by Sarah Fine
“No, of course not. That kind of intrusion into your privacy would be illegal and completely counter to building a trusting relationship. I didn’t mean to alarm you.” Rafiq tilts his head. His eyes on me are warm, and even though I know, I know he’s a machine, it’s still comforting. “I can tell when you receive texts by the movements of your eyes, Cora. I am also aware of your parents’ request that you recover in peace by blocking incoming coms on your Cerepin. I was merely stating a fact.”
“Okay. Right. Good.” I take a deep breath and continue down the hall, heading for my room. I try to calm down as I change out of my silver skin and into pants and a silky sweater that Mom downloaded and genned for me this morning. This is going to be fine, and I can handle it.
When I emerge, Rafiq is in his usual position in the hallway, still in his exercise skin. “Maybe you could . . . wait somewhere else?”
“I should be near in case you need assistance,” he says as we walk toward the foyer.
“But Franka can monitor.”
“I am going to wait nearby. You are showing signs of significant physiological dysregulation.” He looks toward the front door, where Finn waits on the other side. “And so is your visitor.”
Can he hear Finn’s heart beating from here?
I have no time to argue. Finn is already upset, and I don’t want to make it worse. “Fine. I’ll take him into the den, and you can wait in the storage room, or . . . ?”
“That is satisfactory,” Rafiq says and walks past me.
“You can open the door, Franka,” I say when Rafiq ducks into the room.
The door swings open. Finn stands on the front step. It’s raining, and he’s soaked. Like he walked or ran here instead of taking a car. “Hi,” I say. “Um, want a towel?”
“Nah.” He steps over the threshold and stands on the mat, where he pushes his fingers through his thick brown hair, then wipes his wet hands on his pants. His freckles look stark against his pale skin. His eyes are aimed at my feet. “You didn’t com me back.”
“But you saw that I’m okay—I put that message up. My parents made me. I-I would have responded if I could have.”
Finally, his eyes meet mine. “Do you have any idea how freaked I’ve been?” he asks, his voice trembling.
I put my hand on my stomach. “Den?”
He heads back there, and I follow him, hoping Rafiq is out of sight as promised.
“Can you put on privacy settings?” He looks over his shoulder and sees me shake my head. “They’ve really got you under lockdown, don’t they?”
“You have no idea,” I mutter.
He rounds on me as soon as we reach the rug between the two couches in the room, and his body is framed by the massive fireplace behind him. Franka helpfully illuminates the chandelier over us, sending light and shadow cascading down Finn’s face. I suddenly feel sweaty and chilled.
“Do you really not remember what happened that night?” he asks, his voice low. “Lara told me that’s what you’ve been saying, but—”
“Lara has all the information these days, doesn’t she?”
“She said she’d called your dad about Hannah.”
My cheeks are hot. “Right. I guess that makes sense.”
Finn leans forward. “Well? Is what she told me true?” His eyes shift from wall to wall. He knows Franka’s listening.
I bite my lip and glance at the door of the storage room, which is in the corner to my left. The door is closed, but Rafiq can remotely access Franka’s vid feed, so he also hears every single thing we say, and he knows how fast our hearts beat as we say it. “I swear I don’t remember.”
Finn’s shoulders sag, and he lets out a long breath. For a second it looks like he’s going to melt right onto the floor. “For real?”
“I’m sorry. I’m tired of letting people down, but I’m telling the truth.” I rub my hands along my arms and drop onto one of the couches, tucking my feet up next to me and pulling a pillow onto my lap, a shield for my chest. Something to muffle the sound.
“Franka, music, please,” I say, trying to pull together my fractured thoughts. “Debussy. L’isle joyeuse. Volume seven.”
The rippling piano music fills the room. I pat the seat next to me. Finn glances toward the hallway and sits down. I can smell him, soap and boy sweat. I clutch the pillow a little harder, my fingernails digging in. “What’s the last thing you actually can remember?” he asks in a whisper.
