“You’re a good person. Do you know that?”
Maybe she should give him a chance. She didn’t love him the way she loved Nathan, but maybe that wasn’t the only way to love someone. Maybe what she’d always thought of as “settling” was just a different sort of love. Maybe she undervalued feeling safe and comfortable. Maybe she undervalued kindness, and overvalued wit and poise.
She knocked on Lycan’s door, the old-fashioned way.
The door swirled open.
“Hi.” Lycan sounded overjoyed to see her.
Veronika collapsed her screen. “Hi. I came back because I wanted to say this IP.” Suddenly she felt nervous. She actually had no idea what she’d come back to say.
Lycan waited, his eyebrows raised.
“You’re a good guy, and I like you.” Veronika cringed inside. What a line. Pathetic. “And—and I’d like to reciprocate. I’d like to invite you to dinner at my place. I can guarantee you it won’t be nearly as elaborate as the meal you planned—”
“No,” Lycan interrupted, stepping on her last few words, “that doesn’t matter. I’d love to come. Thank you.” He wriggled his nose, one of his other nervous habits.
“Great.”
“Great.”
Once again, Veronika headed into the street, wondering if she could ever be happy with someone like Lycan. She laughed out loud at the thought. When had she ever been happy, anyway?
Lycan pinged her. Laughing at the absurd circularity of this evening, she opened a screen in Lycan’s living room again.
“Do you remember when we met in that pizza place, and I was having a panic attack?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“You asked why I was having it, and I said I didn’t know.” He cleared his throat. “I did know—I was just embarrassed to say. It was because I was going to see you.”
A warmth washed over Veronika, like she was standing on a beach, soaking in the sun.
59
Mira
For the first time, Mira found no one looking down at her when she woke. There was nothing to see but the ceiling far above, and part of the wall. She waited, expecting a face to appear. Had Sunali waked her, then been called away, or left to use the bathroom? Surely it was Sunali.
“Hello?” Mira called.
Nothing but the faint echo of her own horrible graveyard voice. Maybe there had been some technical error in her crèche that accidentally woke her? That would be wonderful; she’d have time to herself until someone noticed.
“Mira Bach,” a woman’s voice said.
Mira waited for a face to appear, then realized the voice had come from farther above, where the warning had come from when Sunali let her speak to Jeannette.
“Yes?”
“Do you recall saying the following during your last meeting with Sunali Van Kampen?”
A brief pause, then she recognized her own terrible dead voice, on the verge of hysteria: “Please help me. Please, I’m afraid—”
She was in trouble. Although, she wondered, what else could they possibly do to her. Put her in prison? Beat her with a stick? “Yes, I remember.” How could she forget? It wasn’t as if she got the opportunity to speak very often.
“What were your intentions in saying it?”
Did they record everything that went on in here? It was probably safe to assume they did, that they’d already reviewed Sunali’s visits. “I was speaking to Sunali; I was upset. I didn’t know she was going to use my words the way she did.” Mira was trying to recall what she’d said to Sunali leading up to her outburst. Did she come across as complicit?
“Congruent with Cryomed policy,” the voice said, “we have revived you to inform you of a change in your status. You’re to be relocated to the main storage facility, where you’ll be preserved for the remaining five hundred forty-four years stipulated in your insurance policy.”
“Wait. I didn’t do anything wrong.” She wouldn’t have the slightest chance of speaking to Jeannette again, or of being revived.
“The decision is not contestable,” the voice said.
“But I didn’t—”
She wasn’t given a chance to argue.
60
Rob
Through the window of the train, Rob watched a micro-T descend from High Town, dropping almost vertically, and wondered if Winter might be on it. It was headed to Grand Central, so it was possible. But it was too far away, and moving too fast, for him to make out individual faces.
Six o’clock, you said? Veronika sent, and Rob replied by sending a thumbs-up.
He wiped his palms on his pants. They were slick with sweat, not from nervousness, but just because he was flat-out excited. He had no doubt his dad and Winter would hit it off. Winter would be able to relax out in the suburbs, where there was little chance of a camera catching them together. It would be nice to be able to hold Winter’s hand in public, or put his arm around her waist. In the city, that was only possible in his room.
The train stopped at Grand Central. Rob hopped out, located the wall with the giant clock in it, and found Winter already waiting, one foot propped against the wall. As they’d planned, Rob kept walking, knowing Winter would follow. He boarded a train to the suburbs, spotted Winter boarding two cars down.
When the train pulled out, he crossed through the car separating them, took the seat behind her.
“Hey, you,” Winter said, turning sideways in her seat.
Rob grinned. “Hi. Hope you like Superfood.”
“Veronika’s bringing something as well. But even if she didn’t, I grew up eating Superfood.”
“Your whole childhood?”
“It depended on who Mom was married to. At times we were pretty well off, then she’d get bored with whoever she was married to and leave him, and we’d be in the streets. I got whiplash from all the change. Mom thrived on it.”
Rob nodded, thinking how different her upbringing had been from his. He’d been poor, but always just somewhat, and everyone else in the neighborhood was poor too, so it felt normal.
“So, were the times you were homeless the worst part of your life? Besides being dead, of course.”
A man a few rows away glanced at them, then looked away.
Winter laughed. “Being dead isn’t part of life, so it doesn’t count.” She thought for a moment. “I’d have to say the low point was Ty.”
“Ty?”
“My boyfriend in college. He broke up with me, but neither of us could afford to move out, so we went on living together as roommates. Pretty soon he was going out with someone new, one of those women who dress like clowns? Bright red hair, colored face paint?”
“Oh, I know them.” There had been a clique of clowns in his school. Liz Faircloth, who lived down the road from him, had become one, showing up for the walk to school one day wearing bright, primary colors, with blue corkscrew hair.
“Soon she was pretty much living with us, and I was sleeping in a corner of the living room while they had loud sex in the bedroom, with her laughing her crazy fake-clown laugh—” Winter broke into laughter herself. “When did people start doing that, where their whole identity is tied to some look?”
“No idea.”
Two boys, maybe twelve years old, burst into their car, giggling like mad. Rob watched as they ran past, hit the door on the far end, and disappeared into the next car.
“Life with my mom wasn’t all bad. I don’t want to give you that impression,” Winter said, when it was quiet again. “Once mom opened a day-care business in our apartment. She just kept packing kids into the place.”
“Hold on. These were the good times?” Rob laughed.