Virtually Yours - Hardcover

Sarvenaz Tash is the author of The Geek’s Guide to Unrequited Love (a YALSA Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant YA Readers), Three Day Summer, The Mapmaker and the Ghost, and Virtually Yours. She was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up on Long Island, New York. She received her BFA in film and television from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, which means she got to spend most of college running around and making movies (it was a lot of fun). She has dabbled in all sorts of writing including screenwriting, Emmy Award–winning copywriting, and professional tweeting for the likes of Bravo and MTV. Sarvenaz currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

Virtually Yours CHAPTER 1

HIS SELFIE MADE ME DO it.

Yes, I had the 40 percent off coupon from the orientation fair. Yes, it was almost about to expire. Yes, my roommate, Hedy, had made a casual comment just the day before about how I never seemed to leave our room. And if I wanted to, I could use any of those as excuses for why I found myself sitting in the waiting room of HEAVR, about to place my love life in the hands of some virtual gods.

But if I did, I’d be lying.

Just that morning, Caleb had posted a grinning photo with a few of his college buddies, in mid-shrug—the kind of “casual” shot it probably took at least fifteen takes to get right—looking so carefree that it had sent my heart into a tailspin. There were a couple of girls in the picture too. I didn’t know if any of them meant anything more to him, but it almost didn’t matter. My ex-boyfriend, love of my life, breaker of my heart, was having the college life I should have been, and looking damn good doing it.

Seeing that post had made me . . . angry. Mostly at myself. Why had I been shutting myself up in my dorm room, doing a months-long performance of the breakup mope, speaking to hardly anyone outside of my roommate? Why, especially, when Caleb was having fun.

My eyes had swept across a stack of papers that was occupying a corner of my desk. At the top was the HEAVR coupon that had been gathering dust for two months. Within moments I had navigated over to their site and filled out their sign-up questionnaire—forced to glance one more time at Caleb’s selfie while I dutifully linked out to my social media profiles like it asked. Then I walked myself to HEAVR’s headquarters. I didn’t have an appointment, so now I was forced to sit in their yellow-and-magenta waiting room, staring at the “Happily Ever After Guaranteed” trademark that was plastered all over it, and trying to avoid the idle time that might make me rethink this idea. Because there was the part of me that didn’t want Caleb to be responsible for my decisions anymore. And there was the part of me that felt like love hurt too much to be worth even trying for again. And, of course, who could forget the part of me that believed in the meet-cute and wanted it to be for real, not orchestrated by a machine.

But the overwhelming majority of me kept thinking: Why not? Sure, it was easy to make fun of a dating app whose name was synonymous with vomiting and to laugh at those SNL sketches mocking the very idea of VR love. But I was certainly not going to meet anyone holed away in my dorm room. Why not let a machine give it a go in an attempt to find my HEA—my happily ever after? HEAVR’s matchmaking skills were supposed to be second to none, and for a little bit extra, they’d even throw in the meet-cute. I’d splurged.

“Mariam Vakilian?”

I smiled brightly at the woman in the lab coat as I got up and followed her down a hallway. No sense in not being extra friendly to someone who potentially held my entire romantic future in the palm of her hand.

She led me into a small room that was painted a cheerful shade of yellow.

A black leather dentist’s chair sat in the middle, complete with a tray nearby that held a sort of helmet/goggle hybrid, two sleek charcoal gloves, and a thin black vest.

“Have a seat, Ms. Vakilian. My name is Joan, and I will be your guide, or as we like to call it at HEAVR, your twenty-first-century Cupid.” She said that last part with a tight smile, which led me to picture her having a long conversation with her boss about just how idiotic she thought that trademarked moniker was. Joan didn’t seem like the type who suffered fools or foolish slogans. “Let me get caught up on your order.”

She looked down at her tablet and read, giving me a chance to observe my “Cupid,” who, in lieu of a diaper, was dressed in a smart navy skirt suit underneath the pale yellow lab coat, which had the letters HEAVR and her name stitched in dark magenta on the lapel. She wore a shade of lipstick that matched the magenta perfectly, and because her skin was a similar olive shade to my own, I found myself wondering if I could pull off the color too. Joan’s hair, however, was put back in the sort of high, professional ponytail that had always confounded me—no matter what I did, my ponytails seemed to escape their confines in unruly strands that gave me a “gym look,” which wasn’t super helpful when I was trying to interview for my work-study job or, say, attempting to look cute in case I accidentally ran into Caleb back home.

