A Long, Long Sleep (11 page)

After a moment Xavier pulled away. I blinked at him, gasping. His face was gray and the sky was gray and the world was gray. I had no breath left.

“Easy,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. He held me tightly enough that I didn’t fall in a heap at his feet. Sensing my shakiness, he slowly brought us both to our knees on the bright grass. Xavier kissed the tears from my cheeks, from my eyes, then he ducked his head and whispered into my ear, “I know.”

Did he know what I was feeling? Did he know why I was crying? I wasn’t sure I knew myself. I was breathing hard, and as the oxygen returned to my system, so did the colors around me. We held each other. Xavier had his lips against the hair behind my ear. I buried my nose in his neck, smelling the familiar scent of him mixed with the new heady smell of man sweat, which had not been his the last time I had seen him.

As our breathing slowed, Xavier squeezed me around the shoulders. “Wow.” He breathed a sigh into my ear, and I shuddered at the sensation. “I wasn’t quite expecting that.”

“Who was she?”

Xavier pulled away a little to look at me. “Who?”

How could he ask who? “The girl who took you from me. The girl who stole your first kiss, who taught you all that.”

Xavier smiled, but it was a little trepidatious. “Does it matter?”

“Yesss!” The word came out a poisonous hiss. I hadn’t realized I felt so possessive of him.

“Her name was Claire,” Xavier said, “and I met her in school. But Rose, she wasn’t important.” He gently touched my face, leaving trails of warm color through my skin. “She was a . . . means to an end. She knew that. I surely wasn’t her first. She’s been through four more since. It was you. Always you.”

He pressed his lips to my hair with a sigh. “The only reason I even let her touch me was so that I’d know what to do when I finally saw you again.” His lips traveled with painful sweetness over my forehead, along the side of my hairline, along my jaw. “Oh, I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered with a heavy sigh that left me no doubt as to his sincerity. “She didn’t love me, and I certainly didn’t love her.” His nose caressed my cheek. “It was nothing like this.”

Distracted as I was by what his lips were doing to my skin, I managed to hear him. “Are you . . . saying you love me?”

Xavier pulled away and stared at me with frank shock. “Rose!” he whispered.

Then his eyes softened. “I’ve always loved you.” He moved to kiss me again, and this time it was hesitant, almost teasing, or it would have been if his eyes hadn’t been so desperate. When our lips met again, it wasn’t frenzied or furious, and the passion was less a raging fire than a warm, diffuse, powerful glow. It felt better than the first few minutes of stasis, better than the drifting safety of the first chemical infusion. When Xavier and I kissed this second time, I knew, without a doubt, that I was home.

The nose that touched me now belonged to my dog, who had begun to get worried by the constant stream of tears falling from my eyes. He licked them from my cheeks, and I laughed hollowly. My Zavier kissing my tears away. It just wasn’t the same.

I dragged myself to my feet and led Zavier inside. He expected me to begin working in my studio, as I did every afternoon, but I couldn’t bear to go in there. The faces of Xavier and Bren would stare at me, grind my heart into chalk dust. I curled up on my rosebud- print bedspread instead, still in my school uniform. I didn’t move even when Patty told me it was time for dinner. I still couldn’t eat much, and the idea of trying to choke something down while I felt like this was abhorrent.

Sometime in the night, I dragged myself to the bathroom and drank a huge glass of water to replenish the moisture I’d lost from my tears. Five minutes later, I ran back and threw it all up into the toilet. This time when I went back to my bed, I took the glass with me and drank slowly, making sure my stomach could absorb each mouthful before I took another.

Around ten my notescreen dinged, but I didn’t feel up to explaining what had happened, not even to Otto. I ignored it, and it didn’t ding again.

It was a terrible night. My pills made me just drowsy enough to throw me into nightmares but not enough to keep me asleep. I oscillated back and forth between nightmares and tears. The nightmares were particularly terrible, as they now involved being attacked by shiny, dead- eyed versions of Bren or Xavier, being beaten again and again with the stick that my attacker had been carrying during my adventures in sleepwalking.

I welcomed the alarm that signaled a reprieve from my nightmares. I fed Zavier and climbed into my limoskiff, scorning breakfast.

When I got to school, I opened the door. Only then did I realize I was still in the creased and tear- stained uniform I’d worn through the night. I winced as the cacophony of the school invaded my skiff. Kids shouted at one another across the quad, and the Uni volleyball team was singing some rhythmic sports chant that seemed to be in Arabic. Cells beeped; footsteps clattered. My head ached before I’d even set my feet on the ground. And then I saw him.

