Natural Selection

by Malinda Lo

  That night everybody gathered at our campsite because it was the biggest, and Mr. Santos and Matt built a huge fire in the fire pit. We had chili for dinner, and it was better than I expected, even if the meat in it was cut-up hot dogs. Afterward, we made s’mores, which I’d never eaten before. Morgan showed me how to suspend the marshmallow over the flames until the outside blistered black and the insides turned into a melting gob of sugar. We peeled off the blackened exteriors and ate them, hot and crispy and so sweet it made my teeth hurt. Then we sandwiched the remaining marshmallow between graham crackers and milk chocolate, and Morgan made me wait for the chocolate to melt before biting in. Our fingers were sticky and we couldn’t stop laughing, and even though I knew there wasn’t much of a chance that Morgan would miraculously turn gay on the camping trip, I might have hoped a little.

  At ten o’clock Ms. Lucas made us get ready for bed. Morgan and I crowded into the bathroom with the other girls, brushing our teeth in the harsh light from the fluorescent bulbs overhead. The girls’ voices echoed in the concrete room as they chattered about what had happened that day. When Morgan met my gaze in the mirror there was a sparkle in her eyes that made the hope inside me glow.

  As we left the bathroom she pulled me aside and whispered in my ear, “I’m meeting Zach later. I can’t believe it!” She clutched my arm, and even though I was trying to avoid sensing her feelings, her whole body was jittery with excitement.

  It felt like she had shoved me. I tried to hide my disappointment. “Don’t go too far into the woods,” I said. “You heard what Matt said. Mountain lions.”

  Morgan giggled. Giggled. “Zach will protect me.”

  She was so hyped up she never noticed I wasn’t laughing with her.

  5

  Kurra

  It’s been more than eight months since I left Earth, and my kibila’sa begins tonight at sunset. On Earth my birthday is February ninth, but it doesn’t translate directly to the Kurran calendar. Here, it’s more like autumn than midwinter, although the seasons don’t change much in Isi Na. It’s going to be a cool, clear night, with no storms.

  My parents accompany me to the base of the temple trail to meet Nasha and her parents at sunset. I see her waiting with two other people as we approach the lighted stone arch, and I realize that she only has two parents. I don’t think I knew that before. I wonder how she feels about coming from such a traditional arrangement. Maybe they imported additional genes from other relatives. I’m not supposed to ask about that, though. It’s not considered polite to ask about an Imrian’s parentage; you have to wait for them to volunteer it.

  Even though I know the girl standing by the archway is Nasha, I barely recognize her. She’s dressed in the same clothing as I am: outdoor gear that will keep us warm as the temperature drops. She has on black trousers with reflective seams tucked into hard-soled boots meant for the rocky terrain, and a long-sleeved black top with a hood to block the wind. Like me, Nasha has a small pack slung over her shoulder. It probably contains the same things mine does: our traditional kibila garments, which we’ll put on at the temple. Water and emergency rations, which we probably won’t use. A blanket, in case it gets really cold.

  “Silim,” Nasha says. Hello. We’re not supposed to use our names, because tonight we are nameless.

  “Silim,” I respond.

  Nasha has cut off almost all her hair; what’s remaining is cropped close to her head. She’s not wearing any makeup either, and for the first time I realize she has light brown skin like Aba’s. Apparently her parents are traditional in more ways than one; they gave her the ancestral pigmentation.

  Our parents come forward to greet each other and talk about local events while we wait for the sun to finish setting. They know each other, after all. Isi Na is a small community. When it’s dark, our parents give us the kibila farewell. They bow, making sure not to touch us, and say in unison, “May you have fair weather and calm spirits.”

  Nasha and I bow back. My pack bangs against my hip. Then we both turn away from our parents and move toward the trail. We’re not supposed to look back, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes peering forward into the night.

  6

  Earth

  I was almost asleep when someone unzipped the front flap to my tent and crawled in, whispering, “Shh, shh, it’s me.”

