“But everyone will wonder wh—”
“No, Lila,” he cut me off with a soothing rush, “they will not. No one will remember anything but the details that coincide with the fiction she chooses. She herself will not remember. We are not unkind.” His wry smile was followed by a deep sigh. “Indifferent, but not unkind.”
“But how . . . ?”
“Electrical impulses can be redirected and modulated.” He let go of one of my hands to trace the air near my temple. “In the human brain, this translates into altered memories and percept—”
I struck his hand away. “Don’t you dare! Is that what your servants . . . ? Are you going to do that to me? To Eileen?” I shoved his chest and tried to pull my other hand free.
“Only if you ask it of me! But I must leave so that Servants do not find you before I can explain to my family.”
I stopped struggling. “Are the others really your family?” My heart faltered at that, at the sympathy I didn’t want to feel. He had to go against his family for us?
“They . . . ” He cringed lower into his crouch. “I cannot say anymore now. I need to go . . . ”
“But go where?” My exasperation was just as intense as my anger had been. “Sal, this is all crazy, you do realize that, right? There’s a hurricane out there! Do you have a spaceship hiding in your pocket or something?”
He surprised me with a harsh laugh, “Ha! It is in every cell of my body!”
“What? I don’t . . . Oh-oww!” He’d squeezed his eyes shut and his fingers twisted my flesh against the bone. I wrenched myself free and threw my arms around his neck, grabbing fistfuls of hair. “Look at me, damn it!” I yanked with both hands and his eyes popped open. The irises were cold crystals, sharp and piercing like the first time I’d met him.
“I must leave now.” He stood, pulling me with him, giving instructions in a dead monotone. “Be mindful. Be discreet. I will do what I—”
“No! You have to tell me more! Stay! Pl—”
His mouth came down against mine, hard, and lightning cracked in the room.
There Is No Calm after a Storm
Gone?
My hands convulsed around a clutch of hot fabric and my nostrils flared at the scouring burn of ozone. Willing my spastic fingers to stretch and release took effort, and stinging threads twined around my fingertips like coils of heated wire. My whole body was trembling, vibrating, and my lips burned—but it was my eyes that worried me.
The door creaked open, but I could only see Sal’s vivid yellow afterimage.
“Mom!”
Eileen’s arms enveloped my waist, and I pressed my face into her cool, soft curls. “I’m f-fine . . . p-promise.”
I kept my eyes closed while she guided me to the edge of the mattress and pulled her next to me as I sank down. Pebbles wriggled onto our laps, awkwardly straddling both of us as if determined to show she loved us as much as Sal.
Sal. I opened my eyes again, blinking around his scalded neon ghost, looking for him though I knew he wasn’t there.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?”
“I’m okay, sweetie. Just need another sec.” I smiled in the direction of her voice and squeezed her hand. My muscles worked again at least.
Gradually, my eyes adjusted, and I distinguished the shape of the dresser from the wall, and then the texture of my sweat pants from Pebble’s fur. Certain I could see again, I turned to my worried daughter and lifted her chin. Her brown eyes were beautiful and warm with tiny flecks of gold I’d never noticed.
“There you are.” I dotted her nose with my fingertip, but she didn’t relax. “I’m really fine, honey. I promise.”
“But what happened? I heard—” she scowled, “Okay, I listened—but I had to! Where’d he go?”
“Baby, I . . . he’s with his . . . people, I guess. The other ones.”
“What was that noise?”
“I’m not really sure . . . ”
“His spaceship was in his body? That’s crazy!”
“Sweetheart, I really, really don’t know.” Anything. Pebbles twisted her head to blink up at me. “I felt an electric shock, I think . . . ? And there was a flash of—”
“I saw that under the door!” She frowned and leaned closer. “Your mouth is puffy.”
Did he . . . ? I touched my lips, then my cheeks and forehead. “My whole face felt tingly. And all I could see was an afterimage . . . that’s when you came in.”
She nodded—trying to process it all, I imagined—but beneath the worry and confusion I expected, there was something else.
“What is it, Leeni?” I tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “Don’t be scared, sweetheart.”
She pulled back and grumped, “I’m not scared! Why didn’t you tell me it was about Cara’s baby? I saw . . . I mean, I knew . . . oh, nevermind!”
“Honey. As much as you hate to hear this, you are thirteen.” Her hands clenched the edge of the bed and I knelt in front of her to work them free. “I’d have been a bad mother to tell you anything! Besides, I didn’t know anything!”
“They’re going to take the baby!”
“I really don’t know anything more than what you heard.”
“You do! I can tell!”
“No, hon . . . I mean . . . it’s sort of private between Adam and Cara and—”
“Well, you could’ve told me something! You kept making me guess!”
“Hey. Don’t even go there. I didn’t make you do anything.” Her pout was over-the-top, and I relented. “Look. There’s no mom rulebook. Or a kid one. And whatever all this is, it’s first and foremost a reminder that you and me gotta stick together. We’re all we’ve got.”
“And Adam.” I tried to pull her into a hug but she pushed back. “Are those his clothes?”
“What?”
She pointed behind me to the pile on the floor.
