He sounded like he’d looked through the veil of stars and saw God waving at us. “Do you think the people who burned the Memoriam, and the ones who killed those people, will go to hell?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe. I have a hunch hell’s not going to be as populated as we think it should be. I’m glad it’s God making those decisions.”
“What if he makes the wrong ones?”
“He’s God. He won’t make mistakes.”
“I wonder what he had to do to become a god and make executive decisions about saving and damning everybody.”
Kalan laughed. “I don’t know. Maybe you can ask him when we get there.”
I loved that he took his faith seriously. And I loved that he wasn’t afraid to laugh about it. My fingers tightened around his. I drank in the feeling, letting it fill my void. It helped me do the one thing I couldn’t do on my own—forget. Just for a second.
“What are you thinking?” Kalan asked.
“About forgetting.”
A chorus of crickets sang.
“Not forgetting you. Just that . . . maybe perfect memories aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.” The image of smoke rising above the trees of Havendale shot me full of pain.
“Are all your memories that way?” he asked. “Perfect?”
“Depends on what they’re stored in. Some materials kind of squash certain parts of a memory. Which can actually be a good thing for memories with strong emotions. Some things make memory decay faster, but we don’t use those much. Nothing’s as porous as a normal human brain, though.”
Kalan rubbed his thumb across mine, sending tingles up my arm. I wished I dared to take off my glove. Touch his skin.
He lifted his face to the sky. “You said you want to be an astronaut. Tell me what you have stored in those Links. About the stars you want to dance in.”
I tilted my face up too. The band of the Milky Way splashed across the sky like a handful of confetti.
“There are over 100 billion stars in the Milky Way,” I said. “Proxima Centauri is the nearest one, 4.2 light years away. It would take over 46 million years to reach it.”
He craned his neck. “Which one is it?”
“It’s part of the Alpha Centauri system, which you can only see from the southern hemisphere. But you can’t actually see Proxima at all without a telescope. It’s a red dwarf, so it’s too dim.”
“What’s a red dwarf?” he asked.
“It’s a main sequence star, but they’re cooler than other stars. Only about 4,000 degrees Kelvin.”
“A mere few thousand Calvins, huh? Barely warmer than my toaster.”
I smiled. “Kelvins. It’s a temperature measurement. And it’s a lot hotter than your toaster.”
“So we can’t see this Proxima red dwarf because it’s too cold to shine much?”
“Basically. They have a slow nuclear reaction process using a proton-to-proton chain mechanism, so they don’t emit much energy, which in stars is seen in their luminosity.”
“Eureka,” Kalan said. “It’s all so clear now.”
My cheeks warmed. Sounding like a textbook? How romantic. “It’s cool, okay?”
“4,000 degrees Calvin kind of cool?”
I laughed. “Exactly that kind of cool.”
“I love that you’re this nerdy.” His hand shifted in mine, his fingers stroking my gloved palm. Pinpricks of pleasure spread out from my hand.
“Why do you like stars so much?” Kalan asked.
“I guess . . . stars are always moving, twinkling and rotating around the Earth. And their light moves across both space and time. We’re watching them dance the way they did millions of years ago.”
Kalan tilted his head toward mine. “I have the perfect bouncy ball for you.”
“A bouncy ball?”
“I have this theory that every person in the world could be represented by a bouncy ball. And I know exactly which one is yours. I’ll give it to you tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait.”
His face angled close to mine. Moonlight caught his eyes only inches away. My body warmed, and the warmth made me brave. I leaned forward. His hand trailed up my gloves to my shoulder. Slid down my back. Our faces drew together until I closed my eyes. His lips brushed mine—
I threw my head back, gasping at a sudden shock of powerful emotion. Grief, betrayal, fury, anguish, terror. Images flickered. Fragments, chewed up by emotion. Blinding me, smothering me. Screaming only in my mind because I can’t
breathe
make it stop, make it
I can’t
Feel. Cold wind on my cheeks. Warm arms supporting me.
