Bumped Read online

  “Harmony!” Zen and I shout simultaneously.

  I race to the front door. As annoyed as I am that she’s still here, I’m relieved that she’s not out there providing Ventura Vida and the rest of the Pro/Am with a new excuse to kick me out of the club entirely.

  I fling open the door, amped to unleash a version of my own parents’ favorite lectures about personal responsibility, when I’m confronted not with Harmony at all, but a hulking teenage boy I’ve never seen before in my life.

  “It’s you,” he says simply.

  This fair-haired, ruddy-faced stranger is wearing a straight-cut black suit and a white shirt buttoned to his thick neck, no tie. A black, broad-brimmed felt hat sits on his head, and muddy lace-up work boots are on his feet. Behind him is a beat-up suitcase very similar to the one Harmony brought with her yesterday.

  “One guess where’s he’s from,” Zen says, reading my mind.

  He makes a move to hug me with massively muscled arms.

  “Back off, farmboy!” I snap back. “I don’t know who you are! But I’m not who you think I am.”

  He looks bashfully at his feet. I’ve embarrassed him.

  “You’re twin sisters.” Then he mumbles something else that sounds like “shoulda known.”

  “Yes, I’m Melody,” I say. “And you must be Ram.”

  “Ma’am,” he stammers, eyes back on this boots.

  “Ma’am!” Zen thinks this is hilarious.

  “You look just like her.” Ram’s lips barely move when he talks. It’s a wonder I can make out any words at all.

  “Well, we are identical twins,” I say. “That’s usually how it works.”

  He looks at the ground and says nothing. He wears his suit uncomfortably, as if it’s two sizes two small. His shoulders are hunched up around his ears but his arms hang heavy at his sides, like he’s carrying burlap sacks of flour or cornmeal or whatever he carries in burlap sacks around Goodside.

  “Unfortunately, your fiancée isn’t here,” Zen says.

  “My what?” Ram asks, a genial if befuddled smile on his face.

  I don’t understand what’s going on here, and it’s not only because I need a translation app to decode Ram’s mush-mouthed mangling of the English language.

  “Har-mo-ny,” Zen says, speaking very slowly and deliberately. “Mel-o-dy’s twin sis-ter.”

  “Right,” Ram says, now looking anywhere but at us. “Your twin.”

  Then he raises his left arm and holds up his left hand, revealing a solid-gold band on his fourth finger. Having remained impossibly still throughout this conversation up to now, this modest gesture has the attention-stealing impact of Jondoe’s half-naked humpdancing in the infamous Tocin commercial. But that’s nothing compared to what he says next.

  “And my wife.”

  THIRD

  We shouldn’t be using hardworking American taxpayer dollars to pay Americans to pregg because pregging is patriotic and America is the greatest nation under God, so God bless America and Americans!

  —“Mission: Maternity,” Fox and Freedom Party

  ZEN’S BOPPING HIS HIPS BACK AND FORTH, WAGGLING HIS finger in whole world’s face, mimicking the famous moves that go along with Fed Double X’s first hit, “Toldja (So).”

  “I toldja toldja . . . Coulda bought and soldja soldja. . . .”

  Zen is never happier than when finding out that one of his hypotheticals isn’t so hypothetical after all.

  “I toldja toldja toldja toldja soooooooo. . . .”

  I grab a pillow and two-handed hurl it at Zen with all my might. It takes him out at the knees and he keels over.

  “AAARGH. WATCH THE ARM. . . .”

  Meanwhile Ram is lying on my couch with his eyes closed, wearing a cold-pack helmet that has saved my brain after countless soccer balls to the skull. Because Ram sure sounds like he suffered a major blow to the head, this helmet was my best attempt at trying to make him feel better.

  “Harmony isn’t here?” Ram asks for the dozenth time.

  He clearly isn’t the most communicative person on his best days, let alone after finding out that his wife has vanished off the grid.

  “Where could she be?”

  “We don’t know. She didn’t leave a message. Her suitcase is still here, though.”

