Swipe

the ground as he did. “Wanna give it a try?”
    “No,” Hailey muttered, her arms crossed.
    Dane shrugged, feigning total apathy. “Fine. I gotta practice the mitts anyway. Did I tell you the Boxing Gloves are playing a concert at the end of the month?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s a battle of the bands.”
    “Mm-hm.”
    Dane had hoped for a more enthusiastic response. “Well. I’ll see you around, then.”
    “Can I try your mitts?” Hailey asked.
    “Um . . . sure,” Dane said. “Yeah, cool. Of course.” It really must be a whole new school year , he thought. Hailey hadn’t given him the time of day since the summer after fifth grade. She lived just past Old District, so yes, she often walked home along the same streets as Dane. And sure, quite regularly, she’d stand, arms folded, insulting him for a few minutes before she’d continue on and go home. But she’d never asked him to let her come in. And he wasn’t about to waste the chance to spend more time with her.
    Dane’s house was one of the few remaining pre-Unity homes in Spokie. Old District was the wealthiest district in town, and among the wealthiest in all of suburban New Chicago. The streets here were wider and lined with enormous trees. Most of the greenery in Spokie was made of bushes and saplings, five years old at best before they shriveled and died. But in Old District, the trees were taller than the buildings, with great big trunks so wide that if Dane and Hailey had stood around one, they couldn’t have touched hands. Presently, the two of them walked under the green shade of an oak much different from the skyscraper shade on the rest of Spokie’s streets. Warmer. Brighter, somehow.
    The homes in Old District were only two or three stories tall, but they were huge. Each sat on nearly an acre of property, and they stretched out over a good bit of that land with many adjacent rooms and hallways and wide-open space inside them. Dane’s house was built in what was called the Tudor style, which Dane didn’t much like talking about. In fact, Dane didn’t much like talking about Old District at all, and Hailey guessed that his flashy jeans and high-tech black t-shirts, whether Dane realized it or not, were a certain kind of disguise. But not even cyberpunk clothing could hide the fact that Dane came from money.
    Inside, the place was even showier than Hailey had remembered from her visits as a kid. Dane led her quickly through the bigger rooms of the house, with their sculptures in the corners and paintings on the walls, and he didn’t seem at ease with himself until they’d reached a small den in a far corner where he kept his music gear. Posters hung sloppily on the walls, and food wrappers cluttered the corners.
    Dane reached down and picked up his new pair of wailing mitts. They were a sleek red that sparkled a little in the light, each one of them a hemisphere, like a high-tech turtle shell, with a strap on the bottom for a wailer to put his hands through. Dane handed the pair to Hailey, and she tried them on. The straps closed tightly on her palms, and her fingers and thumbs slipped into ten rings on the underside of the shells.
    “You turn them on here,” Dane said, and he flipped separate switches on each. Immediately they hummed a musical drone. “Now, um . . .” Dane seemed a little nervous. He moved her hands so that they were held out horizontally from her body, his palms a little sweaty on hers. “This is standard position. Hear the sound it makes?”
    Hailey nodded.
    “Now, if you move your hands up or down, notice what happens.” The drone raised in pitch as she moved her hands up and lowered as she moved them down. “If you tilt your hands, that affects the timbre.” Hailey tilted her hands out so that her palms faced up, and the drone became distorted and much harsher. She tilted them back and it went gentle again. “The farther you hold your hands out to your sides, the louder the mitts’ll get. Those rings on the inside, they’ll play your notes for you. There’s a lot of different combinations, so the mitts have a pretty wide range, once you get the hang of it.”
    Hailey pulled her fingers against a few of the rings, and notes rang out like a cross between an electric guitar and a keyboard synthesizer.
    “That’s pretty much it,” Dane said.
    “You try.” Hailey handed the mitts over to him.
    “Well, I’m still learning,” Dane said sheepishly. But as soon as he’d strapped on the mitts,