by Bevy Daniel
We met at the OneLife Center off Sunset and 73rd.
I’m sitting in my car with the air conditioning blasting, getting ready for the inevitably unpleasant, when I see her. She’s stalking forward, eyes darting like she knows someone’s watching her. Then she bends forward and plucks a weedy yellow flower from a crack in the pavement. She looks at it for a moment, smiles with just one side of her mouth, stuffs the weed into her pocket, and disappears inside.
I think she’s beautiful.
I check my hair in the mirror, but it’s hopeless. Whatever. So I grab my bag, turn off the car, and follow her inside the Center.
It’s not my first time, but I can tell it’s hers. She’s sitting on one of the stained chairs, bent over a holoclipboard, forehead furrowed. I watch her staring into the contract before her, trying to make sense of the terms and conditions. If I remember correctly, there’s 4,016 clauses, though I read online that over two thirds of them are reworded repeats, included only to pad the contract’s length and deter the reader from troubling themself with potentially dissuading information. I know I didn’t read it in full, not even close, clicked to the signature page immediately. My cousin and a couple of my friends had donated and were totally fine, so what was the point of wasting my time?
I watch her fight her way through what must be the first page, though, her annoyance palpable. Her fingers clench and unclench, and a little vein pulses in her forehead. Her lips look soft, mouthing the words on the contract to herself.
The woman behind the front desk clears her throat conspicuously and I jolt back to attention. It’s my turn. The woman’s arched eyebrow says, I saw you staring, and I’m pitifully amused. I grab my punchcard from my wallet and shove it and my license under the opening in the plexiglass window, avoiding eye contact at all costs.
Having an engaging afternoon? the woman asks me. I smile tightly. She punches a sixth hole in my card and doesn’t even look at my license before scanning it and handing it to me through the slot. One donation closer to a free meal at any Life Company subsidiary, and I love SliceLife.
The lady asks me if I’d like to open up a OneLife savings account, an opportunity to accrue one point per milliliter of Life donated with a three percent interest rate towards the purchase of my own OneLife infusion or products of choice someday. I roll my eyes. I know she has to ask these questions, but what are the odds someone donating at OneLife will have the cash to purchase any of their products, ever? Next to zero.
No thanks, I tell her.
She starts speaking before I even finish the ‘thanks.’ Alright then, please take a seat and your name will be called shortly.
I panic a little. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. Do I sit next to her? Is that weird? Across from her? My heart starts thumping, stupidly, but before I can turn around, I hear someone speak.
Hey—would you mind helping me with this for a second?
I turn around, and somehow, she’s looking right at me. I nod my head up and down like an idiot. Of course, yeah! I take the seat next to her, so close I can smell the strawberry gum she’s chewing. I don’t even know where a person would get strawberry gum if they wanted it.
She half smiles at me, the same way she smiled at the flower outside, and my heart swells. Thanks, she says, and closes her eyes in tired frustration for a moment. She shows me the screen of her holoclipboard, which has bits of static glitching over the words of the terms and conditions. She tells me, I have no idea how I messed this up. She lowers her voice – everyone else here is old, and the lady at the front is kind of scary. Do you know what’s up with this piece of garbage?
She’s right. The only other donors waiting are a shriveled couple sitting together, blankly staring at the news playing on the reception room’s TV. It’s a special on TreeLife’s project to replant the Amazon. I can see the resignment in their faces, and I turn away. Older donors are pretty rare, and I really hate to see them here: the likelihood of Sudden Chronatic Death skyrockets for donors over 50. They must be in a pretty bad place if they’re risking it.
I grab the holoclip. It is a piece of garbage, I counter, but it’s your lucky day. She crosses her arms. And why is that? she asks. I tell her, I’m an engineer, and bang the clipboard with the palm of my hand. Her forehead wrinkles and she looks at me incredulously. What the fuck? I think you just made it worse, she says. I bang it again, and the circuits realign, the contract returning in crisp graphics.
Okay, I’m impressed, she replies. I open my mouth to let her know that I’m just glad I could help, or ideally something more clever than that, when the overhead speaker calls my name in a robotic staccato, directing me to report through door two.
Thanks, she tells me. No problem, I say.
* * *
I follow the flashing lights along the floor to the central donation chamber. Flimsy curtains separate the stations from one another, and I stop outside the seventh, where the lights on the floor insistently pulse enter. Enter. Enter. I enter and sit back in the padded chair before the hidden speakers can begin urging me to sit. Sit. Sit. The left section of the chair unfurls, noting the preference in my client file, and I place my arm on the wing of the chair, soft side up. Two cuffs snap into place over my wrist and forearm.
I remember how confusing the process was the first time, how I fumbled around until the chamber triggered an AutoHelper to roll into my station and offer assistance. I couldn’t help but think the whole thing would have been easier with a nurse or something. I probably should have been able to figure it out, anyways, but I remember being irrationally nervous.
Now, it feels routine. Arm in place, a metal hand unfolds itself out of the compartment recessed into the chair. It secures a rubber tourniquet snugly around my arm and a thin needle telescopes out of the hand’s pointer figure. The chair’s cuffs holding my arm tightly in place, the needle whirls and plunges into my wrist, where the life flows most strongly. A twin metal hand inserts a larger needle into the inside of my elbow.
Though I can’t see it, I know the whole system is connected by tubes threading through the metallic hands into the wall, where I can hear a Life Reclamation System whirring. Through an advanced extraction process, the system separates out my Life from my blood, returning my blood cells, platelets, and some additional saline back into my veins through the second needle.
The whole thing is supposed to be perfectly safe since Life, like water, is a replenishable resource. Replenishable, but highly profitable. Since discovering how to extract Life, Life Industries and Life Pharmaceuticals swallowed up the botox and cosmetic surgery and supplements and wellness industries with an authentic version of what they were previously trying to replicate—a return to youth.
For the privileged few, injections or supplements of Life have been shown to have a range of cosmetic, physiological, and emotional effects: heightened life expectancy, smoothed wrinkles, eased joint pain, increased skin tautness, and a returned vigor that has been described only as ‘indescribable.’ Trace amounts of Life have been added to drugs like Viagra Platinum, too.
The extraction itself doesn’t hurt. But directly afterward, when the needle deposits the last of your blood, stripped of its Life, back into your veins, it hits you. You feel absolutely, utterly drained. There is a physical effect—the cuffs remain on your arm to keep you sedentary for the 15-minute waiting period so you can’t fall and hurt yourself—but it’s not the corporeal weakness that’s the worst part. It’s the feeling that the circles under my eyes could swallow me up and it wouldn’t even matter. Like my strings have been cut. With my Life drained, I feel totally disconnected from everything, everyone, even myself.
And then my body pumps enough replenished Life through my veins to restore me to me, and by ten minutes after the procedure’s end, I’m itching for the chair to let me go. I wonder how she’s doing, during her first donation, and if she’s scared. She didn’t seem scared. Pissed, maybe, but not scared.
She went in after me and had to figure out the whole process for the first time, so she probably still has a while to go. I’m trying to think of a good excuse to hang around outside the Center’s exit when the chair suddenly releases me with a cling. You may now exit to reception and collect the payment for your donation, the speaker tells me. I don’t wait to be told twice.
* * *
I’m trying to make my lean against the brick wall by the Center’s doors look more casual when she comes out, smiling, as if she expected to see me waiting.
I thought I may find you here, she says. I sputter that I just wanted to check and make sure she was okay, given that it was her first time and all, and she shrugs, saying, yeah, it wasn’t too bad, not really . . .a little surprising, but not too bad. She looks at me. I’m starving, though. I tell her I know a good spot nearby, that I can drive if she wants. We start towards my car. I’m not sure if I’m being super smooth or just lucky or if maybe it was supposed to happen exactly like this, and fate is just taking its course. I don’t know if I believe in fate, but I’m definitely not going to question it. Not right now.
Think I’m okay to leave my car here? she asks. We look around at the deserted strip mall, spotted with shuttered businesses. I tell her it’s hard to imagine anyone would care.
