“Pretty,” I said.
Carol laughed. “Your mom’s name and mine combined. I think it’s perfect.”
I’d brought a bottle of Mirdonna’s favorite vintage wine. As soon as Jacob passed out, while Carol was in the bathroom, I carried him out to the chopper.
I’m stronger than I look.
Jacob blinks, now, focusing on my voice.
“Remember that time we built a snow fort on Mrs. Kelroy’s vegetable garden to protect it from invading lava monsters?” I ask. “Mom got so mad, even if Mrs. Kelroy thought it was hilarious and brought us hot chocolate with marshmallows to drink in our fort.”
Tears drip down his face. He mouths words again, but I can’t hear.
“It’s one of the few good memories I still have, Jake.”
Outside, in the wild arctic, I hear Madam Eve’s huntresses.
I see them on the security cams: They’ve shifted into bears, foxes, wolves, elk. Some of the women ride snowmobiles, winter coats flapping about their shoulders like capes. Madam Eve is with them, running bare-legged across the snow like a living flame. A stream of boiling water flows behind her steps.
Mirdonna is on the roof, shaping the last threads of steel and living membrane to carry the Empathy across the world.
“It was the day Dad…” I take a breath. “The day he was murdered. I know Mom told us it was an accident. Christmas Eve, and some asshole just walked up to him in the street, high as fuck, and shot him for kicks.”
Jacob shuts his eyes.
“That’s the kind of world we have right now. Random violence. Grief. And I know. I know. I’m taking you away from Carol and your daughter. I’m sorry, Jacob. But they’ll be okay. Because tomorrow… no one will want to kill. No one will want to hurt each other.”
Mom will live. She’ll walk away from Madam Eve. Everyone who’s bound to the Summer Lady will be free.
“We’ll be okay. Your baby’s going to grow up not having to be terrified that if she looks at a guy wrong, he’ll kill her. Your wife won’t have to get catcalled and harassed on her way to work or out for a jog. Mom won’t get her teeth knocked out by a drunk boyfriend.”
I turn off the security feeds.
Madam Eve and her huntresses won’t get here in time. And if they do…it won’t matter.
“I couldn’t have done this without your help, Jake. Goodbye,” I tell my brother. “I love you.”
INSIDE THE CONTROL room, it’s dim and cold. Snow flurries buzz down from the opened roof. The flowering antenna and dishes are positioned. Mirdonna glides down the ladder and stands next to me.
“I don’t know what to do when this is over,” Mirdonna says, her fingers poised above the launch button.
When she presses it, all the empathy and life force will multiply and bloom like a great tidal wave. It will ripple through the atmosphere, airborne, and infect everyone who breathes.
We don’t know if it will change the unborn—like Carol’s daughter—but we can hope. Perhaps, if brought up in a world where pain and hurt are not necessary, children will learn without being neutered by the machine.
“We’ll figure it out,” I say, and she smiles.
The countdown begins: ten, nine, eight…
Engines hum. Power floods the circuitry and the transmitters begin to glow.
The ninety-nine bodies convulse as needles pierce their hearts, leeching out life energy and blood into the tubes winding into the converters.
Seven, six, five.
Mirdonna takes a breath. She looks up at the stormy sky, the snow crusting her lashes.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “Tomorrow…”
Four.
I grab her wrist. Mirdonna turns her head, slow, predatory. Her eyes meet mine.
Three.
The needles pierce Jacob’s heart.
The status bar on our screen is at ninety-nine percent.
“He’s my brother.”
She nods.
Two.
Mirdonna pulls her arm back; I let her go.
One.
Jacob’s eyes close for the last time.
One-hundred percent.
I press the button for a new world.
LIFE/DEATH #7
The woman I’m given to is finished with her boyfriend, so she throws me and the other roses into the garbage disposal.
BECAUSE MEMORY LASTS between life and death, I make lists as my new body grows on the stem.
