Linked

Fourteen : Excruciating

We make it to the small downstairs dining room with ten minutes of breakfast to spare. With a quick squeeze of my shoulder, Corin heads straight for a table in the corner laden with cereals, fruits, and cold cardboard-like toast. It takes some effort to suppress the wince as my body protests violently, wanting to follow him. 

The room has only three other people pulled up at scattered tables - all men, reading newspapers and sipping coffee. Its bitter smell permeates the air. I had feared running into the lanky man from the front desk, but thankfully can't spot him anywhere. I couldn't bear to face him after his embarrassing assumption last night. It makes me flush just thinking of it. I take a seat at the smallest table, wedged in the corner beneath a large window sealed against the gloom and spits of rain. There's a pitcher of orange juice and clean glasses atop the white linen tablecloth so I fill one for myself, and one for Corin. I try not to clink the glassware too loudly, hoping the other guests don't look over and notice I'm a woman. I really have no valid reason to be at this breakfast table. If I were here for... well, what the receptionist accused... I certainly wouldn't have stayed over for small talk and cornflakes with my "client".

"Corin," I Link as he plonks himself across from me, sliding a bowl of oatmeal and a banana in my direction. It's too quiet to talk aloud. "When we scan our Calorie Trackers they might come for us." His foot finds mine beneath the table, stopping the ache of distance. Embarrassingly, I blush. Even though the contact is necessary now, it feels too soon. Too soon after Jesse, or simply 'too soon', I am not sure. Corin shrugs, chewing oatmeal as he replies directly into my mind.

So we don't scan them.

My gaze flicks to a menu lying on the table, between the juice glistening with perspiration, and our bowls. Each item is prefaced by a barcode, compulsory to touch your Calorie Tracker to. Some items will scan themselves as soon as you pick them up to take a bite. It's for our own good, my father insists. We should all be aware of our daily intake and keep an eye on our nutrition levels. The information, we are told, is also fed to the Medical Institutes, automatically filed away, every citizen with his or her own eternally logging statistics. Just not scanning goes against every natural instinct. It's what you do, an automatic habit from birth.

Corin must notice my hesitation.

What are they gonna do? Nothing. There's nothing they can do. Benna, they won't be surprised when your nutrition stats are blank. If you've been "kidnapped" they will be expecting zilch. For all they know your kidnapper is feeding you nothing but water.

"Technically you're my kidnapper," I reply, raising an eyebrow.

This makes him chuckle, and for a moment I'm treated to a glimpse of that dimple again. Winter sunlight gushes through the window behind him, illuminating his crazy tousled hair like some sort of halo. There's no denying he's attractive, so I can't say why I'm so hesitant to enjoy all this forced intimacy. Perhaps I'm a prude. Layla, Jesse's ex, had suggested such when he dumped her for me. The truth was I wasn't a prude by choice, it was lack of experience. All the boys at school were scared of me - that was my mother's well-meaning theory, not that it did much to cheer me up.

Corin's chuckle echoes off the walls, drawing eyes to us. He lowers his head and we finish our food quickly and in silence. I am very careful to keep my wrist away from the menu and its ladder of barcodes.

I'm going to fill my backpack with some fruit and things for snacks. Wait outside and I'll be with you in a minute. Corin whispers. His eyes are locked on mine, but his mouth is still and I hear his voice only in my head.

***

"You've never seen the sea?" Corin asks again, incredulously. He leans on the metal railing as we stand on the docks watching seagulls dip and soar. I am startled each time by the volume of their shrieking. Corin seems nonplussed.