  Zen speaks for both of us because I too have lost the ability to communicate intelligibly let alone intelligently.

  “She can’t go far,” Ram says. “Her cabdriver told me she traded her ring to pay for her trip.”

  “Her wedding ring?” Zen asks.

  Another nod.

  “Oooh, that’s cold.”

  I remember the edge in Harmony’s voice when the Babiez R U salesgirl asked whether she was wearing a ring under her glove. No wonder she got so defensive!

  “It wasn’t worth much.” Ram’s voice sounds high and hysterical now, like it’s being strangled in the back of this throat. “But it was the best I could do.”

  And then he presses his face into his hands to hide his tears.

  I shoot Zen a panicked “Now what?” look. I’m really not good at stuff like this. Touchy-feely stuff. I mean, I aced the EQ exam, but that’s only because my parents hired a tutor to drill me in all matters emotional.

  Zen brings his arms together in a circle and pantomimes a way overdue pregg.

  “What?” I mouth.

  Zen now strokes his bodacious invisible bump.

  “Why are you pretending to pregg?”

  Ram opens his eyes to see this.

  “I’m pretending to hug,” Zens wails in exasperation. “This man needs a hug.”

  When I don’t go for it, he starts ripping his hair out.

  “GIVE HIM A HUG.”

  Ram pushes his palm at me. “No, ma’am.”

  Zen chuckles again at “ma’am.”

  “That ain’t right. I am a married man.” This message is as clear as it gets. Then his eyes well up again.

  “Why don’t YOU hug him, Zen?”

  “Naw!” Ram recoils, horror-stricken. “That ain’t right either!”

  Clearly, Ram is twitchy about man-to-man contact.

  “We didn’t know you were married,” Zen says, slapping him on the shoulder in a very hetero way that still makes Ram go rigid. “She told us she was engaged.”

  “Actually, Zen,” I say, slowly hitting on the truth. “She never said she was engaged. I just assumed that she was engaged because of the way she was dressed when she showed up here.” I turn to Ram. “She made a big deal about wearing the veil.”

  I didn’t ask enough questions. Or any questions at all, really. I was too busy thinking about myself, and how her arrival in my life would mess it up.

  “How did you know to find her here anyway?” I ask Ram as gently as possible.

  He’s quiet for at least a minute before he finally exhales a tremulous breath and says, “Until she found out about you, she didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  This is not the response I was expecting.

  Zen suddenly hops up and says, “I have an idea to help this conversation along!” He bounces over to my parents’ fully stocked bar, messes around for a few moments, then comes forward with a short glass of dark liquid. Gah. Somewhere in the African savannah, Ash and Ty’s GUARDIAN alarm is going off.

  “Take this,” Zen says to Ram.

  “What is it?” Ram hiccups.

  “This,” Zen says, holding out the glass, “is a shot of premium aged whiskey. It will help open up your mind.” He turns to me and whispers, “And your mouth.”

  Zen might be a bit of a genius. A light buzz might actually make Ram less self-conscious and more communicative—I mean, I know I’m far more fluent in Mandarin after I’ve knocked back a few. But the manboy isn’t having it.

  “Nononono.” Ram pinches his mouth and shakes his head.

  “Okaaay,” Zen says in resignation. “I didn’t want to have to give up my stash but . . .” He reaches into his back pocket, pinches a t
iny baggie containing a small green pill. “How about this . . . vitamin. A vitamin that will make everything feel better!”

  That’s no vitamin. That’s a 10 mg of Tocin!

  “I want to feel better,” Ram says in a small voice.

  Without another word, I yank Zen out of the common room.

  “WATCH THE ARM. That arm belongs to the number-one-ranked—”

  “Pause it!” I hiss. “Have you gone terminal? What are you of all people doing with that stuff anyway? I thought you were all against the, um, chemical manipulation of our most basic animalian instincts or, um, whatever.”

  Zen talks so much that it’s difficult to remember anything that he actually says.

  “You’re overreacting,” he says.

  “For serious? You were the one to go manifesto on Shoko when she was dosing. About how it’s totally illegal to hold without a scrip.”

