The Boy In My Head

18

I blink a few times because I don't know what to say. Then realization hits me. "Hold on. I never told you about the girls at Aline's party." "Well, uh," J.P. runs his hand on the side of his neck. Nerves, I guess? "You kind of did." "But I didn't. I only told one person about that." "Yeah," J.P. says. "Uh, me." "No," I insist. "I only told Park—" I stop midsentence. Oh. My. God. But . . . How? J.P. sees the realization written all over my face. He can't hold back the crack of a smile that forms at the corners of his mouth. All I can do is stare at him, and he nods back. "You're Parker?" I ask in disbelief. J.P. nods again. I shake my head, refusing to believe it. "I don't get it. You don't even have the latest upgrade. How did you get in my head?" "I'm sorry," he says, avoiding my gaze. "All I wanted to do was finally talk to you. You wouldn't talk to me face-to-face, so I had to improvise." "What are you saying?" I ask sternly so that he'll look at me. J.P. takes a few seconds to meet my eyes. "I'm saying that working at Verde has its perks, I guess. It was easy to hack into the system, especially when the kinks on this version haven't been ironed out yet." I nearly explode. "You purposely hacked into my implant and listened to my thoughts?" "No," he assures me, shaking his head. "I swear. The program isn't built like that. I promise I could only hear what you wanted me to hear." "You always knew what to say, though," I point out, fury still full in my voice. "Like the day of Aline's party, you asked me what was wrong before I even said anything to you." J.P. gives a bit of a laugh like it's his little secret. "I have access to your data, Rachel. We don't store everything, but I can see things like your heart rate and what you're searching online in real-time as long as you're connected to your watch." "But you still hacked into it," I accuse. "Just because you have access to some of my data doesn't mean you should have access to all of it." J.P. sighs lightly. "I'm not going to say I'm sorry. I learned more about you in the past few weeks than I learned in all the years that we've known each other." I bite my bottom lip because I'm not sure how to respond. "But you didn't have a right," I finally tell him.

He shifts in his chair. "I get it if you're mad at me, but like I said, I'm not sorry." In his following silence, I take a moment to think about why he did it. Would I do the same thing given the same circumstances? I want to be mad at him with all my might. I want to tell him to get out of the room. I want to pull the implant out of the back of my head. I want to— Wait. The implant . . . I reach up to feel the back of my neck, but it's completely smooth. Suddenly, I'm more concerned about where my implant is than what J.P. did. A look of horror crosses my face, and I start to push myself up from the bed. Why am I in the hospital anyway? And what happened to my implant? "It's fine," J.P. assures me. He rises from his chair and places a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Calm down." I lean back until my head touches the pillow again. "What happened to it?" I ask after a moment. I haven't lived without my implant since I was six. Having nothing at the base of my skull is nerve- racking. "They took it out," J.P. explains. "What? Why?" "Your headaches are gone, aren't they?" I nod.