one who now streams every moment of your life onto your Personal Reality Channel,” I point out.

“Leave my PRC out of it,” says Yaz. “Besides, that’s different. I choose when to expose myself based on what it’ll get me. Right now, I’m just exposed.” She dramatically wraps her arms across her body, feigning modesty.

“Like you care,” I say with a laugh.

“That’s actually why I’m calling,” she says as she goes back to picking through clothes. “I got a new product placement—if I can find it—and I want to wear it while I broadcast from a PlugIn. Come with me?”

“Not a PlugIn again.” I slouch down and sigh.

She stands, feet wide, hands on hips, eyes boring twin holes in my forehead. “You won’t go to the Spalon.…”

“Boring.”

“You don’t like EntertainArenas.…”

“Too crowded.”

“You can’t stand TopiClubs.…”

“Old hat.”

She snickers. “The only thing
old hat
is your impossibly outdated lingo, Miss Apple.”

“Got it from my grandma,” I brag.

“No!” She widens her eyes in mock surprise.