"Does the mall seem… bigger to you?" Jeremy asked. Objectively, no, of course the mall hadn't changed dimensions, but the stores around them seemed to loom threateningly. The bright displays were less enticing than before, their bright neons acting as a warning instead. This place is poison! Get out!

"Yeah. I thought it was just me." Michael was still trying his best to follow the new rules, but the effort seemed to weigh on him. Jeremy privately worried whether Michael would make it through the next school day without visibly sleeping back into SQUIPless nerdom.

"We could both use some caffeine," Jeremy said, pressing their hand against their eyes tiredly, "unless you want to buy me a back-up charger. There's a Pepsi machine coming up on our left, but I wouldn't want to drink the Dew in front of you."

"You can keep your doo," Michael agreed. "So you've got a mall map in your head, huh. How many miles until we get to my car?"

"Supposedly? Less than one. Realistically? We might not make it without sugar."

The two of them stopped for breath at the entrance to Victoria's Secret. Jeremy leaned back against the railing, eyes wandering the displays until Michael shot them a Look. They weren't sure what Michael's tired glare was supposed to mean, but in general, Michael's frowns were some variant of Stop that evil robot thing, but without context, all they could do was shrug helplessly and wait for direction.

Instead of explaining, Michael reached for their hand, hesitated, and withdrew. "Hey. Is there a bathroom around?"

Jeremy pointed across the aisle from them.

"Good. I'm gonna take a breather. Can you manage on your own for a few?"

"Ugh, Michael. Don't tell people when you're gonna piss." Jeremy held up a finger, plucked their way through the now-wrinkled shopping bag in Michael's hand, and withdrew their favorite options. "If we've still got a ways to go, you'd better change. Put on this. And this. And drink some water-based on your level of fitness and how far we've walked, you're probably dehydrated."

Michael snatched the clothes away from them with a hmph. "I almost expect you to have rules about how I've gotta use the toilet too."

"Actually," said Jeremy thoughtfully. "Since you brought it up, your attitude at the urinal-"

But Michael was gone, which all in all, was his loss. Jeremy did a rough calculation of how long he'd be gone, letting themself hang back and examine the lingerie advertising again. Now that was math worth doing. Check out the parametrization of those functions.

Before they could commit any differentials to memory, some human girl got in the way, making Jeremy crane their neck.

She didn't move. It was like she was trying to take up space.

It wasn't until the girl had cleared her throat a few times that Jeremy bothered to look at her face.

Jeremy raised their hand, ready to greet her, but Brooke Lohst turned away. "Yeah, no, I'm almost done," she said into thin air, which made no sense. Without a SQUIP, Brooke had no one to talk to beside her, but there was no way in hell a SQUIP would let her talk to thin air in public.

Confused, Jeremy mentally felt around until they caught the humming of a Bluetooth headset tucked into Brooke's ear. They turned their head away, embarrassed they hadn't predicted it.

"Right? Finally." Brooke laughed, turning away from the lacy bras and spotting a nearby kiosk. "It's taking a while. Not super cheap, either."

Jeremy made sure their posture was casual. Leaned-back? Check. Vacant stare? Also not unusual for a teen at the mall. The Bluetooth connection was like a spiderweb-unnoticable until they brushed up against it, but irritating and a little heeby-jeeby. Jeremy could possibly tune in and hear who Brooke was talking to if they concentrated.

"Hey, the straightener could be useful," Brooke said, picking up a wand from the kiosk and turning it around in her hand. She said something to the lady at the kiosk in a lower voice before addressing the person on the phone again. "Too bad about Christine. Her hair gets stupid frizzy before it rains."

Jeremy's head snapped up.

