Heartsick

by Dia Reeves

  Sterling continued to fold paper, leaving it to his brother to decide.

  As Stanton looked her over, Rue felt a moment of panic. Her friendly face didn’t work on them; none of her faces did. She tried to relax and hoped Stanton would find something pleasing without her help.

  Perhaps he did, because after a while he said, “Give us a second to finish up.”

  Rue entered and shut the door behind her.

  She’d been in their room many times during her patrols while they were in school. Teetering stacks of uninteresting books lined the walls like dusty shrubbery. Programming books, origami books. The fire in the fireplace was the only light, but Rue could see well enough to read: The Cosmic Landscape by Leonard Susskind and The Body Electric by Robert O’Brien alongside There Are Other Worlds Than These by Runyon Grist and No Such Thing As Magic and Other Falsehoods by Asher Ortiga.

  The walls were scribbled over with cherry-scented markers, indecipherable sentences composed of numbers and letters, a strange robotic language. “What’s the big project your dad’s working on?”

  “A secret,” Stanton said. “It’s always a secret until the spectacular.”

  Rue poked around the bucket of rusted metal dolls near their dresser. When she picked one up it tried to speak to her, but none of the words were audible. She tossed it back into the bucket and wiped her greasy hand on her uniform. “What’s a spectacular?”

  “A sort of show where Dad reveals his latest inventions and discoveries,” said Stanton. “Everyone goes.” His voice lowered respectfully. “Even the Mayor.”

  “Staff too?” said Rue.

  “No,” Sterling said, joining the conversation at last, “but if you’re very good, Dad might let you serve sandwiches to the guests. Come here and lie down.”

  Rue stayed where she was, watching as Sterling folded the last of the paper.

  Stanton said, “Did you change your mind?”

  In answer, Rue went to the twins and sat on the floor between them. Stanton pushed her until she was lying on her back, her two braids curled on either side of her like question marks against the hard floor.

  Someone had painted their ceiling to look like the summer sky, the sun friendly and warm.

  “Where’s Karissa?”

  “Hiding.”

  “Is she still sad?” asked Rue.

  “She’s seven.” Stanton stood and walked out of sight leaving her alone with Sterling; Rue closed her eyes to block him out. “And our dad is the only dad she’s ever known. Things are weird between them right now, weird and broken, but we’re about to fix everything.”

  “How? Are you going to send Karissa off to live with her real father?”

  The silence lasted for so long, Rue opened her eyes to find Sterling looking at her, like his brother had earlier. Really looked. So intensely, his eyes burned into her retinas like twin eclipses.

  “You have to get over the idea that Karissa doesn’t belong here,” Stanton said. “We don’t care who her father is—we’re her brothers.”

  Wind came down the chimney and disturbed the flames as Stanton returned with a notebook and a pillow. His own pillow—it smelled like him, like tree sap, sweet and sticky.

  He lifted her head and slipped the pillow beneath it. And then he scooped her up entirely, not even straining as he jiggled her in his arms before setting her down again.

  “She barely weighs anything!”

  Sterling said, “Maybe being heartless makes her lighter.” He had lined the hummingbirds like a wall before him.

  “The human heart only weighs about a half a pound,” said Stanton. “That’s not enough to drastically alter someone’s weight.” He poked Rue’s side. “How many other organs are you missing?”

  “I’m not ‘missing’ anything,” said Rue more sharply than she’d intended, annoyed at being manhandled and discussed like a specimen. “This is how I’m made. I don’t know how it compares to humans down to each individual cell. No one’s ever done any studies.”

  “You do them,” said Sterling, testing the sharpness of one of the hummingbirds’ beaks, and then eyeing the blood welling on his fingertip with clinical detachment. “Become the first heartless doctor. Dig up a bunch of heartless and human corpses, label everything that hasn’t rotted, and do a huge anthropological study.”

  Rue thought he might be making fun of her, but there was nothing subtle or sly about Sterling. If he’d decided to poke fun, she’d be bleeding.

