couldn’t choose, so I did it for her. Pick her, I said. That’s how strange life is. I picked her out of all the others.
said she’d already had the conversation with her Face. (We talk to our Faces as little as possible, although sometimes we sleep with each other’s. Forbidden fruit is always freakier. Is that why I did what I did? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?) said her Face agreed to sign a new contract when turns eighteen. She doesn’t see any reason to give up having a Face.
is 
’s younger sister. They only broke ground on ’s pyramid last summer. Upper management teams from her father’s company came out to lay the first course of stones. A team-building exercise. Usually it’s lifers from the supermax prison out in Pelican Bay. Once they get to work, they mostly look the same, lifers and upper management. It’s hard work. We like to go out and watch.
Every once in a while a consulting archaeologist or an architect will come over and try to make conversation. They think we want context.
They talk about grave goods, about how one day future archaeologists will know what life was like because some rich girls decided they wanted to build their own pyramids.
We think that’s funny.
They like to complain about the climate. Apparently it isn’t ideal. “Of course, they may not be standing give or take a couple of hundred years. Once you factor in geological events. Earthquakes. There’s the geopolitical dimension. There’s grave robbers.”
They go on and on about the cunning of grave robbers.
We get them drunk. We ask them about the curse of the mummies just to see them get worked up. We ask them if they aren’t worried about the Olds. We ask what used to happen to the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. Didn’t they used to disappear? we ask. Just to make sure nobody knew where the good stuff was buried? We say there are one or two members of the consulting team who worked on 
’s pyramid that we were friendly with. We mention we haven’t been able to get hold of them in a while, not since the pyramid was finished.
They were up on the unfinished outer wall of ’s pyramid. I guess they’d been up there all night. Talking. Making love. Making plans.
They didn’t see me. Invisible, that’s what I am. I had my phone. I filmed them until my phone ran out of memory. There was a unicorn down in the meadow by a pyramid. ’s pyramid. Two impossible things. Three things that shouldn’t exist. Four.
That was when I gave up on becoming someone new, the running, the kale, the whole thing. That was when I gave up on becoming the new me. Somebody already had that job. Somebody already had the only thing I wanted.
“Give me the code.” I say it over and over again. I don’t know how long it’s been. ’s arm is green and black and all blown up like a party balloon. I tried sucking out the poison. Maybe that did some good. Maybe I didn’t think of it soon enough. My lips are a little tingly. A little numb.
“
?” says. “I don’t want to die.”
“You aren’t going to die,” I say. “Give me the code. Let me save you.”
“I don’t want them to die,” says. “If I give you the code, you’ll do it. And I’ll die down here by myself.”
“You’re not going to die,” I say. I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”
After a while she says, “Okay.” Then she tells me the code. Maybe it’s a string of numbers that means something to her. More likely it’s random. I told you she was smarter than me.
I repeat the code back to her and she nods. I’ve covered her up with a shawl, because she’s so cold. I lay her head down on a pillow, brush her hair back.
She says, “You loved her better than you loved me. It isn’t fair. Nobody ever loved me best.”
“What makes you think I loved her?” I say. “You think this was all about love? Really, ? This was just me being dumb again. And you, saving the day.”
She closes her eyes. Gives me a horrible, blind smile.
I go over to the door and enter the code.
The door doesn’t open. I try again and it still doesn’t open.
“? Give me the code again?”
She doesn’t say anything. I go over and shake her gently. “Tell me the code one more time. Come on. One more time.”
Her eyes stay closed. Her mouth falls open. Her tongue sticks out.
“.” I pinch her arm. Say her name over and over again. Then I go nuts. I make kind of a mess. It’s a good thing isn’t around to see.
And now it’s a little bit later, and is still dead, and I’m still trapped down here with a dead hero and a dead cat and a bunch of broken shabtis. No food. No good music. Just a small canister of something nasty cooked up by my good friend Nikolay, and a department store’s worth of size four jeans and the dregs of a bottle of very expensive champagne.
The Egyptians believed that every night the spirit of the person buried in a pyramid rose up through the false doors to go out into the world. The Ba. The Ba can’t be imprisoned in a small dark room at the bottom of a deep shaft hidden under some pile of stones. Maybe I’ll fly out some night, some part of me. The best part. The part of me that was good. I keep trying combinations, but I don’t know how many numbers used, what combination. It’s a Sisyphean task. It’s something to do. There’s not much oil left to light the lamps. The lamps that are left. I broke most of them.
Some air comes in through the bottom of the door, but not much. It smells bad in here. I wrapped up in her shawls and hid her in the closet. She’s in there with 
. I put in her arms. Every once in a while I fall asleep and when I wake up I realize I don’t know which numbers I’ve tried, which I haven’t.
The Olds must wonder what happened. They’ll think it had something to do with that video. Their people will be doing damage control. I wonder what will happen to my Face. What will happen to her. Maybe one night I’ll fly out. My Ba will fly right to her, like a bird.
One day someone will open the door that I can’t. I’ll be alive or else I won’t. I can open the canister or I can leave it closed. What would you do? I talk about it with , down here in the dark. Sometimes I decide one thing, sometimes I decide another.
Dying of thirst is a hard way to die.
I don’t really want to drink my own urine.
If I open the canister, I die faster. It will be my curse on you, the one who opens the tomb. Why should you go on living when she and I are dead? When no one remembers our names?
.
Tara.
I don’t want you to know my name. It was his name, really.