by Rachel Gold
“You know, I know a much faster way to get connected,” she said.
“Sierra…”
“What is going on with you?” she asked. “We used to have so much fun and now it’s like every time you’re around Blake you get cold to me. What did she say about me?”
“This has nothing to do with Blake.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“You think I’m lying?” I asked.
“I think you don’t know what’s going on,” she said.
I didn’t have to be a genius to get that the rising heat in my body was anger, even before I heard it come out in my voice.
“Because I don’t want to have sex all the time?” I asked.
“You’re not here for very long,” Sierra said. “And it’s been days. I love you, I want to be with you. I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”
“I’m not your living sex toy,” I said.
She jerked back. “How can you say that to me? I would never call you that.”
“I feel like you just want me to get you off,” I told her.
She shoved off the couch and stood in the archway between the living room and dining room. “Lauren, sometimes you’re such a child.”
She slammed into her bedroom with a flourish.
I felt sick and shaky so I got off the couch and went into the bathroom. Snot swelled the back of my nose, giving me a headache. A tear slimed its way down my cheek. I grabbed toilet paper off the roll and sat on the cold floor.
Sierra said she loved me, and I thought I loved her, but I didn’t feel loved. I figured that was because I didn’t feel a lot of stuff. But now I was breathing deep, feeling into my body, and it was all pain.
Lying on the golf course with Blake, listening to her explaining about infinities, I felt warm inside. There was no pain. There was endlessness and depth. Maybe that wasn’t love either. Maybe I didn’t have a clue what love was. But whatever that was, I didn’t feel it with Sierra.
When I did feel something with Sierra, it came from what I was doing, not what she did. When had she done anything that made me feel good that wasn’t sex or saying the words, “I love you?”
When I was upset, Sierra wasn’t the one I wanted to talk to. The times I tried to tell her what was going on with me, she’d listen for a little while and move on to another topic. I didn’t trust her enough to tell her what I was afraid of or what bothered me.
How could I have a girlfriend I didn’t even trust?
How did I end up with a girlfriend I wasn’t sure I liked?
Was Sierra right that talking to Blake had changed our relationship? It seemed like the only way Blake influenced me was that she listened and she showed me it could be different. There was a part of me still unsure about what I felt for Blake—or rather, I knew I liked her, but I was also afraid of her.
She could be so big inside herself, with her feelings and thoughts spilling out into the air around her. I couldn’t be like that. Would she want me to?
Chapter Thirty-One
A soft knock sounded on the bathroom door. Sierra coming to apologize or to fight more? I didn’t know how long I’d been in there.
“One sec,” I said.
I got up and washed my face. When I opened the door, it wasn’t Sierra standing there, it was Cyd.
“You okay?” she asked.
I pointed at Sierra’s door and shook my head.
“She left,” Cyd told me. “When I got home a few minutes ago, she stormed out. I figured you had to be in here. You two have a fight?”
She moved out of the bathroom doorway into the dining room to stand by the table. I followed.
“I feel like she’s using me. Am I crazy?”
“Oh thank God,” Cyd said.
“What? That I’ve realized I’m crazy?”
Cyd lifted one of the dining room chairs a few inches and slid it under the table so it was lined up with the others. She said, “I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk to you about that relationship…Lauren, she’s not good to you.”
“How long have you thought that?” I asked.
The sun was setting and the only light in the room came from its long rays through the front window, mixing with the diffuse bathroom light. It made Cyd’s skin deeper and cast long shadows on her face.
She said, “I’ve never liked how Sierra is with people, but Dustin could handle her. And anyway, he’s older than she is, I don’t worry about him. When you showed up, I hoped it would be different. You seemed so in love.”
“But she’s your roommate.”
“She pays the rent,” Cyd said. “Honestly, the longer I’m around her, the less I like her. She goes on and on about what you do for her, but she doesn’t talk about you. Do you know, when you said you were coming down this week to visit, she asked me what kind of pop you drink.”
“Did you tell her Mountain Dew?” I asked.
“No, you drink Pepsi. I wasn’t going to screw with you to make a point. I told her to ask you. To suck it up and admit she was being a shit girlfriend who wasn’t paying attention and start taking care of you or she was going to lose you.”
“You said that?”
“She told me to suck it, but not that politely. And then she went out and got whatever was on sale. You deserve someone who at least knows what pop you like after four months. And I need to see if Bear wants to get a place together. Did you eat dinner?”
“Nope.”
“How do you feel about waffles?” she asked.
“Love them.”
“We’d better take your car,” she said. “Sierra won’t fuck with mine.”
“You think she’d fuck with mine?” I asked as we crossed the backyard.
“Why chance it?”
“Yeah, good point.”
We went to a 24-hour breakfast place. Cyd ordered a cappuccino with about a dozen shots of espresso in it. I got decaf and we both ordered waffles heaped with sugar-laden strawberries and whipped cream.
“I need to tell you something else,” Cyd said.
“What?”
She put her fork down and wrapped her hands around the white ceramic vat of cappuccino.