  “We don’t throw dirt on our dead.” A doctor? Dr. Rue? “We don’t let worms eat them. The dead are sacred.”

  “How’re we narrowing it down?” Sterling asked his brother, flipping open the notebook.

  “By date.” As Stanton made a note, Sterling leaned toward her, bird in palm, but the bird fell lifelessly to the floor.

  “Damn it.”

  “And autopsies are impossible,” Rue continued mostly to keep herself company since the twins had obviously checked out. “When heartless die, there’s never anything left over to cut open.”

  “Nothing left over?” said Stanton, still writing. About her? She closed her eyes, and Sterling’s intense gaze from before floated Cheshire-like in the private darkness of Rue’s head. So she opened them again. “Do you disintegrate after you die?”

  Sterling’s hummingbird flew from his hand to Rue’s nose and teetered, flapping its teeny wings to keep balanced, a marvel of cute until it jabbed its beak into her forehead. The sensation didn’t register as pain, but rather as pressure, as though a hippo had mistook her face for a bench.

  Rue blew at the bird to flip it away like a stray hair, but it was anchored too firmly in her skull to budge. “What’s it doing?”

  Sterling said, “Taking stuff out of your brain.”

  “Is it?” asked Stanton. He tapped the bird as though checking a microphone to see if it was on. His frown said it wasn’t.

  “What stuff?” Rue asked.

  “Won’t know until it comes out.” Sterling removed the hummingbird, and Rue’s head felt eighty pounds lighter, weightless enough to float up to the summer ceiling.

  Sterling examined the bird, holding it by one talon as it struggled. Rue had no idea what he was searching for, but he obviously didn’t find it. He cursed again before tossing the hummingbird into the fire. A mad second of fluttering—pain? panic?—before the flames consumed it.

  Sterling launched another bird from his palm, and Rue flinched as it punctured her in the same place as the first. “We can try two if this doesn’t work.”

  “We haven’t tested whether that’s safe,” said Stanton.

  “This is the test.”

  More hippo pressure, and then Rue’s head cracked. She could almost hear a liquid swoosh as a great river of thought gushed from her ears and circled the drain. The twins didn’t seem bothered. Maybe they liked being drenched by her mind.

  “Why can’t I move?”

  “You can’t?” Stanton made a worried notation in his notebook.

  “Relax,” Sterling told him. “I programmed it that way so she wouldn’t flail around and lobotomize herself.”

  “Good idea. Although, you should have let me check the math.”

  “I can math too, genius.”

  It was so unnatural to not have complete control over her body. What to say, when to sweat, how often to breathe; but now she couldn’t even move. Didn’t even want to.

  “This isn’t an experiment,” she said. “You’re killing me. Me and the other me. Because of what I said to Karissa.”

  The twins’ mouths fell open in unison.

  “The other you?”

  “My soul. She watches, and if I’m in trouble or can’t function, she takes over.”

  “She comes out?” said the twins in horrified unison.

  “No. She does her thing from the inside.” Rue found herself laughing for no reason.

  “You have dimples now.” Sterling snapped a photo with his phone. “Is this your real face? Finally? None of the
other ones had dimples.”

  “I don’t know why I’m laughing,” she said, even though she had stopped. “I don’t want to be. And worry about your own face. Changing around all the time. Happy, mad, curious, friendly.”

  “I look friendly?”

  “I’m glad Stanton isn’t like you. I hate fickle people.”

  “He’s like me. But he’s also like you, with his mask bullshit.”

  “Stanton likes me?”

  “Stop talking.” Stanton said. “Your inhibitions are low right now. I don’t want you to say something you’ll regret.”

  “What if I already have?”

  “We’ll pretend you didn’t.”

  “He’ll pretend,” said Sterling.

  “Why did I have to come to this ridiculous plantation? I could have gone anywhere. I could have gone to Zaire.”

  “It’s not called Zaire anymore,” said Stanton. And then to his brother, “It’s struggling. Even two or three won’t be enough.”