They couldn't run up and ask about Christine. That would be mortifying, revealing out how of touch with the social network Jeremy was. Oh, and it might give away that Jeremy's best friend was not, in fact, a SQUIP superuser and was instead an analog human pretending to understand quantum probability clouds. Most of the SQUIP's knowledge base focused on standing out from a crowd, not blending in, but Jeremy understood the basics. No eye contact. Look busy. Seem relaxed. Whipping out their phone to pretend to check a text would be obnoxiously obvious that they were faking nonchalance, so it would be better for Jeremy to return to doing whatever they had been in the middle of before they noticed Brooke. What was that again? Something about parabolas…

Brooke cleared her throat loudly into her phone-as if any SQUIP user needed such an obvious social cue. "Not that Christine has been doing great lately," she continued, moving away from Victoria's Secret and further into the depths of the mall. Jeremy, despite themself, winced. Another in a long set of reminders of the SQUIP's broken programming and what was at stake if they couldn't save Christine. A SQUIP admitting to another about a user doing poorly, in a public place, no less… That was astronomically unlikely.

Christine must have been doing really bad. Like, emergency bad. Jeremy realized this as Brooke's Bluetooth connection strayed further away beyond the 30 feet recommended by the hardware manufacturer. Jeremy glanced behind them in the direction of the men's restroom but guiltily slunk along the railing in the walkway. They carefully kept their attention on the storefronts they passed instead of Brooke's face as they focused on the audio stream of Brooke's phone call.

The electric signal had the cadence of a real conversation. Jeremy could swear they heard Christine's name once or twice as they stepped inside Nordstrom's or crouched behind a phone-case display. Da-da-da-da da da-da-da-da Christine da-da da.

When Brooke went into Icing, she stayed there for so long and so far deep into the store that Jeremy had to longsufferingly step inside and pretend to be interested in ear piercings (odds of permanent tissue damage with the piercing-gun, 15.2%). And it was the same story at Claire's. And Bath and Body Works. And Yankee Candle. The entire time, the most Jeremy could make out was Christine's name, but they were so tantalizingly close to decoding the Bluetooth stream! To avoid suspicion and to be polite, Jeremy was compelled to buy something at each store, so they were now lugging around an ever-growing armful of shopping bags.

In an aisle of teensy outfits and accessories at Build-A-Bear Workshop, Jeremy lost the call. They dropped their shopping in surprise when the audio blipped out of their mind and quickly stooped to collect it all again before somebody noticed. They shoved Bride-To-Be banners, stud earrings, and glitter phone cases into their biggest shopping bag hurriedly. They grabbed a Bahama Breeze candle jar that rolled in a lazy circle, but let out a cry of surprise when a foot stomped on their hand.

"Jeremy Heere." Brooke's tone was familiar but her nasty smile wasn't. "Since when do you follow me around like an abandoned puppy?"

Jeremy's conversational unit shorted out. They wiggled their hand under Brooke's foot, eking it out and shoving their candle in its bag again. Standing slowly, they said, "I'm just shopping."

"Right." Brooke rolled her eyes. She held up each of her bags one by one. "At Icing and Claire's and Bath and Body Works and Yankee Candle and Build-A-Bear. Weird coincidence. By which I mean there's, like, a less-than point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero four two percent chance of that happening? So what the hell, Jeremy?"

Jeremy straightened unconsciously. "It's been so long since I've seen y-"

Brooke cut them off. "Were you listening to my private conversation? Don't you know how intrusive that is? How many boundaries you broke?"

Jeremy and Brooke stared at each other for two and a half seconds before breaking into identical peals of laughter. A Build-A-Bear sales associate glanced over in surprise before laughing along.

"Privacy!" Jeremy said, shaking their head with a snicker. "With a SQUIP!"

"Since you're not in-network," Brooke said with a grin, "the surprise element of humor is more effective on you." And yes, there was the expected friend request pop-up hovering above Brooke's head. Jeremy declined it without a second thought, making Brooke's smile fall. "That's not a surprise," she continued. "And it's not funny."

"I'm sorry," Jeremy said, holding up their hands and dropping the candle again. "I'm sorry! It's-there's this whole-I'm going to join as soon as I'm able to."

