by Celie Wells
Jason greeted Hess first and then excused himself to help Dredge, who was motioning to him from a nearby tree.
“This is a strange homecoming for me, Doodle bug.” Hess stood between the crowd of well-dressed onlookers and me.
“I can't imagine you were expecting this level of drama. Our grandmother outdid herself this time.”
“Drama, I expected but being related to Ol' Dredge and then having my sister married off at sixteen—now that was the shock.”
“Hess, this is what I want,” I explained quietly.
“You don't know what it means to want. You're still a little girl. You aren't even sixteen yet,” He noted.
“But I'm not a child anymore. Everything changed. Everything is crap and hard to deal with. Everything I want, I can't have.”
“What do you want? Tell me, and I will try to make it happen.” Hess leaned towards me and hushed his words as if he was offering me some forbidden magical gift.
“Like the fairy and the frog. You're going to grant me one fantastic wish?” I asked sarcastically.
“Yes, one big, green, sparkly wish.” Hess smiled.
“Fine then, I want to disappear. I want to stop crying. All the agony needs to go away. There's no peace left anywhere. I want to forget how perfect everything was. I didn't realize it was perfect.”
“Damn it, Kar. I can't conjure those things for you.” Hess looked up at the glass ceiling and took an exaggerated breath. “All that stuff takes time to change. I picture you in that fuzzy, pink zippered thing they dressed you in as a baby. You would grab in the air like you were trying to find some invisible toy. This is hard for me to get used to.” Hess confessed in a low, hushed tone.
“I'm sorry. You expected more from me, but I want this life path. I want a family of my own. I don't want you to be angry with me. I didn't mean to disappoint you.”
“No,” Hess replied, shaking his head from side to side. “You don't disappoint me, that's not worth talking about. I want you to be happy. Not the special events kind of happy but the everyday right out bed first thing in the morning happy.”
“What does that even mean?” I brushed my bangs back into place and straightened my skirt. My neck felt hot. The need to jump to my feet and run out of the building was almost overwhelming.
“I want you to wake up each day and live with a smile on your face. I don't want you waiting to be happy someday when some yearly event comes around. I don't care what you do as long as it makes you smile. I'm sure that rich boy will keep you safe and fed—but can he make you happy?”
“Nobody can make you happy. You need to choose to be happy. Besides, Jason makes me smile even when I shouldn't be smiling. It's inappropriate today, but I am happy beside him.”
“Do you love him? This is an awkward topic for you and me to discuss, but you have to tell me why you love him.”
“I do love him. Honestly, I don't know exactly why. I don't want him to find anyone else, and I miss Jason when he's gone.” I admitted.
“If this boy only means as much to you as a pet, you need to end this Kar. For about a month's pay, I can send you a synth animal of your choice to entertain you,” Hess demanded.
“You don't even try to understand me. Jason's not my pet. He is mine.” I pushed my hand to my chest and stared at my difficult brother.
“I do understand, but until you can give me a solid reason. I don't want you to marry that boy,” Hess crossed his arms over his chest and shifted his weight.
“It's not your choice, Hess. It's mine. Me being a female doesn't change that fact.”
“So, I'm a sexist Neanderthal now, because I don't agree with you,” Hess countered.
“What else could it be? You said yourself he's rich. He has an original colonist name. I must be a water whore. Why else would I want to marry him?”
“You're getting loud and becoming unreasonable.” My tone overshadowed the tranquil decay that hung thick in the air, but no one can upset me more than my brother.
“He loves me. He wants me to marry him. Isn't that enough for you?” I asked.
“No, it's not enough. You want my approval. You tell me why you want to marry this boy, or I won't sign the family documents.” Hess laid out the ultimatum I'm sure he reversed many times.
“I'll wait for the year, then I won't need you to sign anything. I may owe you my life, but I am not your property,” I scowled as quietly as I could manage.
