“To graduating.” I grin past my anxiety. I still don’t know what I want to do or what I’m good at. Ester once told Mom that I had the compassion to be a doctor, but neither of them lived to see me almost flunk out of chemistry. I’m not as smart as Kay, or as driven as Mom. I don’t have a calling to improve the world, and as much as I like helping people, I don’t think I could handle having lives on the line.
I guess I still have time to figure things out, I think, and down the drink.
The world is spinning minutes later. What a lightweight I’ve become. I tell Rach I have to go to the bathroom, and barely make it into a stall before vomiting into the toilet bowl.
That’s it. Biomonitor, you win. I reinstall notifications. The app’s been off for so long it needs to update. As it does, I rinse out my mouth at the sink, and catch sight of my face in the mirror above it. Frowning, I touch the bruise at the corner of my lip. Not sure how I missed that. I pull out my concealer from my clutch and pause.
The girl in the mirror looks sad. Maybe clubs are no longer my thing. The music tires me out more than it invigorates me. I much prefer the sound of the sea.
“Celia?” Voice, from the bathroom entrance. I look, see that it’s Tabitha.
“Is everything okay?” she asks.
“Never been better.” I untwist my concealer. Swipe, blend, re-cap. Take that, bruise.
“Is that Zika Tu I hear?” I ask, going to Tabitha, looping my arm through hers, and cajoling her out the doorway.
She hesitates. I get it. She shared a moment with Tristan, then saw me run to the bathroom. Hard not to jump to conclusions there, especially if she was, in Rach’s words, “freaking the fuck out” about liking my ex.
But really, we’re cool. I squeeze her shoulder. “I’m happy for you, Tabby.” I know she’ll understand what’s implied, and after a moment, she smiles, tentative. I smile back; hers grows more confident.
I live for this. Seeing the people around me thrive.
Enough with the moping. Despite my dizziness, I join everyone on the club floor and dance my heart out. Keep on dancing even when my biomonitor finishes updating and floods my mind’s eye with warnings, hospel summons, and a prognosis that answers the question of my after-high-school future. If anything, I dance harder. In two months, my friends will be off at college, innotech firms, and making something out of their lives.
And I’ll be dead.
* * *
We live—shamelessly. We talk, we laugh, we breathe, and we do all the things that steal away speech, laughter, and breath, and when the hour beckons, we dress each other in the most ridiculous of M.M.’s sweaters and put on pants. We tend to the taros, tidy up the house, and sketch out a design for a real boat. Celia, I realize, would have envied us. This is what she craved: purpose and meaning, the simple act of creating something with her hands. It’s the perfect day.
And it doesn’t last.
The tug starts at sunset. I ignore it at first, just like I ignore the stream of memories, and continue to sweep the porch alongside Hero. But the pull in my gut intensifies. Black splotches eat at my vision. My heart feels too big and my lungs too small; there’s not enough space inside me for blood and air and memories to circulate.
I tell Hero I’ll be back, then rush to the pier and empty out my stomach. The waves whisk the worst bits of me out of sight. No one will know that I, Cee, puked up my guts in the sea. And no one will know that somewhere in the deep, a girl named Kay is dying in a pod.
Her stunned gaze rears in my mind again. It’s always this moment I can’t get past. The moment she forgot I wasn’t her sister. The moment I remembered.
You never saw her die, I said. Her, not me. Celia, not Cee.
Because I am Cee. I’m alive, and Celia is dead. I’m Cee, I think fiercely, shedding off the last of my denial. Not Celia. Not … human. That’s the paradox: To believe in myself, I must also accept who I am. What I am.
A bot.
As a bot, maybe I don’t deserve to live as much as a human.
No. I won’t think that. The sun will set. The moon will rise. And then it’ll be the sun’s turn to rise, and it’ll be over. It’ll all be over, I think, trembling in equal parts apprehension and anticipation, nauseated at the enormity of what will happen—must happen—and so lost in my thoughts that I don’t hear him approach. Arms slide around my waist, and my heart jumps, then slows, beating in tandem with his.
“You’re shivering.”
“Just cold,” I say, and Hero hugs me tighter. Together we stand, listening to the sea around us and beneath us, licking at the pier planks. The sky ripens, brilliantly orange.