don’t sound very fun.’ Nadine and I have been friends since we were ten. Her father died in a car crash the summer before I met her. She was buddied up with me that September. I think they thought we could bond over losing a dad, even though hers was a totally different thing to mine. I might not have closure, but she watched her father die. Very different sides to very different coins. But it worked, kind of. And now, I don’t know if we’re only friends because we have been for years. She doesn’t totally get me, and I’m not sure that I totally get her, either. And yet. ‘Come on. Gavin keeps asking.’
‘He doesn’t even know me.’
‘He does. He says that he thinks you’re well fit. He told Darren.’
‘Fine,’ I say. Not because I’m agreeing to go, or because I believe that Gavin said that, but because wriggling out of it will be much easier closer to the time. When I get cramps on Saturday morning, or when Mum properly grounds me – whatever lie is easiest to sell to her – she’ll have to accept I’m not going. For now, she’s happy. She grins, leans over, and kisses me. She does that, like a little seal of approval she makes every time she’s happy with something. Not a real kiss; just her lips in an O, pressed against my cheek; a trace of the lipstick we’re not allowed to wear to school.
‘You’re a properly wicked friend,’ she says. ‘What are you doing after school? I thought I’d go to Our Price.’ Nobody shops in Our Price any more, but Nadine’s got a habit of stealing the tape boxes. They keep all the cassettes up behind the counter, and you take the empty box up and they pick them out for you. Nadine’s started nicking the inlay cards. That way, she’s got the lyrics and everything, and she can borrow it off somebody else, make a copy of it, and she’s got the inlay card all ready to go. Looks like the real thing, tastes like the real thing, sounds like the real thing.
‘Lab time,’ I say, and she rolls her eyes right back, does this huff that’s so exaggerated I know it doesn’t come from anywhere that’s even close to real.
‘Oh my God. Will Pryin’ Ryan be there?’
‘Don’t call him that.’
‘You can tell though. He’s such a fucking perv.’
‘Oh he is not,’ I say, but I feel a bit weird, defending him.
‘He’s never been married. He’s not got any kids. He’s slightly twitchy, and jittery, and he’s old. And he talks really strange. He’s either a perv or a homo.’ Malice in her eyes. ‘Probably he’s both.’
‘He’s American.’
Another eye roll, and I can see the subject change in her mouth, opening it to start saying one thing, but changing her mind. ‘Have you got any new albums?’
‘I’ve got the new Björk,’ I say.
‘Lend it me?’ I can see her thinking about stealing the inlay card already.
‘I’ll just make you a copy,’ I tell her.
‘Love you,’ she says, and she gives me another of those stupid false kisses, then swoops off. She twitches her head like a little bird, glancing at the other tables as she passes them. She makes eye contact with some of the other students, just for a second; making sure they all get a tiny piece of her eye-attention. But for some of them she holds her gaze longer; really making sure that they notice.
Mr Ryan’s really pleased to see me. Excited, even. We’re the only people in the room, which means the door stays open. I don’t know if he’s a perv or not. I don’t know if you can even tell. He starts talking before I’ve put my rucksack down, though, he’s that excited.
‘I have to tell you, Laura, having spent a bit of time with her, Organon is quite the achievement. Really quite remarkable.’ He blinks, as if he should be wearing glasses and his eyes can’t quite focus. ‘It’s as if she knows exactly what to ask you. Almost spooky.’
‘It’s just a bit of code,’ I say.
‘Maybe so, but it doesn’t feel like it. Usually with software, you can see the cracks. But this is so far beyond anything I’ve seen like this. I get it, I understand it, how it works. It’s just … The cracks are plastered over. You know?’ He goes to a computer. Organon’s already running on it. ‘I’ve been playing with her some more, today.’ He must see my face react to that. I wonder how much I give away, moment to moment, and don’t even realise. ‘Don’t panic, nobody else was in here. This was just me. I wanted to look at the code, see if I could add in some of my own questions—’
‘You told me you wouldn’t do that,’ I say.
‘I didn’t cross any boundaries. I told you I wouldn’t. I wanted to see exactly where this came from. Where it could go.’ The air in the room turns stale so quickly. I can see him trying to work out how to defuse the situation, straining somewhere inside his head. ‘Look, Laura, I think I can be really helpful to you, here. I think you might have something.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Organon’s hugely impressive. She could have some amazing real-world use, you know. This is the sort of software that could be huge. I mean, you can’t sell her to consumers, but going into other companies’ product lines? You’ve built a really awesome interface, it works well, it’s smooth. There are a lot of companies looking for software like this that they can use. Make it their own, build upon it.’
‘You’ve told people about it, haven’t you?’ I know. I can tell. He’s not being vague. Those companies – and he used to work for some of them, he’s already told me that before – they already know about Organon.
He sighs. I know, from my mum, that a sigh pretty much always means a Yes. ‘It’s not as if she isn’t still yours, Laura. But you are going places. I’ve seen a lot of students in my time, and some of them are more skilled than others, and they fall by the wayside because they don’t have any way of focusing what it is that they’re actually doing. But I could help you get Organon into the right hands.’
‘Give it back to me,’ I say. I’ve never spoken to a teacher that way before. I don’t even know how he’ll react.
‘I’m not trying to—’
‘Then give it back.’ I sit down in front of the computer and I shut down Organon, and I delete the installation file. Get rid of it, clear the trash.
‘Laura, please don’t be so rash.’ His voice is stern, like a slap, or as close as he can get. Before this, he’s been as still as a lake. Now, ripples drag across his forehead.
‘Where’s the zip drive?’
‘It’s at home,’ he says.
I stand up. I go to the door, and I can hear voices down the corridor. I want to be near them, not him. ‘Bring Organon back to me tomorrow,’ I say, and I go, I leave. I don’t give him a chance to reply. It’s only when I’m outside the building, walking across the playground – people saying Hi to me, and I totally ignore them, and again I can tell what my face must look like, from their reflecting it in their own reactions – that I realise he must have been lying. He installed it here, so he must have had it with him. I run back, but the lab is empty, the door locked, the lights out.
Even if he gives it back to me, he could make a copy of it. Keep it installed on his computer at home. And that shouldn’t bother me, because I let him take it; but it hurts me so much, having no way of knowing if there’s another version of it still out in the world. If it’s no longer just mine.
Stub follows me as I run upstairs to my room. I take my matches out of the drawer and place them on the desk in front of the keyboard. One single match out, like always, lined up and ready for me. I flick through my tapes. Paul said, last birthday, that they’d get me a CD player, and I told them I didn’t want one. I kind of like that tapes are impermanent. Even the ones you buy from the shop you can still record over: stick a bit of tape over the security