“I didn't say you were my property.” Hess flopped his hand on my shoulder a bit harder than I expected. “I'm saying that you are wrong. I'm saying that you don't realize what you're trading here. You're throwing your entire youth away to marry a rich boy you don't love.”
“Stop saying rich.” I took a deep, silencing breath before I rose to my feet. Hess shot me his disapproving look. I brushed my brother's heavy hand off my shoulder and drifted toward the exit.
We were wandering around the manicured grounds in our most elegant clothing admiring trees fed by the liquescent bodies of our dead rotting under the soil, but somehow my tone was undignified.
I would not give Hess the satisfaction of a public tantrum. A few days ago, I might have thrown chunks of fetid soil at his stupid face and screamed at him openly, but not today.
I didn't have a solid reason for wanting to marry Jason. It certainly sounds like a good idea. I don't want any other girl to get her grubby hands on him. He's always been mine, and that alone should be enough for any reasonable person to understand.
I saw him naked once, Jason, well almost naked. He was one of the few we knew born with a fully functional appendix. I guess that makes him something of a medical freak. Still, the doctors decided to remove the tiny organ before it caused any problems.
Jason sat in a pre-op room with only a thin sheet across his lap, waiting his turn with the laser. I went in to talk to him. I wasn't supposed to be in his room, but no one stopped me. Under the exam lights, Jason's pale skin made him look like a ghost from an old slasher movie. I took my solar gloves off, kissed my fingertips, and ran them across the black incision mark the nurse drew on his side.
I could tell he was excited by my touch. I tried to sneak a peek at him, but the sheet was in the way, and the whole room had glass observation walls. With no privacy, Jason seemed anxious and fidgety. He put his hands in his lap, which pulled his sheet away from his butt cheeks, and then a nurse came in the room to take him away.
The smirk the woman wore on her mouth upset me for days. She was my rival at that moment. Much older than me, but she was going to help cut a piece out of him. I said the stupidest thing.
“I love you, and I'll be here to take you home when you're done.”
“You love me?” He asked.
“We all love you, try not to feel alone. Everyone is waiting out in the lobby.” Jason smiled at me with that tidy, regal smile he uses for the help that serves him.
This one moment of cowardliness, I have thought about many times over the years. I should have said yes, I love you. Jason was almost fifteen, and I barely turned thirteen. Anatomy class started for me a few weeks later. The first and only nude male figure I've seen was a textbook hologram. He wasn't excited to see me at all.
MONDAY
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning. An obscure quote from a musical my grandmother loved to play at full volume while she cleaned the house. It’s old, but the words were strangely relevant to me today.
I choose to forgo the allotted three days of morning and go back to school. With two tests planned, rescheduling the whole day would have been a monumental pain in the ass.
Everything was the same in the world. I don’t know what changes I expected to find when I left the house, but I expected something noteworthy. There should be some measurable impact due to my grandparent’s exit from the planet, but there wasn’t. The sacrifice they made was all for nothing. It was an outdated custom that served no purpose.
School events went along as methodically as expected. A big wh
ite cake was served at the lunch break. Two younger students also endured family celebrations over the weekend. The cake was supposed to ease our suffering or show our school community cared. I didn’t even have a monopoly on my grief. I had to share it with two other students.
There’s a public execution scheduled for this evening. Well, there’s a vote scheduled for the punishment of a criminal. These things almost always end in execution orders. The focus of the citizenry is our gene pool and how untarnished it must remain. The perfect masses can’t tolerate any human failings.
Today I can accept this arguably barbaric practice. The accused confessed to the murder of his terminally ill friend. There is no other choice left for him, but also because an execution means the town square and all the vendors will remain open long past normal closing time. Everyone alive gets invited out to the main square. We celebrate being inclusive—a town-wide pat on the back for doing our civic duty.
Jason was waiting in the parking lot to collect me after school. “Hey, you, what’s up today? More ancient customs?” I asked.
