I wished I had somebody I could call. Not for help. Just to talk. More than anything, I felt incredibly alone, not even the radio for company. It was weird—living with my mother for nearly twenty-two years of my life, I’d never felt alone, exactly, even though our lives looked lonely to other people. Even when I’d started undergrad courses and we barely saw each other, I knew my mother would have my back. Maybe that was part of the reason I lived at home.
It wasn’t until I moved to Chicago and the first flurry of busyness faded that I woke up one morning to realize that I was on my own. Cut in half, almost. I hadn’t noticed that constant, submerged sense of someone-on-my-side until it was fully gone.
Dutifully, I’d tried to get to know my classmates, but any potential friendships had been flattened into the pattern of an occasional study date or idle chitchat in the lab, where I spent most of my time trying to prove myself. My work at the lab involved exposing zebrafish sperm to the irradiating blast of UV rays, then using the sperm to fertilize eggs. The resulting haploid embryos were parthenogenetic, like me, carrying only genetic material from their mothers. They only lived a few days, at most, which offered us enough time to screen for any new mutations, but I was obsessed with each one. This was such a rudimentary version of what Bellanger had done. These fleeting, doomed little beings, dying off before they even started, stripped of half of their genetic material. The work gave me a tiny glimpse into what Bellanger must’ve felt. The electric brink of discovery.
Cars roared past in a steady stream. Eventually I got so sick of the stuffy air in the Chevy that I climbed out and leaned against the hood, ignoring the occasional honks and the trailing ribbons of shouts and jeers. Someone had thrown a plastic cup of pop at the car and neon-pink gore was streaked along the back windows. I toyed with the idea of trekking back to the closest gas station to call Dr. McCarter, but it would be hard to argue for more responsibility in lab rotations after he’d seen me stranded along a Kansas freeway.
Headlights bloomed on the grass in front of me, expanding for a second, hot against my back. A car had pulled off the road right behind me. I stiffened and turned, adrenaline kicking in as my brain scrambled to figure out what to do. For a second I remembered that maroon car that had been lurking outside my mother’s house in Coeur du Lac, and I tensed, all too aware of how unprotected I was out here—I could vanish just as easily as my mother had—
The headlights blinked into darkness, the door thumped closed. A man’s silhouette stepped out. In the purplish twilight, it was hard to make out any features.
“Josie?” he called. “Girl One? Is that you?”
“Tom,” I said, and for a second I relaxed at the relief of seeing somebody I kind-of-sort-of knew, my arms unwinding. Until I realized how uncanny this was—running into Tom hours from where I’d last seen him. “Funny meeting you here,” I said, hiding my suspicion behind a joke.
“God, I thought that was you,” he said, stopping a few feet away. “Car trouble?”
Of fucking course, I thought. “It’s the alternator. This old hunk of junk is only good for running errands. I should’ve known, but…” I shrugged. “Anyway. Why are you in the area?” I glanced around at the long strip of freeway, multiple lanes leading off into the horizon in either direction. “It’s pretty wild that you were just passing by and happened to spot me,” I said, letting an accusation creep in.
“Must be fate.” When I narrowed my eyes, skeptical, he said: “Hey. I’m based in Kansas City. Remember? Kansas City Telegraph. This is my home turf.” He gestured with a half-joking grandeur at the flat, scrubby landscape, the pinprick stars fizzling to life overhead. “I was passing through and I saw you and thought: Hey, I know that girl. Looked like you were in trouble. I had to turn around and come back. Like I said. Fate.”
I’d forgotten for a second that he lived around here. “Well, fate is faster than the towing company, anyway.”
“Towing? It’s that bad? Shit. That’s all you need, on top of everything with your mother.” He hesitated, the two of us standing there with the Chevy’s lifeless body slumped between us. “Not to pry, but does this mean you went to see Emily French?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did go to see Emily.”
“And your mother…”
There was so much hope in his voice. I saw the way he glanced in the Chevy’s windows quickly, like I wouldn’t notice. Like maybe I’d stashed my mother in there. How long would this go on: people looking past me for her? “Nope. Not there. But you were right,” I went on, noticing the way his expression fell into disappointment. “She was there recently. She really was visiting the others. So. Thanks.”