She slides into the passenger seat, and I turn my key, pulling out of the spot. Your car smells nice, she notes, but it’s squeaking. I gesture towards the OneLife center. Yup, I tell her, that’s why I’m here. Busted suspension.
Let’s get the hell out of here, she says.
When I told her I knew a good spot nearby, I was just saying what I thought would get me more time with her. Now I have to figure out where we’re actually going. She tells me as I drive that she’s still new here, still getting used to way the wet air wraps around you, how the cracked roads seem to sprawl out forever and without direction. The sunsets are different too, she tells me. There’s more fire. I tell her that I haven’t been out of the state since I was too young for my memories to count, but I believe her.
We pull into the Burger Time, and she pumps her fist in the air. Yes, she tells me, I need something greasy and milkshakey after whatever the fuck I just did at that place. I look at her. Milkshakey? I ask. She rolls her eyes and punches my shoulder—fries and a milkshake, okay? I smile. Well in that case, I believe your request can be managed, I tell her.
A man at the host stand, eyes half closed, tells us to grab whatever table we’d like, so we sit at a booth in the back. Sitting across from her, I grab one of the menus, laminated so thickly it could be a weapon. Fuck, I say, I’m always so starving after donating. She rolls her eyes. ‘Donating,’ she scoffs. I can’t believe it’s legal for them to call it that. We’re getting paid, aren’t we? They should call it what it is. We’re selling ourselves. I tell her I hadn’t really thought about that before. I hadn’t.
Does it really matter what they call it? I ask her, if the same thing is happening either way? She looks at me, and says, I think it does. I think that if they can call it ‘donating,’ they help us forget what actually is happening. They hide the exploitation that pushes us into their centers behind a euphemism and then turn around and sell our Life for profits way larger than anything we just got paid in there. I nod. That makes sense, I think, I guess I just don’t see what difference it really makes.
She turns back to the menu, and I surreptitiously study her face. She’s mouthing the words to herself, just as she did at the Center, scrutinizing the milkshake options with the same intensity she had given the terms and conditions. She looks up at me. Okay, I’m ready to order if you are. I ask her if she’s totally sure, because if she needs another ten minutes or so to make a more comprehensive pros and cons list of the shakes, I probably won’t starve to death across from her. She smiles, a full smile, and laughs. She laughs in a gasp, like she doesn’t quite mean to, but couldn’t keep it in any longer. I smile back at her, and we look at one another a moment too long.
Yeah, so, uh, here’s the iWant, I say, fumbling with the ordering device. I poke around the screen for a second, selecting a burger with no onions, fries, and a rootbeer. The beef here is actually between eight to ten percent authentic animal flesh, a pretty amazing deal given the ongoing breadbasket famine. I hand her the screen.
In just a few minutes the iWaiter arrives, carrying our trays, and she does a bit where she pretends to talk to it like a real person, greeting it before she sips her banana pudding shake and assuring it the food is delicious and thanking it and everything.
An actress, I remark. Is that what you moved here for? I think you have what it takes to make it, but I hate to tell you that I don’t think you came to the right city.
She smiles. Picking apart her napkin, she says no, but I guess I can tell you—it’s not like it matters anymore. I came down here to help strengthen the Resistance.
Suddenly, everything clicks into place. She’s a Res Girl. Of course she is, it makes perfect sense. She has a sharp edge to her that I hadn’t been quite able to place. I don’t know what to say for a second, but the iWaiter saves me, rolling over to our table with two waters. I watch it chug away, disappearing through a slot back into the kitchen to join its human and autonomic colleagues.
I feel a little nervous. I know what she stands for, and I don’t think I disagree, but I’ve heard so much about people like her—that they’re violent, cop-killers, international agents running underground pedophile rings. But there she is, sitting in front of me, dipping fries into her milkshake. Does she make me nervous? Yeah, she does, but not like that.
* * *
The Res in Res Girl is short for Resistance, but the Res Kids have taken on such a significance of their own that it’s easy to forget that the word is anything besides itself.
Not too long ago, when I was a teenager, Life Industries discovered the Smart Chip, a revolutionary fusion of human stem cells and synthetic technology that allowed for infinitely more complex decision-making trees within automatons. Technology grew rapidly, the new possibilities for autonomous machinery allowing companies to undertake massive layoffs and replace more human jobs with automatons than predictions had previously projected as possible.
Corporations started replacing labor of all sorts with automatons, work that expanded far beyond the fields we all had been bracing for—the SmartChips threatened to make obsolete all servers, stockers, administrative assistants, and other workers who followed directions for a living.
Subsequent automation of the workforce cut available employment by nearly a third while prices remained consistent. Unemployment rates reached levels commensurate with the Great Depression, while a leaked company memo I saw shared on LifeGram joked about how this was the Greatest Depression yet in terms of the leverage employers had over their workers, who were desperate for any job at any condition.
Amidst the unprecedented societal unrest, there arose two movements. The mainstream one, backed by politicians and covered extensively in the news, flooded the streets demanding their jobs back, calling to limit the number of automatons companies could place in previously human jobs.
Then there was the Resistance. They asked why we were begging for a return to the same dead-end, unnecessary, underpaid hell jobs we had no choice but to work before. They made the point that with automation, there was enough, there had never in human history more clearly been enough, for everyone to live well without returning to what didn’t work before. The Resistance called for us to seize and control these industries ourselves. It was mostly their violence that made the news. I thought that what they said made sense, but the way they said it made me uneasy.
Coincidentally, as the Resistance started to really gain traction, Congress came to a deal. Their watershed bipartisan push seemed to recognize that their constituents were suffering to an untenable and destabilizing degree. They implemented a huge bill capping automation in all industries but corn, soy, and national defense to twelve percent of any company’s workforce. Most people heaved a sigh of relief, and I didn’t hear much about the Resistance after that.
But then, right as I was finishing college, Automatons United was filed, making history as the first Supreme Court case in which an automaton testified before the Court. After a protracted legal battle, the Supreme Court declared discrimination in hiring between people and automatons to be unconstitutional, employing precedent from the overturning of affirmative action decades ago.
The dissenting opinion asked questions like, what does this indicate for our country’s future? Is this not a slippery slope for voting rights, when this decision is used as precedent for automatons to vote, too? What does this mean for democracy? I don’t think people were too concerned about democracy. It hadn’t done very much for them lately. But there was a moment of frozen panic where we all wondered what the hell this would mean for our jobs. Pundits predicted the end of America as we know it. I saw someone burning themselves alive on TV. We braced ourselves.
But nothing came.
I guess in the end, the market does regulate itself. The big industries had discovered that by laying off so many people to increase their profit in the short term, they had actually eroded employees’ purchasing power to such a degree that the corporations’ own profits had begun to decrease. They realized it was a whole lot smarter to maintain near total control over the economy by strategically deciding how many automatons versus humans to hire. People’s purchasing power would be restored and social unrest limited by not again causing such massive unemployment.
Since Automatons United, there has been a consistent rate of around eight percent unemployment. In most states, CareLife, another subsidiary of the Life company, handles the welfare claims from that eight percent. I am very lucky to have a job, and I know there are people who would feel very lucky to take mine in a second.
* * *
I take a bite of my hamburger, chewing slowly. I’m confused that she’s revealing this, since from everything I’ve heard, her people are supposed to be pretty insular. I ask her, Wouldn’t a member of the Resistance not be sharing her identity with me, basically a stranger?
She says I’m right, but she’s not a member of the Resistance. Not anymore. I guess I don’t know when to stop asking questions. I ask her why.
She tells me that she doesn’t want to bore me. I respond that I don’t know her well, but it’s hard to imagine that.
She’s tearing the little pieces of the napkin apart now, making a pile on the table. Okay, she says. I’ll tell you.
There was a struggle by the Resistance, after Automatons United, but barely. The movement had fizzled since the days that they’d set fires on the streets and filled people like me with wary excitement. Many had gone back to their jobs, now that they existed again, sold their guns. They were defeated and impoverished and scattered, their militancy rapidly softening, tensions between members were flaring up, and the police’s reigns had become increasingly untethered.
