“Something tells me this place doesn’t even sell lipstick.” Zoey’s keys jangle in her hands as we march through the parking lot toward the giant computer center in the next town.
“Oh, come on, don’t act like you’ve never even seen a computer before.” I yank open the door. “Have you been practicing at all with what I taught you?” When HiveMind first started beta testing on students and we first started our little side business, I showed her a few tips and tricks for how to do the magic that I do. Once when I had the flu, she filled in for me and kept our customers satisfied.
She shakes her head. “I wish, but there’s no time. Not with all the press conference prep and the scientists I’m still helping.”
“Let me know if you ever need a refresher.”
Every time I walk into this store, my eyes bug out at the wide range of computer products available for me. This store sells all the tools you need to build your own computer.… or hack into one, as the case may be. I could spend hours here perusing the loot and dropping my entire savings, but I stay focused and beeline for one specific aisle.
I drop twenty SSD cards into my little blue shopping basket. I’d buy more, but I took every last one. I plan to stash them in various places: purse, car, home, locker, Sebastian’s pockets, Zoey’s purse. Basically anywhere I can to ensure I always have one accessible. I grab two more external hard drives for good measure as well.
We pay and exit. Thankfully the rain has cleared at the moment, but a dark cloud promises more later. As we’re heading to our cars, three girls pause from their trek between the clothing store next door and the coffee shop on the other side of the computer center. They stare at us as if we might genetically engineer them with no tools other than proximity. One wears a jacket with the Wickham High logo patched to her sleeve.
“God, not this again.” Zoey groans. It’s the standard reaction from the local Wickham students, who can’t fathom how anyone would choose to spend every waking minute learning science instead of dallying in more important activities like cheerleading and art club. “Emmenology!” she shouts at them. The Latin word for the study of menstruation.
They giggle at us, mocking us under their breaths. They might look down on us now, but what they don’t realize is in less than a year, when HiveMind and various other projects hit the market, they’ll be clamoring to be the first preorder.
“You could also just say hi to them,” I tell her.
She shrugs. “Maybe if they didn’t ogle us like we’re museum attractions.”
We get into our separate cars and drive to the student house for seniors. It sprawls in front of me, hidden inside your average mini-mansion. Black shutters against white siding make the house look like a black-and-white photograph. Gray branches punch the sky behind the roof.
Most parents at our school drop their geniuses off and wait for the patents to roll in. I used to be jealous of all the kids who lived here while I’m stuck in my childhood home, but living at home actually grants me more freedom. I don’t have to worry about a specific curfew or about bumping into my teacher wearing only a towel, and I don’t need to log my comings and goings with a key fob like an employee clocking in to work. Plus I get to spend time with my mom and brother, and after losing my dad, I want to soak up all the family time I can get.
I follow her inside. An ornate wooden staircase greets us in the grand foyer, giving the room an air of history even though it was only constructed a decade ago. Laughter emanates from the common room off to the side, which opens to a dining room where bright tablecloths cover rows of long tables. A delicious beef-taco scent wafts from the kitchen, where the house chef prepares a casual home-cooked meal for forty people. There’s even a mini–science lab in the basement for those students who get late-night molecular-chemistry cravings.
A boy wearing only boxers crashes into Zoey as he comes out of the guys’ bathroom near the staircase. He winks, then slips into one of the rooms along the back hallway.
“Sometimes I think he waits for someone to come by just to do that.” Zoey races up the stairs to the girls’ floor.
A long hallway twists in different directions, with rooms on either side like a hotel. Zoey kicks open the first door. Her room bursts with life from her multicolored paisley bedspread to the uncomfortably close posters of models’ faces done up in garish makeup. Most students have to share with a roommate, but Zoey’s parents paid extra just so she could have a single all to herself. “It’s a donation,” her dad once told me when he was visiting. I see it more as a bribe. The fewer distractions his daughter has, the better chance she’ll have at success.
