My Year Zero

by Rachel Gold

  On a whim, Cypher asked, “How do you think of yourself?”

  “You mean how do I remember my patterns?”

  “No, in your own consciousness, what do you call yourself? Is it just like ‘oh I’m a person’ or something else?”

  Zeno grinned at her. “We’re a community,” she said. “But it bugs people if we speak in the plural.” She put her hand over Cypher’s where it rested on her cheek. “Thank you, that was smart. Cut my reconstituting time by a lot.”

  “That looked like it hurt,” Cypher said.

  Zeno shook her head. “Not like physical hurt. But yes, it’s very disturbing to get blown up and have trouble cohering again.”

  “What is your original form?” Cypher asked.

  Zeno turned her face away. “We don’t know,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We don’t know what our original form was supposed to be. We might have lost the pattern, or the information that tells us what the first pattern was. We don’t know what we are.”

  Cypher put her other hand on the bare side of Zeno’s face, as if she could hold her in place between her two palms.

  “What about this form?” she asked.

  Zeno shrugged. “We like it so we gave it first form status. It’s our default now.”

  “I like it too,” Cypher said and kissed her.

  For a second, Zeno’s lips shimmered under hers and solidified. That process sent a shock of recognition and desire through her. It wasn’t the same as teleporting, as being nowhere all at once, but it was close. Closer to her magic than anyone else she’d ever met.

  Zeno pulled back. “Does it bother you that you aren’t kissing the real version of us? That we don’t know what that is.”

  “Don’t be silly. I am kissing the real you. This is all the real you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I woke up muddled and heavy, half-remembering a dream about Zeno and a bomb blast. Cypher had been there and she kissed Zeno and it felt like Blake kissing me. I wrote down as much as I could and resolved to fill in the rest later.

  School was school.

  After fourth period I got a text from Blake: You doing okay?

  Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks for talking.

  Anytime.

  There was also a message from Sierra, fan art of two women kissing from a sci-fi show I hadn’t seen and the note: miss you!

  Miss you too!!! I wrote back.

  For a few bleak days, I forced myself to do American history. So many names I didn’t give a crap about. Bunch of white guys with awful hair. I did sketch out Aaron Burr as a cyborg, but no way was I getting class credit for that.

  I wanted to text Isaac and ask for advice but I couldn’t. Girls we had in common. Our father, we did not.

  With cyborg Aaron Burr in the trash and my final paper mostly done, I dove back into the story. Roy had posted many pages of rambling, badly punctuated scenes featuring his Sunslingers and Cypher. He stopped short of rape or mutilation, but it was disgusting nevertheless. I felt sick. It wasn’t for him to do this. It wasn’t right.

  I needed to be inside the story, but all this didn’t belong. I had to get Cypher out of there.

  It was late, but I saw Sierra online and pounced on her.

  Hey, I wrote, I want to go get Cypher back from Solar. I mean, that Zeno should go steal her back.

  Why?

  What Roy’s writing is gross, I said.

  Yeah, it is. I’ll ask Dustin to talk to him and have him take some of it down, she replied and I let out my breath in relief.

  I wrote: That’s great! But we should also go get Cypher back now, don’t you think?

  No. It’s too soon.

  The “No” was a glowing absence on the stark white of the screen. Why would she say, “No?”

  Lauren? she typed.

  I’m here.

  What’s up? she asked.

  I’m getting a C in American history and my father thinks that’s the easiest subject ever. But it’s boring as shit. I spent three days working on this paper and it still sucks.

  Sierra wrote: Is he grounding you? I’d be super pissed off. I want to see you, when can you come down?

  I’m not grounded but he said I can’t come down until school ends. Maybe what’s getting to me is that he acts like I did this on purpose and I didn’t. I don’t know, maybe I did it subconsciously. Maybe he’s kind of right.

  She replied: Could be. I mean, he gave you a car and stuff. And he lets you come see me, I like that.

  Yeah, he’s working a lot and he gets stressed out and I don’t live up to his expectations.

