Next History: The Girl Who Hacked Tomorrow (49 page)

“Sure, I’ll take a shower.”

“You know where it is.”

Sami gets up, but to Strand’s surprise, walks to the front door and opens it. The way her muscles form each stride, the way her
bare feet claim the ground… He leaps to his feet. Outside it is raining hard. Dark pavement glistens.

“Sami, where are you going? Don’t go!”

Halfway to the street, she turns. Her hair and clothing already dripping. “I’ll be back. I want to talk to you more. I want you with us. Right now I want to experience everything.”

“Sami, stay! You are in danger.”

Her only reply a cheerful laugh. As Strand closes the door behind her, she runs barefoot into rain and darkness. Her amber eyes miss nothing.

A tinkly crash from the upstairs bathroom. Clay hasn’t seen Tharcia all day. The door is ajar, he nudges it wider. Just out of the bath, she’s squatted on the floor, cleaning something gooey from the tiles. Hearing him behind her, she waits pink-skinned for him to go, feels his eyes on her froglike pose. Unwilling to show him her tear-streaked face.

When the latch click
s, she looks behind at the shut door. Teeth clenched, her body begins to shake.

D
ressed, she cracks Clay’s bedroom door. Cross-legged in his wide padded chair, eyes closed, wrists on his knees. She’s seen him like this before. What he does every day, his mind-body connection, his gratitude. She recalls the video on his laptop. Did he know it was recorded? If not meant for anyone to see, it was a glimpse into a secret part of him, one she is happy to know. And what is he doing about Lillian? He’s not spoken her name since their soft goodbye. She closes the door so it makes no sound.

Later he
stands in the upstairs hallway. The sounds in her room. Not hard for him to hear in the gathering quiet.

“Anybody home?”

A sniffle from within. Clay turns the knob, peers in. A tissue box hits the floor with an empty sound. Kneeling upright on her bed she makes a noise that’s not a word at all, but which accepts his presence in a neutral way. She’s found clean jeans and a lavender T-shirt with O’Keeffe’s
Light Iris Flower
on the front. She makes the kind of laugh people do when their nose runs from too much crying.

“Ban ou
d ub tissue.” She pats the edge of the bed for him to sit. When Clay looks at Tharcia he sees the stunning woman she has become. She lifts the T-shirt to wipe her eyes uncaring that she wears nothing underneath. Leans in, whispers, hot tear-stained face.

“I am nothing like Mom
, you know. You and I are much more alike.”

It’s after five in the afternoon, eight in the East. According to Lian’s timetable, t
he night of Sleep has begun. Clay wants to ask when they will feel sleepy, but feels hyper-alert about protecting the house. There are noises in the hills, unseen things run through the brush outside. Packs of dogs prowl the slopes. From down the road six gunshots and silence. A siren wail draws near. Tharcia looks at Clay, shivers. He puts an arm around her shoulders.

“Know what?”
In her voice a lost-little-girl tone.

“Say.”

“I missed having a sister.”

Clay lets her snuggle under his arm, unsure where she’s going with this.

“For real,” she says. “Lylit and I started out being twins. If we hadn’t got squished together in there, we would have been twins. I would have had a twin sister, Clay. She is so beautiful. I would have had a beautiful sister.” She presses her face to his chest, conscious of all the things that would and would not have happened. A twin, with Lylit, someone who would have known her better than anyone else in all the world, someone she could have strongly loved and who would for sure have loved her. Protected her, they would have protected each other. Wet face pressed against him, thinking all this current crap wouldn’t be here if she and Lylit had been born together, grown together, loved each other like family. Like sisters.

When she looks at him, Clay is not waiting, not impatient. He is just being. He squeezes her shoulder.

“Come downstairs, I got the fire going. Scotch. Wine. Finger food.”

Sure, sure. She follows him down, gets herself on the sofa wrapped in
her favorite blanket. They stare into the blazing woodstove. Words unsaid cling to the silence that surrounds her. Clay hands her a large flat package wrapped in gold tissue.

“What?”

“Your birthday. Tomorrow.”

She reaches up, hugs his neck. “I forgot. Twenty. Kind of young to become the Devil’s
doo-dad.” Her voice is shaky.

Clay says nothing. She
pulls away the gold tissue. It’s a drawing pad of heavy paper, good pencils and erasers. Places it beside her on the sofa. He can see her wondering when she’ll have time to use it.

“Something I need to tell you,” Tharcia says. She drops the blanket and climbs the stairs.
Returns wearing her red velvet robe with the hood folded back, holding a sheet of pink paper. Picks up the sketchpad and pencils. The dark fabric contrasts her striking white hair. Sits on the ottoman across from Clay, opens the drawing pad on her knees, tells him to hold still just like that.

“It’s what I’ve been ashamed of my whole life,” she says, not meeting his eyes. Her pencil moves evenly over the paper, she glances up at Clay then back at the sketch. She works for so long that Clay is about to ask why she would be ashamed of her drawing. She stops, looks up.

“I’ve never said this to anyone. Except my mom. My first girlfriend. But he did abuse me, Clay. More than I ever could admit. It’s possible that tomorrow I will be dead. I think lots of people will be dead.” What she’s been crying over, about the other ones. Not the fate she has called down upon herself.

“Here,” she hands
over the sheet of pink paper. Lines of verse written in her open hand, graceful vines and blossoms sketched around. She watches as Clay reads.

