Stronger, Faster, and More Beautiful

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  He kissed her again, and as he did, she wrapped a leg around him, was supple against his body.

  “Slut,” she whispered in his ear.

  It sounded sultry, it sounded honest. The irritation was still rolling around in his stomach, but she was so warm up against him, and it was a new sensation to be called out by a girl. He was a whore, she was his backup plan.

  “I don’t really do this,” she said again, but she wasn’t pushing him away. “I’m drunk. That stuff keeps making you drunk way after you drink it.”

  “You taste good.”

  There was more kissing and it was different than it had been with the other two girls. Maybe Dahlia didn’t know the full extent of him, but she didn’t think he was someone romantic or serious or faithful either.

  “You’re the worst person to do this with,” she said as he expertly unbuttoned her cutoff shorts and slid them down her legs. “Probably full of diseases.”

  If only she had known. If only he had known.

  “I’m the best person to do this with,” he whispered, “because I know what I’m doing.”

  And then it was happening with girl number three of the evening, but it wasn’t how he expected it to be—it was practically like he was making love to her, their feet in the sand, her body against the base of the cliff, the wind moving across the outcropping above them, the stars and moon creeping across the sky.

  “Slut,” she said, almost lovingly.

  Jake thought: I’m definitely going to win the bet. And then he thought: This girl is amazing.

  4. SIBERIA

  “That’s it? Ocean, sand, girls?” Yulia Boykov asked. “Like an old movie?”

  He hadn’t gone into all the details. Yulia was sitting cross-legged, her back against the wall by the open doorway to the kitchenette. Jake had slid down to the floor also, in front of the sofa. He didn’t need to sit—sitting was no more comfortable than standing or walking, and yet there was something nostalgic about being on the floor. It had felt natural once. He twirled the knife in his secondary left arm, as the lingering images of that night, those girls—Dahlia—slipped away.

  All those senses. All of those things to feel. The reconstructed neurons in his “skin” could sense the rough carpet underneath his legs, the nap of the sofa cushions, the temperature of the air. It was feeling, in a way. But the real sensations were in his torso, where the rest of his body was tucked away behind the crystal and metal. He was tingling in there as he thought about the warmth of Dahlia’s skin, her lips smiling against his cheek.

  “What about Mr. Tadd?” Yulia asked, drawing Jake back to the shabby apartment.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Tadd. He is God to people in America, no? Like pope or something. Or rock star.”

  “Who?” Jake asked again. His first reaction was that he’d never heard that name before, but then he felt it tickling at a deeply buried memory.

  “Mr. Tadd,” Yulia said, growing agitated that he had no idea what she was talking about. She waved her arms around her head as if they were octopus tentacles, then made circles with her thumbs and forefingers and stuck them to her temples as if forming two new eyes on the sides of her head. “ ‘Change yourself! Be bird, be fish! God loves you, stupid humans!’ ” She ended with another energetic octopus arm wave and a huge grimace. This brought on a fit of laughter as she collapsed against the wall, which forced a reluctant smile from Jake. Who in the world was she imitating? “Mr. Tadd,” she tried again. “He is big reason why Russia must cut off America from rest of the world. Why Americans love so much to change themselves and stop caring about other things.”

  A vision of the kitchen in Jake’s parents’ house on the bluffs of Santa Barbara came to his mind. The television on the counter, an interview of a man with thick, lovely black hair, wearing a minister’s collar and talking about human modification or new medical techniques or something like that. The man was waving his arms in a tame version of what Yulia had just done, and his matinee-idol hair had fallen over his eyes in his anger about the topic. Jake had only noticed the TV because his mother had been standing by the sink with a glass of wine in her hand, laying cheese out on a cutting board. This guy is over-the-top cuckoo, she’d said. See how much he’s sweating? Who is he to tell people not to improve themselves? Look—the interviewer can’t believe he has to ask this guy questions. Jake had hardly paid attention, and yet…had the screen said The Reverend Mr. Tad Tadd? The memory was starting to feel like a figment of hope rather than something that had actually happened. Surely no one could be called Tad Tadd.