Bren was with his friends in the middle of the quad. I knew I looked a mess. I felt as if I’d been pulled through a hedge backward. Had I even remembered to brush my hair this morning? Bren looked his usual radiant self. He glanced in my direction, and he must have seen my limoskiff, because he quickly turned his back, laughing with Anastasia. My heart twisted.

Otto pulled a little away from the group and looked at me. His expressionless face tilted on his neck, and he regarded me silently. I would have given anything in that moment for an expressionless face like his. Mine crumpled, and the tears started welling again. Otto took a step toward me, his hand reaching out as if he could touch me across the quad. How much did he know?

I couldn’t bear it. I climbed back into the limoskiff. “Home!” I told it. “Home, home, home, home, home!”

The skiff obediently closed its doors and glided off.

When I got to the condo, I pushed a bag of Zavier’s dog food under my bed and left it on its side, open, so he could get to it when he needed to. I knew he could get water from the toilet. I stole a brief moment of comfort by hugging him, but this was too big even for my beautiful fluffy dog. I wiped my tears off on his fur and left the condo, heading purposefully for the lift.

It moved very slowly down into the subbasement. I felt calmer just thinking about my coming oblivion.

I climbed hungrily into my stass tube and stabbed the pre-set button. We’d rarely had to use it before. My parents had always known when it was best to take me from stass. I set the timer for two weeks and lay back as the music began to swirl around my head.

The perfumed chemicals quickly wiped the horror and grief from my mind. I breathed them in deeply and thought of Xavier. I half hoped that when I woke up, this whole terrible incident would never have happened. It would be just a few weeks or months since my parents had closed the stass tube, and Mom would be looking down at me, offering me a champagne breakfast. Xavier would still be my next- door neighbor, and I could throw myself into his arms and apologize for every missed moment.

Anything seemed possible in those first few moments of stass.

With only three percent vision, he had made his way back to his station. His target had fled from the known location. He was not programmed to believe that the target would return there. As he was unable to locate his target, his directives were suspended. He sat himself back down, flipped into standby mode, and waited.

“The famous Rosalinda Fitzroy was reported missing this morning, sparking rumors of a possible abduction. Fitzroy’s last known location was her family’s condominium in the UniCorp town of ComUnity. Police are standing by.”

NAME ALERT: TARGET REFERENCED. ROSALINDA SAMANTHA FITZROY.

The new location was known. It didn’t occur to him that it was the same as the last known location. Patterns of behavior were not something his programming took into account.

He implemented his primary directive. RETURN TARGET

TO PRINCIPAL.

He scanned through the net. Since he was running on 98.7 percent capacity, the scan took only an hour.

PRINCIPAL UNAVAILABLE.

Electrons firing, he reinstated his secondary directive.

TERMINATE TARGET. ON STANDBY, PENDING REDUNDANT SCAN.

His status check automatically pointed out that his vision was still at only three percent. It took his nanos about four hours to remove every speck of the dried oil paint from his eyes before he rose from his station to implement his directive.

When I opened my eyes this time, the face looming over me was not in shadow.

I hadn’t been in long enough to suffer further stass fatigue. Brendan glared at me, eyes flashing as if there were gold fish swimming in the green pools. “You realize threatening suicide is abusive behavior, right?”

I shook my head, regretting the loss of the stass dream. This one had featured Xavier, only Xavier and Bren had somehow gotten mixed up, and I was never sure which one I was with. I told Bren that I missed him, but it was really Xavier I was missing. The boy, whoever he was, held me, and we were swimming in the brightness that pervaded my stass dreams. It bothered me in a vague way that the boy in my arms kept changing. But it had been much better than the angry face of the boy who really stood above me now. “I wasn’t threatening suicide,” I said. My voice was still languid from the stass chemicals.

Bren glared. “Right. What else do you call climbing back into your glass cof fin?”

I blinked. I’d never thought of it like that. I looked down at my comforting stass tube. The smooth satin- of- silk that cushioned me, the gentle music that filled the final moments before the stass began, the first sweet scent of the gasses that created a final dream state before deep stass took hold. A cof fin?

Bren snorted at me and flung himself away. “Get back to your family. They’re worried.”

