Tourist | Fourteen

The audio cuts off at the loamy scrape of a shovel tasting soil. We are torn from Lissa’s voice back into the real world. Moments stretch within Chase’s apartment. We sit frozen and silent: Audrey with her hand over her mouth, Chase’s fist balled tight upon the desk, hot tears dripping from my chin. We are, the three of us, briefly connected in our shock, our horror, our infinite sorrow for Lissa.

“This isn’t fair,” Audrey whispers. Her fingers muffle her words, yet they fill the room. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair, I decide—had decided long ago, as glass shattered and metal crumpled around my fragile, biological body.

There’s movement to my side. Chase slumping onto forearms, fingertips clawing chaotic hair. Audrey lays a hand on his back, her bright eyes meeting mine over his hunched form. Here we are: human and ersatz. We all mourn the same losses when it comes down to it. No wonder artificials so often stick to our own, I realise. We don’t die the same. We don’t lose the same.

And then it hits me: the trade-off I’ve never considered. Paiden, with her open home and loving fathers, can only be all too aware of their impending mortality. While I wanted to live like her, maybe she was looking at my eternal sister and wishing her own family could continue on and on until the end of time.

Shit. When this is all over, I need to apologize to her.

But not now, because my phone is buzzing where I left it charging and I have a feeling it’s not Paiden. I unfurl from my seat to find Sam’s name filling the screen. The buzz in my hands is aggressive, insistent, almost channeling Sam herself.

“Sam,” I say, holding my phone out as if Audrey or Chase will answer in my stead. Audrey simply inclines her head, waiting for me to make my choice. This is your life, her eyes say.

I drag my finger across the screen, lift the phone to my ear. For a long moment, all I can hear is my own breath. Ragged, snotty.

Not just mine, I realise. Sam’s breathing echoes my own. She’s been crying. Is still crying. Something has gone very wrong if Sam sounds like this. Cold nausea churns in the pit of my stomach and I am suddenly very tired.

“Hello?” I ask. More a cough than anything else.

“Allegra? Is that you?” Sam’s voice is nothing more than the hiss of wind soughing through leaves.

“Yeah. It’s me.”

She sniffs. “I made a mistake.”

I glance in the direction of Audrey and Chase—my friends—to find two pairs of eyes watching me. Reflexively, I turn away and reply, hushed, “What happened?”

“I broke into Lissa’s room.” She pauses, as if waiting for me to yell or reprimand. I wait. She continues. “It was stupid. The bark was slippery and I landed bad climbing into her room. My ankle is busted. Her parents are home.” I lower the phone, struggle to process the words I’ve just heard. What does Sam expect me to say? To do?

“Shit, Sam, I think you need to ask them for medical assistance or something.”

“No.” Her voice quavers. “No, I can’t. Gray is here. I’m scared, Allegra. Please help me.”

The air turns sweet and I know Audrey has swept up beside me. Her hand finds my forearm, squeezes once. I sway, blurred memories of Gray on the other side of a graffitied toilet stall door filling my vision. My free hand grips Audrey’s. Without her holding me steady, I think I might collapse again. My heart races in my chest as if it belongs to a hummingbird instead of an ersatz human. Maybe I’m not anxious, maybe they just misplaced Lissa’s heart when they patched her body up and put me inside. Maybe—

Maybe—

Sam’s half-sob across the line cuts through my dizzy thoughts. She’s truly, deeply afraid. Whether it’s Gray himself she’s scared of, or perhaps her own guilt, I have no clue. But she was Lissa’s best friend and I’d rather die another time than leave Sam when she needs Lissa. I may not be her friend, but I’m the closest thing she’s got.

I turn to Audrey. “We have to go to Lissa’s house. Now.”

She nods. Her raincoat is already on.

“I’m coming, Sam,” I say. I think I hear a gasp of relief. Or maybe a single, simple, shit.

∞

Rain lashes the windscreen as the car puts itself in park. Strong fingers grip the steering wheel. Chase looks over at me, mouth a tight line. It’s Audrey who speaks, her voice piping up from the back seat.

“Are you sure about this?”

