I didn't have a solid reason for wanting to marry Jason. It certainly sounds like a good idea. I don't want any other girl to get her grubby hands on him. He's always been mine, and that alone should be enough for any reasonable person to understand.
I saw him naked once, Jason, well almost naked. He was one of the few we knew born with a fully functional appendix. I guess that makes him something of a medical freak. Still, the doctors decided to remove the tiny organ before it caused any problems.
Jason sat in a pre-op room with only a thin sheet across his lap, waiting his turn with the laser. I went in to talk to him. I wasn't supposed to be in his room, but no one stopped me. Under the exam lights, Jason's pale skin made him look like a ghost from an old slasher movie. I took my solar gloves off, kissed my fingertips, and ran them across the black incision mark the nurse drew on his side.
I could tell he was excited by my touch. I tried to sneak a peek at him, but the sheet was in the way, and the whole room had glass observation walls. With no privacy, Jason seemed anxious and fidgety. He put his hands in his lap, which pulled his sheet away from his butt cheeks, and then a nurse came in the room to take him away.
The smirk the woman wore on her mouth upset me for days. She was my rival at that moment. Much older than me, but she was going to help cut a piece out of him. I said the stupidest thing.
“I love you, and I'll be here to take you home when you're done.”
“You love me?” He asked.
“We all love you, try not to feel alone. Everyone is waiting out in the lobby.” Jason smiled at me with that tidy, regal smile he uses for the help that serves him.
This one moment of cowardliness, I have thought about many times over the years. I should have said yes, I love you. Jason was almost fifteen, and I barely turned thirteen. Anatomy class started for me a few weeks later. The first and only nude male figure I've seen was a textbook hologram. He wasn't excited to see me at all.
MONDAY
The wheel in the sky keeps on turning. An obscure quote from a musical my grandmother loved to play at full volume while she cleaned the house. It’s old, but the words were strangely relevant to me today.
I choose to forgo the allotted three days of morning and go back to school. With two tests planned, rescheduling the whole day would have been a monumental pain in the ass.
Everything was the same in the world. I don’t know what changes I expected to find when I left the house, but I expected something noteworthy. There should be some measurable impact due to my grandparent’s exit from the planet, but there wasn’t. The sacrifice they made was all for nothing. It was an outdated custom that served no purpose.
School events went along as methodically as expected. A big white cake was served at the lunch break. Two younger students also endured family celebrations over the weekend. The cake was supposed to ease our suffering or show our school community cared. I didn’t even have a monopoly on my grief. I had to share it with two other students.
There’s a public execution scheduled for this evening. Well, there’s a vote scheduled for the punishment of a criminal. These things almost always end in execution orders. The focus of the citizenry is our gene pool and how untarnished it must remain. The perfect masses can’t tolerate any human failings.
Today I can accept this arguably barbaric practice. The accused confessed to the murder of his terminally ill friend. There is no other choice left for him, but also because an execution means the town square and all the vendors will remain open long past normal closing time. Everyone alive gets invited out to the main square. We celebrate being inclusive—a town-wide pat on the back for doing our civic duty.
Jason was waiting in the parking lot to collect me after school. “Hey, you, what’s up today? More ancient customs?” I asked.
“Nope, just helping out since you won’t pull your transport license. Your father called me. Your mother hasn’t left her room all day. He and Hess are concerned. They stayed home to watch her.”
“Watch her do what? Beryl returned to work, and I went to school. I can only imagine how dramatically abandoned she’s acting. Do you think we can go anywhere but my house? I’m not equipped to deal with her full-blown crazy today.”
“Are you avoiding Hess or your mother?” The heavy transport door slid shut. The air escaping from our day suits puffed a cloud of tainted air into the cabin.
“Hess pisses me off. He of all people should not lecture anyone on commitments. He left us to go work on the Tree. He doesn’t get to make choices for me anymore.” I removed my outer gloves and tossed them on the seat next to me.
Jason shook his head. “We have a couple of choices. Your house full of crazy people who piss you off or your new house with all of my shit in it.”
“New house? What are you talking about?”
“The continuation of the long engagement customs dictates that my family prepare a suite for you to lounge in while you visit me for our supervised courtship. The staff already started redecorating the front salon as they call it.”
“No way! Shut up. I have a room in your huge spooky old house now?” I exclaimed.
“A suite. No bed, of course, we don’t want to look like a bunch of degenerates. It’s still days until your sixteenth birthday.” Jason winked and wiggled his fingers at me. I rolled my eyes and checked the power reserves on my