When I Am Human Again, I Will:
·Eat a twelve-course meal full of cheeses and pie and roast chicken and mashed potatoes and French appetizers with names I can’t pronounce. Anything that doesn’t taste of NutriGrow.
·Watch the sun rise and set and the stars bloom over a country field.
·Go skydiving.
·Wear microfleece sweaters and downy slippers and drink hot chocolate by an open fireplace.
·Hold you tight and tell you I love you I love you I love you.
LIFE/DEATH #19
Petals ripped from my stem one by one to gamble for love. At least the pain lessens with each wound. Roses can’t scream.
THE CURSE WAS nestled in a chocolate truffle glazed with butterscotch.
Was it meant for me, or was it meant for you?
LIFE/DEATH #37
Tossed in the compost after Valentine’s Day. Decomposing amid carrot tops and lettuce heads, coffee grounds and melon rinds. The flies are the worst.
I AM ALWAYS the brightest, reddest, biggest rose in a bouquet. I must be the most beautiful so you will find me.
I bolster my fellow roses with encouraging thoughts—“Look how lovely you are! Your fragrance is delectable! Your thorns are so sharp!”—but they never answer. I know they suffer. If I had a heart like I did, it would always be breaking.
LIFE/DEATH #58
Eaten by a golden retriever. Half-digested in stomach acids and vomited up on a Persian rug.
I wish this would stop.
OUR LIFE TOGETHER was rocky and sharp, because we were both poor and students and unsure where we were headed. But I remember loving you. So hard that it stretched my chest into a balloon I thought would pop if I couldn’t see your bedhead in the morning, brush my teeth beside you in our tiny apartment bathroom, cuddle you in the evening, write you sentimental texts at work.
When you said my name, an electric thrill buzzed in my stomach. I said yours back and you would smile. Kiss me. Hold me.
We were happy, weren’t we? In all our struggle and spats and goofy dates at the waterpark or the zoo or free museums?
You’re still trying to find me, aren’t you?
LIFE/DEATH #71
Tossed in a puddle after wilting, tires grinding my body into asphalt. Drowning in grit and rain.
I WENT TO bed with a stomachache from eating the curse. When you woke, I was gone. You never thought to look at the dozen roses on the table.
You looked. You waited. You called the police. But I was gone—transformed, unable to beg you to kiss me and set me free.
You threw out the roses a week after I left.
That was Life/Death #1.
LIFE/DEATH #87
Dried and pressed between the slats of a vice, crushed into paper. Suffocating against mulched wood until the book opens and I crumble to dust.
THE CURSE-MAKER PURCHASED me during Life/Death #42. She was a chocolatier who worked on her spells on the side. One day she was mixing brownies from a box, a shortcut she was ashamed of, but it was such a last minute invite to her niece’s potluck, and everyone expected her to bring chocolate.
“It didn’t reach my ex,” she said, cell on speakerphone as she worked. “The package was mislabeled and sent to the wrong house. He never received the curse. I feel just awful.”
A mistake? All this…was a mistake?
“So no,” the chocolatier said. “I won’t make any more. You’ll have to find someone else.”
I couldn’t scream. I was right there and she could fix this. Why couldn’t she see me?
&n
bsp; She crumbled us roses into a frosting for the brownies.
LIFE/DEATH #93
Used for an amateur’s home-made perfume. Left to ferment in an old milk-glass jar. The smell is terrible.
I WANT YOU to keep looking for me. I shouldn’t. You deserve to move on, to find other loves, to live. But hope is all I have.
Attempted Methods of Communication Thus Far:
Shedding petals into the words HELP ME. [Too difficult to arrange with no hands.]
Pricking every finger that touches me; someone must realize I am not a rose. [People are imperceptive.]
Asking the bees to carry my message to someone. Anyone. [Humans understand bees poorly.]
Thinking your name as loud as I can, remembering how we said we would always recognize each other’s ghosts.
LIFE/DEATH #103
I refuse to eat or drink. Once withered, thrown away.
THE NUMBER OF Valentine’s Days I’ve endured as a rose: fifty-two.
