Bumped (15 page)

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?”

Ash and Ty are more ectopic than usual because they think
I’m
the one boozing from their liquor cabinet.

“GET IN THE 2VU WHERE WE CAN SEE YOU RIGHT NOW.”

“Don’t move,” I say, before checking to make sure that the couch is just out of view. One look at Ram and my parents would be convinced that I’m up for Churchy indoctrination. “You stay out of view too,” I warn Zen, just for good measure. My parents don’t have anything against Zen personally. They simply regard him with the same wary suspicion that they regard every other male between the ages of twelve and obsolescence, as a threat against everything they’ve worked toward for the past sixteen years.

My parents are still screaming at each other, their eyes practically popping off their faces. “SHE HACKED THE SYSTEM!”

I press the 2Vu. “Who hacked what system?”

My parents quiet at the sight of me.

“You’re home,” Ash says.

“Just like the stalk app said you were,” Ty says.

“The whole time . . .”

“Right,” I say. “I came home straight after my Pro/Am meeting today and haven’t left the house since. Look, I’m sorry about the—”

“But you’re all over the MiNet!” Ash says, not letting me finish my bogus apology about the missing booze. “At the Underground All-Sports Arena, the Avatarcade—”

“You caused a riot at the U.S. Buff-A on Route One,” Ty breaks in. “A dozen girls got stungunned!”

I hear a curious “Huh?” coming from direction of the couch. I glance over to see Zen’s eyes winking and blinking furiously.

“Why didn’t you tell us you were bumping with the highest-ranked RePro in the history of the Standards?”

“Why didn’t you tell us all our financial problems are solved?”

Wow. And I thought my parents were dosed when I talked to them this morning. I
told
them to lay off the Tocin brownies.

“You’re getting very high approval ratings, Melody, just as we always knew you would!”

“But you could try harder to win over the thirteen-to-seventeen demo, who are jealous that you’re bumping with Jondoe and they’re not—”

“Who?” I ask. “What?”

“Jondoe,” says Zen, coming toward me, a stunned expression on his face.

“And to think that we were
this close
to going off contract and setting up a sub-rosa spermination . . .”

Zen steps between me and my parents on the MiVu.

“Hey, Ash!” He waves spastically at the screen. “Hi, Ty!”

Oh, no. He’s put on the synthetically chipper voice that he uses whenever he’s in major neg, which doesn’t happen all that often and is doubly worrisome when it does.

“Congratulations! You’ve waited so long and worked so hard to see Melody reach the tip-top of her profession, and must be so proud of yourselves. You deserve a reward! Now go out and party your parental asses off! Starting right now!”

He blinks off the MiVu and then, on second thought, removes the whole system from the powergrid.

“What was
that
all about?”

He turns back to me, puts both hands on my shoulders, and gives me a sobering look.

“You need to MiNet yourself right now.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Just do it.”

My eyes can’t move fast enough. When I log on to the MiNet, I see that I’ve got thousands of new followers sending me thousands of new messages. They’re easy to read, though, because most of them ask variations of the same question:

JONDOE WTF?

At this point, I’m wondering the same thing myself.

“Why am I getting spamslammed about Jondoe?”

“Look at the links I just sent you!”

I open Zen’s links. And there, before my very eyes, is foto after foto of me with the hottest RePro on the MiNet.

There’s me and Jondoe splitting a West Virginia pepperoni roll at the U.S. Buff-A. There’s me and Jondoe kicking the ball around at the Underground All-Sports Arena. There’s me and Jondoe standing beside a car in the parking lot of the Avatarcade. Finally, a grainy shot of me and Jondoe standing in front of the window in my bedroom . . .

“Who would go to such trouble to fotobomb me?” I ask.

“No one fotobombed you, Mel.”

Zen sends a video. I recognize the setting right away as the parking lot to the U.S. Buff-A on Route 1. Jondoe has an arm around my (my!) waist and is addressing the crowd of gawkers. The audio quality is pretty pissy, even after I adjust the volume on my earbuds.

“Melody and I both just want to thank our Repro Reps—Lib from UGenXX Talent Agency, and Stella from Exceptional Conceptional Management—for making the deal,” he says. “We can’t wait to start working together.”

I blink it off. I can’t watch any more, now that I’ve finally grasped what was so obvious to Zen.

I wasn’t fotobombed. The footage is real, but it’s not me posing next to Jondoe. . . .

“She counterfeited me.”

