My parents like to emphasize the word cool when asking me what's going on, as if saying the word in an annoying tone will help me see through its inherent shallowness. Or maybe it's just that cool is a foreign language to them both and, like rude tourists, they think that shouting will get them understood.

But they do sign the stack of release forms I leave them every week. (Because I'm a minor, they have to give permission before multinationals pick my brain.) And they seem not to mind the free clothes, phones, and other electronics that show up in the mail.

"I don't know, Mom. My guess is that some of Chinatown is cool and some isn't. I'm not hunting, just meeting a friend."

"Anyone we know?"

"Her name's Jen."

My father put down his terrifying graph and raised an eyebrow. Mom raised both eyebrows.

"She's not my girlfriend or anything," I said, making a terrible mistake.

"Oh, she's not?" Dad said, half smiling. "Why do you mention that?"

I groaned. "Because you had a look on your face."

"What kind of look?"

"I just met her yesterday."

"Wow," Mom said. "You really do like her, don't you?"

I simultaneously shrugged and rolled my eyes, sending a somewhat unclear message. I hoped Dad would chalk up any redness in my face to sudden onset of West Nile fever.

My parents and I are really close, but they have this annoying idea that I'm hiding huge swaths of my romantic life from them. Which: would be fine, if there were huge swaths to hide. Even medium-sized swaths.

They sat in patient silence as I cowered behind my coffee cup, waiting for a response from me. Catastrophically, all I managed to come up with was…

"Yeah, she's really cool."

Jen was already there, wearing non-brand, not-too-baggy jeans, the same rising-sun-laced runners as the day before, and a black T-shirt. A very classic look.

For a moment she didn't see me. Hands in pockets, leaning against a lamppost, she was checking out the street. The block of Lispenard where Mandy was meeting us was wedged between Chinatown and Tribeca, part industrial and part tourist-land. The Friday morning traffic was mostly delivery trucks. Design firms and restaurants occupied the ground floors, their signs in both Chinese and English. A few places were boarded up, and patches of cobblestones showed through the asphalt, revealing the true age of the neighborhood. These streets had first been laid down by the Dutch in the 1600s.

All the buildings around us were six stories tall. Most structures in Manhattan are six stories. Any smaller, they're not worth building. Any taller and by law you have to put in an elevator. Six-story buildings are the black T-shirt of New York architecture.

I called Jen's name when she spotted me, to which she said, "I can't believe I'm doing this."

"Doing what?"

"Coming down here as some kind of… cool maven."

I laughed. "Just say the words cool maven a couple more times and you won't have to worry about being one."

She rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean, Hunter."

"Actually, I don't know why we're down here any more than you do. Mandy was being all mysterious."

Jen looked down at the sidewalk, where an advertisement for some new bar had been spray painted. "But she wanted me along, right?"

"You were specifically mentioned."

"But I thought I messed everything up."

"Messing things up takes talent. Like I said yesterday, you've got a good eye. Mandy wants us to look at something."

"To see if it's cool?"

Apparently it was going to be one of those days when people said that word to me a lot. I put my hands up in surrender. "She just said she needed some original thinking. That's all I know."

"Original thinking?" Jen's shoulders twitched, as if her black T-shirt had shrunk in the wash. "Don't you ever think your job is kind of weird?"

I shrugged. That's what I usually do when people ask me philosophical questions about cool hunting.

But Jen didn't buy the shrug. "You know what I mean, don't you?"

"Look, Jen, most jobs are weird. My dad studies people sneezing on each other, and my mom makes smells for a living. People get paid for writing down gossip about movie stars, or judging cat shows, or selling pork-belly futures. And I'm not even sure what pork-belly futures are."

Jen raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they an option to buy pork bellies in the future at a certain price?"

I opened my mouth and found it empty of sound. This was my stock speech, and no one had ever called me on the pork-belly-futures thing before.

"My dad's a broker," she apologized.

"So tell me: why anyone would want to buy pork bellies at all?"

"I have no idea."

Saved. "What I mean is, if people get paid for all that stuff, why shouldn't someone get paid to figure out what's cool?"

Jen spread her hands. "Shouldn't it just …be cool?"

"Like have a special glow or something?"

"No, but if something's really cool, shouldn't people figure that out, on their own? Why should they need 'Don't Walk' ads or magazines or trend spotters to tell them?"

"Because most people aren't cool."

"How do you know?"

"Look around you."

She did. The guy walking past was wearing a shirt five sizes too big (innovated by gangbangers to hide guns in their waistbands), shorts down below his knees (innovated by surfers to keep their thighs from getting sunburned), and oversized shoes (innovated by skaters to save their feet from injury). Together all of these once-practical ideas made the guy look like he'd been hit by a shrink ray and was about to disappear into his clothes screaming, "Help me!" in an ever-tinier voice.

Jen had to grin. Saved again.

"That guy needs our help," I said softly.

"That guy will never be cool. But a lot of people are getting rich off

him trying. That's his money we made yesterday."j

I sighed, looking up at the thin slice of sky, and noticed the weathered, faded American flags that hung from the fire escapes, rippling slowly in the breeze. They'd all been hung on the same day, without any ads telling people they had to.

Jen was silent, probably thinking I was mad at her.

But I wasn't. I was contemplating 1918.

Because of my dad I know all about 1918, the year there was a really nasty flu. It swept across every country in the world. It killed more people j than World War I. A billion people got it, almost a third of everyone alive back then.

And you know what's really amazing? The virus didn't spread over the radio, and you didn't get it from watching TV or reading the side of a bus. No one was hired to spread it. Everyone who contracted the disease got it from shaking hands with, or getting sneezed on by, someone else who had it, right? So in one year just about everyone in the world had shaken hands with someone who had shaken hands with someone who had shaken hands with Patient Zero (which is what they call Innovators in the crazy world of epidemiology).

So imagine that instead of sneezing germs, all those people had been saying to each other, "Wow, this new breath mint is great! Want one?" In just a year about a billion people would be using that new breath mint without anyone ever spending a dime on advertising.

Kind of makes you think.

The uncomfortable silence stretched out for a while, and I found myself annoyed at my parents. If they hadn't been bugging me about work this morning, I wouldn't have lost my cool with Jen. She had a perfectly valid point about cool hunting—it's just that I get tired of having the same argument with my parents every day, and with other people, and with myself.