She and the others had gathered not far from here, outside the Power and Light plant. Prices had just gone up statewide by seven percent in response to the aquifer crisis—the third and most significant rate hike that year—and the Resistance was staging a sit-in. Someone had rented a 26-foot truck that they’d parked outside the entrance to the plant and then slashed the tires.
The police ordered them to disperse. They didn’t. The police ordered them to disperse again. They started to approach with tear gas, and she ran, but it wasn’t like the other times. The police were done with them. They wanted names. She got fifteen feet before a robo-dog sank its teeth into her thigh, ripping through her flesh and sinking into the muscle and pinning her to the ground.
She left the hospital after two days with a criminal record, a scar, and a medical bill for thousands of dollars she didn’t have. Odd jobs and the generosity of the Resistance had sustained her until now, but the whole thing seemed to be coming apart—she’d heard nothing from those who had been with her that day, and didn’t know if they were in jail or hiding or had given up.
I didn’t try too hard to find them, either, she says. I wanted to want to, but I’m just so tired. I couldn’t. And I needed a job, like, as soon as possible.
I tell her that I’m sorry. The word feels inadequate. She shrugs.
I’m surprised you told me all this, I admit to her. I’m thankful you trusted me, but I’m surprised.
She lowers her eyes. I’m not going to lie, she replies. Without the Resistance, I’m completely alone here. Maybe more alone than I’ve ever been. And I don’t know why, but I feel like I can trust you.
I tell her she can trust me. I want more than anything to show her that it’s true. But why here? I ask. Why did so many of the Res Kids come here in the first place?
Her head cocks to the side a little. Your aquifer has already started to flood with salt water. You have the highest rate of income inequality in the country and your city is literally sinking into the ocean. Rent is through the roof and all your mayor speaks about is rolling out the red carpet to the captains of tech. She looks at me, and her eyes fill with hope again. It’s a kindling box. Doesn’t that seem like groundwork for a revolution?
I look into the light shining in her eyes. It’s dangerous and it’s beautiful.
I guess I never thought about it that way, I answer. I just thought this place was a shithole. She smiles. I’m not saying it isn’t a shithole.
I feign shock. Hey – I can say that, not you! You should consider it an honor that this city has opened its gates to you. I’ve never been more offended in my life.
Sounds tough, she scoffs, raising an eyebrow.
The iWaiter has taken away our trays and wiped underneath our table twice already, which seems to be the cue for us to leave. I drive her back to the OneLife parking lot with the windows down. It’s dark outside now, with the air streaming in as we scream sing along to the pop on the radio. She has to stop to laugh at herself, which makes me laugh too, and I remind myself to actually pay at least a little bit of attention to the road itself.
I pull into the parking lot, the OneLife center’s lights still glowing into the night. Walking her to her car, she makes a comment about how honestly we should break in, about how much the Life inside there is worth—our Life. That of course they’ve not only found a way to hoard life, the food and housing and healthcare and water we need to survive, but now also Life, in its most literal form.
I only hear half of what she says. We’ve gotten to her car, and I’m desperately trying to figure out if I kiss her, and how I kiss her, and when to kiss her?
I ask her, are you going to get home okay? The corner of her lip lifts. And I don’t know who started it, but her hand is on the back of my neck, and mine are laced through her hair, and we’re kissing, our bodies wrapped into one another, and I swear I feel our Life itself intermingling.
* * *
The next morning, I wake up to the pound of rain and see a text from my boss. Work is remote today due to floodwaters rendering the road unnavigable. So I spend most of the day moving the mouse around on my company laptop to meet engagement standards and thinking about her and her smile and the way her hands felt when she touched me. We’d exchanged numbers after the kiss last night, and I keep picking up my phone to text her, not being able to decide what to say, how long to wait, how cool to play it, putting the phone down, picking it up again.
I’m utterly preoccupied, and I feel a little ridiculous; I can’t remember having ever felt quite this way before. Just the thought of her makes the blood rush to my face and heat my cheeks. I want to know everything about her. I want her to trust me. I want her to feel held.
I stand up and toss my phone onto the couch, as far away as I can get from it in my cramped studio. Sitting back down at my desk, I force myself to open my email and start working through my task list for the day. It’s long, and I’m utterly unfocused. I watch the rain batter the trees outside and wonder if she’s okay. I don’t even know what she does for a living, if she had to go in today. I should check in, I tell myself, see if she’s safe. It would be callous not to. I feel myself walk back to the couch and send her a text—It’s flooding pretty bad. You okay??—when I hear my laptop start to beep.
Unengaged user detected. System will report lack of engagement to supervisor in four. Three. Two.
I run back to my desk, nearly tripping over myself, and smash the mouse just in time to avoid an infraction. Damnit, I really need to get myself together today. I’m not about to compromise this job.
I’m still not totally sure how it happened—half the kids at my high school wanted to study drone engineering. I had no idea what I wanted to do, stealing liquor from my mom’s seemingly endless stash to get through the day. Any way I could figure, it seemed like whatever I chose would lead to approximately the same thing, so it was hard to get myself to theorize through the specifics of whatever awaited me after graduation.
One day in my senior year, a SmartLife aptitude test from the college and career center told me I should go into biomechanics and engineering. I’ve always liked numbers and working with my hands, though an engineering degree was expensive, at least a fourth more in tuition than something more standard. But the link in my aptitude results took me to the application for the SmartLife Drone Engineering Scholarship. And voila, I guess.
The more jobs automatons take, the more in demand my skillset will be. I used to feel really guilty about that, especially right after graduating college. It was in the wake of Automatons United, and everyone was wracked with anxiety. Most of my classmates had no idea what they were going to do, besides move back in with their parents, many of whom were panicking about their own jobs.
I landed this position as an engineering associate at a TechLife subsidiary before I even graduated, and I know how lucky I am. I like what I do well enough, which is mostly intaking performance issues with TechLife drone customers— particularly the military, the entertainment industry, and police departments—drafting a proposal of repairs, and implementing the fixes in our workshop. At first, I stressed out and worked through my cases more quickly than my supervisor had anticipated. I was rewarded with more cases. Needless to say, I don’t stress too hard anymore.
The job is stable, it’s safe, and while I’m paycheck-to-paycheck right now, there’s a guaranteed yearly raise that I’m only two months from receiving. For the raise, TechLife just requires that I continue to fulfill my performance review, stay out of a union, renew my noncompete, and not get totally unnecessary engagement infractions.
I somehow stay mostly on task for the rest of the day, swatting away thoughts of her. My phone sits on the couch, and I can’t stop glancing towards it. Has she responded? What if she hasn’t responded? Does she think I’m being clingy? Finally, my laptop notifies me that my supervisor has logged off and I am free to leave. I slam it shut and go to check my phone. There’s a notification about the latest unprecedented wildfires and a buy-one-get-one coupon from the Burger Time app, but nothing from her.
The way she makes me feel, this swooping in my chest, maybe it was all too good to be true. She probably hates me now, thinks I’m a terrible kisser. Or did something happen to her in the flood? She’s hurt, what if she’s hurt, and I’m sitting here thinking she’s dissing me? You’re spiraling, I tell myself. She’s probably just busy.
I cook dinner and put on my favorite album to distract myself, but I keep checking my phone, making up different pretenses each time. It’s dark out, now, and she still hasn’t texted me back. I knew it. I knew I messed up somehow. I always do.
I’m half asleep, watching reality TV, when I feel my phone buzz next to me. I grab it, and it’s her. I feel the relief palpably course through my body.
srry. had a long shift today and just got off. whatre you up to 🙂
I tell her I just made dinner, but there’s leftovers. Is she hungry?
* * *
You must be starving; there’s no other way you’d be this into my cooking, I say.
She’s sitting cross legged on one of the chairs of my little kitchen table, shoveling down mac n’ cheese. I’m serious, she insists, it’s delicious. But, uh, yeah. In the interest of total transparency, I am pretty hungry.