Ugh. Why did all thought roads lead back to him?

“Okay, so let’s recap.” Joan looked up from her tablet with a bright smile. “You’re looking for an eighteen-to-twenty-three-year-old male, open to any ethnicity, race, or creed. And location . . . you didn’t fill this one out. Do you want strictly local?”

I hesitated. Logically, I should say yes. But on the other hand, wasn’t the beauty of living in this day and age and with this service at my disposal that I could say no? That I could date someone from anywhere in the world (or, well, the seventeen countries that HEAVR currently existed in, anyway)? Why not take advantage? And besides, it would really stick it to Caleb if I somehow found a long-distance soul mate after all.

“No,” I said. “Open to anywhere.”

“That’s fine,” Joan said with a practiced but nevertheless soothing smile. “And that’s it in terms of preliminary information we need from you. The rest will be done with this.” She tapped on the tray. “So let’s just get this on first.” She opened up the vest, inviting me to put my arms through. It was lightweight for something that surely contained a lot of tech in between its seams. Joan came around to Velcro the front together. “Great. Now sit back and put your feet up.”

I leaned back in the buttery chair, which, despite its comfort, made me feel like I was about to get a root canal.

“It won’t hurt, I promise,” Joan said, almost as if she could read my thoughts. “Let’s get these on.” She handed me the gloves as soon as I was settled.

I slipped them on. They were made of some sort of sleek synthetic fiber and they felt slightly more substantial than regular gloves, but maybe that was only because I knew they were haptic and designed to register my motions.

“Okay, and in a moment, you’re going to place this over your head.” She picked up the goggles. “Before you do, you have a choice of locale for your initial questionnaire. Some of our most popular choices are tropical island, outer space, Parisian café, or—thanks to our new partnership with the Tolkien estate—Middle Earth. Any of those do anything for you?”

“Um. How about tropical island?” Out of nerves, I went with the first option she had mentioned, but it sounded appealing enough.

“Perfect,” Joan said. “Once you put these on, you won’t be able to hear or see me anymore. But if you need anything while on your island, just tap your left pointer finger and thumb together and I’ll be able to punch in to guide you. Otherwise, use your pointer finger to pick your choices. And everything else should be pretty self-explanatory. We’re going to be asking you ten questions to select your matches, okay?”

I nodded.

“And here we go.” Joan handed the goggles over and I slipped them over my head. For a second I was in a dark, silent world until Joan must have flipped a switch or something and suddenly there were crystal seas ahead of me, a sandy beach below, and a low sun above. The sounds of lapping water and seagulls filled my ears, and I could even feel the heat of the day surrounding me.

The water sparkled as a perky female voice came through on the headphones attached to my goggles.

“Hello, Mariam, and welcome to the beginning of your HEA. Please answer the following ten questions as honestly and quickly as you can. It’s best to go with your gut answers.”

I took in a deep, shaky breath. Which the machine apparently felt.

“Don’t be nervous! Think of me as your friend. You can call me Agatha. And the questions will be very easy, I promise.”

Agatha? That name didn’t sound like it matched the chipper voice, which I assumed was intended to resemble a girlfriend playing matchmaker. Agatha was more like a grandma who’d disastrously set you up with her bridge partner’s secretly racist grandson. Maybe the system’s OS needed some updating in terms of hip names. Something like Juniper or Brooklyn.

“Ready? Let’s get started!”

Glittery blue letters appeared in the air in front of me, corresponding with the question Agatha read aloud.

Which one of these locations is the most romantic?

A. a beautiful forest clearing under a starry night

B. an intimate candlelit restaurant

C. a centuries-old city with cobblestone streets

D. a comfy couch and fuzzy socks

I hesitated for a second before I remembered the machine—or rather, Agatha’s—instructions. Right, my gut.

I put my hand in front of me and chose option C.

“Wonderful. Question two:”

You’re on a desert island with a small knapsack. Which one of these items are you most likely to find in there?

A. lipstick

B. a book

C. a knife

D. hand sanitizer

The real answer was D, but I was worried about being typecast as a neat freak. I had a small thing about germs, sure, but it wasn’t like I was going to take a potential boyfriend to task for not being vigilantly antiseptic.

“What did I say, Mariam?” Agatha’s voice held a laugh in it now as it gently chided. “Your first instinct, remember?”