Be the One

From birth you have this dream

is you will tell yourself

who you shall be

cross all creation

task for you alone

Voices said you never worthy

you listened trusting

harsh that curse of being young

trusting let them twist you

hurt your lil child hopeful

How long to trust again?

and what your reason why?

what need to forgive

think, move on

from that hard place?

Now your deeper vision comes

your loving mind serene

song of all creation

flows through you

wants you

is you

Now you own your safe adult

sees that lil kid so hurt

holds her to you, holds her soft

tells her not her fault not ever

You, the one she's waited for

you, will loving let her in

be the one to her as mother

she your best still hopeful child

trusted you to come

From birth you have this dream

tell this girl who she will be

be the one

When Clay looks up he cannot bring her shimmering outline into focus. “Did you just write this?” Knows there is more to be told, the place this poem comes from.

“I was fifteen. Never showed
it to anyone.”

Clay stands, arms out. She steps in. “
So personal. Thank you for showing me.”

She says nothing, muffled sound of warm snuffle against his shirt.
Turns and sits, sketchpad on her lap. Her pencil starts moving.

“But T
harcie, you told me the deal you made, I know you have a good chance.”

“Do I think people of the world want
what’s best for them, or best for everyone? I’ve turned it around in my head for days on end. Don’t know. Out there right now people are going to sleep, the smart ones. Or maybe they are the fearful ones. Those ones will vote. The others, the ones who stay awake, will meet their karma.”

“Why didn’t we go to sleep?”

“I asked for us not to. I wanted this time with you. Say goodbye. Whatever comes I want to face it conscious. With someone.”

Outside the
walls there is a loud grinding crash, as though a giant stage set has been crushed for scrap in a machine of whirling blades. It shakes the house. Clay opens the door, wind lunges inside. His torch probes swirling darkness. A platoon of bipedal mechanized robots lurches by, metallic faces turn, red eyes glow in Clay’s light. Snarls of gleaming metal teeth, menacing gestures. Far down the hill obscured by trees, the orange nimbus of flames, angry curses, screams.

Tharcia
watches from over his shoulder. “I don’t think they can come any closer.”

The phalanx of clanking robot soldiers tromps through the trees and out of sight. Something howls up on the ridge. Clay turns. She has the hood pulled up. Deeply shadowed in the porch light, her face holds a look of solemn purpose, fierce
she-warrior from a distant time.

“Lian said we would not be touched,
” she whispers, “so long as we stay here.”

“What happens when the Sleep ends?”

“The survivors pick themselves up and sort out what’s left.” A chorus of auto horns filters through the trees, beyond the hill. She turns inside. “There is something I’ve been meaning to do.”

Tharcia upstairs, rummaging in the crammed hallway closet, in her room. Comes down
with black plastic bags, sets them on the porch. She goes up for another load. In the bathroom, door closed, she stands before the mirror. The little goblin is there, wearing a tiny T-shirt with a picture of Darth Vader on the front. His eyes are open and he’s not wearing any pants.

“Vardøger?”

The eyes flare green, hungry. “Yes, my Creampie.”

“You
are such an amateur.”

In the mirror, she flips him the bird
. A sweet smile, and she repeats the three little words that Lylit whispered to her in the garden.

“Go to hell.”

Vardøger’s shocked expression has a millisecond to register before he vanishes without so much as a puff of smoke.

She carries the last bags out
to the clearing, as far as she dares, dumps the contents on the ground. It’s a pile of her mother’s clothes. She has a can of kerosene Clay keeps for the hurricane lamps. Stands before the rising flames, a wrenching pull from the abandonment she’s lived with all her life. Watching Tharcia’s silhouette from behind, Clay sees the high priestess, can almost hear her chant of incantation. But the words she whispers at the flames hiss between clenched teeth.
Mom,
y
ou almost made me hate myself. I love myself. I do not hate you. I want us to work it out.
The fire is burning high when she walks up the porch and into the house.

“Sit,” she says, taking up her sketchpad, glancing from the
paper to Clay’s face.

“What I was telling you before. Something I need to say. Need to. She left me, Clay. With different babysitters, her boyfriends, overnight sometimes. We would go places in their cars, I’d see them with their other girlfriends, men friends
, pool tables and bars. One of them took me to the swimming pool one afternoon, which was fun. But on the way home he said I’d been bad. He stopped on a side road and made me get out. He spanked me with his rubber flip-flop. He said I had to be quiet. He said I had to make him happy or he would tell. I was nine.”

Clay sits up straight.
“Nine. Jesus. What was wrong?”

“He gave me some quarters for the snack bar. I forgot to give him his change. Still had it, just forgot. I told him but he kept repeating I was a
very bad girl.”

“Cripes.” A heavy sick place tells him there’s more to this.
Clay leans forward. Wants to get up and punch a hole in the wall. Knows she needs for him to listen.

“He made me take him in my mouth. Beside the car. He held my head very tight. On the way home he told me how much he loved me, that he would do anything for me, that I was so special. I didn’t believe him. He said if I ever told it would be worse than a spanking.”

“How long did that go on?” Jaw rigid with anger.

“It never happened again. The next time Mom left me with him, I ran to a babysitter’s house. I told her. I was so scared, Clay.” Tharcia turns the drawing pad, rapid s
hading strokes with the pencil. “When Mom came home she threw a fit because I wasn’t there. My girlfriend called and told her what happened. She ran the guy out of our house.”

“Did she go to the cops?”
Fists clenched so hard his nails bite, eyes intent on her face.