I’d only been here once before, during that early “date” with Art3mis. She’d told me it was one of her favorite places to go when she needed to relax and unwind, and gave me a guided tour of the simulated suburb’s most popular sites. Unfortunately, I’d been too head-over-heels in love to retain much of what she’d told me, and too busy staring at her to take in the details of our surroundings. Since then, because of Kira’s well-documented affection for Hughes, I’d rewatched most （but not quite all） of his films a few years ago. Now I was hoping I’d retained enough Shermer trivia to avoid looking like a complete fool in front of Art3mis.
We kept jogging down Shermer Road, Art3mis in the lead, until we triggered another needle drop—“It’s All in the Game” by Carmel, another track off the She’s Having a Baby soundtrack. Upon hearing it, Art3mis skidded to an abrupt halt. Then she turned around and startled all of us, by singing along with the song’s opening lyrics in perfect harmony.
“Many a tear has to fall, it’s all…a game,” she sang. “Life is a wonderful game, we play and play…”
I’d heard Samantha sing once before, during the week we spent together at Og’s estate, so I knew she wasn’t using an autotuning app. Yet somehow I’d forgotten what an unusually beautiful singing voice she possessed, on top of all her other talents. Hearing it again now, under these circumstances, made my heart ache with a sudden ferocity that caught me completely off guard.
Art3mis glanced over and caught me staring at her like a slack-jawed goon. To my surprise, she didn’t look away. She gave me what can only be described as a warm smile. Then she stopped singing and checked her Swatch.
“Excellent,” she said. “We’re right on time. It’s the start of another day in paradise.”
She pointed across the street. Aech, Shoto, and I all turned around, just in time to see the front doors of seven of the houses across the street swing open at once. In choreographed unison, seven different bathrobe-clad men emerged from their individual homes to retrieve their morning papers. I recognized six of these men as actors—Chevy Chase, Paul Dooley, Michael Keaton, Steve Martin, John Heard, and Lyman Ward—the men who portrayed Clark W. Griswold, Jim Baker, Jack Butler, Neal Page, Peter McCallister, and Tom Bueller respectively. All suburban dad characters in various Hughes films.
The seventh man wore large clear-framed eyeglasses and had spiky hair that was short on the side and in front, but long in the back—the sort of power mullet worn by rock stars throughout the ’80s. His face looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I was on the verge of running a facial-recognition app on him when it dawned on me—the man in question was John Hughes himself!
Hughes made a brief cameo in The Breakfast Club, playing the father of Brian Johnson, Anthony Michael Hall’s character. Which meant that the house he’d emerged from was where Brian and his family must live in Shermer. （And since Anthony Michael Hall had also portrayed Rusty Griswold in Vacation, it occurred to me that there must be at least two different Anthony Michael Halls living on this street—possibly three, if Farmer Ted’s house was around here too. And on top of that there was Gary Wallace, Anthony Michael Hall’s character in Weird Science. But it was a safe bet that he lived on the other side of the tracks, because his father, Al, was a plumber.）
As I watched Mr. Johnson/John Hughes scoop up his morning paper and then shuffle back into his house, I couldn’t help but be reminded of Anorak—the digital ghost of a dead creator, left behind to forever haunt his own creation.
“Hey, Z!” Art3mis said, snapping me out of my daze. “Let me see that clue again.”
I removed the Second Shard from my inventory and held it out. She read the inscription aloud: “？‘Recast the foul, restore his ending. Andie’s first fate still needs mending.’？”
“So that’s gotta be it, right?” I asked. “Restore the original ending, the one where Andie ended up with Duckie instead of with Blane.”
Art3mis didn’t respond. She just stared at the inscription, lost in thought.
“That rich pretty boy, Blane,” Aech said, glancing at the large, opulent homes lining both sides of the street. “He must live around here, right? I say we find him and lock his ass in the trunk of his daddy’s BMW. Then he won’t be able to attend the prom tonight. When he doesn’t show, Andie will have no choice but to spend the evening with Duckie. That would ‘restore his ending,’ wouldn’t it?”