“Nope, just helping out since you won’t pull your transport license. Your father called me. Your mother hasn’t left her room all day. He and Hess are concerned. They stayed home to watch her.”
“Watch her do what? Beryl returned to work, and I went to school. I can only imagine how dramatically abandoned she’s acting. Do you think we can go anywhere but my house? I’m not equipped to deal with her full-blown crazy today.”
“Are you avoiding Hess or your mother?” The heavy transport door slid shut. The air escaping from our day suits puffed a cloud of tainted air into the cabin.
“Hess pisses me off. He of all people should not lecture anyone on commitments. He left us to go work on the Tree. He doesn’t get to make choices for me anymore.” I removed my outer gloves and tossed them on the seat next to me.
Jason shook his head. “We have a couple of choices. Your house full of crazy people who piss you off or your new house with all of my shit in it.”
“New house? What are you talking about?”
“The continuation of the long engagement customs dictates that my family prepare a suite for you to lounge in while you visit me for our supervised courtship. The staff already started redecorating the front salon as they call it.”
“No way! Shut up. I have a room in your huge spooky old house now?” I exclaimed.
“A suite. No bed, of course, we don’t want to look like a bunch of degenerates. It’s still days until your sixteenth birthday.” Jason winked and wiggled his fingers at me. I rolled my eyes and checked the power reserves on my suit.
“Did you like the cinnamon scones this morning? They were from Craig, our driver. His wife made them. They are part of our weekly food offering to your household,” Jason explained carefully, sounding like he didn’t want credit given where it wasn’t due.
“So much food was left after the celebration, but I did notice a cake box with your family crest on the lid.”
“That’s the weekly offering,” Jason explained.
“Let me get this straight. Your family is planning on bribing my family with baked goods for a year.”
“I don’t make these rules. Something about representing the family bond: give us your women, and we will feed you kind of thing,” Jason laughed.
“Hmm, that is strangely thoughtful and eww at the same time. But I do like pastries with my morning coffee.”
“Keeps the old people happy, so I say why not. I have a gift of my own for you. It’s in the darkest of spooky rooms. Mu-ha-ha.” Jason did his best to lighten my day with his animated voices and talk of mystery gifts and ceremony.
Anticipating the moves of the car ahead of us, Jason swerved, avoiding a near collision. I passed my driving test and took several hours of instruction, but I don’t like driving a transport. You have to rely on the other drivers to follow the same rules you’re following. I don’t have that level of trust in my fellow traveler. There is too much to think about all at the same time. I don’t want to drive, and Jason is a great driver. It’s just one more reason he is perfect for me.
The turn off for my street was near, I waived Jason on, and he kept driving. I messaged my father and let him know I was off to visit my future home and return home before the voting started. He sent me back a single letter, K. Quite a bit was said in that one letter. Most of all that he was disappointed I would not be home to help with my crazed mother. Maybe a bit that he understood and even envied my ability to escape her. And a tinge of fear that I had other options for my well-being that didn’t involve him.
I tried to put all the implications of the single K out of my mind. While my family mourned, Jason’s family found our pending wedding a new reason to celebrate. I was tired of drowning in sorrow. I was going to choose to breathe today.
As the house staff called it, the front salon was decorated in gold and silver, the traditional colors of the long engagement. The suite belonged to Jason’s late mother and didn’t appear touched for some time. The solar paneled windows were heavily tinted, and plants and blooming flowers overran the dressing room off the bath. Several of the staff were busy cleaning and pruning the foliage.
“My mother would love this garden room,” I mentioned walking through the sparsely decorated sitting area.
“You should see my room, no plants, but I have a bushy tree and a huge viewer for my video games,” Jason stated nervously.
“I would love to see your room.”
“Good cause, I left your present on my desk”
As if by summons, a woman I had met on only one occasion before appeared to chaperone me through the house. I shook her hand and smiled.
“Clara, so nice to see you again.”
