Are YOU ok? Pru typed at last. Hurriedly, she hit send, before her traitor brain could start waffling over whether asking sounded too weird.
A read receipt popped up almost immediately. More typing. More pauses. More typing again. Pru’s belly clenched once more, in a completely different way.
I’m asking Cat to bring a few of her gadgets, Alex texted at last. In case we end up in some kind of fight-or-flight situation.
Pru stared at that incredible nonanswer of a text. Better hope we don’t, she typed back with trembling fingers. Also, was that a pun?
The next text came far quicker than the earlier ones: You’ll be fine. Followed by: Also, don’t pun shame me. Accompanying the message was a winking animated dragon. The cheery little cartoon face was, Pru had to admit, stupidly adorable.
She bit her lip against a smile of her own, despite herself. Maybe he was right: she’d be fine. Maybe they’d all be fine.
10
DOUBLE DATE
Anabel and Alex covered all four tickets to the No Man’s Land weekend, which did a complicated series of things to Pru’s feelings. “You could probably write it off as a work-study expense and get the tickets covered by Coalition money,” Pru told Anabel.
The other girl waved her off gently, like Pru had just suggested writing off a food vendor’s pack of fries as a work-study expense. “Sure,” said Anabel, “but then we’d have to fill out, like, five million pages of paperwork. Besides,” her eyebrows climbed, “are you sure your mum would sign off on a boozy beach weekend, good cause or no?”
At that, Pru shut her mouth. She’d made good on Mama’s demands for weekly check-ins on her progress with Rebelwing, but blowing off homework for a weekend to help her friends spy on a bunch of evil arms dealers at a ritzy shoreside getaway probably fell outside the parentally approved parameters of acceptable internship activities.
“Thought so.” Anabel shrugged, then in an aside, meticulously off the cuff: “Don’t sweat the money, Pru-Wu.”
Pru knew, in a clinical sort of way, that Anabel, Alex, and most of Pru’s other school friends weren’t scholarship kids. Moments like these, though, the disparity between them still managed to sneak up on Pru. She remembered what Alex had said that day on the training fields: Your mother makes money from art, and you still attend prep school. You’re bourgeois too.
Fair enough, Pru conceded to the Alex in her head, jaw twitching. But there’s “moderately successful author’s daughter” bourgeois, and then there’s “throw money at No Man’s Land like it’s pocket change” bourgeois. Completely different species, dude.
* * *
THE REALITY OF WHAT she’d agreed to finally struck Pru hard between the eyes when the four of them arrived at the beachside rental. The cabin wasn’t a cabin at all. It was really a small, upscale house, painted a shade of lily white that perfectly matched the tops of the waves cresting gently against the pale stretch of shoreline. The little house sat atop a series of artfully winding stilts, granting it a bird’s-eye view of the beach. To get up to the front door, you hopped aboard an intricately carved, open-air lift—clearly designed by the same fanciful architect who dreamed up the stilts—where you swiped your key card for a winding journey skyward.
It was like a childhood treehouse fantasy crossed with a Coalition representative’s summer home. Pru unhinged her jaw to say so: “This is—”
“—an excellent vantage point for observing Incorporated activity,” finished Cat, with an approving little nod. It was maybe the happiest Pru had actually seen Cat look in real life.
“Um,” Pru began, then caught the warning glance from Anabel. “Sure, buddy. Great spy tower. The best . . . avant-garde treehouse spy tower money can buy.”
“Speaking of which,” said Anabel, “are we all clear on the plan?”
“This itinerary says dinner’s being catered at six P.M.,” said Alex, staring intently at his phone. “We should probably drop our stuff off and head over.” He talked as if mingling over fresh seafood and champagne was some sort of sting operation, which, given the entire reason they were all here, wasn’t actually that far off the mark. Pru sighed.
“I’ve gotten us a table next to a bunch of Incorporated executives— either rivals or old business partners to Jellicoe,” Anabel continued. “They’ll probably recognize my face or Alex’s from holo-tabloids. Either they’ll think we’re well-bred scions of our respectable political families, due to inherit Barricade Coalition leadership, or assume we’re spoiled teen socialites trying to impress our attractive yet comparatively uncultured commoner dates with family money and party invites. No offense to present company, of course.”
“None taken,” said Pru dryly.
“Our job is to convince them of the latter.” A gleam that spelled trouble had entered Anabel’s artfully cat-lined eye. “We want to seem unthreatening, so no one will suspect us of being worth attention, and also vaguely gross, so no one will want to pay attention to us.”
“So you’re proposing—”
“Public displays of affection!” concluded Anabel proudly. “Don’t look at me like that, Pru-Wu, I’m not telling you to make a porno. We just need to be disgustingly lovey-dovey enough at dinner to make our neighbors avert their eyes, so they’ll keep ignoring us when we show up for the fireworks display on the beach at nine P.M.”
“Makes sense,” said Cat, with a curt little nod, but the side of her gold-painted mouth ticked up as—to Pru’s amazement—she laid slightly possessive metal fingers over Anabel’s elbow. “Like this?”
Anabel beamed. “Exactly like this. Very good, Cat. Pru and Alex, watch and learn.”
Pru shook her head, coughing and ignoring the heat climbing up her neck, as she pointedly avoided making eye contact with Alex. “Fireworks display?”
“A euphemism for Jellicoe’s demo,” said Alex. How he could sound so grimly calm when Anabel was instructing them on how to fake hanky-panky for their stupid spy cover, Pru had no idea. “Incorporated arms dealers like to play coy with their toys—no one spells out ‘weapons demo’ in plain terms, but people invested in the industry have a way of knowing when and where it’s happening. Makes it feel more exclusive. Half of salesmanship is theatricality. We’ll have a few hours to kill between dinner and the demo, so let’s spend it scoping out likely investors in whatever Jellicoe’s selling.”
They wound up under a breezy white canopy, seated at a circular table sporting several ornate place settings, which made Pru painfully self-conscious of her cheap flip-flops and short-sleeved chambray frock, despite the tide washing up on the beach just down the hill from their little shindig. Seats were well-spaced for testing romantic waters: far apart enough to allow elbow room, close enough for neighbors to hold hands in plain sight. Around them, men and women in bright, expensive colors milled about, passing between waitstaff in elegant black and white.