“Okay, sit in that chair and tell me what’s really going on. I want to help.”
“Help me snoop in Veronica’s room?” I throw my messenger bag on Zoey’s bed. I plan to sleep cuddled with my laptop tonight in case anyone tries to break in and erase my data manually.
“I am always up for snooping.” Zoey switches on her MP3 player, and loud rap beats pump from the speakers on her desk, a clear attempt to thwart eavesdroppers. A white vanity with an oval mirror contains not makeup but various computer apparatuses plugged into a console.
Giggles from outside the door make us both whip our heads toward it. One of the voices sounds just like Veronica. A quick check outside the door confirms as much, as I see Eliza’s backside right before she turns the corner.
“Shit.” I plop into Zoey’s chair with a heaviness I hadn’t meant to carry with me. “They must have stopped back here before heading to the mall.”
“Perfect. Gives you time to spill the beans and me time to make you beautiful.” Zoey plugs a USB into a tray of blue eye shadows. “That’s right. You might have used this as a ruse, but you’re not getting out of it.”
I blurt almost everything that’s happened today—that I remember, anyway. Zoey’s face turns horrified and sympathetic in all the right places.
“So you think someone’s deliberately deleting everything related to your project?”
“Not deleting. Archiving.” I’m out of space on my arm, so I lift up my shirt and take a Sharpie to my stomach.
Someone’s archiving everything related to my project. Not deleting.
I’m about to cap it when I add:
If you’re short on SSD cards or external hard drives, check your messenger bag.
Zoey’s watching me strangely. “Okay, I admit, writing this all down on your stomach is pretty brilliant.”
I grin at her. “Brilliant, huh? Tell that to the board review committee.”
She laughs as she tilts my chin up with her finger and squints, assessing the ratio of eyeliner to eye. “Close your eyes.” She plugs the other end of the USB cord into a white plastic wand the size and shape of a makeup brush. Holographic makeup was one of Varga Industries’ first products to hit the market. Sales have soared and several popular, high-end makeup brands went out of business as a result. After all, you can’t beat smear-proof, smudge-proof, waterproof, twelve-hour makeup at a fraction of the cost. New colors download automatically.
“Who do you think is behind it?”
I shut my eyes. “My best guess is Veronica, but I’ve got a few other suspects in mind.” I bite my lip. “Teddy, for example.”
Zoey gasps. “It’s not Teddy. Don’t even joke about that!” She waves the wand over my lids like a magician performing a trick. I brace for a spray of color or a hissing sound like an airbrush. But after a moment of nothing discernible, she sets the shadow down and twists a tube of lipstick into the same USB port. She purses her mouth like a duck. When I copy her, she traces my lips with the wand and then leans back to admire her work like an artist studying a canvas. “Voilà! It’s kiss-proof, so you better do some face sucking tonight.”
As part of spilling the beans, I also told her about my Not Date with Sebastian.
“What are you doing with him anyway?”
I shrug. “I want to talk to him. See what he remembers. Try to get to know him.”
“All of those things are precursors to face sucking, just saying!”
I roll my eyes at her and twist to face the mirror. Soft blues of different shades blend across my lids to create an effect that makes me look both pretty and dangerous. When I touch my finger to my daring red lips, no color comes off. “Wow.”
“If the science thing doesn’t work out for me, I’ve got a fallback career as a makeup artist,” she says bitterly before straightening. “Let’s do this. Mental snooping or physical?”
“Both, of course. Have to be thorough. Let me check if they’ve left.”
I log on to HiveMind and check out the list of recent memories in both their accounts. The last one for each of them shows a thumbnail of the two of them opening their drawers in their room with the automatic tag: Stop back home to change clothes. HiveMind is only good up until the last archived memory. It doesn’t allow me to sync to someone’s mind in real time, so I have no way of knowing what they’re doing at this very second. They may still be changing in their room or they may already be on the road to the mall. I won’t know unless I knock on their door, which I’m clearly not going to do, or wait until the next memory pops up on the list to tell me their last known whereabouts. “They might still be here, so we should lie low for a bit. Let’s do some mental snooping first.”