I no longer strive to outshine all the other roses. If I give up, will the curse end? Will I die forever?
You must have stopped looking for me. It’s okay.
It’s…okay.
LIFE/DEATH #111
My stem tip rots in the old water of the boutique fridge. I’m the only rose left after the holiday rush. Too dreary to be picked. The shop owner, a tiny woman who sings to us in Russian, shuffles about as she closes up for the night.
The door chimes. “Do you have any roses left?”
Footsteps approach. I bow my head, petals drifting in a washed-out drizzle to the fridge floor. I want to disintegrate before another stranger finds it necessary to discard me.
Hands that smell of cocoa butter and minty arthritic cream cup my wilted head. Lift me. “Hello, love.”
It’s your voice.
You found me.
After so long, you didn’t give up? I have so many questions. Yet just to be held in your hands once more, to be remembered—it’s enough. I strive to blossom one last time for you.
You came back.
You smile and whisper my name and kiss me.
ONCE UPON A time there was a girl named Red, but since this isn’t a fairy tale, that’s a stupid way to begin.
Start here: You’re sitting with your girlfriend Ashley after dance practice and she says, “They won’t let me join the girls’ dance team.”
You punch the grass. The hill isn’t bothered; its grass is more dead-brown than green, anyhow. “That’s bullshit.”
She shrugs and stares at her feet, toes digging into the ground. Her mascara is beginning to run, so you put an arm around her and pull her tight.
“It’s bullshit,” you say again, no less angry. You’ve seen her dance. She’s good. She should be on the team.
Dancing is how you met. It was the first party you went to in this town, because your aunt’s house was too suffocating in the quiet and you needed music blaring, a rhythmic beat in your chest. You needed to feel something. Ashley danced like a wild thing in the thumping strobe lights. You watched, entranced, and when she saw you, she beckoned. But you just shook your head. Maybe it was the longing in your eyes or your pixie cut or the party-vibe, but she swung her way over to you and asked if you wanted a drink. Watching Ashley dance was like finding an oxygen mask as the room filled with smoke.
(You haven’t danced with anyone since your monster went away.)
“Hey Ashton!” someone, a guy, shouts from the bottom of the hill. One of the mass of the interchangeable bullypack. He starts making lewd gestures at you both, laughing.
Ashley presses her face harder into your shoulder. You flip the idiot the finger.
Ashley takes deep breaths and squeezes your hand between hers. “I just have to wait till I can afford surgery and—” Her voice cracks.
You hug your girlfriend tighter. She should still be able to join the girls’ dance troupe. You have no one guilty nearby to punch out, so you hit the ground again.
I love you, Ash, is what you want to say, for support, because it’s true—but you can’t. Words have never been your domain. They belong to him.
You never told your mom you loved her, either. You don’t believe in happy endings anymore.
This isn’t a fairy tale.
ONCE UPON A time, when you were a kid, you fell into an old abandoned well in the woods. You should’ve broken your arm or your neck, but you didn’t. You landed on a monster instead.
“What are you doing here?” said a deep voice.
You looked up—and up and up—at the monster.
The monster was as big as your house (almost), covered in fluffy purple fur because purple was your favorite color. The monster had great big eyes and soft round ears like a teddy bear. When the monster smiled, you saw very, very big teeth.
“I ran away,” you told the monster. It was one of the Bad Days. Daddy was shouting at Mommy. It hurt your ears.
“Why?” asked Monster.
“I’m scared.” You pressed your face into Monster’s poofy fur. “Don’t wanna go back.”
Monster hugged you while you cried. You knew the shouting was your fault. You’d asked if you could take ballet lessons. Mommy said yes; Daddy said no.
“I’ll protect you,” Monster said.
“On Bad Days too?”
“Always,” said Monster. “That’s what monsters are for.”
You took Monster home and let Monster live under your bed so you wouldn’t be afraid of the dark.