“I think Sierra has been lining up her next girlfriend. I think she sensed that she was losing you, even before the stuff with Blake. Or maybe she habitually moves on, I don’t know. It always seems like she thinks she’s going to be with someone forever, but with Dustin, she was already talking about you two months into that.”
“You know about me and Blake?” I asked.
Cyd sipped the cappuccino, changing the white and brown swirl pattern on top from a spiral to a peak.
“Bear told me,” she said. “Blake told her. Bear asked me if there was any chance you were going to split up with Sierra and go for Blake. Plus you cleaned our whole house right after that party, so I would have figured something was going on.”
“What do you think about it?” I asked, worried that she thought what we’d done was wrong.
Cyd moved my coffee mug away from the side of the table toward the middle. “I think a million of Sierra couldn’t equal Blake. I think if you’ve got a shot with her, you should go for it. Blake’s Einstein-smart, and funny, and she’s got a huge heart.”
“I don’t…what? No. I mean. I don’t know. Don’t you think she’s also kind of…unstable or whatever?”
Cyd shook her head. “Wouldn’t you rather be with someone who knows what her crazy is and is dealing with it instead of someone who acts like it’s her God-given right to use people?”
“Uh,” I said. Brain vibrating with too much to think about—and with the bell-struck rightness ringing in Cyd’s words. “Can we go back to that first thing? You think Sierra is interested in someone else?”
“I think she’s hooking a new girl,” Cyd said. “One she met at school. Tracy whatever. She had her over to the house a few weeks ago, to have dinner and study, of course, but it was flirty.”
She stopped and took a
few bites of her waffle. I dragged a syrup-laden strawberry through whipped cream and ate it.
Cyd said, “I was curious. I joined them for a bit. And I saw that Tracy had a bunch of LGBTQ buttons on her backpack, so I brought up my sister. I know, cheap ploy but she’s okay with me talking about her like that. I got Tracy’s whole coming out story and how she got dumped recently and she’s single. It made me very suspicious.”
“Yeah,” I agreed grimly.
I pushed the melting whipped cream off my sodden waffle. I didn’t want to believe it. Sierra was pretty social. She could have had this girl over to study for real. It wasn’t conclusive…and yet.
“Not to be completely presumptuous, but are you going to ask Blake out?” Cyd asked.
“I have no idea. I don’t understand what the deal is with her and Kordell.”
“Nobody does.”
“Are they truly not a couple?”
Cyd nodded. “Not sure why, but that’s what they tell me.” She paused for a bit, stared out the window, sipped her coffee. “Blake likes you,” she said.
I tried not to grin ridiculously.
“You don’t think it was just for fun? At Bear’s parents’?”
“Oh honey, she’s liked you since she met you. But you can cross that bridge when you’re ready. Tell me what you’re working on? What are you drawing?”
The edge of my breath caught in my throat as I realized Sierra hadn’t asked me that simple question. I’d been staying with her for over a week and she’d never asked. Cyd let me be while I got myself back together under the pretense of being super interested in my coffee and waffle.
“Some story stuff,” I told her. “Though I’m not into that Zeno and the Queen drawing. I was working on one of Cypher and Zeno, but I can’t post that. And a bunch of figure studies. My perspective gets off when I’m doing shoulders and hips, the people come out warped, I’m trying to fix that.”
I paused but she seemed interested so we talked about art and acupuncture, meridians and lines and bodies, until the waffles were gone and our mugs were empty.
When we got back to the house, Sierra’s bedroom light was on and there was morose music coming from behind her door. I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get back into Sierra’s bed and sleep. But I also couldn’t curl up on the couch knowing that at any point she could wake me up and start up the fight again. Even the idea that she could watch me sleeping felt weird.
I asked Cyd, “Can I sleep in your bed? If that’s too weird…”
She gestured for me to follow her into her room. “Sure, honey. In the morning we can tell Sierra you turned me gay.”
“Like she’d buy that. Aren’t you the straightest person ever?”
“I’m nature’s way of keeping the girl dating pool open for the rest of you,” she said.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next morning I hid in Cyd’s room until Sierra left for work. Then I didn’t know what to do so I ran to the grocery store. Even though I had only two days until my flight to Boston, I got a six-pack of Pepsi to make a point. And I picked up a few things for Cyd.
When Sierra got home, she gave me a hug and kiss.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said, like it was all me.
“I’m not,” I told her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Maybe when school starts we should…I don’t know. It’s a whole year and we’re hardly going to get to see each other.”
“What are you saying?” she asked with an edge coming into her voice.
The whole situation was unfair. Sitting at one end of the couch with her at the other, trying to say anything that made sense when it didn’t make sense to me. This was my first relationship, I wasn’t supposed to have to figure out what was wrong and what to do about it.
But I didn’t want to fly to Boston pretending that everything was great. I didn’t want a bunch of “baby, I miss you” texts from Sierra when I wasn’t going to feel the same way. I couldn’t forget the way Cyd had described Sierra as someone who used people.
“Do I make you that unhappy?” Sierra asked.