  Yulia had given up trying to explain who Mr. Tadd was and now asked, in Russian, as though she had found the obvious hole in Jake’s story, “How did you get from California to the asteroids?”

  “Very slowly,” he answered.

  For fifteen minutes, the proximity sensor in the corner of his left eye, designed to keep miners in contact with each other, had been vibrating, letting him know that Kostya was in range. But now the vibrations were growing stronger. Kostya had gotten clear of the crowds and was coming for Jake. Should he go outside and wait? He would do that only at the last moment, he decided.

  “What will you do with me?” the girl asked in English when she saw his focus shift. She had relaxed enough to broach this topic, but she sounded nervous. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m waiting for my friend to find me….I only needed a place off the street. And maybe”—he looked down at his mostly naked body—“some better clothes. If you have a little money, that would help too.”

  “You are going, then?”

  “Soon.”

  “You don’t do anything with me? I’m just place to stay?”

  Jake nodded, and Yulia looked troubled rather than relieved. She glanced at her things, still scattered about on the sofa.

  “What?” Jake asked.

  “Nothing.”

  But a few minutes later, when he had followed her to the little alcove next to her bed that served as her closet, and she had rummaged up some old jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt that might fit him—both upgrades from what he’d been wearing—Yulia frowned.

  “You really from California?”

  “Yeah, I really am.”

  He pulled on the clothing, which felt unnatural. The mining slaves sometimes wore shield gear when they worked, but the jeans and shirt clung to his body, hugged it, showed it off. A tumble of memories swamped him: learning to button his own pants when he was a child, pulling on his soccer uniform, getting into a clean, crisp shirt after a shower.

  “We study California in school,” she told him. “Land where everything allowed.”

  Jake almost laughed. “Yes, it was kind of like that.”

  She was still frowning. The girl had lost her fear, but she was grappling with something else. “What’s the matter?” Jake asked.

  Yulia swallowed, did not meet his eyes. “Police are coming.”

  “What?”

  “My mace,” she explained in Russian. “When I spray it, it sends an alert to the closest station. I thought they would be here sooner, but government, you know! Slow as a two-legged dog unless money is involved. But they will be here soon.”

  This news hit Jake like a blow to his soft, human heart. Of course this girl wasn’t as friendly as she’d seemed! Of course she was just listening to him to buy herself time. Look what the Russians did to their own convicts! They turned them into living garbage collectors and sewer crawlers. Why would she help him?

  “You turned me in?” he said, grabbing his boots and jacket. He couldn’t keep the shameful note of terror out of his voice. “I wasn’t going to hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t my choice! The signal is automatic when I use the mace.”

  She was debating something privately and tugging at
the blond ends of her hair while Jake pulled on his clothing. Suddenly Yulia came to a decision, said, “Here!” and threw him his hat and gloves. She began slipping into her own clothes, which were still piled on the floor. Jake ignored her; he was going to run.

  He reached for the door when the apartment buzzer went off.

  “Exactly when I change my mind they get here,” Yulia said in disgust. She looked out the one window, which faced the street at the front of the building. Green and red lights flashed below. “Chyort voz’mi!”

  She turned back to Jake, who stood frozen by the door. In two steps she was at the intercom panel, her finger hovering above the button.

  Jake imagined the Russian police as a stream of mining bosses, syringes of opioids in their hands, ready to put him under and take him apart. Was this girl helping him or not? He reached for the door again, but Yulia laid a hand on his arm.

  “Wait.” She pressed the intercom. “Da?” she said in a relaxed voice, as though entirely oblivious to any reason the police might be dropping by.

  Jake’s Russian was good enough to understand that the voice on the other end of the line was asking if she was okay after her distress call. She said yes, she was. It had all been a mistake. They wanted to come up and check. Jake tried to recall the layout of the building. Could he charge past them, jump from a window?