She had been on her feet all day, she told me, even though there was really no reason for her to be at work at all. With the storm and flooding, barely any customers had made it into the grocery store. She’d been bored as hell, her phone locked in the break room and no one to talk to.
What do you even do there? I ask. I haven’t been to a grocery store staffed by anything but automatons in years.
You know GoodLife? she asks.
Yeah, I reply, of course. They’re a fancier grocery chain than normal ones like FoodLife. GoodLife is the type where you can grind your own peanut butter and buy more-ganic fruit and vegetables that still bleed flavor, not the lifeless tomatoes and dye-dipped lettuce that most places sell. GoodLife’s whole gimmick, besides the more-ganic options, is that they give a percentage of their profits to charity “So We ALL Can Live the GoodLife™.”
Her face twitches a little. I’m a greeter there, she confesses. One of the only human positions still available.
I can’t help myself but laugh a little. I’m sorry, I say. It’s not funny. I just— She interrupts me, wryly. You can’t imagine? she asks.
No, I tell her honestly. I can’t.
It was the only job I could find that would hire someone with a criminal record, she explains. And you know me, she adds, always looking to help add the human touch to the GoodLife grocer experience. And by human touch, I mean wishing I could personally strangle every one of the assholes that comes into that overpriced, pretentious fucking place.
Maybe I’ll come visit you some time, I suggest. I feel like you’d look good in one of those vests. The neon would bring out your eyes.
She throws her fork at me.
That’s not very warm and welcoming of you, I tell her.
She laughs, and my heart lights up. You better watch yourself, she warns me.
I shrug. You’re the one who got cheese on my shirt and mortally wounded me with my own fork in my own home, I respond.
She cocks her head and asks, how can I ever make it up to you?
I tell her that I’m sure we can work something out.
I wash the dishes as she pokes around my studio, narrowing her eyes at my posters and knick knacks. I’ve noticed this about her, now—she doesn’t just see things, she really looks at them. It’s kind of intimidating when it’s in your own home, though, and I’m suddenly self-conscious. I watch her look around, feeling a little nervous.
I like this place, she says. I like that you can see the whole apartment from the bed. It’s like your own little kingdom.
I never thought about it that way. I ask her where she lives, and she tells me that she had been couch-surfing for a while with friends from the Resistance, but had to scramble when she got out of the hospital. She ended up finding a sublet online for a room in a house with two other girls who mostly kept to themselves. We make eye contact sometimes and talk once in a while, but whatever, it’s a place to live, she says.
I let her know that I have no mildly hostile roommates, but I do occasionally have roaches. Do you want to watch a movie? I ask. She says she’s sleepy, and that sounds perfect.
We sit next to one another on the couch, and my mind is whirring. I try to see in my peripheral vision if she’s actually watching the movie—it’s hard to tell. Her leg is so close to my leg that I can feel its warmth. I want more than anything to kiss her again.
Hey, she says. Can I kiss you again?
The bottom drops out of my heart and it’s falling all the way down.
* * *
I can’t believe it when I wake up next to her, but it happens again, and again, and again. She stays over at my place nearly every night that week.
I feel so happy that it’s a little scary—it’s like I’m living because I want to, not because it makes sense to, just waking up every day and partaking in life because it seems like the most reasonable course of action. I want to make her smile. I want to see the world through that smile.
We wake up late on Saturday, and I realize that neither of us have to work. Somehow, we have the whole day. It feels like we stole it. I turn over. What do you want to do today? I ask. She plays with my hair. You’re the tour guide, she says. Surprise me.
So I take her to a place I know she’ll love, because we’re definitely not supposed to be there. I park a few blocks inland and we walk the rest of the way.
You’ve taken me to a big fence and a broken bridge, she notes. Is this supposed to be some sort of symbolism?
I point through the chain link at the weathered concrete beyond. This used to lead to a whole other city, I tell her. It’s underwater now, obviously, has been for decades. But tens of thousands of people lived on the other side of this bridge. You can still see the tall parts poking up, if you get close.
She surveys the fence, at least 15 feet high and rimmed with barbed wire. What’s your plan? she asks.
I walk to the far corner, where the fence is overgrown with tall, scrubby weeds. Pulling the weeds aside, I show here where someone cut the fence —only about a foot and a half high, so the weeds cover the gap, but if you shimmy under there’s room. I let her slither through first and then follow.
She says she’s surprised, that she didn’t take me for the rule-breaking type. I shrug and tell her, I’m not, but I tend to fall in with people who are. Good, she replies.
She takes my hand as we bend the will of the six-lane highway into one, walking straight down the middle. The ocean shines on either side of us, gleaming in the sun so brightly it’s almost blinding. When we reach the apex of the bridge, about a mile in, I stop us. We shouldn’t go farther, I say. If the tide changes, it can flood nearly up to here.
We sit cross legged in the center of the road and I point out where, if you squint, you can see the pieces of what used to be. A column juts out as the waves break. That’s a parking garage, I think, I point out to her. Humanity’s grandest and most lasting achievement, she says.
For a moment we sit in silence, listening to the tide lap against the bridge. And people thought the end of the world would be loud, she sighs.
I think about it. It really hasn’t been. We’re not at the end, not yet. But would we know if we were?
I’m really glad you took me here, she says. It’s scary. But it’s also special. I put my head on her shoulder. I thought you’d like it, I answer.
She fiddles with my sleeve. I have to admit, she tells me, it doesn’t feel like I just met you. I mean I know I did, I know that we don’t even really know each other yet, but it feels . . .
It feels right, I say. It feels like it was supposed to be this way.
Putting her arm around me and squeezing me tight, she whispers, yeah. Exactly.
She pauses. Why did you wait for me at the Center, though? she asks. I thought you would. But I didn’t know why I thought that.
I lift my head so I can see her, and I tell her the truth. That I saw her pick that flower out from a crack on the sidewalk and that I didn’t know why the fuck she had done it, but that I thought it was beautiful. She half smiles. I thought you were beautiful, I say. She rolls her eyes, but the half smile doesn’t disappear.
* * *
We spend the rest of the day together, picking up a SliceLife pizza on the way back to my place and, ravenous from the sun, splitting the whole thing between the two of us. She looks at me with wide eyes. I’m so beyond full, she groans. I need to be horizontal, right now.
So we lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, and she tells me about the little town she grew up in and the city that she moved to in search of work, finding the Resistance instead. She doesn’t say much about her family. I can tell she doesn’t want to, and I don’t push it. But I feel her smiling next to me as she describes her friends back where she used to live, the city they struggled for together and the hard times they urged each other through. A bunch of us came here, she says. Together. Hoping to make things better, I guess.
Don’t you miss them? I ask her.
She’s quiet for a moment. I don’t know, she answers. I miss my friends. Of course I do. But everything we were was tied up in the movement. It was hard to see where we ended and the Resistance began—we gave all of ourselves to it. I felt high off that, inflated with hope, even when we were hungry, tired, defeated over and over. But after the whole thing with the cops and that dog . . .
I stroke the spot where I know the bite is. It’s still raised, slightly. She puts her hand over mine and squeezes it.
After a moment, she continues. I was just done. I don’t know why that did it. It’s not like I hadn’t seen terrible shit before, seen people I love get hurt . . . maybe because it was me, this time. But since then I just don’t have any energy inside of me left to keep fighting. Or any hope, really, that any of this is worth it. And if I’ve lost that, I’ve lost them. They won’t want anything to do with me anymore. Even if they did, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Being around them and feeling this defeated. It’s pathetic.
I’m sure that’s not true, I reassure her, tilting my head to look at her.
She half grimaces. I’m sure it is, she replies. But what about you?
What about me? I ask. There’s not that much to say. My life is pretty standard. She thinks for a moment. What gets you up in the morning? she asks. Why do you do it?
That’s a profound question, I tell her. You mean, besides the possibility of demolishing half a pizza in one sitting?
The truth is, I don’t know how to answer her. I live where I live and I do what I do and I set my alarm every night, but I rarely think about why. I guess I move forward so that things can get better, hopefully, so that I won’t end up like my mom, drinking herself to death before she can end up bankrupt by her own age.