“No, it’s not you.” The lies came out fluently. “It’s everything. My father wants me to focus on my grades this year and I know he’s going to be stricter about letting me come visit and you’ve said how hard it is to be far away from each other…”
“How can you be so calm about all of that?” she asked.
“I’m not,” I said, but even I could hear the flatness in my voice.
And I knew that if Blake were there, she’d be asking what was under the numbness and listening to my answer.
“You could’ve fooled me,” Sierra said. “Maybe you don’t feel about me the way I feel about you. Or maybe you’re trying to get rid of me so you can be with Blake. You don’t get that she’s using you.”
Her eyes were chips of glaciers in a face gone pale and waxy.
She said, “If you’re not going to make an effort, maybe we should end this now. It is hard with you being so far away, and if you’re not even going to try. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? That this fall you’re not going to fight for us, to make this work. You’re so self-absorbed sometimes. I can’t do all the fighting myself. If you’re not going to work on our relationship, maybe we don’t have one.”
My head felt like it was being crushed from the inside, like at any moment the pressure between my brain and skull was going to make my eyeballs pop out.
I stood up from the couch and said, “Okay.”
“Lauren, how can you be so cold? What did I do? Tell me one thing.”
But it was everything she didn’t do.
I went into the bedroom and threw things into my suitcase. Sierra followed me to the doorway.
“I knew you were too immature for this,” she said. “You don’t know what it takes to keep a relationship going. Do you think you’re going to have a better shot with Blake, seriously? As screwed up as she is and as cold as you are? You don’t know how good you have it with me.”
She went back to the living room and threw herself on the couch weeping. I followed her, leaving my suitcase in the doorway to her room. Watching her cry, under the numbness, I felt sadness and even more guilt. And under that anger. The kind of anger that made me want to break things.
I carried my stuff to the car and left. I drove toward Duluth until I was out of the Cities and suburbs, then pulled over in a rest area and cried for a long time. I sobbed and made sounds I was profoundly glad no one could hear and got snot all over my shirt.
Not because she’d broken up with me or me with her, whatever, but because the whole thing was such a disaster. And because I was terrified that she could be a little bit right.
* * *
My father was glad I’d brought the car home rather than spending the money to park near the airport for two-and-a-half weeks. I had one full day at home and the following morning, he’d drop me off at the bus to ride down to the Minneapolis airport.
He said he was pleased I was showing sense about the value of money finally. He had no idea how shattered I was.
I wanted to talk to Blake but what would I say? It kept starting out in my head like: hey, Sierra and I split up…um…do you…would you…
I couldn’t finish the sentence. Not even to myself.
I fell into bed early and slept until midmorning.
As soon as I got up, I went to the story. There was a new entry.
Blake:
Bound to the slab of metal, Cypher shivered with cold and hunger. King Solar’s Sunslingers had used magic-enhanced metal for the cuffs on her wrists and ankles so she couldn’t teleport. They’d proven their ruthlessness and willingness to torture her until she swore fealty to them. Then they left her.
The air in the room shifted. Turning her head, Cypher saw a stream of dust filter out of the air vent and form into the welcome shape of Zeno.
“We’re here to rescue you,” Zeno said.
&
nbsp; She came to the side of the table and turned her fingers into lock picks so she could open the cuffs. She helped Cypher sit up and got her water from a nearby canteen.
“Solar put a microchip in me. He can track me,” Cypher warned.
“We know,” Zeno said. “We’re going to have to cut it out.”
Cypher held out her left wrist. “Be careful, it’s close to the vein.”
Zeno turned her fingertip into a micro-thin scalpel. Cypher braced for the pain but the blade was so thin it hardly caused any. Blood welled up and dripped down her arm as Zeno used her fingers like tweezers and carefully pulled the chip out from under Cypher’s skin.
Then Zeno did something surprising. She used the scalpel on herself and cut across her palm. She grabbed Cypher’s wrist, blood to blood.
“Are we sworn siblings now?” Cypher asked.
Zeno laughed. “We’re updating our copy of you,” she said. “This is the fastest way to cycle our nanites through your system. We want to make sure we’re indistinguishable from you, even on a scan.”
“Great party trick,” Cypher said.
“It’s how we’re going to get you out of here. We’ll take your place until you’re safely away.”
“Zeno, I’m not leaving.”
“What?”
“I’ve decided to stay. Solar’s right. We need to find this weapon and I’m the only one who can do it.”
“They brainwashed you,” Zeno argued. “You have to come with us. You’re not safe here.”
“I can’t go. This is where I need to be. Get out while you can, before they find you.”
Zeno took her hand off Cypher’s wrist and examined her palm where their blood ran together. She seemed confused.
“Why did you have me cut out the chip if you’re not going?” Zeno asked.
Cypher held out her hand for the chip. “I’m not going to stay as his pawn. I’m not his hunting dog. I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do.”
Zeno dropped the bloody microchip into Cypher’s palm. She closed her hand around it.
“Go,” Cypher told her. “Run.”