  Morgan. As she slid inside, forcing me to make room for her—it was supposed to be a single tent—her body quivered with barely suppressed energy. I woke up completely.

  “He kissed me, he kissed me,” she said in my ear. Her breath was hot, tickling my skin. I tried to pull away from her, but there wasn’t any room. I shut my mind to her so that I didn’t relive, through her memory, the whole experience. I didn’t want to know what it was like to kiss Zach Montgomery. I really did not.

  “Is he a good kisser?” I whispered, because I knew that’s what she wanted me to ask.

  “Oh my God, he’s amazing,” she whispered.

  I wondered how she knew, since she hadn’t done a lot of kissing yet. Neither of us had. I went out with one of Zach’s friends, Joshua Taylor, last fall—if going out could mean being dropped off at the mall a couple of times. He had kissed me awkwardly in a dark movie theater, and I remembered feeling kind of sick about the whole thing. His breath reeked of mint gum and his hands had pawed nervously at my knee as he leaned toward me. I pulled away before he got too far. I had only gone to the movie with him because Morgan thought it would make Zach hang out with us more. Unfortunately I couldn’t stomach going out with Josh again, and that had resulted in Zach avoiding us completely.

  I turned onto my side in the tent so that I could face Morgan, but it was so dark I could barely see anything, only the shadow of her head against the barely lighter tent wall. “So are you going out now?” I asked, because Morgan wanted desperately to talk about it, and even though it felt like stabbing myself in the gut, I wanted to make her happy.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “He wouldn’t say.”

  “Do you want to go out with him?” I heard the impatience in my voice and wished I had hidden it.

  “Maybe,” she said, sounding shy.

  “Why maybe?” I softened my tone. “I thought you were totally into him.”

  “I am, but…” Anxiety twisted through her voice. I scooted a little closer. Her hair still smelled like strawberries. “I don’t want to get my hopes up,” she whispered.

  I suddenly felt sorry for her. “Oh, Morgan. Why don’t you just ask him out?”

  She tensed up. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” I asked, and felt her recoil from me slightly.

  “Girls don’t do that. And besides, what if he doesn’t really like me that way? What if he just wanted to make out with me and—and…” She trailed off, but I knew what she was afraid of. What if he just wanted to make out with her for the hell of it?

  “Then he’s a jerk,” I said.

  She sighed. I wanted to comfort her, but I was afraid to touch her. “He’s not a jerk,” she objected.

  “Then ask him out,” I said, meaning it for the first time. Maybe if she did it, and he said no, she’d finally get over him. “And girls can do whatever they want.”

  She didn’t say anything for a second, just lay there a couple of inches away from me, breathing. “I’ll think about it,” she said finally. “Not everybody’s as confident as you, you know.”

  It was a weird, backhanded compliment—a cross between flattery and accusation—and I didn’t know what to say. Thanks? Or maybe: I’m sorry. I’m sorry you don’t see yourself as the girl I see, a girl who deserves someone way better than Zach Montgomery.

  “I’m gonna go,” Morgan whispered. “Before they catch me.”

  She slithered out of my tent, leaving me lying there on my side, facing the empty space where she had been a moment before.

  7

  Kurra

  The trail to the temple is steep but smooth, with rounded rocks marking the
edge. It’s old and well maintained, reminding me that the Imria of Isi Na have been walking this ritual path for millennia. Tiny lights mark the edges of the trail. They’re attached to slender stalks planted in the ground about every ten feet, making it look as if Christmas lights have been strung up the mountainside.

  Christmas. It’s jarring to think about that human holiday here, so far away from their God, their religions. I take a deep breath of night air and smell the spicy scent of the conifer trees around us, mingled with the fragrance of night-blooming inda. Isi Na is famous for inda perfume; Ama even brings it back to Earth with her in a little glass bottle, and every time I smell it I think of this place.

