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“Just be cool, baby.”
I shudder. “You know it weirds me out when you call me that.”
“Whatever,” she says. “Just grab it and let’s go. I’ll tell you on the way.”
We’re in the car and she’s about two sentences into the explanation, and I’m ready to go home and call the night a bust.
Apparently, we’re going to something called a Pheromone Party. The object of the shirt is to capture one’s scent for the inspection of others. If someone likes the way your shirt smells, apparently, they have their picture taken with the shirt, which bears a number only you know. If you find the person attractive, you approach them and let them know the shirt they had a picture taken with was yours.
It’s farfetched enough that I’m clinging to some hope that she’s making the whole thing up, but this is exactly the sort of thing Annabeth would be into, so I’m not putting money on it.
“Where’s yours?” I ask.
“On the floor of the back seat,” she says. “Why?”
“No reason.”
The reason is that I’m getting the sneaking suspicion that this is all a ruse and I’m about to walk into some extremely humiliating situation. That is also the exact sort of thing Annabeth would do.
Sure enough, though, we pull up to a building in Trenton, and there, on a fluorescent sign by the front door, are the words: “Pheromone Party Tonight!”
I sigh.
This is going to be uncomfortable.
The reason, I guess, that I’m not telling Annabeth to take me home right now is that I really need to get my mind off of Dane. This isn’t how I wanted to do it, but I’m pretty sure this whole scenario is going to crowd out any other thoughts in my head. For that, I guess, I should be grateful.
I start feeling a little less grateful as we walk into the door and I see dozens of people smelling shirts out of plastic bags.
“This is too weird,” I tell Annabeth.
“It’s not that weird at all,” she says. “Before cologne, perfumes, and you know, running water, someone’s scent was a huge part of the mating dance.”
“You know, it sounds even worse when you describe it like that.”
“Don’t worry,” she says, trying to reassure me, “these are normal people just like you and I. You’ve done speed dating. I don’t see how it’s that much different.”
“Oh, it’s different.”
Still, I play along.
My number is 560.
“There aren’t that many people here,” I whisper to Annabeth as the woman with the clipboard writes down my name and number.
“They just do that to keep it more random, I guess,” she says. “Ooh, check this out.”
She pulls out her phone and pulls up the internet.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve got a gematria calculator,” she says. “We’re going to find out what your number means.”
I roll my eyes.
“560,” she says. “It means a few different things, but the one I like most is butterfly.”
“Butterfly?” I ask. “How does the number 560 mean butterfly?”