WE’RE HURTLING OVER THE HILLS AT A HUNDRED MILES PER
hour.

“Whoa,” he says. “That was pretty intense. But it was worth it, right?”

I don’t think I’ve exhaled since we got in the car.

“We’re done with promo for the night. The paps got more than they needed, so they’ll leave us alone now,” he says. “It doesn’t help any of us to get too overexposed too soon. The asking price of their footage goes down. And our value is subject to backlash fluctuations. . . .”

None of this means anything to me. “Where are we?”

“Not too far from the last stop on our . . .
date.
”

He wants me to ask where we’re going so he can refuse to tell me. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do. I
know
him. I know him better than I know my own husband, and we were in diapers together. Jondoe is totally focused on me, which would be glorious if it didn’t mean he wasn’t paying any attention at all to the road. The car directly in front of us is flashing its brake lights.

“Watch out!”

He jumps, looks behind him. “For what?”

“The car!” But before I’ve even said it, our car slows down to avoid a collision.

He gives me a curious look. “I’ve got it on Autodrive,” he says slowly, cautiously, the equivalent to tiptoeing around a field to avoid cow patties.

“Autodrive,” I say. “Right. Of course.”

Our settlement shares a garage of cars and trucks, all of which are at least thirty years old and don’t have the modern amenities commonly found in Othersiders’ personal transport. Gas-powered putterers are just fine when your whole world exists within a few square miles. No one is ever in a real hurry to go anywhere when there’s nowhere to go.

“I don’t have a car like this,” I say, hoping this might provide a logical opening for me to tell him the truth. “Because . . . well . . . you see . . .”

He nods in acknowledgment. “You ride a bike to school because you’re the president of the ECOmmunity Club. I read that.”

Melody’s file.

I am fascinated by Melody’s file. As much as I want Jondoe to know who I am, I want to know who my twin is even more.

“What else does my file say about me?”

“It’s your file.” He gives me a blank look. “You already know it.”

I think fast. “I want to hear it from you.”

“You want to hear about the file that told me that you don’t like flowers but love Coke ’99 and GlycoGoGo Bars.”

Yes. I nod for him to keep going.

“And told me you were a varsity soccer star and didn’t allow a single goal before your team had to forfeit the rest of the season. Your favorite player on the National Team is number fifteen. You play real guitar, not guitarbot, are far above average in intelligence, and plan to apply to the Global University, where you will pursue a career in epidemiology. Your personal heroes are the international team of scientists who found a cure for HIV and you’d like to be on the team that either finds a cure for the Virus or develops a viable form of petri-pregging, maybe through, um, embryonic stem-cell research or something called partial reproductive organ transplantation—whatever any of that even means.” He raises an eyebrow. “You’re aware that all of this would put us out of business, right?”

I’m learning more about my sister from this file than I’ve heard from her. I get so caught up in my silent prayers of gratitude that I almost miss what he says next.

“Your birthparents are unknown, you were abandoned at a hospital when you were just a few hours old and adopted a few weeks later.”

I can barely eke out a whisper. “You know that?”

“If it’s in your file, I know it,” he says. “You’re lucky you didn’t try to become a Surrogette twenty years ago before the YDNA tests could prove your Northern European ancestry within one one-hundred-thousandth of a percentage point. The Jaydens would’ve never signed a contract without it. Anyone willing to take a chance on a total unknown might as well save money and make a postdelivery bid on an amateur.” He pauses, puts on a meditative face. “Then again, it wasn’t legal to pay teens to bump back then. But I guess that’s because there wasn’t the supply-and-demand issue that there is now, you know, until a bunch of brains like you find a cure for the Virus—”

Then car slams the brakes so suddenly that I’m thrown toward the dashboard. I’m wearing my seat belt, but Jondoe throws a protective arm over me anyway.

“HEY, JACK-OFF. TRY AUTODRIVE,” Jondoe yells to the driver of the car that cut into our lane. “Sorry about that,” he says, though he doesn’t seem sorry at all to have a reason to keep his hand resting across my lap.

We blur past a few dozen streetlights before I finally will myself to speak. “The file.”

“Right,” Jondoe says as the car slows down and turns onto a narrow path. “It said that you wanted to book a room at the only MiNet-blinded accommodations in the county.”

He points out the window toward a sign:
WELCOME TO THE INN IN THE WOODS: DISCONNECT TO RECONNECT
.

“
Surprise! I didn’t put that on the itinerary because I didn’t want it to get leaked to the press,” he says. “I know you don’t want any distractions when we get down to business.”