But moving forward doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like necessity. Most of my life doesn’t feel like a choice, not really. Pick a card, any card, and the trick is, most of them are functionally identical. Not her, though. When I’m with her, it feels like we’ve made something special. Something that’s just our own.
I’m silent.
An inadequate answer, she declares. But it’ll have to wait. It’s getting dark, she tells me, and she needs to spend the night at her own place tonight—she has work early in the morning on Sunday, and she lives on the other side of town, way closer to the GoodLife. I try not to let on that I feel as disappointed as I do. Maybe I can meet you after, I ask. Cook us dinner or something. She hugs me. That sounds good, she says into my neck. I’m off at four.
* * *
I hate that I miss her by the next morning, but my mind is stuck on loop wanting to hear her voice and hold her. I go on a run, I clean my entire apartment, but by the time it’s three, I’m impatient. I think she was planning to meet me back at my place, but what if I just met her at the
GoodLife? I bet it would make her happy after such a long and mindless shift. I send her a text, letting her know I’m on my way, and drive over.
I see her through the sliding glass doors long before she sees me. It’s like she’s wearing a mask that someone who doesn’t know her painted her smile on. She tilts her head and waves at an older couple walking in, mouthing words that I can’t hear through painfully upturned lips.
I walk through the doors and go up to her. Fancy seeing you here, I say.
She looks at me, mouth agape. There’s silence as her eyes widen in surprise and then dart around, like they’re looking for an escape.
Then they harden. What the fuck are you doing here, she asks.
I’m so confused. I tell her, I thought I’d come say hi. I didn’t know if you got my text, but I thought maybe I’d surprise you.
Her lips snarl back. Wh-text? Surprise? I don’t have my phone on me—not all of us work desk jobs, I thought you fucking knew that. She crosses and uncrosses her arms, jaggedly, and a smiley face pin falls off her neon green vest and clatters to the floor. How could you—why would you—
A middle aged man with an upturned nose walks in. I see the mask slip back on, and she beams through it. Welcome to GoodLife grocers, where we all can live the Good Life! I hope your shopping experience is absolutely egg-cellent!
The man doesn’t even look at her.
She turns to me. I think you should leave, right now, she says. I’ll be off in 30. I pick up the smiley pin and hand it to her. She takes it wordlessly. I leave.
I walk out to my car and bite my lip, willing myself not to cry. I have no idea what just happened, no idea what I did wrong, but I think I really fucked up. She was so angry, a scorching anger that I didn’t know she was capable of. But then again, what do I really even know? I met her a week ago, a week that feels like forever, but a week nonetheless.
I feel like I’m going to throw up. If I messed this up, the best thing that’s happened to me in who knows how long, I don’t know what I’ll do. The Department of Public Health sent out this mailer on stress-relief breathing a while back, during the worst of the recession, and I try it now. In for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. In for four. Hold for seven. Exhale for eight. I think it’s helping.
Finally, I see her coming out of the store. She walks up to me, face blank. I don’t know what to say. So I say nothing.
You’re still here, she says.
I wasn’t going to leave, I tell her.
She responds, you didn’t have to wait.
I’m sorry, I say, I don’t know what I did but I’m really really sorry.
She looks at me, her expression still tight. And then her face just shatters and she’s sobbing, shoulders heaving, and I put my arms around her and feel her shaking. I hold her tighter.
When her sobs slow, she tells me that she knows I didn’t mean it, but that she never ever wanted me to see her here. That she hates this place, hates standing there and reciting a script to people who don’t even see her as a person, if they see her at all, buying carts of food that each costs more than she makes in a day. She hates knowing that if she doesn’t keep her smile bright and her voice chipper enough, she’ll be just another member of the unemployed eight percent, but without eligibility for even CareLife’s unemployment insurance, given her criminal record. She hates her supervisor whose eyes always seem to drop lower than they should and her boss who will never know her name and she hates the automaton that she feels like she is when she’s in that uniform.
She tells me that she had been feeling like she wanted to put an end to either everyone associated with the whole damn GoodLife chain or to herself, the latter of which would probably be easier.
And then she met me. And our time together was a time apart from the other realities, where she had lost all her friends and quite possibly her purpose and worked a shitty job she was supposed to be grateful to have. So when I walked into that grocery store, she saw the only good she had right now being swallowed up by reality, too.
I’m crying too, now. I’m so sorry, I say. I never wanted to hurt you.
I think that hurt is inevitable, she replies. It’s not your fault.
I take her face in my hands. It’s wet with tears. You make me feel alive, I confide. In a way I haven’t ever felt before. I need that. I think that I need you.
I don’t know what I’d do without you, she tells me. She looks into my eyes. I know it’s crazy. But I really think I’m in love with you.
I feel like my heart is swelling out of my chest. I hold her forehead to my lips. I love you too, I whisper.
And everything feels right again.
* * *
She checks to make sure I’m still covering my eyes. No peeking, for real, she insists. It’s almost ready! I hear rustling and a click. Okay, she tells me, open your eyes.
In front of me, on the kitchen table, there’s a perfect little cake, delicately frosted in white. A red candle splutters on the top. You shouldn’t have, I say, and wait—are those real strawberries on the side? It’s called a strawberry shortcake, she explains. Apparently it used to be really popular. It’s kind of spongy, and there’s more strawberries on the inside.
I haven’t had a strawberry in years, I tell her. This is amazing. Thank you!
She beams at me and lilts, only GoodLife’s finest for you today. Your car is fixed, you’re done with the whole OneLife thing, and you deserve a celebration. I smile, and kiss her. What are you doing? she asks. Blow out the candle, quick, before you lose your wish.
I crinkle my forehead. I get a wish? Isn’t that just for birthdays?
Don’t question it, she says. I blow out the candle. I ask her, do you want to know what my wish was?
She looks at me like I’m crazy. Of course not, she answers. Then it wouldn’t come true. I consider it. Okay, I concede. Fair enough.
She hugs me, tight. I’m just so glad you never have to go back to that place, she says. I don’t think it’s good for you.
What? I ask. Why wouldn’t it be? They say it’s fine, besides the exhaustion after. But even that doesn’t last long. I’ve never seen anything different in the news or anything.
I don’t know, she shrugs. But think about it—how much of a study would they possibly have done about long-term health effects? Who would fund a study like that or give attention to it if the people ‘donating’ the most have the least leverage in society . . . I don’t know. I just have a bad feeling about it.
So you’re not going to go anymore, either? I ask.
She looks down. I didn’t say that, she says.
What? I insist. What if it hurts you, somehow?
I’ll be fine, she replies. And besides, I really need the extra cash. I still haven’t paid off the hospital stay.
I try not to sound whiny. But didn’t you just say it basically is definitely bad for us? If you don’t think I should go, why should you go?
She takes my hand in both of hers. I said I’ll be fine, she says. I’m just glad you’re not going, is all, and putting yourself at risk. Because I love you.
I hate how much that distracts me, but it does. A lot. I feel myself inadvertently smiling.
Now are we gonna eat this fancy little cake, or not, she inquires? She cuts me a slice—it’s ridiculously delicious. I decide I really like strawberries.
I still can’t totally believe the way that she makes me feel, the alternating swooping and fluttering in my chest when she’s around. It makes me understand why figures of the ancient and metaphorical past did such absurd things for the ones they loved. I begin to see why they felt compelled to build palaces and burn down neighboring towns to try and show how painfully fully they felt for their person. I don’t think I want to build anything or burn anything down. But I do want to make her happier than she’s ever been.
And for a while, I think I do.
She lives at my apartment, basically, going back to her frigid roommates to swap out clothes once a week or so. I drive her to work when her shift starts before mine and pick her up to DJ for one another in the car as we speed to the ocean to share a joint and sit on the hood of my car and watch the sun recede beneath the waves. Most of the coastal parks were twisted into luxury high-rises a long time ago, but there’s a parking lot right on the water that becomes our place.