Zoey flops onto her bed and clasps her hands behind her head. “Mental snooping is my favorite kind. I can be lazy while doing it!”
My pulse grinds in tune to the rap music pounding against my skull. “Turn off the music though. I don’t want it distracting from the memories.”
While Zoey flips the station to something classical and turns off the lights, I do some quick keyword searches in HiveMind for my prime targets—Veronica and Teddy. HiveMind can sort memories by size, date, and relevance, so I select the most relevant memories from Veronica’s and Teddy’s heads and select the first one from the list to copy into both our minds. “First up: Veronica’s memory from yesterday when she wanted to rat on me. Should begin in three, two…”
Just as I make myself comfortable in Zoey’s chair, the cheery ding that indicates the start of a memory simulation beeps in my mind. A bowl of Chinese chicken salad overlays on top of my view of the dark bedroom. A fork carrying lettuce flies across my vision. The colors of the memory are dim and muted compared with the vibrant memories of Bash I got back.
“Maybe I should report her.” Veronica’s voice blares inside my mind. “It might be the only way to stop her.”
“I wouldn’t mind making her stop looking in my head,” another voice says. The image wobbles as Veronica focuses on the Eliza Shaw from yesterday, who still hadn’t made a bad decision about bangs. “I suspect she gave Zoey that memory of me kissing Teddy.” Eliza stabs her fork at a piece of chicken. “If Zoey really wants to know what it’s like to kiss him, I’ll tell her all the details. I don’t need her living vicariously through me.”
“Oh, she’s got it all wrong,” Zoey says from her bed. It’s true, I did give Zoey Teddy’s version of the kiss, not Eliza’s, so Zoey could hear the quick flash when Teddy started thinking about Zoey instead of the girl he was kissing.
“I know,” Veronica continues in my mind, answering Eliza-from-yesterday even though it sounds like a direct reply to what Zoey just said in reality. “It’s like Arden doesn’t even think about the consequences.” Veronica glances behind her, where Past Zoey sits at an adjacent table, reading—or pretending to read—a textbook. “I had to do four fucking weeks of after-school bitch work thanks to her probation stunt.”
Without the light, it takes my eyes a moment to differentiate between the dining room image playing in my mind and the shapes that make up the dorm room. Her inner monologue from yesterday shouts in my brain: Simon’s falling apart because of his memory addiction and what does Arden do? She cuts him off cold turkey! He needs to be weaned off this addiction gently. Ugh.
My chest tightens at the reminder of how I’ve been hurting Simon. Here I thought I was helping him.
“I say do it,” Eliza tells Veronica in the memory. “Get the bitch in trouble. It’ll finally make her mother realize she’s not the second coming of Einstein.” Eliza tosses her hair. “I am.”
Veronica groans. “Maybe I should talk to her before I do something rash.”
The memory fades out.
I groan. “Bad news: That wasn’t very incriminating against Veronica.”
“Good news: You have a new suspect to add. Eliza.” Zoey turns onto her side to look at me. “Good thing I’m planning on doing recon on her.”
I copy the next memory. The one of Veronica’s visit to the IT room starts to play in my mind. She holds up her laptop to Brandon and whimpers that she’s been locked out of her student email again. After reviewing her account, Brandon turns to her with a perplexed expression. “It says your account has been suspended due to inappropriate usage.”
She lets out a large sigh. “Oh my God. I’ve already been over this with the Ethics Committee. I’m eighteen. I should be able to send any photos I want!”
Brandon doesn’t look amused. “Not on school-regulated systems.”
“Please just let me back in,” she begs. “I can’t turn in my quantum entanglement paper without email. Do you want me to fail?”
