Free Where Futures End by Parker Peevyhouse Page A

Get Out Of This Town.”
    â€œNot again,” Lola says.
    But I’m already full speed ahead into moody territory. “Push the button, Other One.”
    â€œStop calling me that,” he says, but he pushes the button.
    I inject flavor foam into Lover Boy With Big Plans. The giant TV screen quickly cuts to my feed. Mr. One always likes to get this on camera.
    I ignore the screen and consider Lover Boy’s sad smile. It’s been two months since Griffin left. He joined this street art movement in L.A. We still talk some. In fact, we talked just last week. He said he misses me; I asked him why he never calls. There was this long pause during which he was either breathing really loudly or the wind was hitting the mic on his e-frame, and then he said,
I always answer when
you
call
me, like that makes up for it. Then he told me I should come out to Santa Monica, and I told him he should ask his dad to. I admit that was a mean thing to say. We both know his dad can’t leave MyFuture until he pays off his debt. But I also think it’s mean to abandon your own dad when his only wrongdoing was that he lived off his credit card too long when his unemployment ran out.
    I can still hear Griffin’s voice, low and sad and mixed in with the sound of the ocean:
Brix . . . It’s hard here. It’s hard without you.
    It always kills me, that voice.
    Then come back,
I told him.
    I lean down close to Flavor Foam’s counter. I return Lover Boy’s sad smile, and for a moment it’s almost like we’re apologizing to each other for everything that’s happened. Then I pour my Coke on top of Lover Boy’s foam head. It eats through his face and comes bubbling back out of the mold. Fun fact: There’s a little bit of baking soda mixed in with the flavor foam. Keeps it foamy. Also turnsmolds into mini-volcanoes.
    A caption on the screen lets our customers—and any viewers—know that they can order Lover Boy With Big Plans To Get Out Of This Town plus a third-tier flavor gel for $12.99. And that Brixney herself will bring it to your table and would probably even pour her soda on it if you asked her real nice. Mr. One must be typing furiously up in the control booth.
    Then the old replay starts. Even though I’ve specifically asked Mr. One not to play it ever. It’s me and Griffin in our Flavor Foam uniforms, the old ones without the slimming panels we have now and you can really tell the difference. We’re making our Big Plans To Get Out Of This Town. The old Chevron Gas icon shines in the corner of the screen. I just made ten cents. Thanks a bunch, Mr. One.
    I decide to take my break early and head out to the patio overlooking the lake. I find a guy sitting on a marble statue of a soda can, very lifelike and squirting some type of brown liquid. The marble soda can, I mean. The guy isn’t lifelike. He’s sitting too still and when I hold up my e-frame, it can’t identify him. The screen shows a little clock icon and then, instead of displaying his name and online profile, just says, NOT FOR HUMAN CO NSUMPTION .
    My food scanner app is a little hyper, always jumping in before I ask it to.
    So he has no profile. Very interesting. Means he’s either a criminal who’s found a way to scrub himself from the Internet (except he’s too clean for that), an e-free whoshuns social media (expect he’s also too clean for that), or a richie-rich tourist with some outdated idea of discretion (of which we get plenty around here). His hair is shaggy, skin luminescent. I recognize his clothes from a boutique at the other end of the plaza. Definitely a richie-rich tourist.
    He gazes out across the plaza, ignoring the notebook in his hand and curiously watching preteens buzz about the pavilion where a Feed-Con expo is going on. In about an hour, all of those kids will be buzzing over to Flavor Foam for a snack break. Probably sans tip money. My calves ache