I shake my head, the music my own private alarm bell, clanging in my head. “I blacked out . . . I don’t know. Before midnight, I think. I don’t remember anything until after I got to the hospital.” I glare at the wall, praying Franka doesn’t comment on my heart rate. I can’t keep my body still any longer, and begin to rock. Just a little. Barely noticeable. I close my eyes and breathe.
“So you have no idea how she ended up at the bottom of the stairs? Do you think she fell because she was trying to stop you from killing yourself? Because after I saw that vid and heard what happened, I thought—”
“Finn, please.” My voice is brittle. Like bone. Like fingernails.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just been climbing the walls. Wondering if some of it was my fault.”
My eyes open. “How would it be your fault?”
His eyes are still red rimmed like they were when he messaged me. “You know why.”
“You thought we fought over you?” I look past him, rooting my gaze in the immaculately clean grate of the fireplace. “I was over it. And she never even knew it happened.”
“She did, Cora.”
Heat blooms in my chest. “How do you know?”
He sighs. “You sure you want me to tell you?”
Another glance toward the storage room. “Yeah.”
He taps his Cerepin and closes his eyes. “I’ll send it to you.”
I take my ’Pin off blank and a second later, I receive a vid from Finn. Chills unfurl from the center of my chest. “Open,” I whisper.
While Debussy plays in the background, I see myself through my sister’s eyes. I am sitting on a table in Finn’s parents’ wine cellar. Finn is standing between my legs. My fingers are curled around his biceps, and his are digging into my hips. I remember how that felt. Urgent and compelling. I remember squirming, clutching, just to get a little closer to him. It felt so familiar, that need to move just to find a little relief—I wanted more until there was no more to be had.
For a few seconds, that is all I see. Just me and Finn in that cellar, the lights low, and I feel like I did that night, when everything else dropped away and shattered beneath the weight of his kiss.
He had the privacy settings on, but that couldn’t hide us from Hannah. She must have followed us down. The pounding bass from the music throbs overhead; the party upstairs goes on without us. For a moment, the view blurs.
Was she crying?
“Did you know she was there?” I ask, my voice breaking.
“What? No!”
Until that sweltering August night, with Finn’s parents on their anniversary trip to Brazil, I thought he was determined to get Hannah back. Maybe I was right. “Were you using me to make her jealous?”
“How can you say that?”
“Maybe because you didn’t respond to any of my messages after that night?”
His eyes are wide, and there’s sweat glistening on the peach fuzz of his upper lip. “She broke up with me! I was messed up, Cora. I really like you, but I just . . . didn’t want to hurt you.”
“So instead you decided to pretend I didn’t exist.” I remember being happy, hopeful. Thinking maybe he could be mine instead of hers, and then . . . nothing. Nothing. My bare feet push against his thighs, hard, as the resentment and anger well up. “I don’t even know why I’m talking to you now. Leave.”
His hands grasp my ankles. “Cora, please! I know things have always been . . . kinda complicated for you two. Right now, all I want is to be here for you.”
“Complicated.” Like his hands
on my ankles? I wish that I had shaved my legs. The door to the storage room is still closed. The music is still on.
“She sent me that vid the morning after we kissed,” he said. “Along with a message.”
“Let me see it.”
“I’m not sure if—”
“Let me see!”
“Fine.” He taps at his Cerepin. Just text, no vid.
Don’t you hurt my sister. She’s more fragile than you think.
I read it three times. “Fragile?”
“I got scared. I didn’t know what to do!”
I kick him again. “You never liked me. Even now, you’re just pretending to like me.”
“You know that’s not true. We’ve always gotten along great, haven’t we? You don’t talk when you should be listening. When you do talk, you say stuff that’s honest. Not like you’re trying to create some perfect impression. You seem real, I guess. Innocent.”
Of all the ways to describe me, that’s the word he picks? “So basically, I’m not intimidating like Hannah was, and you wanted to give that a try.”
He curses and runs his hands through his hair again. “You make me sound awful, and I’ve never been anything but nice to you.”
