Serene had no reply to Taylor's admission on the part of Steve. Dylan's speedy departure was more understandable by the second, and Serene wished she had her own skateboard to fly away on.
"So that guy at your house, the one who never wears shoes," Taylor's eyes fell to Serene's own feet in her habitual cheap black flip flops, "who is he, like in relation to you?"
"No one." The words seemed to come from Serene's mouth of their own accord.
"No one?" Taylor's hand covered her mouth and her blue eyes danced with humor. "Oh, I sense a sore spot," she said through her hand. A car slowed next to them, the passenger window sliding down.
"Taylor," the driver called out. She had a similar shag style like Taylor's, the look most women wore these days. “The Rachel,” Serene remembered reading once on the cover of US magazine while standing in line at Foodland to buy groceries. Rachel was a character from that TV show, Friends. She hadn't seen it yet. She rarely watched TV, mostly because her family hadn't owned one.
"Get in." The girl in the car said.
"Where you going?" Taylor asked.
"Fox Hills Mall." The driver glanced at Steve, then Serene, and frowned slightly.
Taylor turned to Steve. "Want to come?"
He shook his head, no.
She opened the door and slid in, blowing him a kiss. "I'll stop by later."
The car sped away and Steve and Serene started walking again.
"Your girlfriend?" Serene looked up at him. His anger sharpened his features, chiseling his facial muscles into protruding angles. His green eyes looked like a frost-covered Caribbean sea.
"Unfortunately, yeah."
11
Dora - February 2020
Dora had that feeling again, the squeezing feeling that she'd come to recognize as a panic attack taking shape. Her therapist had taught her how to head them off. She just needed to take some deep breaths, acknowledge what it was, and take a walk. Walking worked the best to calm frayed nerves. She and Barbara had left the tiny room that used to be her bedroom when she was Serene and went back to the living room. Too many things were happening at once. There were too many new gadgets. And there were too many new people and others who used to exist but suddenly didn't. This new reality was hers, whether she wanted it or not. A forty-year-old gay mom. Half her life had evaporated before she'd ever really had a chance to get started with it, lived by someone else.
"Are you okay?" Barbara asked.
Dora felt overly warm. Her throat muscles were rapidly constricting like a blood pressure cuff.
"I just need to get some air." She managed to say.
Barbara's perfectly defined brows drew in and she opened the front door. Dora practically ran out. Back down the cement steps and onto the sidewalk, she began to speed walk toward town, filling her lungs with a deep breath of air.
You're not dying, it's only panic, she repeated over and over to herself. Her throat began to relax and, with the next deep breath, she let out a jaw-snapping yawn, allowing her to take the full real breath of air she'd been trying to get ever since she left the house. A few people were out walking their dogs, but the streets were mainly quiet. Dora's breathing grew calmer. She slowed her pace, thinking about the time, all the time that had gone by, like she'd accidentally climbed into a time machine. That's what it was like, like one of those sci-fi novels Steve liked to read. He'd told her that her grandmother liked science fiction, too, but Serene was never able to get into sci-fi or horror stories. Mostly, a lot of sci-fi was just too out there for her to grasp. And horror was either cheesy or so scary that it gave her nightmares. But that's what things felt like now: a sci-fi story. The smartphones alone were something to marvel over. A nurse at the hospital placed Dora's phone in her hand shortly after she'd arrived.
"You'll probably want this," the nurse had said with an understanding wink.
Dora had turned over the sleek black rectangular object in a sky blue case, running her fingers over the dark screen. She'd wondered what it was exactly and why she would want it. Before Serene woke up as Dora, she hadn't even had a chance to own a cell phone. In fact, when her family lived on Maui, they were so far out in the jungle that there were no phone lines on the land. They'd had voicemail instead and would check their messages on pay phones or at a postal center in Paia called Global Services.
Dora had eventually set the phone placed in her hands by the nurse on her bedside table, picking it up a few times when it came to life with calls or texts she had no idea how to answer. When she was finally shown how the phone worked, she'd marveled at everything that could be done on it. It seemed most of what had been invented in the past twenty-four years could be accessed through her phone. Yet she couldn't seem to care about it like other people. She did not find herself reaching for it or keeping it nearby. During her stay at The Source, Dora had a hard time connecting with others because they were all on their phones—almost all the time. Even in the middle of conversations, people would strangely tap out and become immersed with their phone, looking up now and then to flash Dora a faraway smile or apologize. There was always something needing to be done on the phone. And if people weren't staring down at a phone screen, then there were small white earbuds crammed in their ears. How many times had Dora turned to ask someone something or make an off-hand comment to find the person wouldn't be able to hear her? They were
