When we get off the elevator, Kamila warns Noah and me one last time to keep the door open, then she goes to her room.
“Where do you want to study?” Noah asks. “My room or yours?”
The thought of being alone in Noah’s room with him makes me uncomfortable. It’s not that I think he’ll do anything; I just don’t know him well enough and after all of Kamila’s warnings, I’m a little leery.
“How about mine?” I suggest.
“Sure,” he says, “Be right back.”
Noah disappears down the hallway and returns a few seconds later carrying a black Memoro like mine. When we go into my room, his eyes dart about as he checks things out. Thankfully all my dirty clothes are in the closet and not scattered everywhere like usual. I look around, wondering where we’re going to study. There’s only a small desk and a single chair. I dash over to my bed and pull up the blankets.
“How about we work here?”
Noah nods and sits down. I plop down next to him, and he slides closer until our legs touch. I start to move away and stop in case he gets the wrong idea and thinks I don’t like him.
“What do you need help with?” I ask.
He groans. “Trig…Are you any good at it?”
“Not too bad,” I say, selling myself short. Math is my best subject by far, followed by physics and chemistry. I’m mediocre at English and thanks to being a total klutz, catastrophically bad at phys-ed. It’s a good thing he didn’t ask me to play tennis or basketball or whatever it is they do for sports now because I’d seriously embarrass myself.
Noah opens his Memoro and says, “Freshman trigonometry.”
A blank page fills with trigonometric shapes and equations. Escalante’s voice comes out of a hidden speaker on the Memoro. “Can I help you, Noah?”
“Dismissed,” he replies curtly.
“Is she your academic chaperone too?” I ask.
Noah snorts and says, “Who, Escalante? She’s everyone’s chaperone. She’s just a useless level-three AI the Department of Child Services assigned to us.”
“What does level three mean?”
Noah gives me the same look Kamila gave me when I asked her about Simatope. It’s the what planet are you from look, and I suspect I’m going to see it a lot.
“You don’t know?”
I shrug. “We didn’t have levels where I came from.”
“Where’s that?” he asks.
“Japan,” I say, sticking to a variation of the lie I told Kamila. Noah seems impressed and stares at me like I’m an exotic animal. I think he’d be even more impressed if I told him I was a time-traveller from the year 2019.
“Are a lot of things different there?” he asks.
“Pretty much everything,” I reply, which is basically true—especially compared to a hundred years ago.
Noah points to the Kabuki face mask on my desk and says, “Is that from Japan?”
The emotions come out of nowhere and hit me hard. My eyes well up with tears. I remember my grandmother frowning when I bought the mask for Dad. She said it was just a cheap touristy knock-off. But then when we got back to her house, she spent an hour teaching me how to properly wrap it in Furoshiki gift cloth. It’s strange how I didn’t think about my family all morning, and now they’re all I can think about.
“It was my father’s,” I tell Noah. “It’s all I have to remember him by.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. Did he die in the riots?”
I don’t know what else to say, so I nod and change the subject. “You were going to tell me about the levels.”
Noah hesitates for a moment, then he starts to explain. “The levels measure how intelligent an AI is,” he says. “Level ones and twos are about as smart as the toasters in the cafeteria. Threes like Escalante aren’t much better.”
I remember my conversation with Escalante last night and joke, “Those must be pretty smart toasters.”
Noah grins at me. “Nah, they’re not smart at all. They burn my toast every morning.”
I grin back at him and ask, “How many levels are there?”
“Five in total,” he says. “The ones and twos are really basic. Threes like Escalante are mostly used as personal assistants.”
“What about fours and fives?”
“You have to be a government or really rich to have a four,” Noah says, “and fives are super rare. Madison told me her father knows someone who has a five, but I doubt it. There are only a few in the entire world.”
Madison!
I completely forgot about her. That was stupid. I edge away from Noah. He glances sideways at me and says, “If you’re worried about Madison, don’t be. She’s down in the Simatorium. Knowing her, she’ll be there all day.”
“Is she your girlfriend?” I ask. The question kind of explodes out of my mouth, and Noahs seems taken aback.
“She thinks she is,” he says, “but not really. We just hang out a lot together.”
“Why didn’t you go to the Simatorium too?”
Noah stiffens and says,“I told you last night I’m not like the others. I never go down there.”
“Why not?”
“Because I just don’t,” he says flatly.