“Fine.” Brandon works a little magic with his admin console. “But next time, use your personal account for those kinds of pics. And maybe send them to your boyfriend instead of Josh Lazarus?”
“Oh my God!” Zoey says.
“He broke up with me,” Veronica says bitterly.
Veronica quickly thanks him for fixing her email block. She doesn’t yank out the SSD drive. In fact, I can still see it in her peripheral vision as she heads back out the door with her miraculously cured computer.
It wasn’t her.
“When do I get Teddy’s memory?” Zoey rubs her hands together when that memory ends.
“Give me a sec.” I retrieve the last one in the list, this one from Teddy’s mind.
Zoey grabs her spare pillow and hugs it against her chest, as though she can simulate the act of hugging Teddy while his memory plays in her mind.
Teddy’s memory starts playing. The image of several students surrounding Teddy in a classroom ghosts over the sliver of light seeping under Zoey’s door. The sound of Teddy’s laughter fills my head, too loud to be coming out of his mouth as well. He’s laughing inwardly.
They better not be using my study session, Teddy thinks. He watches as each one receives their grades on their tablet. A boy squints at the screen as if it’s written in a foreign language, a girl’s lip quivers, a third spins around and glares at Teddy. All three are my best customers. The boy glances over at Teddy. They are. Shit. I need to differentiate my answers so I don’t get in trouble too. Teddy goes on to decide that next time, he’s going to purposefully study the wrong answers, just to mess with my customer base.
The memory ends there, leaving me with no evidence or leads. He wanted to screw with my customers.… but not with me.
“You realize what this means, right?” Zoey bolts upright. “Teddy’s innocent! He’s the best guy ever! He’s going to love me forever!” She delivers each sentence with its own little victory dance.
I wrinkle my nose. “The first two, maybe. The last one … debatable.”
She throws her pillow at me. “You’re my best friend. You’re supposed to support and encourage my fantasies!”
“Okay, fine. Yes, he’s going to love you forever,” I deadpan.
She squeals as if my saying it makes it fact. “Are we ready for the real snooping yet?”
I check Eliza’s and Veronica’s accounts again and see a new memory, this one with a thumbnail of the two of them in the car with the automatic tag: On the way to the mall.
“Let’s go.” We step out into the hallway and Zoey shuts her door. She tiptoes toward Veronica’s room while I march with purpose.
Inside the room, the glow from my phone illuminates a leopard-print bedspread on the left that could only be Eliza’s, so I fly to the shabby chic side and open up Veronica’s laptop, which waits on her desk like an invitation. Despite the memory potentially exonerating her, I need to verify what I saw with concrete evidence. After all, I know now that memories can be altered and deleted.
Zoey bounces on her toes as she starts searching through Eliza’s desk drawers.
I bite my inner cheek and sync my password-cracking software to Veronica’s computer. Not even three seconds later, her laptop opens up to all her secrets.
“Look what I found.” Zoey raises a bottle of large pink capsules, the pills rattling like a baby toy.
“Are those Eliza’s Sober Up prototype?” I click Veronica’s HiveMind and run a quick script to pull up her recent activity. I want to see what Veronica’s setup looks like and what her permission controls are, in case she blocked me from accessing any shady memories.
“I think they’re a rip-off,” Zoey says. “Just a bunch of vitamin B and some enzymes that aid in alcohol metabolism. She’s got an unofficial prototype called Shitfaced. Supposedly that stuff is a huge hit in the party circuit. Gets you drunk without any hangover side effects.”
The display of Veronica’s recent activity makes my brow furrow. She only logged in to HiveMind twice in the last six months and neither of those times was recently. The only way she could have deleted my memories was if she’d hacked into the mainframe via the admin console like I did using proprietary software. But I can’t find any evidence of that sort of thing on her laptop. Either she’s an evil genius who knows how to disguise her tracks even from hackers … or she’s innocent. A cold sensation races down my spine. Intuition tells me it’s the latter.