  “Yes, of course,” Yulia was saying into the intercom. “Fourth floor.” She pressed the button to let the police in downstairs. Then to Jake she said, “Come!”

  Taking his sleeve in her hand, she maneuvered Jake out the door and a moment later they were running down the hallway. She led Jake to dark stairs at the opposite end of the hall from the way they’d come in. They went down two floors, and then paused and hung back when they saw police officers walking up the main flight of stairs on the other side of the building. Then Yulia pulled him down and down, to an old metal door at the bottom of the stairwell. They came out into a cluttered alley. Jake’s proximity sensor had reached full alert, and by following its direction, he was drawn across the alley to a row of sorrowful fir trees lining an empty lot. In the shadow of the trees was Kostya. He was wrapped in stolen clothing, his body suffused, so he looked like a normal human teenager—almost. They grabbed each other’s shoulders in a version of an embrace, and Jake discovered himself so relieved and grateful to be reunited with his friend that he couldn’t speak at first.

  “It worked,” Kostya told him, of their simple plan to separate and avoid pursuit. “They didn’t follow us. Once I got clothes, I was only one more Russian walking in the snow, toward you.” He tapped the corner of his eye, where his own proximity sensor had guided him.

  Yulia, who had followed Jake into the shadows, cast a look at the swirling police lights coming from the other side of the apartment building, before deciding the three of them were safely out of the way. She studied Kostya and Jake with interest.

  “This is Yulia,” Jake told Kostya, when he’d found his voice. “The police came, but she helped me get away.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Kostya said gallantly in Russian, though he looked Yulia up and down warily. “I am Kostya.”

  “You are Russian?” she asked with some surprise, after hearing his voice.

  “Da,” he answered.

  She was on the point of asking him something else, when the strains of a police radio reached them from within her building. This would have been a natural moment for her to leave, but the girl showed no sign of going. In fact, she cleared her throat and asked, “What is your plan?”

  “We go east,” Kostya told her.

  “Into Siberia,” Jake said.

  “Siberia? You are standing in Siberia,” she told them, gesturing at the city around them.

  “We’re in Udachny,” Kostya explained. “About halfway across Siberia.” That had been Kostya’s job, when they split up—to find out where they were. “So we must keep going east.”

  He and Jake shared a look, reaffirming their commitment. They would go as far east as they could. They would keep going until there was nowhere else to go—either because someone had stopped them or because they had reached their destination.

  Jake nodded toward the police lights. “Will they keep looking for you?”

  Yulia shrugged, tucked loose strands of hair into her winter hat. “Not for long, but maybe. We should get out of the way. You want a train?” Yulia asked. Dumbly, they both nodded. “You have money?”

  They checked their pockets, came up with a handful of coins—Russians still used them for everything. Kostya had explained this and a few other details to Jake, though he had had difficulty telling Jake much. Even speaking of his motherland was upsetting for Kostya.

  “Not enough,” Yulia said when she had looked through their coins. “That will get you ten blocks.” She studied Kostya. There was a seam across his bare neck, where you could see his pliable face meet his reskinned throat. Yulia unwound her own scarf and tied it carefully around Kostya, hiding the seam.

  “You will tell me how you got to asteroid?” she asked Jake in English.

  He and Kostya glanced at each other, wondering what lay behind her interest in them and her willingness to help. And yet her assistance might mean the difference between success and failure.

  “Okay,” Jake agreed.

  Yulia Boykov nodded, hooked her arms through theirs, and led them away.

  5. LAST DITCH

  “It’s a funny aspect of this disease—not actually funny, of course, but odd would be a better word, I suppose—that if you’re young and fit, that very hardiness, in a general way, can mask most of the symptoms for months or even years.” The doctor spoke in concentric circles, tiptoeing closer to the truth, then farther away, then closer again. “If you play sports, like you do with soccer, Jake, the pains in your feet and knees, and wherever else they might be showing up, don’t attract the right kind of attention, because you’re beating up your body all the time. The good, healthy pain is hiding the bad.”