We feel the beauty in life like I never have before—the magic of dusk, milkshakes in stupid flavors after a long day, laughing till we almost cry at jokes that stop making sense far before they stop being funny, lying on my bed as she holds me with her lips grazing the back of my neck. We make a little world within this one for just the two of us.
Then, one Sunday, we’re on a walk around my neighborhood to soak in the last of the weather before the season fully changes and daytime becomes unbearably hot. She notices it before I do, stopping on the sidewalk.
Oh no, she says. Oh, fuck no.
There’s an encampment of people, living under the bridge a couple blocks from me, who either can’t or won’t go to a CareLife shelter. There’s a waitlist for the CareLife shelters, apparently, although I don’t totally understand why. Seeing as CareLife charges the government by the number of beds they fill, it seems in their best interest to fill more beds. Maybe they leave people like this to send a message. Whatever the message is, it’s received—I can’t imagine being out in the heat of the day here, all day, all year.
What’s happening isn’t unusual. There’s been a notice posted on the fence under the bridge for as long as I’ve lived here that forbids encampments under penalty of fine. Every once and a while, the police actually come through, clearing it out and fire-hosing whatever belongings the people who live there can’t get out quick enough to salvage.
Two officers are there now, faces covered above the nose to protect themselves from the smoke. People are desperately trying to fill their arms with their things before the spray of fire gets to them, yelling to one another and beating the flames off of their bags and blankets. I see one woman, running, the tail of her sheet alight and flying behind, fire slowly creeping its way along it and towards her.
I feel frozen. We have to help, she says, tugging my hand. She pulls me forward, and one of the officers turns around. Step away from the operation, he yells. I feel her jerk forward, then freeze. Her fingers leave my arm and inadvertently touch the spot over her thigh where, I know, the skin is still puckered and angry. I feel her quivering, almost, with indecision. The officer steps forward, hand on his belt. I make the decision for us, putting my arm around her shoulder and turning us around and walking us back, away, as quickly as I can. She lets me.
We walk back to my apartment in silence. She sits at the kitchen table, eyes wet, but not crying, just staring down at her hands. Do you want any water? I ask. She doesn’t respond. There was nothing we could have done, I tell her. Nothing. She’s silent. They were going to burn their stuff and run them off no matter what we did, I say. We couldn’t have done anything for them but get hurt ourselves. Her jaw tightens a little. There’s a pause.
I think I need to go, she says.
What Are you upset with me?
She shakes her head. No. I just need to be alone right now. I need to think.
She grabs her keys and starts towards the door. I love you, I tell her. I love you, she says, and she’s gone.
* * *
Things start to change, but at first I’m not sure how, exactly.
She had gone home and called everyone that she used to know from the Resistance. Not a single one of them picked up, and after hours of obsessive analysis, we still don’t know why—if they were in prison, or done with the movement, or wanted nothing to do with her since she had left them before. She focuses on the last one, sure it’s her fault, that the people who had been closest to her think she’s a fraud and a coward and that maybe she is. I try to convince her that’s not true, and she lets me talk, but I can tell she’s not really listening.
She’s jittery with anxiety, trying to figure out what she can do and who else left there is to talk to. When we’re together, I can tell that part of her mind is elsewhere, running in circles that seem to lead nowhere.
I tell her how special she is, how much she means to me, that I love her more than I thought was possible. I don’t know why I think this will fix things. It doesn’t.
Not slowly, but not all at once either, she starts to become different. Softer. The light in her eyes that was gleaming before like a caged animal recedes a little farther back every time I see her. She seems calm, somehow. More at peace. She stops talking about the Resistance altogether. I think I should be relieved, but I’m not. Something feels wrong.
After work one day, we’re watching the last slivers of the sun recede beneath the waves. I summon up the courage to ask her what’s wrong. She asks me what I mean. I try to explain that she’s been different lately.
Different how, she responds? I don’t know how to describe it, I say. Just . . . since the whole thing with the police and the fire and those people. I feel like something’s not right.
I don’t want to talk about that, she says. Why are you bringing that up?
I’m worried about you, I insist.
She looks away from the horizon and into my eyes. I’m fine, she replies. Are you? This isn’t about me, I retort.
Are you drinking? she asks. You can tell me if you are. I won’t judge you.
I turn away. Nevermind, I say. We don’t have to talk about it. She takes my hand and we stare into the space where the sun just was.
I’m not sure how she knows that I’ve been thinking about that. I haven’t touched alcohol since I got my SmartLife scholarship and it seemed, for the first time, like things really were going to work out okay. I haven’t even wanted it. I’ve told her that.
And I still don’t want it, when I’m with her, but it’s the times between that I can barely seem to handle. I feel this dark fog in my mind, full of what’s wrong, something feels wrong and maybe she doesn’t love you anymore and maybe she’s found someone else and she’s not okay, she’s definitely not okay, and you’re not helping. No wonder she doesn’t want you now.
I try to reason my way out of the fog, but there’s no reason to be found. Something is actually wrong. I just don’t know what it is. She comes home with circles under her eyes and barely wants to eat. She just seems so, so tired.
I’m making dinner, a soup that my mom used to make. It has real chicken stock and I hope that it’s soothing, easy enough that she’ll actually finish the bowl this time. Stirring the broth at the stove, I feel her come up behind me and wrap her arms around my waist.
I love you, she tells me. Sometimes, I think you may be the one good thing left.
We eat, and I tell her about my day and how ridiculously frustrating it was. I spilled coffee on my white shirt on the way to work, tried to get a head start on filling out my employment renewal contract just to find that at some point I’d misplaced my driver’s license, then spent an hour attempting to find a specific type of screw only to be told by my supervisor that the screw has been discontinued. How can a screw be discontinued? I ask. That doesn’t even make any sense. I think he was bullshitting me because he did inventory wrong.
I don’t know, she says. She half smiles. Seems a bit screwy to me. We crack up, and I almost spit out my soup. That has to be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said, I tell her. She shrugs. Sometimes it’s only decades later that genius is recognized, she replies. And by the way, the soup was delicious.
She pushes back her chair to take her bowl to the sink. As she slowly stands up, I notice her wince.
What’s wrong? I ask. Is the bite bothering you again?
She shakes her head. My joints are sore for some reason, she tells me. But it’s not a big deal. Just stiff.
Now that I’m looking for it, I see her tighten her face in pain almost every time she stands up from the table or the couch or my bed. I give up asking if she’s okay. It’s always the same—I’m fine. Are you okay?
One evening, she can’t deny any longer that something’s wrong. I’m watching TV when I hear her in the hallway, struggling with the spare key. I walk over and open the front door, and she nearly falls over onto me. I barely get her to the bed before she collapses, face pale and her breathing slow.
I feel frozen. What’s wrong? I ask. Are you okay? Do we need to go the hospital? Her lids are closed, fluttering. No, she murmurs. I’m fine. Don’t need the hospital.
I stop myself from yelling. You’re not fine, I say. You are not fine right now.
She says something that I can barely make out. I put my ear closer to her lips. What was that? I ask.
I just need you to hold me, she whispers. Please.
I hold her, feeling her push breath in and out, for what feels like forever. Slowly, her skin starts to warm up, her breathing returns to normal. She turns around in my arms to face me. Her eyes are flat above dark circles.
I feel almost numb. She’s okay. She’s going to be okay.
What happened? I ask.
Softly, she admits, I went to the Center. The OneLife center.
I’m confused. What? I ask. That’s what did this to you? Donating at OneLife? How often have you been going?
The maximum, she says. Twice a week. Right before work.
I think you should stop donating, I tell her. I don’t think it’s good for you. I thought you were going to . . . I thought you were hurt. Really hurt.
She touches my cheek. Can we talk about it tomorrow? she asks. I’m so tired.
The next day, she acknowledges that she thinks I’m right, that it was probably donating that exhausted her like that. That she won’t do it anymore, she promises, but she doesn’t know how else to make ends meet.
I ask her if she wants to move in with me. To save on rent so she can focus on paying her hospital bill off and because I want to be with her, obviously. She smiles and hugs me and beams yes, of course I do. I tell myself that I’ll take care of her, this way, that things will be better. I will myself to make that true.