I switch places with Zoey and flip on Eliza’s laptop while Zoey helps herself to a spritz of Veronica’s expensive, flowery perfume. She then pulls out Veronica’s notebooks from her bookshelf and flips through the top one.
Just as I start the cracking program, the doorknob jiggles, and my heart leaps into my throat. Zoey and I exchange glances. If we get caught in the room, the stupid Ethics Committee would overrule Mom and expel us all. A sharp jolt of panic propels me under Eliza’s bed. My knees trample crumbs, and I kick a long plastic container filled with clothes against the wall to make myself fit into the cramped space. Zoey squeezes into Veronica’s closet while I yank the leopard-print comforter down to help cover me. My heart beats fast.
The light pops on and two sets of feet parade into the room.
“… Being so psycho, right?” The set wearing combat boots stops atoms from my nose. Eliza. Her feet rise, one by one, and the weight of the mattress sighs, caving in just above my head. Now would be a terrible time to develop claustrophobia.
“Yeah, it was almost like she was accusing me of something.” Veronica’s feet carry her toward her desk. “Okay, got my credit card. Sorry about that.” There’s a scraping sound as Veronica likely slides the plastic rectangle off her desk. “Weird; why is my laptop hot?”
My hair rises on my arms. With a jolt of panic, I notice my thumb drive sticking out of Eliza’s laptop. The scent of Veronica’s flowery perfume from Zoey’s spritz lingers in the air like evidence.
“Did you leave it plugged in all day?” Eliza asks. “Mine overheats when I do that.”
“Nope, just started charging it a few minutes ago. It was out of battery, so I plugged it in when we stopped back here.” Veronica’s laptop charger falls into a clump on the hardwood floor.
A vibration from the phone in my pocket sounds louder than a bomb. I hold my breath.
“Are you getting a text?”
Eliza glances at her phone. “No, but I heard that vibration too.”
My phone buzzes again, but if I try to reach for it, I’d make even more noise. My heart pounds.
“Must be coming from next door. Do you have everything now or are we going to have to turn around a third time?” There’s a hint of jest in Eliza’s voice.
“Sorry; I’m just preoccupied.” Veronica’s feet stomp toward Eliza’s bed. “You think Zoey overheard me complaining yesterday about Arden getting me on probation and told Arden and that’s why she was being such a bitch?” She stops in front of Eliza’s desk. I clench my teeth.
Another four-alarm-fire text vibrates in the pocket of my jeans. Cold sweat drips down my forehead. There might as well be a neon sign pointing to my location flashing INTRUDER RIGHT HERE! I prepare excuses: My mom put me up to this. I’m your new cleaning service! We’re playing hide-and-seek and you found us!
Silence cuts the tension, blooming until it lasts an uncomfortably long time. I imagine all sorts of scenarios: Veronica pointing at the USB drive while Eliza raises a brow, the two swallowing a set of Eliza’s pills—the kind not for erasing bad behavior but starting it, both of them too self-absorbed to notice the obvious clues we left behind.
“I think you should just ignore both of them,” Eliza says after way too long. “Let’s get to the mall before the sale at Forever 21 ends.”
“Sure.” The metallic clink of jingling keys grows softer as Veronica heads out the door. Eliza’s feet land with a thump. A moment later the light switches off and the door slams.
My muscles relax, but instead of feeling relieved, I’m annoyed that my classmates really suck at being smart. Perhaps my mom should consider testing for common sense in her new applicants. I crawl out from under the bed and wipe off all the nasty crumbs sticking to my jeans. Zoey climbs out of the closet, and I check my phone. Four texts from Sebastian:
Sebastian: Seriously? I was friends with HIM?
Sebastian: I asked him if he remembers our project but he keeps changing the subject to video games. He’s practically on his knees, begging me to play. He seems desperate to just spend time with me.
Sebastian: I told him after we finish our homework, maybe. Yep. We’re doing homework. We’re cool like that.