"And you can't because Michael is still in beta."

It wasn't a question, but Jeremy realized that they had not calculated a cover story for that particular aspect of their existence. Jake hadn't asked them about it. "Not exactly," they said slowly. "Brooke, it's none of your business."

"Everything is our business," Brooke said and Jeremy could swear her eyes almost glowed. Why were they having this conversation with her alone, anyway? Where was Michael?

Wait. Wait, no, Jeremy had left him in the bathro-

Brooke's hand grabbed their chin and forced them to stare at her directly. Jeremy's thoughts screeched to a halt. "You're not even looking at me anymore!" Brooke snapped. "You are the worst. Worst SQUIP-user, worst glitch, worst boy in school!"

Jeremy stumbled backwards into a rack of empty teddy skins. "So why are you bothering with me when I'm so clearly uninterested?" they retorted, shoving her away. It was a valid question. Brooke hadn't gone out of her way to interact with them since they had first turned on. Jeremy wasn't a SQUIP priority and (based on a vague memory of Halloween and its aftermath) wasn't the apple of Brooke's eye either. Jeremy had only begun following her because- "You were talking about Christine to get my attention!" they realized. "To trick me into sneaking after you!"

"That was sneaking?" Brooke laughed again. Her surprise seemed genuine, but most SQUIP emotions did. "Jer-bear! You were piping Mission Impossible through the electronic store speakers. Anyone would have noticed you!"

"Wait. I was?" Jeremy felt their face heating up. "That doesn't matter! You were doing it on purpose! You wanted to lure me away from Michael to get me alone and, what, intimidate me into running a diagnostic? Because your odds of success are, 'like, zero percent.'"

"Oh my god." Brooke crossed her arms tightly. "If you were on a network, this adorable little solipsism spiral of yours wouldn't be happening."

Jeremy made a mental note to look into that one later. They pushed themselves off the rack and looked away. "You wouldn't even want me on your network, alright? If I'm a malfunctioning SQUIP, maybe I'd infect you all, huh? Make you all as broken as me? Do you want that?"

"That's a lie too, right?"

Jeremy flinched. Looking away, right, classic sign of dishonesty. They forced themselves back into the standard level of friendly eye contact that they had taught to Michael. "I'm being honest."

"Like you were honest about how we all 'took ecstasy' at the school play?" Brooke was unimpressed, but that particular zinger didn't hit home for Jeremy. They weren't the one who had lied. "Or are you having a great time tromping around with Michael Mell and totally ignoring everyone you installed a SQUIP into in the first place?" Jeremy tried to interrupt but Brooke kept going, ticking off Jeremy's sins on her fingers. "You let Jenna get her SQUIP reactivated but now you're too good to trade socials with her. You call Jake a failure to his face. You ignore everyone's friend requests. You beat Christine in the drama queen department whenever she talks to you but as soon as you leave the room, you act like she doesn't exist! And you still don't even look at me. So again: What. The. Hell. Jeremy."

Jeremy's expression had gone carefully blank as Brooke talked. "I told you already through Christine. I'm malfunctioning and I'm trying to fix it." Their lips pulled into a smirk involuntarily. "Your SQUIP is having a hard time reining in all your teen-girl hormones. I'm not into you, Brooke. Come to terms with it instead of having a jealous freak-out."

Brooke's expression mirrored Jeremy's. Her voice, which had been intense and accusatory, mellowed out into a near-monotone. "I'm not jealous, Jer-bear. Why would I be? You might like Mell now, but you'll drop him as fast as you dropped me. And Chloe. And Christine." She gestured at the shop around them. "Obviously. "

Jeremy processed that with a frown.

Wait.

"Shit. Michael." They twisted their head around as if they would see him in a corner of the store. "One of you is targeting Michael!"

They didn't stick around to hear their theory confirmed. As they sprinted out of Build-A-Bear, leaving half of their shopping bags at Brooke's feet, they heard Brooke and the store associate laughing artificially together.