I sense there’s more to it than that, but he quickly changes the subject. “We should get started.”
I nod. “What do you want help with?”
“Right-angled triangles,” he says. “I can never remember how to calculate the sine, cosine, and tangent. I’m always mixing them up.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I say. “Just remember Soh Cah Toa.” From the look on his face, I might as well be speaking Japanese.
“You’ve never heard that before?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“It’s a memory aide to help remember the formulas,” I explain. “Each three-letter chunk is a hint. SOH means the sine of an angle is the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypotenuse. And CAH means the cosine is the adjacent divided by the hypotenuse.”
“So, the tangent is the opposite side divided by the adjacent side?” Noah asks, uncertain.
“That’s right. Try it and you’ll see ”
Noah tells Escalante to bring up his trig homework. She does, and he works on a couple of examples. He looks pleased with himself when she tells him that he’s got the answers right. It’s only basic trig, but I’m happy for him because I know what it’s like to be bad at something and then suddenly figure it out. It makes you feel like a genius—at least for a minute or two.
The Memoro starts to vibrate. Noah flips to the back page. Short snippets of text appear in small bursts.
I’m finished
Where are you?
Never mind
Meet me in my room
Noah stiffens and slams the Memoro shut. He jumps up from the bed and says, “I’ve got to go.”
“What is it?”
“Madison. She’s on her way back. If she sees me with you, she’ll make both our lives difficult.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the way she is,” he says, actually looking afraid.
We both freeze at the sound of the elevator door opening. Madison’s voice comes from down the hallway. “Next time, don’t be such an idiot,” she says to whoever she is with.
“I told you I was sorry,” the other person replies. “Do you want to play again after lunch?”
“Of course. I’ll meet you downstairs.”
The elevator door closes, and I start to freak out. In about five seconds, Madison, the axe-murderer, is going to walk down the corridor and see Noah and me together.
“What should we do?” I hiss at him.
Noah stares back at me like a deer in a car’s headlights. One of us has to do something. I bolt to my feet and reach for the room door to close it. Noah suddenly comes alive and grabs my arm.
“No, the alarm will go off.”
“Maybe it won’t.”
“It will. Trust me.”
Panicking, I search for somewhere to hide him. There’s nowhere except the closet. I open the door, push him inside, and slam the door shut.
When I spin around, Madison is standing in my doorway with the same mocking expression she had the first time I met her.
“Don’t you look nice,” she says sarcastically. “Nice, for someone wearing a sprawl-rat’s hand-me-downs.
I realize she means the jumpsuit. “It isn’t used,” I reply defensively. “Kamila gave it to me to wear until I can do my laundry.”
“New or used, you still look like a Sprawl-rat. Have you seen Noah?” She runs her eyes over my room, stopping to stare at the closet door.
“You just missed him,” I lie. “He walked past my door a few minutes ago.”
“Where’d he go?”
“Downstairs, I guess.”
She scowls at me. “Why would he do that? I sent him a text to meet me up here.”
I shrug. “Maybe he didn’t see it.”
She thinks about that for a second and then says, “What are you doing?”
I follow her gaze to the bed. Noah’s Memoro is laying where he left it. On the outside, they all look the same, but if Madison picks it up and opens it, she’ll know in an instant it’s his.
“I’m reviewing the material for tonight’s class.”
“How studious of you,” she says, mocking me. Her eyes narrow. “Do you always study with your door open?”
I blurt the first thing that comes into my mind, “I was airing out the room.”
“Why?”
“Do you think I’m wearing this thing because I want to?” I reach down and tug on the front of my jumpsuit. “All my clothing is dirty and needs to be washed.”
Madison snickers. “You mean that horrible smell is your clothing? I thought it was you. If you see Noah, tell him I’m looking for him. And wash your ugly clothing. You stink like a Sprawl-rat.”
She turns and walks away. When I’m certain she isn’t coming back, I open the closet door and let Noah out.
“You should go,” I say in a voice so tight it will snap if I speak even one more word. I don’t know why I’m so angry at him. He didn’t do anything, but at least he could have apologized for the way Madison treated me.
“Maybe we could study later?” he says, sheepishly.
“Please go!”
I glare at him until he gets the message. When he finally leaves, I slam the door shut and collapse on my bed, fighting back angry tears.
I hate 2115. I want my old life back.