I can’t help it; I smile as I scroll past the third one.
Sebastian: Oh, he asked if I thought Zoey liked him or if she’s still mad at him.
I hold the last one up for Zoey. She gasps and plucks the phone from my hand.
“Just tell him it’s you, okay?”
Her fingers start typing rapid-fire. “But if I tell him it’s me, then the text I just sent saying ‘I want to lick you all over’ is going to seem really odd.”
I shoot her the dirtiest glare I can muster and yank my USB drive from Eliza’s computer. My only hope is that she assumed it was one of hers.
She hands me back the phone and I peruse the texts.
Zoey: ZOMG WHAT DID HE SAY?!?!? TELL ME NOW!!!!!
Sebastian: Hi, Zoey.
Zoey: That’s what he said? Or are you saying hi because you’ve guessed I’ve taken Arden’s phone hostage based on the excessive use of exclamation points. She wants to do naughty things to you, btw.
Sebastian: Is she okay?
Zoey: She’s Arden. Which means she has a plan. Now stop stalling and tell me sweet nothings.
Sebastian: Hmm, it seems like you’re the one who should be saying sweet nothings to him.;-)
I tap out a text.
Arden: Hey, it’s really Arden this time. Pick you up in thirty? I have some updates.
He responds in an instant.
Sebastian: Okay, I’ll tell Teddy I need to go home.
“Come on.” I storm toward the door.
“I can’t believe we got away with that,” Zoey says. “Best day ever.”
“I know. I—” The words die on my tongue as soon as I step into the hallway and come face-to-face with Veronica and Eliza. Both wear fighting-stance expressions despite their protective, crossed arms.
“This time.” Veronica pokes me in the clavicle, getting her revenge by invading my personal space. “I WILL report you.” She stomps back to her room, bumping her shoulder into me on the way. Inside she calls out, “Don’t mess with me or anyone I care about again.”
Comebacks and excuses pile up in a traffic jam in my throat.
Eliza circles us, bangs obscuring her brown eyes as she glares. “You’re wasting your time.” She jerks her head toward Zoey. “Teddy’s never going to be interested in you.”
Eliza swings her dark hair and slams her door. I stew in silence.
“Shit.” Zoey grips my shoulders in panic. “This is bad, Arden. So freaking bad.” Her eyes grow wide and terrified. “I can’t be expelled. I just can’t. I’m already on thin ice with no thesis project.”
My teeth clench at the realization of what I have to do. I have to delete Veronica’s and Eliza’s memory of the last ten minutes. It’s the only way to ensure she doesn’t report us. I’m no better than the person who deleted my memories. I’m playing God, choosing what people remember to serve my own needs.
Suddenly, my lungs seem too big for my chest, and I gulp desperate breaths. I pace Zoey’s room, working up the courage. I have to do this. If I don’t, the Ethics Committee will cut off my access to HiveMind and I’ll lose all ability to figure out who did this to me. And I’m not the only one who has memories missing. Sebastian does too. And he’s missing all of them.
This is the only way I can save him. Save Zoey.
With trembling fingers, I open the HiveMind hacking app I’ve set up on my phone and navigate to Veronica’s mind. When I select the last ten minutes of her memories, the highlighted files are as glaring as blinking neon lights. I add Eliza’s files to the mix. My heart pounds frantically in my chest as I sit here, willing my hand to move with the force of a Ouija board spirit at a sleepover. But then I glance over at Zoey’s worried face, and my purpose is reinforced. I have to do this. I have to break my own moral code. I drag the last ten minutes of the girls’ minds into the trash.
The little whir noise that accompanies the deletion makes me want to throw up.
I wrench my fingers from the keyboard and twist them toward me, glaring at them like I can’t believe what they’ve just done. It feels as if the entire Earth just tilted off its axis and I’m off balance as a result.
I saved my friend but sacrificed a piece of myself in the process.