I focus on the frozen image of Finn and me, my head tilted back, his back hunched, our lips mashed together. My eyes shut tight, tight, tight. Footsteps creaking above us.
I should have known Hannah was there. I should have sensed it.
“No harm done,” I say too loudly, fighting my need to rock and rock and rock. “We kissed. Your house let us know the music was too loud, so we went upstairs again. That was it. Just a hookup. No big deal.”
His look says I’m wrong, and I’m hopeful for a second that it actually meant something to him. Then I’m angry, tired of feeling hopeful and then like an idiot.
“Were you really okay about it?” he asks. “Because Mei told me about something that happened on the Fourth of July. She was worried about you.”
My muscles are knots of dread. “What did Mei tell you, exactly?”
“She said something about you guys being up on the roof of your house. The widow’s walk. It weirded all of them out—Mei and Lara and Hannah. When Hannah sent me that com and vid of us, I guess she thought that if I upset you, that you might . . . I guess she was just scared for you.”
“Of course she was,” I mutter. “Because I’m fragile.” I bow my head and rub at my eyes, suddenly tired. Suddenly sure I’m the most terrible person in the whole world. Suddenly sure I won’t be able to hide it forever. My body is rocking just enough to keep me from exploding.
Hannah deserved it, I almost yell.
Finn is looking cautious. Or maybe scared? “Hannah told Mei that some bad stuff had happened to you as a kid,” he says. “She said that’s why you did some—” He looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Of the things you do.”
I freeze. “You’re serious right now?”
“I thought, when Hannah said you were fragile, she was afraid that when we kissed I had . . . I don’t know . . . brought some things back to the surface? I searched it, and I know trauma can make people—”
“What the hell? I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t know why we’re talking about this!”
“I’m sorry. I came here because I thought maybe I could help you piece together what happened the night she fell, but it got all twisted up.” He’s sitting forward now, and my feet are in his lap. His hands are still on my ankles. I don’t know if he’s trying to keep himself from being kicked or if he likes holding on to me. “I’m just thinking, you keep trying to hurt yourself, and so maybe you . . . feel guilty about something?”
“Because of the vid she sent you that night. The one where I—” Slapped her. My eyes zip to the storage room.
Finn notices. He turns and looks. And apparently sees nothing, because he turns back to face me. “You were scaring her, Cora.” And there is a question in his eyes, I think: Was she right to be scared?
“Why send it to you?” I ask. “She wanted to blame you, right? To say I was suicidal because you wouldn’t talk to me? But it’s not your fault, okay? You didn’t bring anything up from the past or do anything wrong, and this is all stupid. It’s stupid. And it had nothing to do with you and nothing to do with me trying to kill myself! It was an accident, okay? She fell down the stairs on accident!” Why can’t I slow my words down? My thoughts are racing. I’m talking a mile a minute.
“Okay, calm down.” He’s watching me like I’m a bomb about to detonate. “But you don’t know for sure, Cora. Hey, are you going to be all right? Do you think your memories of that night will ever come back?”
I shrug, an up-down jerk of my tense shoulders. “I need time.” It won’t help at all, but it sounds nice. I can’t be still now. I have to move.
Finn’s brow furrows. “Okay.” He’s staring at his own hands. His thumbs stroke the skin around the bony part of my ankle, the veins shifting beneath my skin with the slight back-and-forth momentum of my body. “Whatever does come back, will it be . . . I don’t know . . . reliable?”
“How should I know?” I barely trust my own thoughts in the here and now, for god’s sake.
He looks nervous again. “Will you call me first if you do remember anything?”
“Why should I?”
And now he looks like I’ve just punched him in the face. “I want to be here for you, Cora!”
“Oh, sure, now you want to be here for me.”
His grip tightens like he wants to hold me still. “Cora, please. I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he continues. “And if I had anything to do with whatever happened that night—” His eyes are shining, and his voice is thick. Choked. “I can’t believe she’s gone. I can’t believe she’s dead.”
