The Boyfriend App (15 page)

PhilanthrApp
.

“Yes!” Nigit screamed.

Lindsay threw her arms around Nigit. He hugged her snug against him, then sprang from his chair and pumped his white-gloved fist.

“PhilanthrApp,” Carrie said, like she’d just figured out how to read. “Wow!”

“Congratulations, you guys,” I said. I wanted to hug Aidan, or squeeze his shoulder or something, but Carrie already had her arms wrapped around him.

Lindsay was back in her seat, scrolling again. Looking for the Boyfriend App. “Maybe it’s under
T
?” Her green eyes narrowed as she reread the list.

My insides curled into a tight ball. My eyes roved, searching for black letters against a white screen, spelling out my creation . . . all I needed.

Nigit was moonwalking. Carrie was laughing. Joel Norris was clapping Aidan on the back.

Lindsay sighed.

I felt Aidan’s glance.

“It’s not here,” I whispered, unraveling.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Part 2.0

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

chapter fifteen

“A
udrey?”

Bates folded her thin arms across her chest. Her movements were graceful, like an ice-skater.

It was just the two of us. The ventilation system kicked to life for the first time in forever, and a dull hum filled the air along with Carrie, sing-chanting in the hallway outside. Her voice quieted as she made her way down the hall with my friends.

“Yes, Ms. Bates,” I said, trying not to sound annoyed.

“This isn’t over.”

I scrawled
X
’s in blue pen on the side of my Vans. “Then why does it feel like it is?” I asked, not meeting her gaze. I drew triangles around the
X
’s to morph them into stars.

“Every great creative has experienced rejection and setbacks.”

Duh, Ms. Bates
. She may as well have been reading a quote from a fortune cookie. “Right,” I said, exhaling. I tapped my pen next to the keyboard. I didn’t want to be with my friends and I didn’t want to be with Ms. Bates, either, but being surrounded by computers in the lab made me feel like I could keep breathing. I hadn’t felt so still in a place since my dad used to take me for walks around the lakes on Notre Dame’s campus. I didn’t want to leave—not yet, anyway. “I just want to be alone,” I told Bates. I felt worse for being rude, but I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry,” I added.

Ms. Bates slid her Infinitum laptop into a black leather carrying case. “I’ll be in the lounge across the hall if you need me.” She peered through the door’s plastic partition into the hallway. She didn’t look at me while she said, “If you want to win this thing, dig deeper.” She turned the bronze knob and the door opened with a
click
. “Look within. And then build a better app.”

Hours later, I sat with my knees to my chest, my fingers alternating between the keyboard and hugging the toes of my sneakers. The vents were still blowing cold air and it was the first time I needed one of my hoodies in the lab. I was wrapped in the one Lindsay found for me at Farrah’s Finds for seven bucks that was a few washes away from disintegration. It was dark gray with black wings silkscreened across the back. It made me feel like a girl who rode a motorcycle. It made me feel brave.

Without the other trogs, the lab felt soft and slow, ready to rest for the night. I checked my phone. It was quarter to seven and I needed to make the last bus at 6:50. I logged off my computer and slung my backpack over my shoulder. In the hall, dim light spilled across the linoleum.

“Audrey?”

I looked behind me. Lindsay sat outside the lab, leaning against a bank of steely gray lockers. Had she been waiting for me this entire time? “I didn’t see you,” I said.

Normally she’d tell me to stop being obvious. Instead she said, “I thought you might need a ride,” like it was no big deal. Like her butt hadn’t gone pins-and-needles from sitting on a rock-hard floor.

In the parking lot, we folded into Lindsay’s Acura. She didn’t bother trying to get me to talk during the ride. We were about to pull onto Route 31 when she veered left.

“Lindsay?”

“You’re going to have to trust me,” she said. She took a right, and then another, until we were cruising along a small side street I didn’t recognize. Tiny ramshackle houses sat close to the street. We passed a yard filled with a dozen broken-down bicycles. Another had plastic flamingoes next to a Santa Claus. A dark-haired little boy in denim overalls zigzagged through the flamingoes pushing a Radio Flyer wagon.