  Nasha walks a few feet ahead of me. She stops as the trail makes a sharp right turn and says, “Look.” She points to the left, where the shoulders of the mountain part to reveal a distant view of the ocean. Something sparkles down there. It must be the lights of the nearest floating city, Sakai’uru. Above us, the stars glitter like a city in the sky. The pattern of them sometimes still surprises me. I can’t see the Big Dipper here, or Orion’s Belt. I’m in a totally different part of the universe, and all of a sudden I miss Earth with a deep, startling ache.

  “Are you all right?” Nasha asks, taking a step toward me.

  I guess it showed on my face. Ama says I have to be careful about letting my feelings show so much, at least back on Earth, where I’m supposed to be keeping a lot of secrets. “I just miss Earth,” I tell her.

  She doesn’t respond, and I wonder what she’s thinking. Does she even believe me? Or does she think I’m saying it to show how special I am? Earthsider. I’m a little disappointed by her silence. I guess I hoped Nasha would be different tonight. That she would be friendlier.

  We continue up the trail. In the distance the moon rises. It’s a little bigger than Earth’s moon and sheds a bit more light. Soon the mountainside will turn silver. About two-thirds of the way up we come to an overlook that gives us another view of the ocean. Up here the wind is cool and the air is thin, and I pull my hood over my head as Nasha walks toward a stone altar on one side of the overlook.

  “Are you hungry?” she asks.

  I join her at the altar. Three bowls, a pitcher, and two cups have been placed on top. Eres Tilhar, my teacher, told me about this. Three bowls to represent the origins of our people. One contains buru, hard red berries that look like cherries but taste more like olives. This is the fruit that sustained us on the mountainsides. One bowl of kubansurra, dried, salted fish that tastes kind of foul but represents the richness of the sea. Finally, slices of nindaba, flatbread made from coarsely ground grain, to symbolize our discovery of agriculture. It tastes a lot better if you have oil to dip it in or something sweet to spread on it, but we have to eat it plain. The pitcher contains kurun, a clear, sour drink that’s kind of like watered down white wine.

  Nasha pours me a cup of kurun and holds it out to me. “Sude,” she says. A blessing.

  In the moonlight I see the expression on her face and I realize she’s not being unfriendly. She’s being serious. Her eyes are steady and direct, her face sober. I feel chastened, and I raise my cup to her before we each take our first ritual sips. “Sude,” I say. I’m supposed to be thinking about the fruit that made this kurun, but instead I think about how kibila is still in many ways foreign to me. Even though I’ve known about it my whole life, it’s always been a distant idea to me, probably because I had nobody to talk to about it on Earth except Ama. Sure, I went to the Imrian equivalent of elementary school here, but little kids don’t care about kibila. It’s not until the two or three years before kibila’sa that it becomes a real, serious thing.

  One year before kibila’sa—when you turn fourteen—you begin studying with a special teacher who guides you into a deeper understanding of susum’urda and also advises you on choosing your name. Not every Imrian chooses a new name at every kibila. Ada has kept the same name for his last three kibilas, and Aba for his last two. For your first kibila, though, it’s customary to choose a new name. Many Imria think of your kibila’sa name as your true name, even if you choose a different one later.

  “It’s not simply what people will call you,” my friend Uli told me. I’d been tossing off various name possibilities with her, and she clearly didn’t think I was taking this seriously enough. “It’s who you’ll be. Your new name will change you.”

  “Who do you think I’m going to become?” I asked, puzzled.

  “I don’t know,” she said solemnly.

  I wondered if she was worried about the two of us. “We’ll still be friends,” I said.

  Uli smiled. “We’re hilima.”

  Hilima is an Imrian word that doesn’t translate directly into English. It means something like friends who kiss, and it’s much less serious than the human—or American—concept of a girlfriend or boyfriend. Imrians tend to have many hilima when they’re young, especially before their first kibila, because it only involves kissing and maybe a little fooling around. There’s kind of a big taboo against having sex before kibila’sa because it’s believed that if you haven’t yet chosen your identity, you can’t possibly share it completely with another person.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “We’re hilima. That won’t change, and if it does, it’s all right.”