  Get your work done, I want to see you so much, she said.

  Okay, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

  I pushed my chair back from the drawing table and bent over, arms across my chest, shaking and feeling like I was going to puke. She didn’t get it.

  I didn’t get it.

  What was wrong with me? Blake said I wasn’t crazy, but what did she know? I was shredding apart. I pulled my sketchbook into my lap, hunched over, and roughed in the shape of a body.

  I drew Zeno naked, not quite hunched over, arms and legs bent as if she was trying to sit up. One hand covered half her face, the other was dissolving. Pressing so hard that the tip of the pencil tore the paper, I drew a spear through her throat.

  I bent in and did details: the skin tearing away from the tip of the spear, blood running down the front of her neck and chest, a bubble of blood at her throat where she was trying to scream but couldn’t.

  I went from bent over in my chair to bent over my drawing table. I switched to another pencil when the pressure wore down the point on the first one. I slowly stopped shaking.

  When I got up to use the bathroom it was one thirty a.m. I woke my laptop. I told myself that it was to see if Sierra had talked to Dustin and gotten most of Roy’s writing removed. But that wasn’t it.

  Blake was there.

  Hey, why are you up? I typed. Infinity?

  Infinities, she replied. But no. I heard there was torture porn with Cypher. I thought I’d check it out.

  It’s gross, I warned her.

  I noticed. Not my scene. What’s up with you?

  I don’t know, I said. That wasn’t right so I added, My father’s still unhappy with me and I’m freaking out.

  What kind of freaking out?

  I didn’t feel like fighting my way through the words. I snapped a photo of the sketch and sent it to her.

  A nonbreathing stretch of time happened during which I was certain she’d want nothing more to do with me or, maybe worse, be weirdly fascinated.

  She wrote back: Lauren, that’s beautiful. And I’m sorry you’re hurt like that.

  I touched the word on the screen, “Hurt.” That was right. That was the word I needed. I felt it in my throat, a tearing pain like the spear through Zeno. Hurt.

  I wish we lived in the same city, I wrote. I wish I could see you. I want to see you even more than Sierra right now, is that weird?

  A gust of wind blew against the house and I jumped. I turned off my desk lamp and listened for a minute in case my father woke up. The wind sounded again and my heart sped up.

  It’s not weird, Blake wrote. I like it. I wish you were here too.

  The wind is blowing here and it’s making me feel afraid, which is so strange. When I was trying to go to sleep, I was afraid of the sound of my father walking around the house. And now I’m afraid of everything.

  She wrote, Maybe not everything. Maybe you can’t yet see what you’re afraid of. In your drawing, there’s no person holding the spear.

  I can’t draw that, I told her. Where there should have been a person stabbing Zeno with the spear, I saw the nothingness, disintegration.

  You don’t have to. I just thought it was interesting. I don’t know what else to tell you. If I give you advice, even good advice, it might not be right for you. That’s my advice.

  I like your advice, I said.
>
  Are you safe? she asked.

  I contemplated my closed bedroom door and felt the silence of the house around me. I was always safe. That’s why I was crazy, because I could feel this awful for no reason. Because I was safe all the time and yet I was shredding apart and dissolving into nothingness over and over again.

  I wrote back: Yes. I’m safe. I’m…hurt and scared.

  I know, she said. I have to go now. Get to sleep and all. But you can write me or draw me whatever you want. I’ll see it in the morning.

  I think I’m going to bed too, I said. But if I can’t sleep, I will. Thank you.

  No need to thank me, dear girl, she said and logged off.

  Why did I feel so much better? My father thought I was a spoiled, melodramatic disappointment. Sierra had told me I couldn’t send Zeno to rescue Cypher. I’d sent Blake a horrible drawing that she somehow liked, proving we were both mad as hatters. But I felt better.

  I got into bed, rolling onto my stomach so I couldn’t stare through the ceiling into space. Someday, when I wasn’t afraid, I needed to get Blake to explain how she could think about infinities without losing it.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I couldn’t stay in this dull city, in this dead house, in my stupid life. It was June, school was almost out, I had to get back to the Cities.