  “Don’t burn me when I’m dead,” said Rue, her voice inappropriately soft, as though her ability to scream had been turned off as well. “Or nail me to the wall in the common room. But especially, and pretty please, don’t put me in the ground and throw dirt on me.”

  “We’re not killing you,” Sterling said. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’re not.”

  Something scrambled over her right breast. “And don’t molest me. Especially not while I’m dying.”

  “It might be fun to dissect you, but that’s where it ends.” Sterling snatched the malfunctioning hummingbird off her chest. Its wings had stopped working, and its beak was missing. Sterling tossed it into the fire. “How old are you anyway?”

  Rue made the calculations as well as she could with a lifetime of knowledge gushing from her ears. She’d be lucky to remember her name when they were through with her. “Seventeen. Ish.”

  “Us too,” Stanton said. He removed the missing hummingbird beak from her head with a pair of tweezers. Rue wondered if Sterling had also programmed her not to bleed because there was no blood on the beak.

  She gazed at Stanton. “If I die, take me straight to my family in the dark park. Tell my kid sister I never stopped thinking about her.”

  “You have a sister?” they exclaimed.

  “And brothers and parents. Why is it so amazing to you Westwoods that I didn’t sprout independently from the ground like a turnip?”

  “We thought your family was dead,” Stanton said, as his brother grabbed four birds. “I mean if they’re alive, why are you here with us?”

  She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see those birds fly at her poor head. “They don’t like me.”

  “So what?” said Stanton, over the bee-like buzz of hummingbirds’ wings. Her soul seemed not to have a remedy for hummingbirds and robotic code. “I don’t like my family either, but they need me. I guess I need them too.”

  “My family likes to pretend they can get along without me. But once I take Nettle away from them...they’ll realize...”

  “Realize what?” asked the twins.

  “I’m bleeding inside.”

  “Internal bleeding?”

  Sterling rolled his eyes. “She’s being dramatic.”

  “I’m not! I hurt in a way my body can’t fix.”

  “No shit.” said Sterling as the hummingbirds drove their beaks simultaneously into her temples and forehead. There was no feeling of pressure this time; her head simply split open, like an egg into a frying pan. “You can’t slap a band aid over emotional trauma. Over the damage your family’s caused you.”

  Sterling’s voice sizzled across her diminishing consciousness. “Love hurts, and there’s no remedy. How can you be seventeen and not know that?”

  Chapter 8

  “If I Only Had a Heart” woke Rue out of a sound sleep. She snatched blindly at the phone and came further awake when she realized who was at the other end.

  “Nettle? Why are you calling so late? Is everything all right?”

  “…yes.”

  “Where are you? Are you outside? I hear the wind. You shouldn’t be out so late at night.”

  “I’m not a baby. My phone stop working so I have to go to the phone box.”

  “Phone booth.”

  “Phone booth then! Don’t scold me. You treat me like the family; no one lets me have fun.”

  “If you want fun, just have it.” This was an old argument. “And stop waiting for permission.” Rue flopped back against the pillows, exhausted. “I’m sorry I yelled at you about Dodder. You have every right to play with his emotions. To play with his…whatever. I shouldn’t have tried to make you feel bad for wanting to have a good time.”

  “It’s okay. It’s stressful for you there. I should not add to your stress.”

  “I’m older and wiser and built to handle stress. You can always come to me. Especially about boys. Have as much fun as you like, but don’t take it seriously. The family will be pushing you to make a choice, but you don’t have to.”

  “But they say…” Nettle sighed. “Never mind. What about your twins? Have you kill them yet?”

  “Not yet. Actually…they’re all right. I had dinner with them tonight, and Stanton came down to my end of the table to pour me a glass of water. He came down to Mars. Just for me.”

  “Why they stop hating you?”

  “I let them take things from my brain.”

  “You let what?”

  Rue explained about the twins’ mysterious experiment, and why she’d participated.