“You’re going to fall and hurt yourself,” Chase says. Backing up her worries. That’s not what he’s worried about though—at least, it’s not his main concern. He doesn’t want me to help Sam. Doesn’t want me risking danger for her of all people because he cares about me. He feels selfish and stupid, but he can’t hide that he thinks Sam isn’t worth me antagonizing Gray.

I focus on the squeaking windscreen wipers streaking across the glass. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’d rather avoid getting parents involved if I can.”

“Well,” Chase says, his lips stretching in a vague grin. “If you need a distraction you know who to call.” My heart swells at the sight of Audrey and Chase, the both of them here with me in this torrential storm. Despite their reservations, they’re both ready to help me smuggle a girl who hates the three of us with her entire being out of a house. In this moment, I think I understand love.

“Thank you,” I say.

Steeling myself, I throw the door open and tumble into the storm, hood pulled tight against my hair. I slam the door behind me and run into the din. Water splashes beneath my feet, grass squelching and mud clutching at my boots. I’m breathing water: the rain, the humidity, the tears I’m afraid might choke me.

At the base of the storm-tossed tree I catch sight of Lissa’s memorial—

⧜

There is dirt on my hands, the arm laying in a hole at the bottom of the tree. Can you hear the crickets? They’re everywhere. Thank God, I think their screaming hid the racket I’ve been making digging this hole. I didn’t know how much fucking work it would be to dig a hole big enough. There’s something cathartic about it.

I couldn’t find a shoebox that would fit the arm, so I wrapped it in some spare silk I found in the study. I hope nobody misses it. The silk, I mean. I know nobody misses the arm. Which is bullshit, isn’t it? Why doesn’t anyone care? Why didn’t I care before now?

What do I say now? What kind of obituary can I give to the arm of a dead artificial? How can I in any way make up for what I did? Can I say I’m sorry and be done with it, or must I in some way repay what I have taken? An arm for an arm. A life for a life.

Instead, I will do what I can. I will remember this artificial. I will remember every artificial that touches my life.

⧜

—and I’m frozen in my steps, unwilling to tear my gaze away. I feel once more as if I’m back at the bakery, back at Paiden’s doorstep, afraid to make a choice. Overwhelmed by what my choice could mean. Overwhelmed by the simple unfairness of everything.

Teeth clenched, I force myself to breathe through my nose. To remind myself of how I got past these past blocks. How that one baker on that heartbreaking summer day helped me unfreeze myself.

“Count from three,” I whisper, words whipped away by the wind. Close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Three.

Two.

One.

My fingers grip the rough bark, my feet slipping against the trunk as I struggle onto a branch. It’s hard to see what I’m doing in the rain and gloom, but my hands feel the way. I’m soaked through. The raincoat was a hopeless gesture—Audrey insisted on it. Pulling back the hood, I accept my rain-soaked fate. At least it’s easier to see without it, barely.

I edge onto the branch near Lissa’s window, pull myself inch by inch across the slippery, ragged bark. Fingernails digging into the cracks because I’m afraid I will fall. I swallow rain and tears around the lump in my throat and refuse to look down—worried I won’t be able to see the ground from here through the downpour.

The window feels impossibly far away. Even when I reach it and press my hands against the glass to raise the window, Lissa’s room feels distant, in another universe that I can neither see nor touch.

Except I can. I pull myself through the curtains and out of the rain, slamming the window closed behind me. The roar of the storm echoes in my ears. The noise slowly fades to the background as my eyes adjust to the dim interior of the room.

⧜

I’d forgotten that the arm was still there. Hidden right at the back of my closet. Hidden from memory, I guess. When I pulled my big suitcase from where it was embedded in junk the arm tumbled free from behind it, dried oil flecking the carpet.

My entire body heaved with disgust at the sight of it. An involuntary reaction, as if my guilt were bile I could vomit out. I thought of Audrey seeing the gruesome trophy that I had claimed. Imagining the look in her eyes, my knees nearly gave out. I retched onto the carpet. In flashes I found myself back among the screaming crowd. The scent of destroyed plastic and synthetic life-blood smearing my skin filled my nose again. I looked down, terrified I would see the caved chest where I slammed the rock down again and again and again until the robot stopped twitching. Shaking at the thought of meeting those shattered eyes.

But there was only a limp arm, lying at my feet.