My parents used to talk about the kind of house they wanted to buy once we’d saved enough money. But I liked our apartment: Houses felt too personal. In an apartment complex, there’s the anonymity of uniformity. Houses publicized how much money a family had by their niceness, and revealed what kind of people lived inside with paint-color choices, cars, decorations, and flower beds.

These houses told a different story. They looked like abandoned children, left in playgrounds with dirty faces and skinned knees.

Lindsay curved around a bend. Heavy black wires looped in half circles from telephone poles. The car slowed as we neared a tiny bumblebee-colored house: Black shutters hung crookedly on chipped bright-yellow paint. Sparrows lined a thin tree branch that arched like a finger over the driveway. Lindsay pulled behind a light yellow rust-covered Buick that made her 1995 Acura look new. The Buick’s hood was open. Jumper cables were attached from its engine to a pickup truck. Tiny sparks shot from the cables as the car’s battery got a jump.

A wooden sign next to the bumblebee house read:
MADAME BERNESE: WORLD-RENOWNED FORTUNE-TELLER AND READER OF CHAKRAS.

My chakras clenched. “No way,” I said.

Lindsay stared through the front windshield. “I’ve never asked you for anything, have I?”

I combed my brain. I’d asked Lindsay for plenty: rides to school, clothing hand-me-downs, to test-drive the Boyfriend App. And there was plenty Lindsay did that I didn’t need to ask for: the way she’d supported the Boyfriend App with her PR tactics, for instance. But there was nothing she’d asked me for. Ever. And now that I thought about it, there wasn’t much I’d really done for her, either. Except maybe embarrass her.

I shook my head.

“Well, I’m asking now,” she said. She turned off the ignition. A tiny red stiletto charm jingled on her key chain against a miniature Statue of Liberty. She always said it reminded her of her future. “I want you to win this thing, Audrey. I want us both to get chances at something big.” She swiveled in her seat to face me. “You have what it takes—you always have.”

I wanted more than anything to believe her.

“You’re the one with the brilliant brain,” she said. “And I know we need a miracle—you said it yourself. But there isn’t anything more I can do. You’re going to have to make this happen.”

A pit bull emerged from a gap in a boarded-up shed. It nosed a piece of trash along the chain-link fence. Lindsay gestured toward the yellow house. “Madame Bernese is the one who guided me to start
Fashion Becomes Me
,” she said. “And that blog saved me. It’s the thing that got me into FIT. So all I’m asking is for you to spend a measly five minutes with the woman, ’kay?” She grabbed her zebra-striped purse from the backseat. “My treat,” she said as she climbed from the car.

I kicked at a rock on the driveway and followed her. What else could I do?

Lindsay punched a black button next to Madame Bernese’s sign. A shrill buzz sounded from inside the house. I held my breath. I just needed to get this over with, like a tetanus booster.

The door opened to reveal the same little boy we saw tugging the wagon in the neighbor’s yard. He must have sprinted through the back when he saw us pull into the driveway. He stared up at us with round, dark eyes.

“We’re here to see Madame Bernese,” Lindsay said, smiling like it was great news.

The little boy stared through the screen until a woman appeared behind him. Her chubby curves were draped in magenta swaths of fabric, and her head was wrapped in a teal scarf.

Lindsay clasped her hands in a prayer position and bowed like we were in a kung-fu movie. Madame Bernese returned the gesture and beckoned us inside. The little boy hid behind her skirts until she whispered in his ear. He took off running down the hall, and I heard the unmistakable clatter of a porcelain cookie jar.

Madame Bernese gestured to a room off a dimly lit hallway. Lindsay sat on a chair next to the door and made a shooing gesture for me to follow Madame Bernese. I gave Lindsay a look and she gave me a worse one back. I convinced my feet to move and stepped behind Madame Bernese into the tiny room. The scent of sage and patchouli filled the air as she shut the door behind us. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. I made out maroon walls covered in gold-framed pictures of people who looked like the Lakshmi photo Lindsay had uploaded to her blog on her first date with Nigit. The people (saints, maybe?) had knowing, placid expressions and wore head scarves and clothing like Madame Bernese. Some were praying. Others held their hands up like they were giving a blessing (or at least that’s the blessing move Father Doyle did on Sundays).

