My suspicions that this was a date were confirmed when Jin insisted on paying for my americano, plus a blueberry muffin for us to share. The only available seating at the little coffee place on campus was the tall table in the center. I climbed onto a stool as I took a sip of my drink, not surprised to find that it wasn't nearly as good as the place on my block.

"So what are you going to invent?" he asked, landing on the stool next to me. But he seemed to realize he was craning his neck too much to look at me. "Wait, this isn't working. Hold, please."

I laughed a little awkwardly when he hopped down and zipped around the table so he could face me instead.

"Better?" he asked.

"Much better," I agreed. He was pretty cute now that I was getting a good look at him. Just a few inches taller than me with a lean swimmer's body and spiky hair. He had movie-star teeth, too, which made me think his parents had made some orthodontist very rich.

"Cool, I'll start over. Wait, what did I ask?"

"Um, inventions for Sanchez's class. But I don't really know yet. What about you?"

"Okay, so here's the part where I impress you. Are you ready?"

"I'm ready," I said, laughing again.

"So my brother was born deaf. He's got these Cochlear implants. You know, they go inside his head and they help him hear."

"Yeah, I know what they are."

"And so I was thinking: why stop there? He's already got all this hardware in his head and it's only serving one function. Why not install some more software into it?"

"What do you mean? What would the software do?"

"Anything. Books on tape. Mozart. I mean, it's wired right into his head. He could just be like, mm, I've got five minutes. I think I'll learn Swedish. And then the program would just start teaching him Swedish for five minutes."

I smiled, sipping my drink and feeling the pressure that it was my turn to talk. But all I could think about was wires sticking into my brain and teaching me Swedish.

"You're not impressed," he said, disappointed.

"No, I'm just thinking—I don't know if I'd want to have all those voices in my head."

"Well, you already do. We all do. We're being bombarded all the time with information. What do you think your phone is?"

"But is it too invasive?"

"Well, he's used to that. I mean, it's just for learning. It's not, like, mind control."

I nodded, realizing that I was coming off as a bit combative. I didn't know what to do with my hands and so I just kept them both on my cup. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's a good idea."

He buried his head, but then looked up and smiled again. "So you don't know what you're inventing yet?"

"Oh, I'm inventing mind control," I answered without missing a beat. "Yeah, I've decided that the problem with society is that people are liars. So I'm going to invent a device that stops them from lying."

"Like Minority Report!"

"Exactly."

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

I almost knocked my coffee over. Did he just switch topics again? "Um..." I had to stop and laugh before I could go on. "No, I don't."

"Cool. I'll take you to the movies on Friday."

I nodded instinctively, taking a second to realize it had been a statement and not a question. I laughed again, this time in shock. "Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Jin, nice to meet you," he said, extending his hand to shake mine.

"Nice to meet you," I played along, shaking his hand.

We hopped off our stools, a silent agreement that it was time to head to Futurism. I walked the length of the campus about a foot away from him, not really hearing the rest of what he was saying, until I slipped on a puddle of ice and fell hard on my ass.

Luckily, the coffee cup was empty by then.

*

The movie was instantly forgettable. A comedy with obvious pratfalls and more than one joke about toilets not functioning properly. Every now and then, Jin would look at me over the large popcorn tub we were sharing and I would smile for his benefit. At one point, he put his arm around my shoulder and I smiled again, reminding myself that this was what normal people did.

I kept thinking of those wires sticking into his brother's brain, the ones he would program to teach him things. Except my tubes were reminding me to smile and act happy.

By the end of the movie, I had decided we were all nothing but hardware, easily reprogrammed depending on what was wrong with us. My brother's little white lithium pills tweaking his brain chemistry; my little gray birth control pills tweaking my uterus so my cramps wouldn't be so bad. Our phones in our pockets, feeding us a constant stream of information that defines our reality.

But if my time in Down World taught me anything, it's that reality is constantly changeable. We choose diverging paths, and yesterday disappears.

You don't need a portal to do it, either. Just look at my aunt.

"Did you like it?" Jin asked as the lights came up. I blinked at him momentarily. The movie had ended.

"So funny," I said, grabbing my purse from below the seat.

We took a Lyft back to my place so he could drop me off, but when the driver stopped the car in front of my brownstone, he got out too.

I fumbled stupidly with my coat once we were standing on the front stoop. He leaned over and kissed me, and all I could think of was his perfect, straight teeth. I wasn't ready for this. Would I ever be ready again?

"I have a lot of homework," I said, a ridiculous lie on a Friday night.

He stepped back and stared at me, quizzical, studying me for flaws. "You do have a boyfriend, don't you?"

"What? No."

"You do. That's why you're acting this way."

His tone was harsh, colder than I had expected.

"I'm just..." I couldn't think of an end to the sentence. Suddenly, I heard Adam's voice in my head: I need to be proud of myself.

"Forget it," Jin said, starting to walk away. But then he turned back to confront me. "I thought you didn't like liars."

"Jin, wait—"

"It's fine, Marina. I'll see you in class."

He was gone before I could say anything else. I got out my keys as I turned to my front door, but I didn't end up needing them. Piper was already home, and as soon as I saw her in the entryway, I burst into tears.

She had me in her arms before I knew it. "Bad date, huh?" she asked.

I could only nod, burying my head against her shoulder.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

But I shook my head. Piper and Robbie didn't know about Adam. I could never tell them. What if Piper remembered him from when she was a freshman? What if they found out he was a teacher at the high school?

What would they think of me if they knew?

"Come on," Piper whispered. "Robbie's not home. Let's go snuggle in bed."

I smiled as I followed her up the stairs to their bedroom. This was something we used to do a lot when on nights when Robbie was studying late. Sometimes we would watch TV, or she'd sleep while I did my homework. The bed was Piper's safe place, a haven she would invite you into for warmth.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Piper said, her head on the pillow facing mine.

"I just don't know how to do it," I said.

"Do what?"

"Forget."

She nodded, her eyes taking on a heavy quality when she realized what I was talking about. All of us who had been into DW had that look in our eye sometimes. There were things only we knew about, things that would never really let us go.

"Let's just lie here for a while," she suggested. "There's nothing else you have to do."

I closed my eyes while Piper stroked my hair, a motherly gesture that made me realize how much Robbie and I had both made her into the missing link of our family.

"Sleep," she suggested, but I was already drifting away. The bedroom was filled with pictures of Piper's parents, childhood vacations to the Grand Canyon and the Empire State Building. A hand-sewn pillow that simply said "love." Her father's eyeglasses mounted in a frame behind plastic, perfectly preserved.

The safest place in the world.

****

You guys know I only include a music video if it's PERFECT, so seriously, listen to it.

And I know it's been a lot of build-up, but trust me: You do NOT want to miss next week.

https://youtu.be/BtQzOkLZBAw