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with? We could make it a girls’ day out.”
    “Isn’t today a girls’ day out?”
    “We can never have too many days out!” She
finishes off her plate and stacks it on top of mine. I gulp the
rest of my cola and she sets her lemonade aside, deeming it too
sour even with four packets of sugar.
    I glance up at the clock. We’ve been here a
lot longer than I’d expected. “I’d better go. Mr. Rockwell will
have a fit if I don’t get home before three.”
    “Cool. I’ll talk to my mom about the whole
hair thing. See you at school?”
    “Yep.” I plop Sync back into my bag and give
a little wave, my heart floating in my chest as I walk out the
door. She wants to go out again. With me. AKA: She doesn’t think
I’m a freak, or else this is some huge elaborate plan to show the
world what I truly am. From Caddie? It’s hard to believe.
    My tablet beeps in my bag and I dig it out to
find Mr. Rockwell’s sent me the list of groceries in its entirety.
And it’s a huge list. I groan loudly and resist the urge to chuck
it.
    “Issues?” That smooth voice ripples through
me and I jerk my head up, meeting Iofiel’s stare. He’s leaning
against the plate glass window of a large clothing shop, a smile
playing on his lips. My heart picks up speed as I memorize the
shape of his lips, imagining what they would feel like on mine
and—no. I look at him, sliding my tablet back into my bag.
    I slowly shake my head. “No. I just don’t
wanna go shopping.”
    The corner of his lips quirk into a
knee-quivering grin. “Well what if you had a little eye candy to
tag along and help you?” He winks and I suppress another groan.
Instead, I roll my eyes.
    “I don’t see any eye candy around here.
Sorry, pal.”
    “Lucy, Lucy. Hasn’t anyone ever told you not
to judge a book by its cover?”
    “You’re pretty vain for someone with one
eye.”
    “So that’s a yes?”
    I can’t help my grin. “Hurry up. I don’t
wanna get my ass chewed.”
    “Aye, captain.”

Chapter 7:
    Iofiel

     
    “Give me the cart. You take the list,” I say,
unhooking one of the hover carts from the row at the front of the
store. It hums softly under my fingers, floating along in front of
me. Lucy makes a face and pulls out her tablet, tapping it to turn
it into a checklist. “Alright. We need the necessities. Milk,
bread, yada yada. Along with all this other shit he added.”
    “He?” I tip my head.
    She wrinkles her nose. “Daddy Dearest…”
    “Ah, fathers can be like that. Mine’s a hard
ass.”
    “Mine’s not blood, thank God. He’s my foster
dad.”
    I glance to her, a little surprised that
she’s admitting this to me. “I didn’t know you were in foster
care.”
    “It doesn’t really matter. Don’t worry about
it.”
    “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t
know my blood parents.” Probably due to the fact that I was a
test-tube baby, raised by Nursemaids and then handed over to a Pack
of cyberhounds. Surely they used DNA from somewhere, but I don’t
know who it was from. Lylan’s not my real father; that’s laugh
worthy.
    “You’re a foster kid?”
    “Kinda? I live with a group of guys, but
we’re pretty tight-knit. They’ve been my family since I was a baby,
so…” I shrug and trail off, then flash a grin. “I love them.
They’re my family.”
    “Lucky boy,” she says, unable to hide her
smile, but her eyes cloud over. “My mom died when I was five. I’ve
been in the system ever since, tossed from foster home to foster
home. I thought I found my forever family once, but…” She shakes
her head. “Life doesn’t work like that.”
    “I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. I want to
reach out and take her hand, lay a kiss across her knuckles, twine
our fingers together, but I know it’d just scare her off. Slow
and steady wins the race, Io, I tell myself.
    “It doesn’t matter. One more year and I’m out
of here. I’ll be my own woman, pave my own path.” She grins, but it
looks almost wounded