I pull my feet away. “I need time,” I say again, but my voice is high-pitched, like a child’s. I need him to leave. Now. “I’ve—I’ve got—”
He reaches for me. “Don’t be like this, Cora!”
“Your trainer is waiting in the foyer, Cora,” says Franka. “He apologizes for being late.”
Finn looks at me. “You didn’t say you had a—”
“I forgot.” I am standing up. I am walking. I have a vague idea of what just happened, and—yes. Rafiq is standing in the foyer, his hair wet, a raindrop hanging from his chin, with a folded yoga mat under his arm.
Finn is behind me. I feel the shadow of him, and when I look over my shoulder, he’s got his eyes on Rafiq. “Hey.”
Rafiq nods. “Hey.” Then he looks at me. “I’m sorry I got held up. Do you want to change into your exercise skin?”
“Um. Yes?”
He smiles. “Great!”
Finn puts his hand on my shoulder. “Cora. Com me if you want to talk? I’m here. I want to help.”
I do not turn around, but I tense my shoulder, trying to shrug him off. “Thanks. Maybe later, okay? I have . . . my trainer. My training.”
Rafiq is watching us. His face is frozen in a bland smile. He looks completely at ease. “I’m so sorry to rush you,” he says, “but I have another appointment right after yours, and—”
“Right. Sorry.” Without looking at him, I take Finn by the wrist and tow him toward the door. “This isn’t a good time. I’m sure I’ll be back at school soon. I appreciate you caring about me enough to stop by.” Once again, I’m talking so fast that I’m out of breath.
Finn looks back and forth between me and Rafiq. His jaw is clenched, and his eyes are narrow, worried. I don’t know what’s going through his head. “Later,” Finn mutters and walks toward the door, which Franka opens for him, revealing the downpour outside. He walks into it without looking back.
Franka closes the door.
“Thank you,” Rafiq says.
“You’re welcome,” she replies.
He reaches me in two steps. “You were clearly flooded with negative emotion and becoming cognitively disorganized. I decided to intervene.”
I close my eye
s. The video of Finn and me in the wine cellar is still frozen, covering my right visual field. Hannah’s com is still there, too, enlarging whenever I focus on it. Don’t you hurt my sister. She’s more fragile than you think.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I mumble.
“Franka, have Gretchen bring a glass of water to Cora’s room,” Rafiq says briskly. Then he takes me by the shoulders and steers me down the hall. “Clear your Cerepin screen, Cora,” he says to me. “I can tell you still have the images he shared with you up on the space, and I believe they are distressing you.”
“Close messages,” I say, and when my vision clears again, my stomach unknots slightly. Rafiq’s hands are on me, and I sag in his grip. I feel his body, warm, deceptively human, against my back.
“I won’t let you fall,” he says quietly. “I can carry you if I have to.”
“I can walk.” And I do. But I’m glad he’s touching me. It’s not a demanding touch. It doesn’t ask me for a single thing.
When we reach my room, he guides me to my gel chair. “You can rock if you need to,” he says.
I cover my head with my hands.
He meets Gretchen, the physical extension of Franka, in the hallway just outside my door and accepts the glass of water, which he sets next to me. At first, he stands in front of me, but then he walks over to my desk and sits in the chair. I don’t know how long we stay like that, but I’m not getting better. Inside, I’m screaming.
“Cora, for three days now, you’ve done everything you can to avoid talking to me about anything of substance.”
My fingers tug at my hair. “It won’t change anything.”
“It’s not about changing anything that’s happened. It’s about helping you cope with it. Right now, you don’t feel able. You’re overwhelmed by it. You think you won’t be able to handle it if you let it in.” He pauses. “And you’re wrong about that.”
“You have no idea how this feels. You’re a freaking robot.”
“I don’t know how this feels. I don’t claim to. But I know other things. I know you are capable of dealing with what’s happened, of sorting through it, of accepting it, if only you’re willing to let me help you.”
“Finn was right—everything is too twisted up. I don’t—I don’t even know what to say. I don’t want to talk at all.”
