Trade Me (13 page)

This is…fucked up. On the other hand, even if I suspected shenanigans, I can’t figure out how they could actually have arranged to make this happen.

“Because I’m nice,” Tina says, “I’ll tell you what it took us two months to figure out. Just don’t use the fridge. Not for anything. You’re a block from a grocery store. If you don’t store perishables, you don’t need the fridge.” She takes a deep breath. “Also, save anything on the laptop before you use the microwave.”

“Don’t tell me.” I eye the blue-hinged beast before me. “The battery doesn’t work.”

“Not really.” She sighs. “It’s like having all the detriments of a laptop with none of the portability.”

I shake my head at her. “Why do I get the impression that you’re enjoying this?”

Her smile is just a little shaky. “You seem to be under the impression that my life is some back-to-nature serenity camp. It’s going to be amusing watching you realize that it’s not simple. It’s not a tourism home stay. You’re going to crash and burn.”

I let out a breath. She stands in place, her hands in fists.

And that’s what it is. I
want.
For me, it’s simple. For her…she hasn’t had time for bullshit. I know she’s attracted to me, at least a little bit. I also know she doesn’t want to be.

I want her.

But you know what I want most? I don’t want her to break down and quash her reluctance. I don’t want her to surrender to me. I want her to want to want me, not to want me grudgingly against her will.

“You’re right,” I say. “I’m full of shit. I have no idea what I’m doing. This is going to be hard, and maybe I’m going to fail and fail and fail again.”

Her eyes widen.

“But you know what? There’s one thing I’m
not
going to do. I promised you when we started that you were important. So I’m not going to call your life a back-to-nature serenity camp or a tourism home stay. I may be clueless. I may be taken aback. It may be that I have no idea what to do with $15.22 because I have never even gone grocery shopping before. But this is your life. It matters.”

She inhales sharply. “Fine.” And then she turns to leave.

“One other thing.”

She turns back to me slowly. She doesn’t say anything.

“It’s okay to like me,” I tell her. “Eventually, just about everyone does.”

TINA

My hands are shaking by the time I go to his car.

It’s okay to like me.

Too late; that seed was planted weeks ago. I’m a shitty enough liar that Blake’s already seen everything I wanted to keep hidden. This isn’t going to work.

A voice in the back of my mind stirs—my mother’s voice, dimly remembered.
Xingjuan, you have to be careful.

Ha. As if my mother was
ever
careful about anything. I yank the door handle—it still freaks me out that the handle comes out of the car for me as I approach—and, once I’m in, slam the door.

Maria is waiting for me in the passenger seat. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t point out that my hands are shaking. She knows I’ll say something about it as soon as I’m ready.

This isn’t some beat-up, decades-old Camry like my parents drive. Blake gave me a brief explanation on the way over. This is a completely electric vehicle, something so new and space-age shiny I wasn’t even aware that it existed. It has a thousand features I didn’t even know cars could have. This car, with its dark leather and sleek electronic displays, probably cost him more than four years of my college tuition.

It takes me two minutes to figure out how to adjust the seat and mirrors from their previous position—chosen to accommodate Blake’s long legs. There are no levers, nothing manual. Everything slides whisper-smooth into place at the touch of a button.

That leads me to the second problem: I don’t know how to turn the car on, and I’m not about to go back and ask him. There’s no key, no ignition—it’s an electric car; what would there be to ignite? There’s not even a big button labeled “power.”

I finally get out my phone in desperation and send a text.

Blake, how do you turn your car on?

The answer takes a few moments.
Are you sitting in the car? Do you have the electronic fob?

Yes. And yes.

Then it’s on. So long as the display behind the steering wheel is on, the car is on. It’s just that the engine doesn’t make any noise.

Maria casts me an inquisitive look as I start down the street. That’s the way everything is for him. It happens automatically, without his even having to press a button. Hell, I’m feeling too much for him already, and all the encouragement he’s ever given me is to…offer me paperwork.

“Everything okay?”

My hands are still shaking. “Fine,” I say. “Awesome. Better than okay. Couldn’t be any better.”

“That bad, huh?”

“He knows I like him,” I say, gripping the wheel as hard as I can.

“Oh,” Maria says. For a moment, neither of us says anything. I pull onto the main road, but the traffic just heightens my unease.

I can’t get over this car. It’s everything I would have expected Blake to have. It’s so silent that the only noise I hear is tires against asphalt. I scarcely have to press the—it can’t be called the gas, can it, if the car is electric?—accelerator and it responds, as silent and as forceful as a ninja. The speedometer jumps.

Forty-five thousand dollars seemed like an impossible amount two weeks ago. Now, I’m realizing that it’s nothing. One side-swipe from a passing car could do that much in damage.