  “Of course,” Uli said. “But you’ll be different.”

  Nasha startles me out of the memory by handing me the bowl of buru. “Here,” she says.

  “Thanks.” I take the bowl from her and eat the berries. They taste better than I expected, but when she hands me the fish, it tastes worse. The bread evens everything out, and as I chew, I actually do think about my ancestors: the Imrians who built the floating cities on the ocean, who built giant ships that could fly, that eventually brought my parents to Earth, where I was born.

  “We can sit here for a while, or I think there’s a resting spot up the mountain where we can sleep for a few hours,” Nasha says.

  I’m not sleepy at all, so I say, “Let’s sit here for a while. We have time.”

  “All right.” She pushes her pack over and sits on the ground, leaning against the altar. I sit down a few feet away, my back against the mountainside. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” Nasha asks.

  “No.” I’m curious about what she wants to know.

  “What’s it like on Earth?”

  Other Imrians ask me this all the time, but Nasha never has. “It looks different,” I say. “There are oceans and mountains like here, but there are also big flat regions where nothing grows. There are cities and small towns, but they’re only built on land. People drive everywhere in things called cars.” I spend some time explaining transportation to her, because on Kurra nobody drives; we all walk or take what humans would call cable cars, although our cable cars don’t look like the ones on Earth.

  “What about the people?” she asks. “What are humans like?”

  Imrians really only want to know about one thing: how humans deal with not being able to sense others’ emotions through touch. “Sometimes they’re defensive,” I say, “because they don’t always know where they stand with other people.”

  “That must be so weird,” she says.

  “Well, they’re not always defensive. Some humans are really open.” I think about Morgan. Before she found out I liked her, she never hid anything from me. I haven’t thought about her in a long time, and it brings back a twinge of sadness.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Nasha says. “I mean it must be sad not to be able to do susum’urda.”

  I’m a little irritated by the pity in Nasha’s voice. “They don’t have any other choice. It doesn’t feel like missing out to them. Besides, we’re not doing susum’urda tonight either. We act just like humans during kibila.”

  “You think so?” Nasha sounds doubtful. “I’ve always thought of kibila as a chance to recognize how important susum’urda is to us. By giving it up during kibila, we appreciate it more afterward. We appreciate who we are as Im
rians.”

  Her interpretation of kibila startles me. I’ve been thinking about tonight so differently, as if it were a chance to be human—or, at least, to play at being human. Maybe I’ve been looking forward to it because I miss Earth, and I miss my human friends at Hunter Glen even if they never knew who I truly was.

  In one dizzying instant, my perspective shifts completely. I’ve had human blinders on the whole time I’ve been back on Kurra. It’s as if Nasha reached over and took them off, and for the first time in a long time, I feel Imrian. Without susum’urda, it’s not that I become human—it’s that I’ve shut off everyone else’s emotions, and I have to sit here with my own. This is a specifically Imrian experience: deliberately turning inward after knowing what it’s like to be connected to so many others.

  “It feels strange, not doing susum’urda,” Nasha continues, not noticing how still I’ve become. “It’s like I’m walking around with my eyes closed, and I keep wondering if I’m going to bump into something. Is that what it was like for you on Earth? And how did you feel being surrounded by people who couldn’t experience your feelings?”

  I’ve never been asked this question before. I realize it’s because I’ve never had to tell someone how I felt about my time on Earth—not in words. Ama knows, and Aba and Ada, but they know through susum’urda. They know.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Nasha says when I don’t answer her.

  The truth is, I don’t know how to explain it. Dozens of memories and emotions rise up inside me all at once, tangled and messy, and I feel as if I’m struggling against myself. With Nasha looking at me like that—as if she feels sorry for me—I can’t find the words.

  “Maybe we should keep going,” she says, and she stands up and offers me her hand.

  I look up at her. “We’re not supposed—”

  “I’m focused on myself,” she says. “Aren’t you? I won’t sense anything.”