* * *
She’s sitting with me on the couch watching TV and I’m staring ahead, pretending to watch, but pulling at threads of anxiety instead. I should be happy, I know that. I have what I wanted more than anything, under my arm, right here, and I’ve never felt less alone. I think that means things should be good, but they don’t feel okay.
We don’t fight, not really—it’s hard to fight with someone who doesn’t seem to care enough to push back. She’s promised me over and over that she’s telling the truth, that she hasn’t donated since that day she passed out. That she has no idea why the veins in her hand are starting to bulge, why her bones are poking closer and closer to the surface of her thinning skin. That of course she can’t see a doctor, as I suggest, because she has no health insurance. She looks up at me through shadowed eyes and asks, why don’t you believe me? Why don’t you trust me?
At first I would succumb. I would tell her, of course I believe you. Of course I trust you. I love you, I’m just worried about you.
One night, though, I broke. I screamed at her to tell me the fucking truth, that I know she’s hiding something, to stop lying to me while living in my fucking home, that I can’t take it anymore. She didn’t even react, just looked at me, eyes dull. She said nothing. I apologized and kissed her forehead and told her I’d never talk to her like that again. I haven’t. I don’t want to hurt her, but I’m almost more afraid of that dead, unreactive look on her face. Like it didn’t matter to her, much, what happened either way.
I start drinking again. She notices, but never comments. I’m grateful for that. I need something to help dull the buzz of anxiety that’s clouding my thoughts, and it doesn’t fix it, but it helps. I decide that it’s fine as long as I don’t drink before or at work. So far, it’s been alright.
I’ve just gotten home, popping the top off a beer, when she walks in and sits next to me at the kitchen table. Do you want to grab takeout tonight? I ask. I haven’t been to the grocery in forever and besides, I’m too wiped from work to cook.
She doesn’t answer, just looks down. After a minute, she tells me she was fired today, released from employment with GoodLife effective immediately. Apparently the official reason was related to performance issues, specifically, “a substandard amount of Energy and GoodLife Cheer.”
Holy shit, I say. Honestly, though, it makes sense. She’s a shadow of her old self, right now, frailer than anyone our age should rightfully be. The light in her eyes is absent more often than not. It’s hard to imagine her greeting anyone with any amount of cheer.
She seems detached from the whole thing, even as she reminds me that, due to the nature of her criminal record, she won’t be eligible for unemployment insurance. I’ll find some way to pay my half of the rent, she insists. I promise. I won’t let you down.
I take her hand. You could never let me down, I tell her. I’m so sorry that this happened to you, but the last thing you need to worry about is paying rent. I covered the full cost before, I can do it again. And maybe this is a good thing. You can find something you hate doing less—I mean, you really couldn’t stand working at that place.
Her lips turn up a little. Thank you, she tells me.
It’ll be okay, I respond, and I stroke her cheek. It’s soft, but strangely so, held looser to the bone than I’m used to. I open my mouth to ask her, please, tell me what’s happening to you, then decide against it. I know where that path leads, that there are no answers at the end of it. It’s not worth it.
What? she asks. Were you going to say something?
Oh—no, I say. Just that I love you.
She leans forward and kisses my cheek. Thank you, she whispers. I’m so glad that I have you.
* * *
I decide I need to go through her phone.
She looks and feels like she’s falling apart, her spark is dim and her eyes are glossy. It’s gotten really bad, to the point where she’s lost her job from whatever’s happening. I convince myself it would be irresponsible to not investigate. I’m doing it because I care, I remind myself.
The next morning, as soon as she gets in the shower, I grab her phone. I memorized her password when she told me it once, what feels like forever ago, so I could change the music as she drove us to dinner. I enter it.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for, exactly. I scroll through her text history, suddenly feeling stupid. What did I expect to find, a personal invitation to whatever’s making her act so strangely? I’m about to give up and put her phone back on the coffee table when the screen flashes—it’s ringing from a local number.
I panic. I shouldn’t answer it. What if it’s someone she knows, and they tell her I was rooting around on her phone? But what if the person on the other end has answers, can tell me what’s wrong with her?
I can’t live with this anxiety anymore. I need to know.
I pick up, and the man on the other end asks if I am available. Me, by my first and last name, not her. I’m caught so off guard that I almost drop the phone. The man repeats himself. Yes, I tell him. Yes, that’s me.
Thank you so much for picking up, he says. This is a representative from OneLife calling, as we’ve made several attempts to get in contact with you in regards to the mailing address you have on file. He reads the address. It’s where she used to live, on the other side of town, before she moved in with me. We have received notice that this address does not match state records for your current residence, the representative tells me. In order to continue as a valued donor, we do need to confirm your valid, current address.
My head is spinning. I sit back on the couch, look up, and she’s standing there, staring at me, in her towel. I didn’t even notice that the water had turned off. I hang up the phone.
Everything suddenly makes sense now. My missing license. Her frailness. Feeling like the life has been sucked out of her, suspecting but not knowing why. I know my heart should be sinking right now with the knowledge that she’s tricked me, taken my identity, lied to my face again and again, but I’m filled with an eerie sense of calm. I felt like I was losing my mind, but now I know that I was right, that she has been lying to me. I just don’t know why.
That was my phone, she says. Why were you on my phone?
I ignore the question. You’re not going to lie to me anymore, I tell her. You’re going to sit down. And you’re going to tell me why.
Why what? she inquires. Are you alright?
Why you’ve been donating, twice the legal limit, using your own and my name, when you promised me you’d never go again and have been telling me that everything’s fine, I reply.
She looks at me and closes her eyes for a beat. Then she sits down.
I needed the money, she professes. After losing my job, going just twice a week wasn’t enough to pay rent and the rest of the hospital bill. I didn’t want to lie to you, or to take your license. But I needed to go more than they were letting me, and I just didn’t see any other way.
That’s bullshit, I say. You knew that I could cover rent, that I’d much rather pay the full thing than have you put yourself through that.
She’s silent. There’s nothing else to say, she responds.
In that case, I tell her, then I think you need to move out. You stole my fucking license and you’re hurting yourself but won’t admit it and you’ve been looking into my eyes and telling me you love me while lying to me over and over and over. If there’s really nothing else to say, then you need to leave.
So she tells me.
* * *
She says that in the moments after donating, before her body can replenish its Life, there’s a sort of reverse high as the inherent optimism of youth is sucked away through the needle. What I felt as depressive exhaustion she feels as clarity. To her, these moments before her body pumps Life back into her veins feel more real than the throbbing hope her youth inures her with.
She figures that maybe these post-donation delusions are the only thing that aren’t delusions any more. I ask her what she means. She tells me that hope keeps us high until we’re too old and weak to fight. By the time we’re old, we understand the nature of the ruthlessly calculated realities that have been built for us to run around inside of, but our age has made us exhausted and complacent with the truth of the present. With the spark of her own life dulled, she can see the way the world really is, and probably always will be.
I ask her why? Why the hell would she want to see that?
She tilts her head and looks at me, and in a voice so flat it scares me, she responds, I’m tired. I’m tired of the perverse cycle of hope I’ve been stuck in all my life that picks me up and tells me it’s possible and necessary to keep going. It just lifts me so that I can fall again. When there’s not hope, there’s peace. I feel old, now. At ease. Like it’s not my fight anymore.
I open my mouth. I close it again.
She looks at me with something shining in her eyes. Is it pity?
I don’t have the energy to pretend anymore, she tells me. Not for the Resistance, not for anything or anyone. When I come down from donating, my feet keep walking me forward. They tell me to search for another dead fucking end job to pay for myself to keep existing in a world I hate. And I convince myself that it’s all worth it, because the moon is shining above the ocean, and beads of grass are poking their way through the ground, and I’m in love with you, and there just has to be a point. Things have to get better. I think that’s what I’ve been sick with all my life—I can’t shake that hope. But I need a break. I’m exhausted of feeling like this is my world to win. I’m tired.
