Awaken Read Free Page A

It felt like Justin’s presence stole the oxygen in the room. I tend to shrink when people look at me, as if my shoulders are sensitive to stares, but he was oblivious to the attention he was generating. He had on a dark baseball cap, pulled low over his forehead, but I could see tufts of dark brown hair spilling out around the edges. He wore faded jeans and a dark gray T-shirt. It made me feel a little better. Those girls might look like peacocks next to me, but from his apparel he didn’t seem to care about fashion either.
    He looked around the room and his gaze quickly passed over me. I wasn’t surprised. In my brown shirt I looked camouflaged with the other chairs. I watched him and observed his expression change. He slowly looked at each face sitting there as if he thought he was in the wrong room. He waved at the other girl sitting by herself and addressed the guy in the back of the room opposite me as Matt. Then he looked at me, this time full in the face. I felt myself blush, but his look wasn’t flirtatious. It was unbelieving, as if I shouldn’t be sitting there. I bit my bottom lip and my eyes fell down to my flipscreen.
    I kept my eyes on my screen until I heard the chair move next to me and was aware of him sliding into the seat. When I looked over at him, I was met with dark brown eyes that stared straight into mine.
    “Hi,” I mumbled. It was the standard social greeting so why was he looking at me like I was nuts?
    “Alex?” he asked me with disbelief.
    “It’s Madeline, actually. Alex is just one of my profile names.”
    He leaned back against the chair and studied me. My eyes flickered to the three girls in the front of the room, blatantly staring at us with their mouths open.
    “Madeline,” he said finally. I felt my stomach contract again and tried to ignore it. He took his baseball cap off and ran his fingers through a heap of brown messy hair.
    “Sorry I’m late. Traffic.”
    All I could do was stare at him. I felt my face heat up, infuriated he could see it. Meeting people in person makes you vulnerable, which my dad always preaches is a weakness.
    “How did you know it was me?” I asked. His eyes took a turn around the room.
    “I’ve seen them all before,” he said. “The real world’s getting pretty small. I think we’re an endangered species.” He looked back at me and there was a small grin on his lips, which forced me to stare at them too long.
    I jumped when Mike interrupted us to scan our fingerprints. I brushed mine against the small, portable screen he carried, about the size of a cell phone. Justin quickly scanned his finger and turned his attention back to me.
    “Just out of curiosity, why do you go by Alex in your profile?”
    I lifted my shoulders and kept my eyes on my flipscreen. “I hardly ever use my real name. I like to keep my identity private.”
    “Why?” he asked me. It was a simple question, but it felt like an attack.
    “Does it really matter?” I asked and my voice came out flat. Out of the hundreds of thousands of people I’d met online, I could count on one hand how many I’d met in person. I could make friends around the world without stepping out my front door. But people stretched themselves so thin, they started to lose shape. On-line we were all equal. Social status wasn’t important. Money and looks and jobs and clothes almost become obsolete. So who cares what my real name is? It’s just a label, like a particular brand of person. Who cares who sits behind it when we only meet in waves of space?
    Justin pursed his lips together as he thought about my question.
    “I was expecting a guy, that’s all,” he said finally.
    I noticed his empty hands. “Where’s your flipscreen?”
    He tapped his index finger against his temple. “It’s all in here.”
    “How are you supposed to do your homework?” I asked with a frown.
    He pointed at my computer. “Call me crazy, but I find those things more distracting than helpful. Don’t get me