Madame Bernese still hadn’t said anything. The patchouli smell was making my throat feel choked, like the time I had acid reflux and thought I was dying of a heart attack. She pointed to a metal folding chair next to a round table covered in tarot cards. Thank God there wasn’t a crystal ball.

“Um, hi,” I said, feeling like one of us should say something. I sat in the chair and flinched when the metal creaked.

But Madame Bernese only nodded as she sat opposite me. Her eyeballs looked too big for her eye sockets, like they might pop out and roll across the table like marbles. Pink powder shimmered on her cheeks. “What bring you here today?” she finally asked. Her accent was French, or something, and it made the words sound like
Wha bring you eere today?

“My cousin thought you could help me.”

Madame Bernese lit an ivory candle surrounded with black lace that belonged in a fire-safety video. The flame shot to life and lit the lower half of her face. She stared at me until I blurted, “There’s this contest.” What did I have to lose? “And I want to win it.”

Madame Bernese closed her eyes. She kept them jammed shut for so long I worried I’d offended her with my nonspiritual request, or that she’d fallen asleep. I stared at a watercolor painting behind her of a person with golden light emanating from the crown of his head. I AM THAT I AM was inscribed on the bottom. I was about to clear my throat and say something more about the contest when Madame Bernese’s eyes shot open.

“Look within,” she said, her hands clamping on the metal table.

Why did everyone keep telling me that?

“There is more,” she went on, the words oozing like toothpaste . . .
Thayerrr ees mooore.
She opened her palm and raised her hand above the table. “Dig beneath surface. Find what is hidden.” Her voice was soothing and creepy at the same time, like she was trying to put me in a trance. I focused on the golden-light painting—I was
not
about to let some lady in a head scarf and chandelier earrings put me in a trance.

Madame Bernese blinked and shook her head. The peaceful expression on her face was gone. She looked bored.

“That’s it?” I asked, not meaning to sound as unimpressed as I was.

Madame Bernese shrugged. “Sometime it come fast. Simple.” She tucked a dyed-red strand of hair beneath her scarf. “You want more?”

“Some concrete guidance would be nice.”

Madame Bernese closed her marble eyes again. “It’s time to let it shine, that light of yours; it’s all within you. Let the truth reveal itself.”

What she said felt so familiar I was momentarily stunned. It was like my mind recognized the message on a deep soul level, like I’d been waiting to hear someone say it my entire life. For a split second I was in awe, until I realized Madame Bernese was quoting a Danny Beaton lyric. “Thanks,” I grumbled. “Haven’t heard that one before.”

Madame Bernese arched forward. Then she quoted the next verse:
“Be the light. Enter the realm of truth.”

“I think I’ve got it from here.” I shoved my chair from the table and stood. “Thanks.”

For nothing.

Lindsay waited outside the door at a mosaic side table with a crystal sword in the center. The little boy sat on the floor with a set of jacks. I didn’t wait for Lindsay to get up. I pushed through the front door and stepped onto the lawn.

The cars in the driveway were still turned on, their engines rumbling with the transfer of electricity. Sparks jumped from the cables into the darkening sky. It was that purple-and-navy time of night, just after the sun has set, but hasn’t abandoned you completely, still gifting glints of light across the shadows. It was the after-dinner and before-bed time when the world seems easier, more at peace with herself. It was the time of night my dad used to take me to the grotto by the lakes at Notre Dame—a hollowed-out stone cave formation lit with hundreds of glittering candles. Usually we just knelt on the wooden kneelers and said prayers. But when we talked, the cave made normal speech sound sacred.

I breathed the cold night air, imagining the slivers of golden light on the horizon seeping through me. A car engine groaned and sputtered in the distance. Wind gusted through the trees, making the skinny branches tremble. A white-haired woman emerged on a falling-down porch down the street and lit a cigarette. A guy pushed through the screen door and tried to take the cigarette away. I squinted as they argued. The guy looked so much like Xander. I watched him throw up his hands and retreat. His large frame lingered in the doorway before disappearing inside.
Was
that Xander?