I look at her. I want to come up with the right jagged question, one that could pry her from this logic that’s destroying her heart. I want to ask her why she’s trading an illusion for an illusion, to tell her that she’s selling her youth for blindness, that her pain isn’t felt alone, that I know she’s hurting more than I can understand but that no matter how tired she is, she owes the life in her veins not to OneLife Industries, but to us, all of us, and to me.
But I get caught up in the me.
So I ask her, does that mean it doesn’t matter? That if nothing matters, then it doesn’t matter that you love me?
She takes my face in both her hands, and I see a tear roll down the fine lines beginning to crinkle from the corners of her eyes outward. I’m sorry I would ever make you even ask that, she says, and she kisses me, and I fall back.
* * *
I don’t sleep that night. I lay there, watching the back of her head, trying to untangle my emotions. I felt relieved, at first, when she started talking to me—really talking to me, for the first time in what feels like forever—looking into my eyes and telling me the truth. I’ve wanted, so badly, to understand her.
And now I do. I guess I just thought that understanding her would mean more than it does. The relief gave way to a numbness as we lay there after, me stroking her hair and her clinging to me like she’d crack apart if she let go. I won’t lie to you ever again, she swore to me. But I can’t tell you I’m not going to keep going.
I didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
This is what you’ve been waiting for, I remind myself. There’s nothing hidden about her now, no painfully palpable secrets, no lies. She’s an addict. You know, now, that if perhaps it’s a stretch to say she wants to die, she certainly wants nothing to do with her Life anymore. Didn’t you want to know? Isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for?
I guess it is. But somehow, I thought that the truth would be empowering, that it would clarify a course of action to fix things, or at least to make them better. Instead, I feel crushed by the weight of knowing. Knowing just how broken her state of mind is, knowing why her spirit and her body have been crumbling apart, knowing that there’s nothing I can do short of locking her in my apartment to stop her from spiraling farther and farther away from me. The truth isn’t powerful. It taunts me.
I feel frozen with indecision and an icy sort of anxiety that fills me with apprehension. Something very bad is going to happen, it tells me. You know that. There has to be something you can do about it. There is nothing. Nothing. Nothing that you can do about it.
She keeps sleepwalking through life, vaguely applying for jobs and running errands sometimes, until she doesn’t. She mostly stays in bed, now, but I know she gets up to go donate. I can tell in the growing web of lines now creasing her face and the glossy cataracts beginning to dull what were once sharp, bright eyes.
We don’t really fight anymore, and we barely talk about the obvious—what would be the point? We argue, once, when she asks me for gas money. I tell her no, knowing exactly where she’s driving herself. She begs me, desperately, crying and saying please, just this once, please. I hate myself for it, but I give in.
So, in that way, we continue to fall in slow motion.
* * *
I leave for work in the morning, kissing her forehead. I love you, she murmurs, half asleep. I tell her I love her too. On the way out I see that overnight, yellow buds have begun to push out of the tree by my complex’s entrance. I smile to myself and make a mental note to pluck some for her when I come back in the evening.
I’m mindlessly replacing bent propellers when I get the call from OneLife. I know something is wrong, really wrong, as soon as the receptionist starts speaking. It’s the same receptionist who was on shift that day we met at the Center, I think, but her voice sounds different. It’s strained and hesitant as she tells me that an incident has occurred at the OneLife Center off Sunset and 73rd. As the listed emergency contact, this is a courtesy notice that I should make my way there at my earliest convenience.
I don’t feel my lips move, but I hear myself ask, what happened? Is she okay? Due to donor privacy concerns, she tells me, I cannot divulge details of the incident. Then her voice breaks from its professional cadence. You should get here now, she says. Right now.
I feel like I’m in a trance as I grab my keys, walk out of the building, and start my car. I realize that I forgot to tell my supervisor I was leaving. I realize that I don’t care.
I hear the sirens before I pull into the parking lot, where police are still unfurling lines of yellow tape around the perimeter of the Center. It’s okay, I tell myself, as I slam my car door closed. It’s probably okay. She’s hurt, sure, maybe she passed out on the way to her car. It could still be okay. I duck under the yellow tape and walk towards the door of the Center. A cop grabs my arm. You can’t go in there, he says. Crime scene. I ignore him and swing the door open.
A crowd of police, OneLife employees, and donors are gathered around something in the reception area. I push through them. And then I see her.
She’s lying, face up, on the ground, a hole blasted through her chest. Her arms are bent out to either side. In one hand, there’s a pistol. I had no idea she owned a gun. In the other, I see a yellow flower, the end of its stem frayed.
The receptionist recognizes me. Her face twists in sympathy. She came in here, yelling, she says. Demanding her Life back. Waving that gun. The receptionist looks at me pleadingly. I had to call them, she tells me. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t . . . I didn’t think they’d do this.
She must have left my apartment to go donate, I realize, and seen the tree outside my apartment pushing out new life, the yellow flowers glittering with dew. She must have been struck by it. It must have reminded her of the fire of hope that used to burn inside of her and the wonder that persisted no matter how shitty the world became, the beauty that made Life worth living. She must have felt for that hope and wonder inside of her and found only emptiness in the hollowed-out husk of a soul she’d traded her Life for. She must have realized, finally, what she’d done to herself. She would have decided to go and get her Life back, the Life that is rightfully hers, no matter the cost. And now she’s twisted, lifeless, on the floor before me.
I feel myself fall onto my knees. And now, so close to her body that I can feel where its warmth should be, I notice that her face is different than it had been this morning when I’d kissed her goodbye—it’s distorted, sagging, the skin barely held to her jaw. Her eyes, still half open, are milky. On her upturned arm, bent beside her, I see one small dot on her wrist and one on the inside of her elbow.
She must not have been dead after they fired the shot, not quite. They must have drained the rest of her Life out of her in her last moments, to package and sell, leaving this shell behind.
I look up at the silent circle standing above me. The cops, their faces blank; the receptionist, eyes wide as she desperately searches for what to say; the donors gathered in tired curiosity. I look back down at her broken face.
I scream.
I scream for the girl I loved, lying there, dead and drained of herself, left with her mouth still slightly open.
I scream for her, for the spark that used to shine in her eyes, for the half smile that lit her face with a mischievous glow, for the furious hope that pounded through her veins, for the way she cared with such intensity that it shattered her soul.
I scream for me, for the sleepless nights I spent waiting for this day without knowing exactly what I was waiting for, for knowing that I’ll never hear her whisper my name in the darkness or point out the beauty hidden in the contours of life or raise her eyes and smile at me and fill me with the feeling that if she’s real, if we’re real, it must all be worth it, somehow.
I scream for this whole fucking broken world, where we sell every piece of us that we can so that we can keep trudging forward, trying to find love strong enough to get us through the daily hell, praying that what’s most precious to us can’t be broken, but it can be, and it will be, and it is, now, right in front of me on the cold linoleum.
I scream, because I realize she was right, that there’s no way forward from within. I scream, and I feel my Life coursing through my veins.
I’m not strong. I never have been. But my Life is, and as it swells inside of me, I feel myself shaking uncontrollably. Every atom of my Life is agitated, quivering, and my body feels lit up by a million twisting sparks. I hear the shaking and then shattering of a thousand freshly packed vials of life from inside the OneLife Center, too, picking up and matching the frenetic frequency that my Life is reverberating at.
The Life in the Center pulses, beaming the pace of its beat to the Life trapped in every other center across the country, too, and each of their atoms begins to shudder to the same frequency, bursting through their vials and twisting madly in the air.
The Life pulses, hard, and I feel my chest bursting open, my life beginning to snake out in front of me. And as the frequency of my Life quivers in perfect synchronicity with the Life trapped in thousands of other Centers, I feel it beat in unison one last time.
And then it explodes.
I, and her, and the police and the receptionist and the donors, are swept into the air as ash, as every Center which once held our caged Life comes crashing down, crumbling into nonexistence.
But Life is never created or destroyed. It finds its rightful owners. The ash settles. And somewhere in the pile of rubble, there’s a yellow flower that once belonged to the girl I loved.
© 2023 Bevy Daniel All rights reserved.
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