  As soon as I was done with finals, I cleaned the whole house. I polished chrome, I brushed dirt out of the tile grout, I fixed a shelf that was starting to come loose. I cranked up Halestorm on my iPod and did the garden. I went over the whole ridiculous thing from the mean roses to the stupid little groundcover plants. I weeded and edged and pruned. I sat outside in a blue and green sundress and drank iced tea so when my father got home from work I matched his perfect picture of the perfect life.

  On the evening of the sundress day, he came into the kitchen while I was nuking myself dinner.

  “I know what you’re doing,” he said.

  I watched the tray turn in the microwave.

  He crossed his arms and continued. “I’m not hard on you so that you’ll be some glorified maid. I’m hard on you because you need to be able to succeed in this world. I’ve seen failure and I’ve seen success and the second is far superior. You can do better. This fall you’re going to have to work harder.”

  “I know,” I said. “Maybe if I toured one or two colleges, it would help me think about where I wanted to go, make it real. Cyd’s sister is going to Macalester. She’d show me around. It’s a really good school.”

  “Are you lying to me?” he asked.

  I kept my face blank, thinking: gee, thanks, way to have a high opinion of your daughter.

  “No,” I said. “You can call Cyd.”

  “Why do you want to go to the Cities so much?”

  I couldn’t use any argument with words like “creativity” or “story” or “girlfriend” in it.

  “It’s like practice for the real world,” I said. “Cyd and Sierra are a few years older and hanging out with them, it gives me a better sense of what it’s going to be like.”

  “How long do you plan to stay?”

  “A week?” I asked.

  “All right. I expect to hear about colleges when you get back. The same rules apply as last time.”

  “Thanks!”

  For a crazy second I considered hugging him. Yeah, no. I got my dinner and ran upstairs to message Sierra and see when it was okay to show up.

  * * *

  Two days later, I got up at five thirty a.m. while my father was at the gym for his crack-of-dawn workout. I grabbed the packed suitcase I’d left by my door and was out of there.

  Even stopping for breakfast, I got to Sierra’s house around nine. She’d just woken up. When she dragged me into her bed, I could see the imprint where her body had been. Being naked with her, tracing patterns across her body, and seeing the reaction I evoked, brought back the feeling of liquid power I had the weekend we were together. That feeling swept away all the others.

  By midday, I was starving and happy. I’d showered and put on jeans and a light blue and shamrock summer plaid. Sierra and I were sprawled together on the couch: her against the arm, me sitting between her legs, her arms around me. Cyd flopped down on the other couch.

  “Where’s Blake?” Cyd asked.

  I felt Sierra shrug. “Probably doing something with Kordell.”

  “Aren’t they usually here by now?”

  “I told them not to come over too early,” Sierra said and squeezed me.

  Cyd typed into her phone. “Bear wanted to come by and show off some sketches, she’ll be here in a few. I hope that doesn’t cramp your style.”

  “We’ll be okay,” I said. “We should figure out what we’re doing for lunch.”

  “Dustin was going to bring over an old laptop for me to borrow,” Sierra said, her voice casual. “I can see if he’ll pick up food.”

  I sat up, away from her. Bringing her a laptop sounded like kind of a big deal. People didn’t just loan laptops to their friends, did they?

  Sierra pushed up from the couch and walked into the kitchen, saying, “We have take-out menus.”

  I followed her.

  “You broke up with him, right?”

  It couldn’t take two months to break up with someone.

  In May when she was at my house, when she was in my bed, we hadn’t talked about it. I’d assumed she had broken up with him weeks before. You wouldn’t go have a weekend of sex with someone and say “I love you” and “I miss you” about a million times if you hadn’t broken up with your boyfriend, right?

  Sierra opened a drawer and shifted its contents until she could pull out a crumpled yellow sheet of paper. She spread it open on the counter and faced me. Her fingers smoothed the wrinkles on the page.