  Up until now, I thought Zen and I were the only two sophomores at Princeton Day Academy who hadn’t dosed. It’s a popular party drug, way easier to score than beer, weed, or even Oxy. Lib always warned me to stay away from illicit recreational use because he’d seen too many clients breach contracts with amateur bumpings that would have never happened without it.

  “If you want to get all high and humpy, that’s your choice. But who knows how he’ll react?”

  “Have you looked at him?” Zen asks incredulously. “He’s a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound mountain of muscle. That’s a tiny dose for a Goliath like him. It’ll be enough to make him feel good, but not too good.”

  “I want to feel good,” Ram says from the other room.

  “Good enough to tell us the truth about that mysterious sister of yours,” Zen says. “The one who is out there impersonating you as we sit here and have this debate.”

  I sigh, knowing this is really our best option for getting any answers out of Ram that will make any sense. Plus, if he gives the Tocin to Ram, he can’t take it himself and use it with . . .

  Whomever Zen planned to use it with.

  “Zen?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If he tries to impregnate my couch, you’re cleaning it up.”

  “You can’t be the designated driver as many times as I have and not know how to clean up such messes,” Zen replies affably, as if none of this is out of the ordinary. “Besides, that only happens when you crush and snort it.”

  I don’t even want to know how he knows that.

  HIS VOICE—RESONANT AND REASSURING—IS THE FIRST sound I hear.

  “We’re here.”

  I’ve had my senses shut off for the whole wild ride. How long we’ve been chased, I can’t say. It might have been an instant or an eternity.

  “Don’t worry,” he says in his smooth, soothing voice. “You’re with me. I’m a pro.”

  I’m with Him. That’s all I need to hear. There’s nothing to fear as long as he’s beside me. Ready to know the unknowable, I slowly open my eyes to see . . .

  A parking lot?

  “We’re at the Avatarcade,” he says. “You’re into 4-D, right?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Really? I thought I read in your file. . . .” He stops himself again. “I went to the first Avatarcade when it opened in Tokyo a few years ago. I’m not so into facespace role-play but it was all the surge on the MiNet and I wanted to see what all the yawping was about. So I go there and guess what? The Jondoe avatar was their top seller! Japan loves me! I had no idea! I’ve been making major yen off my simulation rights but I didn’t even know it. Anyway, I wanted to try out the Jondoe avatar, you know, to see how others experience being me, but they wouldn’t let me because there’s risk of a permanent schizophrenic split.”

  I don’t even pretend to know what he’s saying.

  “It’s go time,” Jondoe says. He hands me a smaller pair of mirrored sunglasses that are otherwise identical to his own. “There will be more of what we had before, so wear these.”

  I put them on only because he seems to know what’s going on and I don’t.

  “I’ll get out and say my lines to the paps. All you have to do is look at me adoringly and smile. Then we’ll slip back into the car without going inside. The whole scene will take about a minute, then we’ll move on to the next location. The paps all know the deal, we worked it all out in advance. It’s all been awesomely staged.”

  And just when I’m about to beg God for his forgiveness, that I never wanted to be deceitful about my true identity, Jondoe gets out the car and shouts, “Get out of our facespace! We only want to role-play in peace!”

  And then he comes around to my side and throws open the door and I’m again bombarded with flashing lights as I was at Melody’s house. Only now, through the filtered lenses of the glasses, I can see the truth behind where they’re coming from.

  “If you scummers don’t leave us alone, I’ll have to put an end to my charity work!”

  I’m not being chased by angels . . .

  “Miss Melody Mayflower is just regular girl! She deserves her privacy!”

  I’m being chased by the press.

  Jondoe rushes to my side and wraps his arms around me. He whispers in my ear, “Give ’em what they want! That’s the deal! Or they’ll never leave us alone.”

  Too stunned to think for myself, I look up at him in adoration, smile for the cameras.

  I’m blinded by the explosion of flashes. Dazed, I slip back into the car.

  Moments later, Jondoe is beside me once again.