This was when you thought fairy tales were real. Then maybe you’d be a princess in shining armor riding a palomino horse to save your stuffed animals from the evil king.
And besides, even when Bad Days happened, fairy tales got happy endings.
Like this:
It was a Bad Day. Mommy was crying and saying “Stop, stop, please stop!” but Daddy kept hitting her.
So you got really mad. You ran up and kicked Daddy in the leg. Your shoes had hard toes because Monster was teaching you how to dance after bedtime. “Leave her alone!”
Daddy’s face went as red as your favorite hoodie. “You little bitch.”
You ran to your room and dove under the bed. “Help, Monster!”
Monster’s warm, furry arm wrapped around you. “You’re safe, Red.”
Then Daddy’s face appeared all scrunched up mad. “I’m gonna teach you a lesson in respect, you little brat.”
Monster growled.
“Go away or Monster will bite you,” you told him.
Daddy thrust both hands under the bed to grab you. You squirmed back into Monster’s protective fur.
Monster’s mouth opened wide and bit off both Daddy’s hands.
Daddy screamed and rolled around on the floor, hugging his arms to his chest.
Monster smiled with red teeth, and you smiled back.
But it was just a chapter ending, and the fairy tale went on. (You didn’t know how dark most fairy tales were, back when you were small.)
Daddy leaned in the doorway of your bedroom later. When he stayed outside the room, his hands came back. If he came inside the room, they disappeared, because Monster had bitten them off. He stopped hitting Mommy when you told him you would let Monster eat him all up if he didn’t.
(He didn’t, not really—he just made sure you didn’t see.)
You sat cross-legged on the floor playing Go-Fish with your favorite plush rabbit, Mr. Bunny. Monster watched from under the bed.
“I’m going to kill it,” Daddy said in his Normal Voice. “Your monster. I’m going kill all of them. Just you wait.”
“Go Fish,” you said to Mr. Bunny, but your hand quivered as you picked a card.
When Daddy walked away, you crawled under the bed and tugged Monster’s ear. “I don’t want Daddy to kill you.”
Monster pulled you close with one arm. “He can’t harm us in this world, Red. Don’t worry.”
You sniffed, relieved. “Can we dance, Monster?”
Monster smiled. “Whenever yo
u wish.”
You bounced up and down with excitement, and pulled Monster by the hand into the ballroom. Under the bed was like a tent, full of space for your stuffed animals and toys. It even had a dance floor where Monster gave you lessons.
Monster took your hands and began to hum, a lullaby that had become your favorite music. You hummed along with Monster, your feet tapping to the beat.
You pulled Monster along to the music, spinning and dipping and leaping. Your feet hardly touched the ground. It was like the time Daddy took you to the amusement park and you got to ride the grown-up roller coaster, only a million billion times better. The music soared through you and you felt like you could fly.
The dance floor blurred around you, became an open glade full of trees and a bright sunny sky. It smelled like lilacs and cotton candy. You loved when Monster made it look like outside. You danced wildly, swept away in the movement and the music.
Letting go of Monster, you twirled faster and faster across the grass. You sprinted onto a fallen birch log and jumped into the air. Monster caught you and lifted you up, higher and higher until you thought you could peel the sky open with your fingertips.
The dance ended.
Monster set you down, back in the ballroom under your bed. You laughed, out of breath, and hugged Monster tight. “I love dancing!”
“It is something no one can ever take from you, Red,” Monster said.
(Daddy’s words were long forgotten by the time you went to bed.)
YOU DON’T SEE Ashley after track practice on Friday. She texted you she’d meet you on the hill. You’re taking her to dinner (even if it’s just McDonald’s because you can’t afford much more) to celebrate the year you’ve been dating.
But she’s not there. Storm clouds roll in, a cold October wind kicking the trees into a gold-brown frenzy.
Your phone dings. Voicemail, although you don’t see any missed calls. You drop your duffel bag with your change of clothes and dial your voice mailbox to listen.
So You Want to be a Robot and Other Stories Page 7