  Her eyes were azure with the barest hint of green, like the sky in autumn when the contrast of the dying leaves makes the color deeper than usual. The playful purple in her hair and the vibrant color of her eyes made my breath catch.

  “Of course I did,” she said. She put her hands on my hips, bringing our bodies almost to touching. “You’re what’s important in my life now.”

  I kissed her and ran my hands up into her hair.

  After a while, she moved a half-step back. She said, “You know, you’re so far away a lot of the time.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And Dustin doesn’t care about the formalities of relationships. I mean, he respects ours, but he doesn’t care if he’s officially dating someone or not. So he offered that if I get lonely, you know, I can go see him.”

  She was staring at the menu on the counter as she talked, her fingers flexing and relaxing on my hips. I had my hands on her waist but I let go and pulled away from her.

  “He…what?” I asked.

  “Just to hook up, to take care of our needs,” she said. She went back to smoothing out the menu.

  Usually my mouth was behind my brain, but now my brain stuttered and shivered and tried to catch up to the questions and answers happening in front of me. Had she actually said that when she broke up with Dustin, he said it was okay to keep having sex and…? Was she still having sex with him? (I so should have wrapped something.)

  I stammered, “Wait, what?”

  “It’s a merely biological thing. Don’t be a child about it,” she said. “I thought you’d understand.”

  “You’re still having sex with Dustin? And he’s coming over? To lend you a computer?”

  “Those are two separate things. Honestly, Lauren, you know I love you. You’re the one for me. Don’t be so insecure. What do you want for lunch?”

  “Cashew chicken,” I said automatically.

  She took out her phone and I wandered back into the living room. Blake had told me that she and Kordell were friends who had sex, so maybe this was a Cities thing. Was I that backward coming from Duluth? Had I missed a crucial memo about casual sex in major metropolitan areas?

  Did I care if Sierra hooked up with Dustin
while I was out of town? It was hard being apart most of the time. If I had someone in Duluth would I hook up with them?

  I couldn’t figure out how to answer that. I mean, my first answer was: no I fucking would not. But I worried that was the wrong answer. Maybe I was being immature and too emotional about all this.

  Someone knocked on the front door and Cyd got up to open it. She hugged a shorter person, about as short as Sierra, with a stout but well-balanced body. I’d expected Bear to be a towering Viking. So not. Warm umber skin and dark hair pulled up and wrapped with a scarf; graceful, solid nose; long, laughing eyes. She was in a gray, ankle-length skirt and an olive-tan T-shirt, loose around her big chest and belly.

  Cyd turned and said, “Bear, this is Lauren from up north, the one who took over Zeno.”

  “Hey,” Bear said with a nod and a wide, toothy smile. She had a portfolio in one hand and crossed the living room to set it on the dining room table. “Great to meet you. Love that sketch of Zeno.”

  “Uh, yeah, hi,” I managed.

  Bear either expected me to be conversationally fumbling or was used to giving people a minute to get over how much not a Viking she was. To Cyd she said, “I want you to pose for me so I can use your face for the High God, is that cool?”

  Cyd laughed. “Sure, what do I get to do?”

  “Basically run everything,” Bear told her.

  “Sweet. Just like real life. How do we do this?”

  “Sit on the couch and read, I need you to not move for a bit.”

  Bear unzipped the portfolio and pulled out a sketchpad.

  I touched the edge of the portfolio. “Can I look at these?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Bear said.

  She and Cyd went into the living room. Cyd took her usual spot with her legs stretched along the couch. Bear sat in the middle of the other couch with her sketchpad in her lap.

  I opened the portfolio. The first few sheets were illustrations I’d already seen online: King of the Wilds with an actual bear; Dustin as Lord Stone standing beside Lord Ocean and Lady Death; an illustration of a giant suit of battle armor labeled “The Machine.”

  I bent down to examine the line weights she was using with her inks, the shadows. I loved the dimensionality of the machine pieces on the armor. I wanted to ask her how she got that effect, but the kitchen door opened.