Chapter 4
4
REMI
Before…
I pause outside the front door, my hand on the knob but not turning. The house looks like every other home on the block: the red-brown brick, white columns, perfectly manicured yard. It’s the exact shot you’d show at the start of a movie—letting the audience soak in the picturesque view. That way, when they see something not quite right happen on the other side of the brass-knobbed door, they easily dismiss it so you can shock them later.
Misdirection. Show them something beautiful to obscure the ugliness of reality.
Rather than go inside, I retreat down the steps. I follow the little stone path to the side of the house, and in under a minute, I’ve scaled the decorative trellis to my bedroom window. It easily slides open, and I crawl in, successfully avoiding the rest of the step-house.
I toss my bag by the bed and fall backward onto my mattress.
Unlike the outside, my room is full of reality. My teenage angst has bathed the walls in red, black words scribbled over the paint. Mostly they’re notes from Sage, telling me she loves me and claiming me as her best friend in case any competition might wander in. The rest are words that felt too significant to forget. Quotes I’ve read or realizations I’ve made about life. All the wisdom I hold after eighteen years of existence.
Important shit.
Speaking of the best friend, I reach for the top hem of my school uniform skirt. Navy and green plaid. Another faux reality.
I slide out my buzzing phone and read the three messages, spaced less than thirty seconds apart.
Sage
Are you home? I know you get out early on Fridays.
Bitch?
If you’re off blowing a football player, I’ll be so pissed/proud.
A perfect representation of our friendship in a triple text.
I blow out a breath as I stare up at the coffered ceiling, counting down from ten, and like clockwork—or an overly aggressive teenage girl—my phone starts vibrating.
“You’re certifiable,” I answer, putting her on speaker.
Sage doesn’t miss a beat. “And you’re a prep school slut.” Then she immediately adds, “Unless you’re just in your room on the bed. Then you’re a substantial disappointment.”
“She means she loves you,” a deep voice says.
I smile. “Hi, Miles.”
“Hey, Rem,” her boyfriend says.
The two of them have been inseparable all week while he’s been back. She even had him use his Mr. Teller impression to call her out of school.
They’ve been dating since last summer when he was home on break from CalTech. He’d skipped a year, so he graduated this spring but spent most of summer on the West Coast at a new internship. Or, as Sage refers to it, his new ho market.
“Did you get the app to work?” he asks.
“Yeah.” I sit up, hearing the garage door open. “It’s working fine.”
“Let me know if the video cuts out. I’ve dealt with a few reports of it today.”
Sage sighs into the mic. “You two need a room or what?”
I roll my eyes, and Miles starts sweet-talking the drama queen on the other end.
“You love the nerd talk.” Something rustles, his voice suddenly much closer and lower. “You want to hear me talk about backend servers and bug reports.”
“No!” she giggles out.
“Admit it—you’re so turned on right now.”
They fall into their own little world like they usually do, and once a breathy sigh comes through, I don’t even bother with a goodbye.
It’s nothing new for us. In fact, Sage and I haven’t said goodbye once since we met in the second grade. Not when she left for eight weeks of summer camp, not when my mom and I moved to the town over a few years ago.
A door slams downstairs, and I glance at my closed one. I grab the extra pillows from the top of the bed and go over to shove them against the crack at the bottom, silencing all other sounds from the rest of the house.
As I crash back onto my bed, I grab my phone and open the app Miles installed over the weekend.
The startup he’s interning at is developing an app for virtual tourism. Eventually a person will be able to log in, and someone in another part of the world will walk them through a museum or an art exhibit. They could experience Carnival in Brazil while working a late nursing shift in Maine or see the Vatican in the middle of a snowstorm in the Midwest.
It’s in the beta-testing stage, only available to a few dozen people right now. I’m one of them because my best friend has no boundaries and volunteered me without my knowledge. She claimed it would be good for me to have more randomness in my life. Really, she thought Miles said virtual dating, only realizing her mistake when he was explaining to me how it works.
The purple W flashes, and the dots appear at the bottom as the app loads. Then the dashboard appears, welcoming SaintR to Wanderer .
No matter how much Miles swore the strangers on the other end couldn’t see anything too revealing, I couldn’t bring myself to use my real last name when I logged in the first time. I kept thinking how perfect of a setup it would be for a thriller movie. A stranger on the other side of the world tracks me down through the app. Might as well make them work for it.
But also, I wanted a few hours a day as far away from my life as possible. Even if it was only through a screen.
I check to see if anyone is online and available for a tour. Since the testing is broken into smaller groups to help track issues, my options are limited to three surrogates and wherever they might be in the world.
None of them are on, though, and I reach for my bag off the floor. A ding makes me stop and look down at the screen.
WestF has signed on and is available.
Rolling onto my back, I grab my phone again. I tap the notification to bring up his profile. Foster West, twenty-one, currently in Paris. His profile picture is of his shadow—or I assume it’s his with the cast of his phone.
Out of the three, he’s the one I choose most often. The others are constantly asking me in the chat what I want to see. But he just shows me what he thinks I should look at.
While it’s barely two in the afternoon in Ohio, it’s already evening there. I wouldn’t think any places would still be open, but when I check, there’s an available art museum nearby that doesn’t close for another hour. I select it before hitting the Wander button.
Typically, it takes a few minutes for it to connect after he accepts the tour, but as I slip in my earbuds, a dialogue box pops up, telling me I’m wandering with WestF. Then the screen flickers to life, and I’m in the museum. The white floor below and windows above filled with the dimming Parisian sky.
There’s always a pull when I see somewhere new. Like a part of my soul’s begging to go—to see what I’m forced to experience through someone else’s eyes. It reminds me of pictures and videos my dad would send me from when he traveled. The way I’d quietly promise myself to really be there one day.
I listen to the heartbeat of the museum while Foster pauses beside a large stone statue. Something abstract and harsh with smooth lines. Then he moves on to a wall of artwork, lingering on each long enough for me to absorb them fully.
It’s how I know he’s truly looking at them too.
When he stops the camera on a painting longer than the others, I study it, trying to figure out what about the colors he wants more time to appreciate. Why he’s spending it on these brushstrokes over the others.
Eventually he starts to move again. He’s crossing to the opposite wall when a brunette passes him, her eyes not leaving him and her mouth turning up. She’s almost out of sight when the camera follows, keeping her in view longer.
That’s the one drawback of Foster—among the culture and city sights are smooth legs in short skirts. I usually ignore them, but this one keeps cutting into the shot. The artwork’s always off to the side to include at least her ass.
It starts to look like she’ll be a permanent part of the tour, and I roll my eyes. I open the chat between us for the first time, not paying attention to the prompt telling me to say hi to my tour guide.
SAINTR: Not that she isn’t pretty, but a little more art, maybe?
Miles said a few of the surrogates were sent glasses with a camera in them to test. Foster must be one because as soon as I hit send on the message, the video shifts down to his phone in his hand, and I can see the red dot by the chat icon in the corner.
Instead of opening it, the camera moves back and forth, as if he were shaking his head, and then he looks up again.
“Calm down, Remi Saint,” a low voice says into my ears. “We’ll go look at Impressionism shit.”
Something about the way he says my name makes me smile as he walks in the opposite direction of her.
SAINTR: Thank you, Foster West.
When he glances down this time, he opens the chat and reads my messages.