His gaze sent Aya's shivers scattering across her skin, and she felt a flush returning to her cheeks and a tingle in her spine. His honesty was scary-making! Her head spun with all the questions she was dying to ask, but wasn't sure she could stand the answers to. About why he was here, and what he thought of their difference in ambition.
"You like me, don't you?" she said.
He laughed. "Was I being too subtle?"
"No, I guess not. But it doesn't make sense...because you're so famous and I'm an extra! Plus I'm an ugly and you keep seeing me wearing stupid robes or covered in slime and when we met I lied about my nose!"
Aya sputtered to a halt, wondering where all those words had come from. They'd just gushed out of her, like bubbly from a shaken bottle, fizzing and undrinkable.
"Wow," she said. "Is Radical Honesty contagious or something?"
"Sometimes." Frizz was grinning. "It's an unexpected benefit."
Aya felt herself blushing and tore her eyes from him, staring out at the soccer fields. Only a handful of warbodies remained standing, battering each other with plastic swords and battle-axes. "But why do you like me?"
He reached out and took her hand, and the reputation shivers became a tightness in Aya's chest, as if she were underwater again, holding her breath.
"When I first saw you outside that party, you were on a mission - very intense. And then your hood fell back, and I thought, 'Wow, she's pretty brave to wear that awesome nose.'"
Aya groaned. "But I'm not brave - I was just born with it. So it was a kind of truth-slanting for me to say it was randomly generated."
"True. But by the time I realized that, I knew other things about you."
"Like I'm an extra and live in an ugly dorm?" she said. "And mislead people about my huge nose?"
"That you sneak into tech-head parties and go on underwater rescue missions. And that you kick great stories, even though they don't bump your face rank."
She sighed. "Yeah, my stories are really good at doing that."
"Of course they are." He shrugged. "They're too interesting."
"That doesn't even make sense." She looked at him. "If they're so interesting, why isn't anyone interested?"
His eyescreen flickered. "Have you seen Nana Love's feed lately? She's been picking her outfit for the Thousand Faces Party. Today it's: 'This hat? Or this hat?' Seventy thousand votes so far, and there's a hundred other feeds running commentary."
Aya rolled her eyes. Nana was a natural-born pretty, one of the vanishingly rare people who wouldn't have needed surgery even back in the Pretty time. Which was why she was the second-most-famous person in the whole city. "That doesn't count. Nana-chan can be interesting without trying."
He smiled. "And you can't?"
She stared into his huge eyes, and for once they didn't tangle up her brain, as if some barrier between them had disappeared.
Suddenly Aya knew what she really wanted to ask him.
"What's it like, being famous?"
Frizz shrugged. "Pretty much the same, except a lot more people joining my clique - and then leaving after a week."
"But before Radical Honesty got so big, didn't you ever feel like something was missing? Like looking at the city and feeling invisible? Or watching the feeds and almost crying, because you know all their names and they don't know yours? Feeling like you might disappear, because no one's heard of you?"
"Um, not really. Do you feel that way?"
"Of course! It's like that koan they tell in littlie school. If a tree falls and nobody's watching, then it doesn't make a sound, like one hand clapping. You have to be seen before you really exist!"
"Um, I think that's two koans, actually. And I'm not sure that's the point of either."
"But come on, Frizz! You haven't been famous that long, you must remember how horrible it was to ..." Aya stammered to a halt, trying to read the look on his face. His radiant smile was gone.
"This is an odd conversation," he said.
Aya blinked. Ten minutes of Radical Honesty and already she'd been too honest.
"I'm being a total extra, aren't I?" She sighed. "Just sign me up for Radical Stupidity."
He laughed. "You're not stupid, Aya. And you're not invisible to me."
She tried to smile. "Just mysterious?"
"Well, not so much anymore. Verging on obvious."
"Obvious?"
"You know, about fame, and the way it makes you feel."
Aya swallowed. Obvious. That's what she was, in his radically honest opinion. Way too late, she remembered another thing they taught in littlie school: Complaining about your face rank to other extras was okay, but you didn't talk this way in front of anyone famous.
She turned away, staring out at the soccer fields, knowing that if she looked into Frizz's eyes again she'd say something else stupid. Or he'd blurt out more about what he was thinking, which would probably be worse. Maybe the feeds were right about differences in ambition, that big faces and extras should never get too close. There was too much opportunity for embarrassment.
The mech battle was over, and lifter drones were carting off the last few warbodies. Littlies were lining up in front of Akira Hall for their next activity.
"Oh, crap," she said. "What time is it?"
"Almost noon."
"I have to go!" She jumped up. "Littlie-watching duty. I'd skip it, but..." i need the merits, she thought.
Frizz still sat cross-legged on the hoverboard, his face clouded. "It's okay. You shouldn't break promises."
Aya bowed good-bye, wondering if this time he was glad to see her running away. She tried to think of something to say, but it all sounded too embarrassing in her head.
So she called for Moggle and dashed toward the dorm, hoping she wasn't late.
INITIATION
Something was pinging...
Aya emerged from a deep and sticky sleep, fighting dizzy-making waves of exhaustion. A noise was poking at her ears again and again, demanding her attention.
Even with her eyes closed, she could see a wake-up signal flashing in her eyescreen. It was blinking and making an earsplitting sound, warning her that it was almost midnight.