⧜

Sam tries to pull herself up as I clamber through the window, but all she manages is to pull the cover off the bed. She grunts and throws the heavy blanket to the side. I am mute at the sight of her stormy hair and the pale sheen of her face. Pain radiates from her.

“You came.” Her jaw thrust defiantly. Still challenging me, even now.

“You asked.” I crouch beside her, notice that she doesn’t shy away from me even as I accidentally brush her knee. Her foot is twisted in a bad way. Her whole body is curled in and tense.

“Yeah, well.” She snorts. Flinches. “If I’m getting into shit for this I’m taking you down with me.”

“You know I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I say. Her mouth twists into a wry, pained grin. There’s anger there, but for once it’s not aimed at me. Most of it, at least.

A floorboard creaks and we both freeze, eyes wide in the dark. I barely breathe as I wait for the door to swing inwards, our presence discovered. Sam seems to melt into the shadows. My eyes would give me away in a heartbeat.

The door doesn’t open. The footsteps pass us by. A hushed giggle bubbles from Sam, she’s getting hysterical. I let out a strained breath.

“We’re so fucked,” Sam whispers. I agree, but I refuse to give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

“What’s your plan?” I ask.

“What plan?”

“What do you mean what plan?” I fight to keep my voice low and hope that the hammering rain covers any particularly strident consonants. Sam’s shoulders are jagged shadows.

“The plan for getting me out of here.” She says this as if it’s obvious—and I realise that maybe it is. Maybe I should have had a plan before shimmying my way up the big old oak.

Or.

“Maybe you should’ve spent your time stuck up here thinking of a good way out,” I say. There’s a rumble in her throat at my tone, but what do I care? Who is Sam to me but a young woman who would rend me limb from limb if she had the power? If I didn’t look like someone she loved with all her heart. She’s brought me nothing but pain.

Her fingers brush my arm. Her face is wide open, afraid. Filled with human terror. Her shoulders aren’t tense with anger—they’re rigid with panic. Her glacial rage has become something else, or perhaps revealed itself as what it has always been: fear. My own frustration melts at the sight of her broken and afraid.

Lips parted, she breathes my name. “Allegra.” She is trembling.

I press my palm against her palm, fold my fingers between hers. She squeezes back and her eyes glimmer in the dim. Everything I want to say is true, yet cruel. I say nothing at all and let her pretend I don’t see her tears or feel the way she clings to me as her shoulders shake with sobs, her chin jutting defiantly as if she weren’t heartbroken and merely had no heart at all.

“I don’t know how it feels.” I’m met by a questioning silence. “To lose someone I love. I have no clue what it’s like to have that absence in my life. But—and this is important, Sam—you don’t know how I feel, either. You’ve never been annihilated in spirit but not in name, never been killed and seen your killer walk free with only a warning. Never felt the absence of your own body.”

She pulls my hand to her chest, holds it tightly. “Maybe we know better than we realise. We’ve both had to grieve the loss of our lives as we knew them. That’s the same thing, in the end.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Who knew you could be so poetic?”

“I must’ve spent too much time around artificials like you,” she says.

We don’t expect the click of an opening door.

⧜

Gray, who used to be Dad who used to be Papa who used to be Da, is struggling. We are all of us struggling, but I think he is most of all. I am young, I am resilient; I have Chase and Audrey and even Sam, when she tries; I have a generation who understands that mental illness is real and deadly. Gray has Mum and I, and a life of the masculine ideal draped heavily over his shoulders. I was afraid of him—am, still, afraid. But I find myself instead scared for him rather than of him. What might he do if he doesn’t get the push he needs?

I would grab his shoulders and tell him I would give anything to have my dad back. But I’m too scared he might say the same. That he would ask me to be his sweet little Lissa again. I don’t know how to give him that.

What has become of us?

⧜

Gray is a shadowed mass towering from the doorway, his eyes hidden in the gloom. He looms over us as Sam grips my arm, her fingernails sharp through my sleeve. Time freezes for a long moment as he sees me and I see him. A lost daughter; a lost father.

He steps into the room with thunderclap footsteps. I notice he’s only wearing socks; I imagined he could only wear heavy boots. His fists are clenched, his shoulders rigid beneath his thick sweater. I catch the way he clenches his jaw with anger.