My finger shook a bit as I reluctantly chose D. I suddenly had the strange feeling that Agatha not only knew when I was nervous (as a result of having my heart rate monitored with the vest, I supposed), but could predict which answer I was going to pick. But that was impossible, right? Agatha couldn’t genuinely read my thoughts.

Could she?

Oh God. I realized I was starting to think of Agatha as a “she.”

“Let’s go with an easier question, Mariam. To relax you. Remember, there is no wrong answer. And at the end, you will have three initial matches to choose from. If none of them work out, you get a free do-over. It’s part of the HEAVR guarantee!”

I could practically hear the toothpaste-commercial smile in Agatha’s voice.

If you could paint your bedroom any of these hues, and you only had five seconds to choose, which one would you pick?

Four swatches appeared in front of me, and above them, a countdown clock ticking down from five.

The first was a light mauve, the second a sky blue, the third an olive green, and the fourth a mid-range gray.

I barely had time to register that they were cool tones, the only colors I personally would ever choose to paint a room. It was only a flit of a thought that I might have, in fact, actually lived in a room with each of those paint colors at some point in my life. Whenever we moved, my parents would allow me the small luxury of painting my new room whatever color I wanted. I guessed it was their way of giving me a modicum of control over my life, however superficial. It was only the last three years of high school, the three years with Caleb, that I’d ever stayed in one room for such an extended amount of time. The mauve room.

The countdown was at one when I numbly picked out the first option, the color I’d stared at when I’d lost my heart and, eventually, my virginity to the boy who didn’t even have the decency to give it back. My heart, that is, not my virginity. That one’s pretty nonrefundable.

“Great. I think we’re going to keep the countdown clock going. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel relaxed when picking out your answers. Okay?”

Um, yeah sure. Easy for you to say, Agatha. What’s a clock to someone who’s composed of ones and zeros?

“Next question.”

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Per day?

Wait, what? How was this related . . .

A. five tons

B. three trees

C. seventeen sticks

D. more than a squirrel could squirrel away

Ummm . . .

I read the question over again, but the countdown clock was already down to two by the time I finished. I instinctively fell back on my multiple-choice training from years of standard education: when in doubt, pick C.

“The next few questions are going to seem less straightforward. Remember not to think too hard about them, and most important, don’t consider how they may or may not affect the outcome today. Trust our methods, Mariam. They work. Okay?”

I assumed the question was rhetorical, so I was surprised when Agatha said, “Just nod if you feel comfortable with that.”

Nod? So there must be some sensors in the headset too . . . sensors that could read my mind?

I nodded instinctively, even as the rest of me started to feel distinctly uncomfortable with this situation. Which of course made me feel worse, since it immediately conjured up one of the only fights Caleb and I had ever had. The one where he had called me a sheep who blindly followed instructions.

But anyway, either Agatha—or the machine; it was better if I thought of it as a MACHINE—knew that I was on the verge of possibly bailing, or it was always programmed to make the last six questions as rapid-fire as possible.

Agatha’s voice became brisk and businesslike, and even though the countdown clock never veered from starting at five, I couldn’t help but feel that it was counting down faster with each successive question.

What is man’s greatest invention?

A. fire

B. the wheel

C. the Internet

D. it hasn’t been invented yet

Maybe it was the influence of my environmentalist parents, but I had a relatively easy time with that one. I chose A.

Which Shakespearean name would you give to a naked mole rat, if you ever had the opportunity to name one?

For reference, Aga . . . or rather, the machine provided an image of a naked mole rat, which unfortunately for my wizened eleventh-grade English teacher, immediately reminded me of my wizened eleventh-grade English teacher.

A. Viola

B. Banquo

C. Prospero

D. Cordelia

I chose B only because I thought I remembered Banquo being a murdered ghost and there was something decrepit about the creature in front of me.

Which of the following pronouns is the most musical?

A. she

B. we

C. whomever

D. several

Wait, was “several” a pronoun? Was this a trick question?

The countdown clock now came with a ticking noise that I was positive hadn’t been there before. I chose A before a zero flashed across my screen and Tom Cruise arced through the sky, framed by a fiery explosion.

The next time Agatha’s voice came through, she definitely sounded more like an army commander than a gossipy confidante. Suddenly this matchmaking experience was starting to feel closer to a first-person shooter than a dating app.

If you were a spy, which country would you want to work for?

Wait, what? Was this some sort of patriot test? Was the government listening in on this?

A. USA

B. Iran

C. Russia

D. England

Normally I wasn’t super anxious abou...