Suddenly this whole thing freaks me out. I’m afraid to look up the value of his house, but I suspect the number is firmly in the millions. This car. The electronics he handed me. A prototype, which, if stolen, could cost his dad’s company millions in falling stock prices. Billions even.

Adam Reynolds was right. Fernanda
was
my ticket on to the merry-go-round. I’m in a position where I can do real damage.

I feel like I’ve been outfitted with boxing gloves and ordered to juggle three Fabergé eggs across the Golden Gate Bridge. I’m going to break something. Everything.

A passing car honks.

“Tina,” Maria says. “You’re going fifteen in a thirty-five zone.”

“I know,” I choke out. “But—if I crash…”

She looks over at me. “A car like this is not made to go fifteen. Are you sure you’re okay? Did he do something to you? Because I don’t care who he is or what he’s paying you, if—”

“No, it’s nothing like that.” I pull into a parking lot and stop. “It’s just…”

My heart is beating hard. I don’t know what to say.

“This isn’t safe,” I finally manage. “Not him. Not this car. Not the prototypes or the NDA or anything along those lines. It’s not safe, and I’m afraid I’m going to fuck it all up.”

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she reaches over and takes my hand. My fingers feel cold in hers. But she holds on anyway, sending me warmth.

“Honey,” Maria says finally, “there’s only one thing to do when you find yourself behind the wheel of a car like this.”

“What?”

I know we’re not just talking about the car. My voice shakes, but Maria doesn’t say anything about that. She just squeezes my hand.

“You floor it. Because you know what? Blake has good insurance. We’re both on it, remember? We signed the forms.”

I laugh uneasily. But I don’t move.

“Do you want me to drive?”

“Yes.” I let out a breath. “Could you?”

We trade places. She adjusts the seat smoothly, and then, when she pulls out of the parking lot, she floors it.

7:09 PM

Hey Blake. I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.

I don’t think you’re going to crash and burn.

7:11 PM

no?

7:11 PM

No.

I’m actually more worried that I will.

I have no experience with any of this.

How do you do anything?

The stakes are so high.

It’s paralyzing.

What if I completely fuck everything up?

7:12 PM

You won’t.

7:13 PM

You can’t know that.

7:14 PM

Yes I can

b/c if you get stuck, you’ll ask me

and we’ll figure it out like reasonable people.

7:15 PM

Still no good.

That way I’ll spend more time around you.

I’m trying not to like you.

7:15 PM

Honest question

Does it suck to know failure is inevitable?

7:16 PM

God. You’re so conceited.

7:17 PM

I guess that’s not surprising.

Or entirely unwarranted.

I’m going through the Fernanda materials.

You’re right. You do work hard. And she’s brilliant.

7:17 PM

Why yes

I was something of a genius with her

Thank you for noticing

7:18 PM

Argh. That just made it worse, didn’t it?

I knew I shouldn’t have said anything.

Stupid sense of fairness.

7:19 PM

Wrong.

We just traded

so now it’s your turn to be a genius.

7:20 PM

Here’s a hint

I knew you could be one the day you told me I was full of shit.

Not many people notice that

7:21 PM

Stop it. I’m trying not to like you

Remember?

7:22 PM

Not working out so well for you, is it?

7:22 PM

Jerk.

7:23 PM

That’s English for yes?

7:23 PM

Pretty much.

7:25 PM

Thought so.

9.

TINA

The work I’m doing for Blake doesn’t take me less time than my job in the library; it takes more. Blake’s time estimates were based on his own abilities. But he drew from a storehouse of knowledge that I will never have. If I want to do a creditable job—and I won’t give him the satisfaction of doing anything less—I need to get my feet under me, and do it quickly.

I watch Cyclone launches while I’m brushing my teeth, walking to school, even taking a five-minute break from homework.

The launches are lavish affairs, scripted to the hilt, practiced as much as possible. Alternates are chosen in case of accidents. Blake had his assistant pull out the last twenty launch scripts for me, and it turns out the scripts are a source of far more than just a description of what is supposed to happen. They’re all stored in a proprietary Cyclone format, one that contains prior versions, comments, stage directions—just about everything you can imagine.

Online, there are Cyclone launch groupies, and they’ve made my work easy by breaking the launch into parts. There’s the financials stage, where Adam talks through what Cyclone has accomplished in the last year or so. There’s the refresh stage, where he—or a product engineer—introduces new versions of old products. And then—sometimes, not always—there’s the new product stage.

At some point in this affair, there’s what the groupies call “the Adam and Blake show.” Internal Cyclone documents have adopted the same name. At some point, father and son both end up on the stage, interacting with whatever new toy they have, showing off its features. The more elaborate the gadget, the crazier the script.