“What the hell is wrong with you?” Ian is staring at me, stunned.
“Nazeera is here.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t know, Nazeera is here,” I say, keeping my voice low. “And I don’t want to talk to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because my head is stupid right now, that’s why not.” I glare at Winston. “You did this to me. You made my head stupid, and now I have to avoid Nazeera, because if I don’t, I will almost certainly do and or say something extremely stupid and fuck everything up. So I need to hide.”
“Damn,” Ian says, and shrugs. “That’s too bad, because she’s heading straight here.”
I stiffen. Stare at him. And then, to Brendan: “Is he lying?”
Brendan shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, mate.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit.”
“It’s nice to see you, too, Kenji.”
I look up. She’s smiling.
Ugh, so pretty.
“Hi,” I say. “How are you?”
She looks around. Fights back a laugh. “I’m good,” she says. “How . . . are you?”
“Fine. Fine. Thanks for asking. It was nice seeing you.”
Nazeera glances from me to the other guys and back again. “I know you hate it when I ask you this, but— Are you drunk?”
“No,” I say too loudly. I slump down farther in my seat. “Not drunk. Just a little . . . fuzzy.” The whiskey is starting to settle now, warm, liquid fingers reaching up around my brain and squeezing.
She raises an eyebrow.
“Winston did it,” I say, and point.
He shakes his head and sighs.
“All right,” Nazeera says, but I can hear the mild irritation in her voice. “Well, this is not the ideal situation, but I’m going to need you on your feet.”
“What?” I crane my head. Look at her. “Why?”
“There’s been a development with Ella.”
“What kind of development?” I sit straight up, feeling suddenly sober. “Is she awake?”
Nazeera tilts her head. “Not exactly,” she says.
“Then what?”
“You should come see for yourself.”
ELLA
JULIETTE
Adam feels close.
I can almost see him in my mind, a blurred form, watercolors bleeding through membrane, staining the whites of my eyes. He is a flooded river, blues in lakes so dark, water in oceans so heavy I sag, surrendering to the heft of the sea.
I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with tears, feathers of strange birds fluttering against my closed eyes. I see a flash of dirty-blond hair and darkness and stone I see blue and green and Warmth, suddenly, an exhalation in my veins— Emmaline.
Still here, still swimming.
She has grown quiet of late, the fire of her presence reduced to glowing embers. She is sorry for taking me from myself. Sorry for the inconvenience. Sorry to have disturbed my world so deeply. Still, she does not want to leave. She likes it here, likes stretching out inside my bones. She likes the dry air and the taste of real oxygen. She likes the shape of my fingers, the sharpness of my teeth. She is sorry, but not sorry enough to go back, so she is trying to be very small and very quiet. She hopes to make it up to me by taking up as little space as possible.
I don’t know how I understand this so clearly, except that her mind seems to have fused with mine. Conversation is no longer necessary. Explanations, redundant.
In the beginning, she inhaled everything.
Excited, eager—she took it all. New skin. Eyes and mouth. I felt her marvel at my anatomy, at the systems drawing in air through my nose. I seemed to exist here almost as an afterthought, blood pumping through an organ beating merely to pass the time. I was little more than a passenger in my own body, doing nothing as she explored and decayed in starts and sparks, steel scraping against itself, stunning contractions of pain like claws digging, digging. It’s better now that she’s settled, but her presence has faded to all but an aching sadness. She seems desperate to find purchase as she disintegrates, unwittingly taking with her bits and pieces of my mind. Some days are better than others. Some days the fire of her existence is so acute I forget to draw breath.
But most days I am an idea, and nothing more.
I am foam and smoke moonlighting as skin. Dandelions gather in my rib cage, moss growing steadily along my spine. Rainwater floods my eyes, pools in my open mouth, dribbles down the hinges holding together my lips.
I
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