I stand, putting my short frame between Sam and Gray. The obvious expendable body in the room. The floor tilts, my knees melt, and Gray stands tall and solid before me.

He swallows, goes to say something. No words escape him, instead he explodes into tears. A desperate gasp for air as he falls to his knees and takes my hands in his, presses my fingers to his lips as he apologizes again and again, weeping apologies to his beloved little girl. He looks up at me and for the first time I see his eyes, human-bright and so like Lissa’s. Filled with love, horror, loss, grief, and ever more love. Through my own tears, I watch him search my face. For anger? Forgiveness? Love?

I lean in and press my forehead against his, fever-chilled at the touch of his skin.

“I killed you.” Choked through wracking sobs. “It’s my fault you’re gone.”

Ignoring Sam’s hissed words at my back, I whisper in return: “It wasn’t you.”

Gray jerks back. Forehead creased, eyes wide, tears spilling down his face. He’s looking right into my ersatz-bright eyes. There’s a flicker of anger across his face at his realisation: I am not his daughter. I am my own person—an ersatz person, in his mind.

I find a pool of calm within me as I straighten. Over Gray’s head I catch my reflection in Lissa’s mirror. With my rain-curled hair and straight-line mouth, I finally see myself in the mirror. Allegra. I am Allegra.

Sam scrambles to her feet and she pulls me away from Gray. Her hands fumble at the sides of my face. She is wild as a storm, jagged and furious.

“How can you say it wasn’t him? How, Allegra?” she cries. Betrayal cracks her voice. Gently, I prise her hands from my face and hold them between us.

I ask, “Who do you really think killed Lissa, Sam?”

⧜

Sam. Oh, Sam. You are my favourite person in the whole world, but you seem determined to prove otherwise. In your world, I have been stolen away by Chase and Audrey and Emily, these people who have shown more kindness towards me than you have in a long time.

I miss the days we spent as children in the treehouse, the two of us wrapped up in daydreams and summer blankets at night. Before the roof was made we would lie there and point out the stars to each other, dreaming up fake constellations with names only the two of us knew. I want us to go back there again. One more time, before adulthood tears us away from each other for the last time. If everything goes to hell, meet me there.

You and me in our place. Where I can tell you all my secrets.

⧜

Sam swallows, eyelashes fluttering. She tries to blink away the shimmering brimming at her eyes. But even determined Sam can’t hold back the flood. “Me,” she says. Deflates as she admits her truth. “It was me.”

And this is where I know the real truth: Emily, Chase, Gray, Sam, each and every person who loved Lissa believes they were the one who killed her.

“No,” I say. She blinks, moans.

“You don’t understand. You weren’t there! I said horrible things and pushed her away because I didn’t want to lose her. I thought that hurting her was the only way to keep her close to me. If I could make her believe she wasn’t worth anyone’s time, she wouldn’t try. She’d—” she struggles to form the words “—she would just stay with me.”

“I know.” I brush her hair from her face. “Sam, I know. She knew, that’s why she cut you from her life. She was protecting the both of you.”

“Lissa hated me.”

“Maybe. Maybe you deserved it.”

She keens, pulls her fingers from my grasp and presses them to her face. I wait for her. Let her release the pain and anger she’s had locked up in her chest for so long. What I said was harsh, and I’ll apologize later. Still, she can’t grow from this without the truth.

“But Sam,” I say, holding her face, “You did not kill Lissa. Neither of you did.”

And I see them both look at me—the ersatz Lissa with eyes like radiant suns—and I think they actually believe me.

∞

“Lissa, what the fuck?”

Chase sprints from the car to me, his sneakers slipping on the slick grass. I must look an absolute mess to him. As must Sam, with her arms draped across not only my shoulders but Gray’s too. Chase rears back a little at the sight of Gray, and Gray’s eyes narrow in warning.

“Lissa sure knew how to pick friends her dad would hate,” Sam snorts.

“We should get her to the emergency room,” Chase says. But there’s something else, first. I wait for Sam, because it should be her who voices it. She gives me a sidelong glance, her lower lip chewed raw.

“It’s the tree, isn’t it?” she asks.

Chase looks from her to me. “What’s the tree?”

