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dress up.”
    “Well, then it’s our secret. What about your hair? You’re not going to leave it like that, are you?” he asked, steering her toward the couch.
    “Well, I wasn’t really going to stay like this,” she said, trying to pull away from him. “Let me go change and you can show me what you have in mind for a surprise.”
    “Not that fast,” Brandon said and laughed. He took her shoulders in his hands and steered her toward the couch. “If you’re going to get all dolled up, you need the hair to match, don’t you?”
    She let Brandon set her on the couch and he went looking for a comb. She studied the hover cars as they meandered along outside. What if someone saw them through the patio door? But the people weren’t looking at the apartment complex. Or if they were, they weren’t studying the windows.
    What did it really matter? Natalia had never given Cass anything other than damage that needed repairing and treating her like dirt. Brandon made her feel good. Should she feel bad for that? Should she be scared of Natalia because of how another person decided to treat her?
    What’s happening to you? She wondered. Why was she suddenly having these thoughts? What did it mean? She had always been a good servant before.
    “Cass, what are you doing? Let me out!”
    The memory came and went so fast she couldn’t be sure if she’d experienced it or not.
    I have to see Gerard, Cass thought. Something isn’t right with me. He’s wrong. He needs to fix me. Did she really want to be fixed though? Didn’t she like what was happening to her? Everything had been so much simpler before, she thought.
    Cass was staring at the floor in disbelief when Brandon returned.
    “Alright, since your hair looks like it’s going to be long when we get it all untangled, I found a hair clip for you.”
    “Thanks,” Cass said.
    “And here,” Brandon said, placing a pair of leathery sandals on the floor before her. “Put these on.”
    They were dainty and showed of the gentle arch of her feet and the narrowness of her ankles.
    Brandon positioned himself behind her, moved her around slightly so he could get a good angle, and started combing out the tangles that had become of her hair. He was gentle and slow, making sure he didn’t tug more than necessary.
    “I don’t know how people like her get away with doing this,” Brandon said.
    “Like who, and doing what?” Cass wondered.
    “People like Natalia and how they treat robots.”
    Cass shrugged. “I’ve never really thought about it. Do they treat us bad?” That was a lie. She had thought about it. Part of her, no matter how comfortable she felt around Brandon, still couldn’t trust him completely. She didn’t want him to know what she was thinking, not after how he looked at her yesterday at the doctor’s office.
    “Some people do,” Brandon said. “You were bought used, don’t you remember your family before Natalia?”
    “A little bit here and there,” Cass said. She looked at her hands in her lap and started picking at her nails. She didn’t really like where this was going.
    “Did they treat you better?” Brandon asked.
    “They treated me different, that’s for sure,” Cass said. How different I need to talk to the doctor to find out. If only Brandon had forgotten their meeting today. If only he’d forgotten his surprise. What could it be? If it didn’t take too long maybe she could sneak off to Gerard before Natalia got home.
    But he said she was working late today and that means whatever he’s planning is going to take some time.
    “No beatings, no closet?” Brandon asked.
    “No beatings,” she said with a shake of her head.
    “You know why she does it right?” Brandon asked.
    “No,” Cass said.
    “Her father left her mother for a robot,” he told her.
    “Is that normal?” Cass wondered. She remembered the news broadcast from earlier and wondered if that was something that commonly happened. As far as she knew, she was just