Clara smiled and patted my hand lightly. “We are so happy to have you here, Karine.”
“Thank you, I’m grateful for everyone’s enthusiasm. My household is still recovering from our recent life celebration.”
Jason led me across the house and into his room. The door opened into a large room space the size of my family’s living room. A tall, green-leafed tree was placed near the doorway separating the entry from what looked like a video gamer nest. A wide bed and a writing desk sat at the other end of the room with a grouping of overstuffed chairs marking the middle of the space.
“Very bachelor pad chic,” I said, walking the room and taking note of his paperback book collection. “You collect paper books. I thought you liked the digitals?”
“I read one of your mother’s old books, The Hobbit, on paper that summer I got the bad flu. I don’t know why, but the paper grabbed me. That grain under your fingers, the smell of the paper and the ink, I guess. I try to find them when I can at the antique shops,” Jason confessed.
“Me too, the books my grandmother gifted me are heavy hardbacks, one is called ‘Gone with the Wind,’ it’s in a clear air-tight box. I want to read the books, but I need acid-free gloves and a tabletop book protector first,” I mentioned, reading his virtual reality game titles. “Hayman’s Harlot’s!” I laughed. Didn’t the government ban the whole series for extreme violence and sex,” I asked, surprised?
“Yep, that’s the one,” Jason confessed red-faced. “If it got banned, it must be good, right.”
“Well, is it?”
“Don’t know,” he answered, leaning on his bed—a neatly decorated box sitting in his hand. “I haven’t made time to play it yet, we’ve been busy.”
“So, is that my present?” I strolled towards the little box, clapping my hands quietly.
“I figured this box would get you on my bed,” Jason smiled and helped me hop up on the tall mattress. His coverlet was dark blue and deep gold—a stark contrast to the suite that was being decorated for me.
“Open it,” he demanded with excitement. The white box opened to a white velvet case that held a black leather and platinum bracelet.
“Wow, it’s so beautiful. It almost looks electronic?”
Ja
son laughed and clasped the bangle around my wrist. “This is a currency and biometric tracker. You can monitor your health and buy anything you need. It’s linked to my currency account.”
“Wait? What? No, I can’t accept this. This is too beautiful for me, and what if I lose it. I don’t need to buy anything, and I certainly wouldn’t want to use your money if I did.” I tried to remove the item carefully, but it wouldn’t unclasp.
“See, it won’t fall off, nothing to worry about,” Jason laughed. “There is nothing too beautiful for you and my money is your money now, get used to it.”
“Jason,” I whined, holding my arm out and turning my head away from him. He leaned in close and kissed me on the shoulder.
“You want me to take it off. One little button on the back, not a big deal, Kar.”
“No, leave it on. It’s beautiful and very thoughtful. I just don’t want you or anyone else to think I’m engaged to you because of your family money,” I confessed.
“You marry for money?” Jason laughed and tossed the wrapping on his desktop. “I guess you could, but I would have to kill the guy so you could marry me after his funeral.” Jason was laughing, but he didn’t sound like he was joking. Murder is a fatal crime, not something society takes lightly. “I don’t care what anyone else thinks, Kar. I want you to have everything you need when I’m not around to buy it for you.”
“Thank you. This is so beautiful.” I raised my arm to the high ceiling and let the amber lights bounce off the platinum in my new bangle.
His bedroom door remained open with Clara sitting in the hallway outside. We had no real privacy as intended. Jason pulled me to him quietly, and we fell back on his soft bed. I brushed his dark hair out of his eyes and stared at him for a few long seconds before he kissed me again—this time, I forgot all about Clara.
I slid my hands behind Jason’s neck and rolled him on top of me. His weight pressing me into the bed sent a wave of warmth across my entire body. The sweet smell of his skin and warm feel his hands sliding over my jeans. Nothing like this was ever described in my human interactions class. I could tell how much he wanted to close the door on my thigh, and then I could hear Dredge speaking to Clara in the hall.