“Gena? What’s wrong?” Kalan’s fingers clutched at my back.
“Oh no.” An image from Kalan’s Memo burst into my mind. The night we met. My bare hand touching his forearm in the dark.
“Are you sick? What happened?” His hand came toward my face in the darkness. I grabbed it, my glove a barrier between our skin.
“Don’t touch me,” I whispered.
His hand withdrew. “I’m sorry. I thought . . . I’m sorry.”
I wanted to cry and scream, but I was too exhausted to do either. I struggled to sit up. “It’s not you. It’s not that I don’t want . . . it’s my fault. I can’t believe I did that.”
“Did what, Gen?” Frustration filled his voice.
How could I tell him? I’d violated him. I’d used him.
“The night we met,” I said. “I touched you.”
“Yeah.”
I was grateful for the dark, so I couldn’t see his face. “I stored a memory in you. In your skin.”
18
From whence clear memory may begin . . .
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam XLV
I counted twelve quick heartbeats before he replied. “What do you mean?”
“We never do it,” I said. “Never. It’s violating, using a person to store a memory. And skin does something no other material does. It enhances the emotions. I couldn’t even see the memory through all that emotion.”
I counted seven breaths.
“Why would you do that?” In the dim moonlight, his expression was hard to read. He had to be pissed. I would be.
“I’m sorry, Kalan. It was a memory I didn’t want anyone else to find.” I rubbed my arms, cold with my own past actions. “Memory stored in skin doesn’t give off a buzz. With everything else, a Mementi can sense when a memory is stored in it. Like a tingle in your head. But not with skin.”
“That was the night you saw the Link thief.”
“Yes.”
“So you stored the memory of her in my skin so she couldn’t take it away from you.”
“Yes.” I closed my eyes.
“That was kind of brilliant.”
My eyes popped open. “What?”
He chuckled and leaned against the shadow of the rock. “That was why you wanted to meet me the next day. So you could get your memory back. You’re amazing.”
“I guess.” I bit my lip, confused. “You’re not mad?”
“No. It’s kind of cool. I’ve been carrying a part of you with me.” He brushed my gloved hand with a single finger. Like he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to touch me even with gloves on.
I pressed his fingers into mine, yearning to feel him again. “I guess it doesn’t matter to you, but I knew what it meant when I did it. It’s degrading.”
I’d treated Kalan like an object. A convenient getaway car for my memory, one who would never be suspected because he was Populace. One I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about. I’d probably never intended to tell him, just get my memory and send him packing.
“I’m so sorry, Kalan,” I whispered.
“It doesn’t bug me. Okay?” He reached both hands toward my face, then stopped. “It kind of changes things, though. Does this mean you’ve been hiding your other lost memories?”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t remember the memory I gave you, but
I should remember the act of giving you the memory. Someone else took away that memory, and all the other ones I’m missing too.”
He rubbed his eyes. “If the thief took your memory of giving me a memory, wouldn’t she know I had the original memory? And she could come get it from me?”
I slumped against the rock, which had finally cooled enough to give me shivers. “It would make sense. So why do you still have it?”
He sighed. “Every time I think we understand what’s going on, I realize we don’t know anything.”
“Yeah.”
He took my hand again. “We need that memory.”
“Yeah.” That drowning emotion waited. I’d have to wade through it again. Swim in it this time, if I wanted to get to the actual memory.
This was the last kind of fight I wanted to have. A battle with my own emotions amplified times a thousand. I’d started the day pretending like skipping school and infiltrating Happenings was something other than cowardice masquerading as bravado. Now I had to do something real. I looked skyward and the stars winked at me.
I might not be brave, but I could learn how to be.
I slipped my hand from Kalan’s and, one finger at a time, removed my thin glove. Kalan leaned in. His breath moved across my forehead like a caress.
“This is going to be hard for you, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes.” I hesitated, but I couldn’t do it alone. “I might . . . need you . . .”