I knew that was a lie. Barry and Patty barely noticed me when I was there —

how long had it taken them to notice that I wasn’t? I swallowed. “How long?” I asked.

“Two days,” Bren snapped. “When they told me you disappeared, I guessed you might be down here.”

“No one else did?”

Bren glared at me. “No one else has any reason to think you were trying to make someone feel guilty.”

I gripped the edges of the opened tube and climbed onto the floor. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel guilty.”

“Oh, weren’t you,” Bren said, incredulous. “It never once went through your self- centered little mind that you’d crawl back into stass, and then I’d be sorry.”

That was unfair. “No,” I said. “I actually kind of thought you’d be glad.”

Bren raised an eyebrow. “Glad? Burn you! You think I’m a total creep, just because I won’t go out with you?”

That confused me. “No.”

“So why do you think I’d be glad? Just because I don’t want you doesn’t mean I want you hurt or dead or . . . disappeared into coiting stass.”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t like that! I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Bren scoffed. “Yeah, given a choice between life and death, of course this was the proper option.” He shook his head.

“But . . . this is what I always do.”

“What do you mean ‘always’?” he asked. Then he froze. “Coit. You’ve . . . done this before?”

“Yeah. All the time.”

He stared at me in disbelief. “Why?” he asked, drawing out the word.

I shrugged. “Mom called it our coping mechanism. When we’d have a fight, or they were too tired, or things got really hard for me at school, or they needed to go on a trip, they’d put me in stasis.”

Bren seemed to lose his footing. He sat down hard on a dusty trunk. “You mean, your parents put you in stasis all the time?”

“Yeah,” I said. “How did you think I got there in the first place?”

“I . . . didn’t know. You weren’t put into stass for protection from the Dark Times?”

I shook my head. “They hadn’t started yet when I was put in. Not really. There was some circulation of TB, but it wasn’t that bad.”

“Your parents really put you into stass . . . over and over again? Just because they were going on vacation or something?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. They said that no one could raise me as well as they could. It was the best thing for me, really.”

Bren was staring at me in disbelief.

“What?” I asked.

“You . . . you know that’s illegal?”

“What is?”

“To stass an individual for one’s own convenience is considered a class- one felony. It falls under the same category as assault.”

I didn’t know what to say. Stass was welcoming and comforting, a calming release from the pressures of life. How could anyone compare it to assault?

“Your parents did that to you?” he asked, his voice soft. “All the time? Just stole great chunks of your childhood away?”

“No,” I said defensively. “No, it wasn’t like that at all. They were keeping me from having great chunks of my life wasted. The longest they ever kept me in was four years, and that was only because they had to oversee the formation of the mining colony on Titan.” As I said that, I frowned, trying to remember if that were true. I wasn’t sure. I often lost track of time while I was stassed.

“They had a party for me when they came back,” I said, trying to get back on track. “It was my seventh birthday.”

Bren gave me an odd look. “Seven . . . like, you’re now sixteen going on seventy- eight?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Rose . . .” he said. “How many years did it take for you to reach the age of sixteen?”

“Well . . . I’m not sure. I realized a few weeks ago that I’m actually a hundred, technically. The last stass was sixty- two years ago, so . . . twenty- eight years?

I think.” I shrugged.

Bren rose slowly to his feet and did something that really surprised me. He put his arms around my shoulders and wrapped me in a warm, strong hug. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered in my ear.

Now, this just wasn’t fair. It was as if he were trying to tear out my heart, just so he could grind it into the dust. His breath was heavy in my ear, and his body was as comforting against mine as sleep. I couldn’t hold back a gasp of relieved shock, but I was angry. He didn’t mean it. He was just torturing me. I pulled away. “What for? I’m fine.” I was surprised my voice sounded as strong as it did.

He stared at me, his face as soft and open as I’d ever seen it. He shook his head slowly. “Rose, you are not ‘ fine.’ ”

“Yes, I am,” I said, glaring at him. “Who are you to judge my coping mechanism? You go hit a tennis ball; I go into stass. No difference.”

Bren stared at me in disbelief, and then he slowly closed his eyes. He shook his head a few times. “Fine,” he said, opening his eyes. “Believe that if it gives you comfort.” He grabbed my hand. “We gotta get you back home.”

I balked. “No.”

Bren turned to look at me. “No?”

“I’m not ready to go back yet.”

Bren stared at me for what seemed like a full minute. “Too bad,” he finally said.

