Trade Me Read Free Page B

attendance represents.
    “By contrast,” I say, “I have an hour between this class and my next one. If I can’t knock off one of my assignments in that time, I will be up until two tonight.”
    His smile fades.
    “I’m sorry,” I say. “You’re probably a legitimately decent person. But I don’t have time for your apology.”
    “Two-second version, then. I’m sorry I was clueless. I’ll try to do better.”
    He looks at me, his eyes serious, and that damned
something,
that coiling awareness in my stomach starts up again. It almost makes me mad that he won’t let me walk off steeping in my anger. No; he has to take that away from me, too.
    “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” I say, and I start to leave.
    “Tina.”
    I turn back reluctantly.
    “You were right about almost everything you said,” he says. “But there was one thing you were really wrong about.”
    “Oh?”
    He gives me another one of his smiles, and this one seems to curl around me, catching me up in a wave of warmth. “You said that I didn’t notice people like you.” His voice lowers. His eyes are relentlessly blue, and they cut into me. “That’s completely false. You’ve never been invisible to me. I saw you the first day we crossed paths, and I’ve been seeing you ever since.”
    I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to think. Against my better judgment, that little spark of something ignites in my stomach. A flame dances, ready to catch fire.
    But I have to be vigilant.
    “On the contrary,” I hear myself say. “This morning, you cut in front of me in the parking lot. You were three inches from me. And…” I hold up my sleeve, showing the damage.
    He winces.
    “So when I said you didn’t see me, I meant it. Literally.”
    His eyes shut. “Shit.”
    “It’s okay,” I tell him. “I’m used to it.”

2.

    BLAKE
    The kitchen window of my house high up in the Berkeley Hills overlooks fog-shrouded waters, interrupted by the bulk of San Francisco to the south and the illuminated towers of the Golden Gate Bridge further north.
    Twilight is coming and I haven’t turned on any lights. I’m surrounded by granite and stainless steel, and I’m considering the benefits of an apple that I’ve rinsed, when my phone rings.
    To be precise, it’s not actually my phone. It’s the highly experimental video chat app on my even more experimental watch.
    My pulse picks up a few beats. I love my dad. But there is, after all, a reason why his ring tone is the ominous-sounding Imperial March from Star Wars. He’s difficult, demanding…and I’m not about to make him wait. I tap my watch, accepting the call.
    He appears on the tiny watch screen. Reduced to thumbnail size, he looks exactly like his publicity photos. His eyebrows are thick and bushy; his hair is turning to salt and pepper. Other than the hair, though, he looks a lot like me. Same wiry build. Same blue eyes; same Roman-centurion nose.
    “Blake.” He must be at one of his standing desks, because he paces back and forth, his head shifting. In the back of my mind, I notice that the video is finally following his movements with nary a glitch. He frowns at me. “You’re backlit.”
    “Julio,” I say. “Lights.”
    My kitchen lights come on in a dazzle of brilliance—all of them, from the bright, recessed LEDs overhead to the warm under-cabinet lights that catch the gold flecks in the granite counter.
    At the exact same time, the lights in my dad’s office shut off.
    “Goddammit,” Dad says. “There’s an unintended consequence. Julio, lights.”
    Obligingly, his experimental computerized environmental system turns his lights back on—and just as obligingly, mine plunges my kitchen back into darkness.
    Dad lets out a sharp bark of laughter. I cross the room and flip the lights on old school with my elbow. “Okay, I’ll file the bug report. What’s going on?”
    I’m holding the apple in my hand opposite the watch. I got it from the fridge a minute