  “I knew you were a natural,” he says, tearing out of the parking lot.

  “I FEEL GOOD,” RAM SAYS. “I FEEL BETTER.”

  Zen nudges me in the shoulder. He’s mouthing “toldja toldja” and doing a downscaled version of the dance. He’s not taking any of this seriously. I reach for another pillow and threaten him with a penalty kick to the manparts. He stops the dance.

  “Do you feel like telling us about Harmony?” I ask Ram trepidatiously, pulling the pillow in front of my chest. I don’t want him getting any amorous ideas.

  He tilts his head to the side. “Sure,” he says loosely.

  He’s already unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, removed the ice helmet and muddy boots. He’s now nestling his large frame into the oversize couch cushions, his whole body totally at ease.

  “You can start talking now.”

  He looks genuinely surprised. “Oh, you mean now?”

  I’m trying my best to be patient, to remind myself that it isn’t his fault he’s one haybale short of whatever haybales are used for.

  “Yes, now.”

  “All right,” he says seemingly unaware of my agitation. “Well, we were all shocked when Harmony told us that she had found an identical twin sister.” He stops and dips his head in my direction. “That’s you.”

  I’m smiling so hard my teeth might fall out.

  “You look just like her,” he says. “Are you sure you aren’t her?”

  I roll my eyes. “Just keep talking.”

  “Sure,” he says genially. “And by the next prayer service, she had the whole settlement praying on you. How thrilling it must have been for you to feel our prayers filling up that God-shaped hole in your soul!”

  Unless prayer can be mistaken for the indigestion brought on by too many instant chimichangas, I haven’t felt a thing.

  “Harmony really, really wanted to witness to you. She felt awful guilty that she had been chosen to live with the Church and that you had been forced to live in sin through no fault of your own. It didn’t seem just, especially when it could have just as easily gone the other way round. And the more she talked to you and got to know you, the more she was worried about you living without the Bible out here in Otherside and not having God and suffering in a Jesus-free eternity and all that bad stuff. She became convinced that it was her mission in life to save you from wickedness in this life and the next. Especially when she found out that you were selling your babies.”

  He says all this without a tr
ace of judginess in his voice. He’s simply stating the truth as he sees it.

  “Harmony believed that once you met her you would want to move to Goodside, get married, and join our household.”

  “She really believed that?” Zen asks. “She clearly doesn’t know Melody.”

  “And I certainly don’t know Harmony, do I?” I retort.

  Ram keeps talking. “That’s Harmony, for you. Dedicated to ministering to the unchurched, more than any other girl in our settlement. Especially after the bust-up of her first engagement.”

  Ooooh. Now we’re getting somewhere.

  “What happened to the first fiancé anyway?” I ask.

  Ram stiffens. “Well, he up and married someone else, one of her other housesisters, actually. The Council prayed on it and decided she wasn’t ready. They said Harmony asked too many questions. Too hardheaded and rebellious to husband to. I thought that was a load of goose poop.” He pauses. “Until . . .”

  Until she ran off without him.

  Ram is clearly hurting, and yet he’s reluctant to say anything neggy about his wife.

  “She had hoped you would come out to see her, but you didn’t. When she went missing I knew right away that she had disobeyed the Orders and gone Wayward to see you. I just don’t understand why she wanted you to believe she was engaged and not . . .”

  The unsaid “married” just hangs there, suspended by the palpable tension. It’s what we all want to know, but none of us can answer. Ram’s eyes are getting all watery again, which makes me nervous that maybe the Tocin isn’t as powerful as we thought it would be.

  “Why would she leave without me?” He tries to smile again. And fails.

  I make my best guess. “You’re telling us it’s against the rules to leave the settlement, right?”

  Ram nods. “Except for approved missionary trips or trade, yep. She’s Wayward right now for sure. She’ll have to wear a red dress when she returns.”

  “A red dress?” Zen and I ask.

  “Red’s the color for shunning,” Ram says grimly, twisting at his wedding ring.

  Shunning? “How long will she be shunned?” This is alarming, to say the least.