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“I’d better hope my OCA3 picks up the slack then.”
I was somewhat pleased with myself when the guy laughed. I was well aware that my image at SF Prep was cold and prickly, a giant cactus that no one could get near. But this was college-level banter I was succeeding at. I could set a better tone than I did those first few days at SF Prep where I was too hung up to talk to anyone besides Yunie.
“Genie, could you come here for a sec?” Yunie said, louder than she needed to.
“I’ll save your spot,” said the guy.
I extricated myself from the chair and joined Yunie in line. “Are you out of cash?”
“No, not that,” she whispered. “That guy’s a creep.”
“What?”
She nudged the air with her chin. “I caught a glimpse of his laptop.”
The line had moved to the point where I couldn’t see what she was talking about. I debated in my head how wrong it would be to shoulder surf, and decided I could take the hit to my karma. I put my hand to my temple and beheld.
This was an especially egregious misuse of my powers. But I saw what Yunie meant. The guy I’d been talking to wasn’t working. He was on some kind of chat app, the thread full of crude memes and gifs, including a few that I didn’t understand how he wasn’t being kicked out of the cafe for looking at.
ayyy im about to climb everest, he typed.
WUT went the person on the other end.
theres this alternative japanese chick at the rookery shes so tall her legs go to the ceiling
tatted up her arm and wears contacts
I looked down at my wrist. I’d forgone my sweatband in favor of long sleeves, but they weren’t long enough. The iron Milky Way mark peeked out.
you know when theyre in the rebelling against daddy phase thats the time to strike
PICS
PICSPICSPICS
ill try to get her to lean over the camera when she sits down again
I blinked back to normal. Our order was up.
“We’ll take it to go, please,” I said to the cashier.
? ? ?
“You’re looking a little shell-shocked there, Stretch,” Ji-Hyun said.
We were safe back in her apartment. I didn’t think I would ever call such a festering pit safe, but here we were. I hugged my knees to my chest, perched on top of a beanbag that had more dried stains than a Pollock painting. Yunie was taking her turn in the shower.
“Are . . . are guys terrible?” I said.
Ji-Hyun shrugged. “I hear yours is pretty good.”
My guy’s not human, I thought. And he’d needed a while to come around to the limits of acceptability. I supposed if I gave Quentin the benefit of the doubt, his early bad behavior toward me was weapon-related confusion and not him wanting to hit it and quit it.
Anyway, now wasn’t the time to give Quentin the benefit of the doubt. We were fighting. And I wasn’t thinking about him.
Ji-Hyun drained the last of her beer. I had no idea what count she was on. Over the short time I’d known her it had become clear she was a gigantic lush, albeit one that held her booze very well.
“I’d be lying to you if I said that kind of stuff never happens at college,” Ji-Hyun said. “You said he might have been a bio major? I’m not terribly surprised.”