Get down to business?

“It’s your first time,” he says. “You’re nervous. I understand.” He reaches into his knapsack, takes out a small bottle of pills, shakes it. “Tocin will help you open up.”

Open up?

“And I’m not just saying that because I’m a paid spokesperson,” he says. “It will be fun. Satisfaction guaranteed.”

Satisfaction? Guaranteed?

“I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I was a virgin once.”

I back myself up against the car door and blurt, “What’s
your
story?”

At first he looks alarmed, but then his features soften into something else. Amusement maybe.

“My story?”

“Why do you do . . .
this
?”

He closes his eyes, rubs the golden hairs on his chin. When he finally speaks, it’s in a voice much quieter, yet even more commanding than before.

“The answer isn’t in my file, is it?”

Of course I haven’t the faintest idea what’s in Jondoe’s file, but I don’t let on.

“I’ve been subjected to more physical and mental evaluations than I ever thought possible. I’ve done the YDNA, of course. VO
2
max, flexibility, and isoinertial strength assessments. Myers-Briggs, Winfrey-McGraw . . .”

He smiles ruefully.

“And?”

He looks up, right into my eyes. “And no one has ever asked me that question. Not once. They just . . . assume.”

“Who assumes what?”

“Everyone assumes I do it to
do it
.” He rolls his eyes, laughs. “For the sex.”

I feel my cheeks burning. “Y-y-you don’t?”

“No,” he says dismissively. “With so many girls waiting to be bumped, just about any guy can get some ass anytime.”

I flinch at his coarse language, then think of Melody’s friend Zen, who would offer an altogether different opinion on the subject.

“It’s not the money either. Though it definitely doesn’t suck getting paid to do something I would do for free.” His eyes dart toward the window. “And I know you won’t believe me, but it’s not about the famegaming.”

“Then why
do
you do it?”

“It’s really not about me at all. It’s about . . .” He falls back onto the headrest and looks up through the moonroof. “I’m providing a valuable service.” Unhappy with his explanation, he screws up his perfect face and tries again. “No. It’s more like . . .” He stops himself once more. “I want to do good. That’s why I accepted the Jaydens’ application.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Oh, come on,” he says. “The Jaydens do okay for themselves, but they weren’t anywhere near affluential enough to meet my minimum bid. It just so happens that I am very passionate about helping aspirational couples who want an upmarket pregg. So once a year I do some pro boner work and the Jaydens are this year’s pick.”

“That’s very generous of you.”

“If you had something that could change people’s lives for the better, wouldn’t you want them to have it?”

I suppose I would.

“Such an extraordinary gift is meant to be shared.”

It is, isn’t it?

“I figure that if I was put on this earth to do this one thing, I should do it to the very best of my ability for however long as I’m equipped to do so.”

Yes!

“I feel exactly the same way!” I say.

“About delivering a pregg?”

“No!” I cry, my heart beating madly. “About spreading the Word of God!”

Oh my grace! I just couldn’t stop myself! The spirit moved me to tell the Truth. I’m ready for Jondoe to call me a freak, kick me out of the car, and dash away faster than an unbroken pony.

But he doesn’t.

“You’re a surprising girl, Miss Melody Mayflower,” he says. “So encrypted.”

My cheeks are roaring now, I can feel it.

“I’ve been in the business for three years now,” he says. “I showed up here today thinking I knew everything I needed to know about you to make this transaction go as smoothly as possible. But . . .”

He leans back, looks me over. If I could show him all of me, my soul, my everything, I would. I
will.
It’s time to make my confession.

“I’m not the girl in the file!”

Jondoe doesn’t hesitate. “I’m not who I am in my file either.”

“You’re not?”

Even though there’s just the two of us together in his car, he motions for me to come closer. My flesh goose bumps at the warmth of his whisper on my neck.

“Jondoe obviously isn’t my real name. That’s just the name my agent at ECM gave me because she thought it would be better for my man brand. I’ve never told a Surrogette my real name. But you, Miss Melody Mayflower, are no ordinary Surrogette. You’re special. Do you want to know my real name?”

“I want to know everything.”

And not just in the spiritual sense of knowing him in my heart, but the physical, tangible sense of knowing him, a knowing that lets me reach out and touch his hands, as he touched me moments ago.

“Then let me take you somewhere else that isn’t on the itinerary,” he says.

I tell him I’m ready to be taken.