His hands circled my waist, smoothing across me in a trail of fire. Wild and hungry, warm and comforting. In the moonlight, all I could see were his eyes staring into mine.
With deliberate slowness, I pressed my palm to his cold cheek.
The crush of fear, the tang of annoyance; hurrying past the Low-G with Cora. A muffled groan behind the club; stumbling and knowing someone heard me. Panic raking me like fingernails. Then fury howling in my veins. The tearing anguish of betrayal. Ren’s purple stripe flashed in the shadows, a man at her feet, his Links in her gloved hands . . .
With the gasp of the drowning, I wrenched away from Kalan. My hand scraped the cliff wall. I held the memory in my mind, battling it. Claw at it. Like I wanted to claw Ren. Scream at it. Like I wanted to scream at her. Rage, cry, fight. I rocked, emotion tossing me like waves on a rough sea.
Store it. Get it out of my head. It demanded to stay alive inside me. I wrestled it, forcing it behind the cool bars of a metal Link.
The memory faded, and with it the emotion. But that did nothing for the current emotions. Blood drained from my face, pooling in my feet like my heart had given up trying to channel that much sensation. Kalan pulled me against him. I choked on words I didn’t know how to say.
After a few minutes, he asked, “Can you talk about it?”
No. But I had to. “In your Memo,” I whispered, “I said it was her. A girl. The Link thief.”
He stroked my hair, his hands blissfully free of memories. Strong and soft.
“It was Ren.”
His fingers froze against my head.
“I saw her taking someone’s Links that night, that’s why she came after me and Cora. My sister. Ren. She can’t be the Link thief.”
Ren wouldn’t do this. She was a rebel, but she was Mementi. She was my sister. The one who quit dancing because she grumbled I was better than her, but still came to my recitals. The one who taught me about boys, about building trust step by step until we could touch without fear.
I wanted to scratch her eyes out. And I wanted to sneak into her room like when I’d had nightmares as a child, so I could curl up on the floor by her bed and cry.
I pushed away from Kalan. “I have to talk to her. I can’t believe it until I talk to her.”
“Gena, wait, if she’s the thief—” He grabbed my hand, but I yanked it away.
“No!” I scrambled to my feet.
I snatched my loose glove and squeezed through the rock cavern. Kalan followed with a curse. I broke out of the mountain and hit the trail. I blew past dark rock walls, sliding on loose dirt, my momentum carrying me almost faster than my legs could manage.
I pounded across the bridge and up the tramstop stairs. No tram, no tram, where was the tram?
“Gena.” Kalan panted up the stairs behind me.
“She has to explain. I have to know why, I have to know, where is the tram?”
My yells echoed over the distant gurgle of the river. Kalan wrapped his arms around me. I couldn’t feel it. I felt nothing but a sucking whirlwind in my gut.
“We will talk to her,” he said. “Together. Tomorrow. We can’t barge in there now.”
“The tram,” I whispered into his shoulder.
“It’s after curfew. We’ve got a long walk to town.”
He guided me down the steps again. We traipsed through the desert dust below the tramline. The city glowed, four miles distant. A single thought cycled through my mind like a song on repeat.
My sister. The Link thief. The stealer of memories.
19
Like strangers’ voices here they sound,
In lands where not a memory strays . . .
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam CIV
The next morning, I stared out the window, trying to ignore Mom’s yells. I found it hard to care that she was shouting at all. Outside, the sky looked blue but felt gray.
Or maybe it was me that felt gray. Thick and foggy. Like I was lost even though I sat at my own kitchen table. An unexplainable fissure split my heart and bled my soul out of me. It ached, a peculiar homesick feeling.
Like I was missing something. Or someone.
* * *
At the pre-recital dance practice, Zahra smoothed her hijab every minute and a half. She kept walking past me at the barre to ask if I was okay. I told her I was fine, but I’m pretty sure she knew I was lying.
