“Okay.”
Sometimes answering “okay” meant she had to answer follow-up questions, but Ma just kissed her on the head. That meant she was free to go upstairs. She surprised herself by lingering.
“She did it, huh?” Sophie looked over at the sleeping figure on the couch. Ma looked over, too, and nodded.
“Just like you said she would,” Sophie said.
Ma turned up one corner of her mouth. “I didn’t know you remembered that.”
“I remember it exactly. You said everyone was going to have a Pilot except you and me, and we would be okay without them, even when everyone else has them.”
Ma pulled the elastic from her hair, then smoothed it back and redid her ponytail. “That’s exactly what I said. Did you believe me?”
Sophie shrugged. “I didn’t understand what you meant when you said it.”
“But now you do.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“I still believe it, Soph. It’ll be okay.”
“I know.”
“You and me, right?”
“Right.” Sophie hugged her ma, then headed upstairs. At the top she turned and looked back. Ma still stood in the same place, looking at Mom. Maybe she saw the blood spots, too.
CHAPTER TWENTY
VAL
Julie didn’t suffer the same foreboding that had plagued David in the month between Pilot installation and activation. If anything, Val thought she looked impatient. Val, meanwhile, found herself trying to savor the days. She tried not to think of them as leading to some cliff, some unscalable before and after. David’s personality hadn’t changed; she had no reason to think Julie wouldn’t still be her Julie.
And yet she still found herself running extra miles in the morning, trying to excavate some new pit in her stomach. She climbed back into bed after showering, taking extra time to wrap herself in her wife’s familiar body. When they reached for each other that night, she tried not to acknowledge her fear that she’d never have Julie’s undivided attention again.
“You’re somewhere else,” Julie said, running her fingertips over the curve of Val’s hip. Irony of ironies. Then, because Julie always knew what she was thinking: “You know, the Pilot will make me more able to focus, not less.”
“I know—sorry. I’m here, I promise. Let me show you.”
She didn’t want anything to change.
• • •
She took an afternoon off to drive Julie to her activation. She had been there for David’s installation but not his activation, so she didn’t know what to expect. The same waiting room, the same current magazines, the same strange fresh-baked-cookie smell.
“Do you want me to go in with you?” she asked, eyeing the same mahogany door.
Julie shook her head. “I don’t think so. You’ll make me nervous. Remember our first date?”
Val laughed despite herself. The thing they called their first date had started out as a trip to a county fair with a group of mutual friends. They’d been flirting all night, with Julie daring Val to go on rides Val thought looked too rickety to be safe, and to try the deep-fried beer, which she hated and drowned in regular beer. It had taken Val the entire night to find something Julie didn’t want to do: the House of Horror.
“I don’t like being scared,” she’d said. “I get jumpy when I’m nervous.”
“Chicken!” Finally, Val had a way to turn the cute girl’s taunting around. A Tilt-A-Whirl with a loose bolt could kill you, and what if it had been damaged on the ride from one fair to the next, but haunted houses were a place to let go of your worries, to erase and replace them with a delicious mindless terror divorced from real life.
Except Val was standing too close behind Julie when some carny in a Leatherface costume stepped from the shadows, and Julie, as promised, jumped. Her head collided with Val’s lip, which collided with Val’s front tooth. Blood everywhere, real blood, which made Leatherface faint, and the House of Horror had to be closed temporarily to hose off the real blood. Lips and scalps both bleed an awful lot.
Julie drove them to the emergency room—they told their friends not to waste their evening going with them—and they each got seven stitches, which they both thought was a lucky number despite the circumstances. They’d since been in hospitals together far more than they’d expected, far more than they’d have preferred, but the family joke was not to make Julie nervous.
Julie looked at the door, and Val turned her face to hide the tears. This was the last time Val could hope Julie didn’t notice her tears. She already had trouble hiding her feelings; now she wouldn’t be more obvious, but Julie would be more observant. Either way. Before and after. Val leaned over and kissed her, trying not to think this was the last Before kiss.
• • •
She couldn’t point to anything different on the way home. Julie looked out the window, backseat driving from the passenger seat. That was usual. Julie chatted with her, her hand occasionally drifting up to touch the spot above her ear. That was usual for this past month, though it always reminded Val of when David had first gotten his Pilot. If anything was different, it was that Julie was a little extra talkative, overanimated.
“Do you feel different?” Val asked.
“Yes. More awake? Alert. Like some people describe too much coffee, but not in a bad way.” Caffeine never affected Julie.
“Is it like David says? Noisy?”
Julie closed her eyes like she was consulting something inside her own head. “No. I wouldn’t use that word.”
Val took a deep breath. “Do you still love me?” She meant this to sound lighthearted, but as it came out of her mouth it sounded scared to her own ears.
She glanced over at Julie, who frowned. “Of course I still love you. You know this could never change that.”
“Sorry. I know I’m being silly.”
Julie took her hand and held it until Val needed it to make the turn onto their street. She felt foolish for it, but the fear didn’t dissipate. There was