“You’ve got half the police of ComUnity on the alert. Your foster parents are in hysterics. Guillory and Granddad are so riled up that they’re about to come to blows. So grow up, get a grip, and get upstairs.”

I winced. “Just leave me alone,” I groaned. “Tell them I’m fine. Tell them where I am. I just can’t go up there yet.” I pulled away from him and sat down on a crate.

“Why not?”

“It’s too . . . soon,” I said. “Everything’s supposed to have gone away. It’s supposed to have been long enough that it doesn’t matter anymore.” I stole a glance at him — wretched beauty —and my heart twisted. Nope, not long enough. “It hasn’t been.”

Bren still stared at me. He crept forward, as if I were a feral cat, and crouched at my feet so that I would meet his eyes. “Rose,” he said. “I really am sorry. I shouldn’t have said what I said to you. It was . . . cruel, but you took me by surprise. I misinterpreted you.” He sighed. “I’m not very good at getting to know new people; our little group is pretty . . .”

“Insular,” I supplied.

“Yeah. That’ll do.” He smiled ruefully. “And you’re so quiet. That’s what I meant when I said you were like a ghost; it wasn’t anything to do with the stass stuff.

It’s hard to get to know you when you don’t talk. I really didn’t see it coming.

Not in the least.” He struggled for the right words. “You’re unreadable. To me, anyway. Otto saw you that morning, when you left school. He was worried about you. I told him you just had a crush on me and were overreacting, but he thinks . . .” He hesitated. “Otto thinks there’s something wrong with you.

Not with you, I mean, he doesn’t think its inherent or anything. But you have these gaps in your mind. I didn’t know what he meant, but now I think . . .”

“It’s not the stass,” I said firmly. “You wake up one morning and find your entire world gone, everyone you’ve ever known and loved dead in one fell swoop, every place you’ve ever been to changed so radically that you don’t recognize it — even the expressions on people’s faces are different — and see how whole your mind is!” By the end of that little speech, tears had welled again in my weakened eyes. “Coit!” I muttered, trying to force them back. I was right. I hadn’t been stassed long enough.

“That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make.” He touched my face. “You can cry,” Bren said quietly. “I’d cry, too.”

“No, I can’t. I can’t let anyone see this. I’m too high- strung. I need to control myself.”

“There’s no one here to see you but me.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “It isn’t proper. I need lots of time to wind down.

That’s why the stass, okay? I’m too emotional. Besides, I spent all of last night crying. I shouldn’t need to cry anymore.”

Bren tilted his head, amused. “Last night you were in stass,” he pointed out.

“Oh,” I said. Bren’s mouth quirked to the side, and then he came and sat down beside me on the crate. He put one arm around me and rubbed my shoulder. It seemed entirely platonic, but actually heartfelt. I sighed. This was the first touch I’d felt since I came out of stass that hadn’t felt forced. Unless you counted Zavier. My head tilted until I leaned against Bren’s shoulder. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable yesterday,” I said.

“Three days ago,” Bren reminded me.

“Right,” I said. Organizing time when you’d been stassed was always a conundrum. “I’ve never really dated anyone. I don’t know any signals.”

Bren snorted lightly. “No one really does,” he said. “It’s always hit or miss. I thought you said you had a boyfriend.”

I nodded. “Xavier,” I said. “But he and I didn’t need to know any signals. We knew each other so well it was like water joining water. I knew him all his life.”

“You wanna tell me about him?” Bren asked gently.

I took in a deep breath. “He was the son of our next- door neighbor. I met him as a baby when I was seven. We used to play in the garden. We grew up together. He was like my little brother, and then . . . somehow he became my best friend. My only real friend. He was the only one who understood, the only one who listened. When we were both fifteen — or, I think he was sixteen by then —we . . .” The tears started again, and this time I just let them go.

Bren squeezed my shoulder and pressed his cheek to the top of my head. “I’m so sorry, Rose. It must be so hard to have had someone like that and never have had a chance to say good- bye.”

But that was what made it even worse. “I said good- bye,” I said, and my tears distorted my voice. “I just never had a chance to say sorry.”

Bren didn’t understand that, but he didn’t need to. All I needed from him just then was to let me cry myself out.

I didn’t get the chance. A harsh voice pierced the silent gloom of the subbasement, startling me from my grief. “You are Rosalinda Samantha Fitzroy. Please remain still for retinal identi fication.”