  Translation: You were sick for ages, kid, and no one noticed. Now you’re screwed.

  Jake nodded as he stared into his lap. “Yeah, that is really funny.”

  He thought about the vague aches he’d been feeling and ignoring for months. If he hadn’t gone in for an exam when his sprained ankle refused to heal, the disease would still be hidden.

  The doctor had projected a series of three-dimensional X-rays of Jake’s body over the center of his desk and now he pointed out, in painstaking detail, where the cancer had most likely started and then every place to which it had spread in the months it had been creeping through him, unsuspected. This became a tour of Jake’s vital organs: bones, lungs, heart, brain.

  “I need most of those, don’t I?” Jake joked weakly as the doctor touched one location after another on the rotating images. The cancer was highlighted in glowing silver on each of them. Was there anywhere the cancer wasn’t?

  His parents sat in two old-fashioned wooden chairs, stoically. They asked the doctor a series of questions that Jake understood were solely for his benefit—they had already had all of these discussions with the doctor privately. This was a masterful example of slowly breaking terrible news to someone by giving one piece of bad news after another until the sum total became clear. You actually passed the “screwed” stage months ago. Now you’re on the way out, kid.

  His mother had tears in her eyes, but it was obvious that she had already cried a great deal before this meeting, perhaps alone in her bedroom, while Jake was surfing. His father looked like he’d been hit by a bus but was somehow still keeping himself upright. Jake wondered what he looked like. He should be upset, he knew. But it was hard to feel anything just yet. His hands, tan from soccer and the beach, gripped the armrests of his chair so hard that his knuckles were turning white.

  * * *


  “But why aren’t you doing chemo or something?” Dahlia asked about a week later.

  She was pacing Jake’s bedroom floor as he lay sprawled on his bed, staring out the window and trying not to think of anything. There was a bottle of painkillers on his bedside table, but he didn’t need them much. Not yet.

  “Jake,” she said, placing herself between him and the window so he had to see her.

  “What?”

  “Why aren’t you going to the best hospital in the country for chemo or an experimental treatment or whatever? I know they can cure cancer now. They’re using stem cells and special drugs and your own immune system. My mom listens to NPR all the time.”

  “We did twenty-two consultations,” he said. “Like three a day.” Since the window was blocked by Dahlia, he stared up at the ceiling, feeling the weight of all of his limbs on the soft bed, the touch of his clothing against his skin, the pressure of his lungs pushing air in and out. All temporary…

  “And…?” Dahlia prompted.

  “And they can cure some kinds of cancer, and other kinds are still…winning at being cancer. They’re, like, totally excellent at being cancer. And I could do chemo, but the chances of it working are less than one percent. Are you good at math? Because one percent is, like, the smallest percent. So I would spend the next four months barfing up everything, turning gray, losing all my hair, looking like a skeleton, and I’d have to lose both my legs first, because that’s where it’s the worst. So I would be a barfing, gray, skeleton stump.” He smiled, because it was ridiculous, though it was also true. His body, which felt so solid on the bed, so alive, was being eaten out from underneath him.

  “But.” That was all Dahlia said. Jake could sympathize. That was all there was to say: But.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, where the sunlight from the window streamed through her hair in a flare of fire. He ran his fingers through that sunlit hair, which caused Dahlia to move away. She’d found out about the other two girls he’d been with that night on the beach, and then she’d found out about a lot of other girls. She’d affectionately called him a whore when they were alone in the quiet beneath the cliff, but when she’d been proven right, she hadn’t been happy about it. She hadn’t let him touch her since then, even though she’d somehow become the only girl he wanted to touch. Dahlia was here only because she felt sorry that Jake was dying.