Tears lurked behind my eyelids. Fog still warped my brain, and I kind of wanted it to hang around. It blurred a confusing mix of loss and betrayal that battled inside me.
Leigh and the rest of the Populace students hadn’t shown up at all. Neither had Cora. We were on track for a recital of pathetic proportions. Zahra kept yelling at us about lines and turnout and form until Darena burst into tears, which got Marine crying, which made Zahra cry. She pulled the two of them to the side and told me to take a break.
I turned away from the barre in time to see a boy sneak into the practice room.
Populace, which made me nervous. Kind of cute in a boynext-door way, with curls hanging across his forehead. Tall, nice tan. He caught my eye and smiled.
I didn’t want to smile back, but I couldn’t help it. His smile demanded a response. He crossed the floor toward me. Uh, back it up, buddy. That smile was not an invitation. I swallowed. Maybe he was one of the Populace dance students.
“Do you have a sec?” he asked.
Yeah, but not for you. Curse my inability to be impolite. “Sure.”
The gold of his hair mixing with the brown of his eyes brought out a familiar image. Honey. It seemed to fit him, though I wasn’t sure why.
“You seem okay,” he said. “I’m glad we waited for today.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Ren. I think it was a good idea to wait. You seem less . . . distraught.”
My pulse throbbed at my temples. “How do you know my sister?”
A long pause. His mouth opened a little, a sharp sound escaping.
“No,” he whispered. His eyebrows contracted like he was in pain. “Not again, Gena.”
He knew my name. My eyes darted toward Zahra, and I almost called to her. But the boy looked so crushed. For the first time all day, I let emotion slip past my fog. Pain for his pain. Much stronger than it should have been for a strange Populace boy. It drew me toward him, and I felt a need to actually touch him, to soothe him.
I stumbled back.
“It’s Ren.” His face was so sad I almost couldn’t stand it. “You went to her last night, you said you wouldn’t.”
>
“What are you talking about?”
“I . . . you . . . we’ve been together for days. Trying to find the Link thief.”
“That’s . . .” I didn’t know what that was. Crazy. “I don’t know you.”
He smoothed a hand over his face. “You don’t remember me. This is the third time. Someone’s stealing your memories.”
A thrill of terror tickled my ribs. I forced a laugh. “Nice try. I’ve still got all my Links.”
Didn’t I? I glanced down. They were all in place.
He shook his head. “Someone’s taking your memories without your Links. It’s Ren, you must have gone to her last night after you got home. But, hang on, you texted me.”
“I texted you.”
He pulled out his phone and frantically stabbed buttons.
I fished my Sidewinder from my bag, ready to prove him wrong. This boy was loco. And scaring the crap out of me.
“Here, see?” He thrust his phone into my face.
Text from Genesis Lee to Kalan Daniel Fox, TDS 01:55:18/5-10-2084
Mom and Dad have me on house arrest. Meet me at Zahra’s Dance Studio tomorrow, next to the Mementi Arts Center. My concert’s at six but I can sneak away from practice before then to get to Ren’s.
The same message appeared on my phone. In my sent messages.
I tapped my screen off, like if I didn’t look at it, it would go away. “I didn’t send that.”
“You did, Genesis Lee. Ren must have come to you last night.”
The grief in his voice brought a lump to my throat that made it hard to breathe. I turned away from him. “You’re lying.”
“Ren stole your memories, Gena, that’s why you don’t know me.”
My head snapped around. My protective fog was fading, threatening to let loose a torrent of panic and pain. “My sister would never do that.”
“She’s been doing it for weeks.” He sounded tired. “She’s the Link thief. We found out last night.”
My head spun; I was hyperventilating. “Get out.”
“Listen to me. Last night, we were in Havendale Canyon—”
“Get out!” My scream bounced between mirrored walls. The three people in the corner spun to stare at me.
“Okay. But I’m going to fix this. I’m going to help you remember me.” He closed his eyes in a long blink. “Again.”
The Unhappening of Genesis Lee Page 18