“Lissa kept trying to tell me to meet her in the treehouse,” Sam says. Sighs. “I think it’s where she put the—” her voice catches. She coughs, pretends she’s not crying again. “The… note.”

“Oh.” Chase rain-sleek hair back from his forehead. “Fuck.”

Gray is silent, somber, his gaze on the grass. I hear a muffled gasp and a ruffle of fabric from Jules behind us. She braves the rain—less torrential now, but still insistent—to stand at Gray’s side and he reaches for her blindly. Without a word, Chase takes Sam’s weight from the towering, trembling man. Sam flinches, but doesn’t push Chase away. She doesn’t thank him, but none of us thought she might.

“Allegra,” she says.

“Hm?”

“I can’t climb up there. If she did leave something in the treehouse, I can’t get it.”

All eyes turn to me. The anxiety fills my veins again, turns my blood to ice and poison. I want to turn and run, to fall into bed and hide beneath my blankets. Can’t they see how tired I am?

I can see how tired they are. I’m not alone. We’re all exhausted and grieving. I’ve followed Lissa this far, how can I possibly turn away now?

“I’ll look,” I say.

A raindrop falls into Chase’s eye. He grimaces. “Can the rest of us wait inside?” he asks. We wave Audrey over and she helps Chase get Sam to the couch. My throat tightens at the thought of saying anything. I slip away while they dry off.

And I face the tree once more. With scratched fingertips I trace the X Lissa scratched into the bark. I hear Lissa’s voice in my head, her deleted audio echoing between my ears. It wasn’t her final recording, it wasn’t her explaining how she died. What we heard was her working through becoming someone else. It was the beginning of losing her.

I roll my shoulders and reach for the oak.

⧜

What would I tell you, if I had the courage? It would be that I lie awake at night, tired and exhausted—I’ve discovered you can be both at once—and feeling afraid. I don’t want to die. Despite not wanting to, I know there’s that niggling belief that it’s better I do. So I stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars above my bed and pray to anyone out there that I don’t fall further. I’m scared that if I do, I might…

If I do. If it does happen. I want to donate my body to an artificial. I’m trying so hard, I promise, but if I fuck it all up I need to know someone else gets a new chance at life because of me. The world would be a better place for it.

Though, God, I do love this world. I wish I could know how they see it through their blazing eyes? How beautiful they must find the sky.

⧜

I find them inside an old wooden box. Letters wrapped in a plastic bag to protect their delicate words. The plastic crinkles in my hands as I drop my head to my knees and howl with the wind. Now that I’m alone, away from the people who really deserve to mourn Lissa’s death, I let myself feel everything that the grey depression fog has been clouding.

Anger, at Lissa for leaving us like this; at myself for fucking everything up; at Sam for dragging me into this mess and tearing me apart at every step; at the world, for making someone like Lissa believe she wasn’t good enough to see the stars. Sorrow, for letting Paiden fall to the side; for losing my passion for paint; for the void that Lissa left behind, even in my life. Guilt, because reality doesn’t mean shit when you believe you’re the reason someone is gone.

I wipe my eyes and tuck the letters into my raincoat. Walking into Lissa’s house feels strange, like I’ve stepped into another world. An alternate reality where things might end up being okay. Or could that be this reality?

Everyone is quiet when I enter, but somehow they still fall even more silent at the sight of me. I pull the letters from my pocket and offer the bag to Jules.

“I didn’t read them,” I say. It’s not my place. Each letter is named for someone here. Everyone except for me, because while her love for me radiates forward from the past, mine can’t echo back to her. The words looping across those pages aren’t for me.

Chase offers to drive me home, but the directions I give lead instead to Paiden’s house. He doesn’t question the unfamiliar house, merely wishes me luck before he speeds off through the rain. He wants to get back to his apartment to pour a drink and read the letter addressed to him.

I make my way up the path to Paiden’s house. With each step, I force myself to look up from my feet and take note of the garden: the violent purple of hyacinths, the pattern of raindrops against the stones of the path, the yellow-warm glow of lights pushing back against the grey through windows. I’m wrung out, hollow. The world is emptier without Lissa.

But it is still beautiful. I want to see it like she did.

At the door, I stop to inhale deeply. I whisper to myself, counting down from three.

---

<— Chapter Thirteen |  | Epilogue —>