  “But this is stupid and dangerous! Why you don’t die all the time is a mystery to me.”

  “It was worth it.” She had fallen asleep during the experiment, or passed out, because she had awoken in her room several hours later with Stanton’s pillow clutched to her chest. The pillow was still on her bed. She didn’t intend to give it back either.

  “They like me now.”

  “You go through a lot to be liked.”

  “Well not everyone is as naturally charming as you, Nettle.”

  “This is true.”

  “I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong. You didn’t call so late just to chat.”

  “To chat. To live through you. You are right. I wish I could be you. My life will be so different so soon. They want me and Dodder to join. They already make the choice.”

  “Tell them no.” Rue sat up in bed, shouting in the dark room. “No and no and no and no.”

  “They insist!”

  “They can’t choose for you, Nettle. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your life chained to that house in the dark park, you do what I did and run. I know some people, humans who go to Houston every Sunday.”

  “Humans?”

  “You’ll like them. They’re real friendly. They both go to the music school at Rice University, but they come home every weekend.”

  “I will be stuck in a strange place for a week. What will I do? Who will I talk to?”

  “Do whatever you like. Explore the city. Talk to anybody you like. Stay with Cado and Patricia in their apartment or sleep in the park. Steal a new phone and call me every day. I’d love that.”

  “I don’t know, Rue.”

  “You gotta send the family a message right away, or they’ll think they can walk all over you. Unless you want to join with Dodder?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Then run—how many times do I have to say it? It’s scary at first, but running away is the best thing for girls like us. Check out the college scene over there. I’m going to college. Did I tell you? I’m going to become an anthropologist. You’d think the Mortmaine would have done some scientific study of the creatures around here long ago, but they haven’t so I’m going to.”

  “They don’t study us. They kill us. Humans only ever kill us.”

  “Humans kill everything; I wouldn’t take it personally, Nettle. My point is think what you can aspire to once you leave the dark park. The doors that will open.�
�

  “Doors are scary. You go through and never come back.”

  “Doors of opportunity, not doors to weird galaxies or wherever. Nettle? Nettle, don’t cry about it okay? Listen: if you don’t go to Houston, come here. Come live with me. I’ll take care of you.”

  “I don’t want to live with people who suck things from my brain.”

  “Visit then. Just for a little while, just long enough for the family to get the message.” When Nettle didn’t speak, Rue added, “Westwood’s throwing a ball.”

  “Like Cinderella?” Definitely more upbeat.

  “You could wear a pretty dress and dance all night.”

  “When?”

  “In a few weeks, but you can come anytime. Right now sounds perfect.”

  “Maybe your brain-sucking twins don’t want me for two visits.”

  “So go to Houston with Patricia on Sunday. I’ll give you her address. And when she comes back this weekend, come stay with me.”

  “Is it the only way?”

  “It is. Believe me, life with Dodder would make a coma seem like a circus.”

  “O-okay, but—”

  “Great!” She gave Nettle Patricia’s information. “Just tell her I sent you.”

  “But what if—”

  “Good night!”

  Rue hung up, glad things with Nettle were finally settled.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Rue sat in the dirt, her back to the cloven mesquite, the two pupae balanced together in her lap.

  “And then the woodsman sliced the wolf in half with his mighty ax, and Little Red Riding Hood and her beloved grandmother sprang free,” she recited, brushing the pupae’s hard shells with a milk and sugar mixture that seemed to agree with them. Their cocoons had smelled rotten before, but the daily milk baths had given them a sweeter aroma. And they were maturing so quickly, the cocoons taking on the shape of the insects within: sweep of a wing there, the raised line of antennae here, something that looked like an eye way up top.

  The pupae were being nourished, but the milk and sugar mixture was also attracting sweetbites. Rue had made herself resistant to them, but sweetbites were persistent.

  One landed on her arm—a lavender critter as long as Rue’s thumb, with iris-free white eyes and translucent wings—and bit her. Immediately toppled over, holding its tiny belly.