• • •
She found it bizarre to watch her wife do the same exercises David had done. Times tables while doing crossword puzzles, head patting and stomach rubbing, repeating phrases Val supplied while she read about something else entirely. That weird heist game, when Julie had never gone for video games.
Val hated it. “How is this better than when we used to complain about people checking their phones while holding a conversation?”
“It’s better because I’m able to pay attention completely to what you’re saying, even though I don’t look like it.” Julie didn’t look away from her tablet.
“Can we try it the other way around, then?” She knew she sounded petulant. “Can you look at me while we talk, and make the tablet think you’re ignoring it?”
Julie frowned. “These are exercises. I won’t do this to you once I’ve got the hang of it, but I’m still learning.”
Val sighed. “I know. Sorry. Back to the script. ‘Sally sells seashells by the seashore.’”
“Sally sells seashells by the seashore. I wonder how that’s going in this economy?”
“Not much market for seashells these days?”
“If there ever was.”
If she weren’t so opposed to getting a Pilot herself, she could draft her student progress reports while reciting these stupid tongue twisters. She supposed that was her own fault, or her own decision at least.
“Spoons?” Julie asked, surprising Val. She had never been the first one to suggest family games, either; she usually preferred movies.
“If you can convince the kids.”
“Oh, they’ll play. I can be persuasive.”
Whatever she said worked. First Sophie, then David, came down from their rooms, quicker than Val would have expected.
“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Sophie walked past them into the kitchen, returning with three spoons for the bare table.
“I was just thinking it’s been a while,” said Julie, watching David. “And it may be a while before we get to do something all together again.”
David winced. “I’m going back upstairs if you’re going to guilt me.”
“Stay. No guilt.” Val kissed the non-Piloted side of his head.
“I’ll deal first.” Julie held her own cards in her left hand, dealing from the deck with her right. Val, in the fourth position, had a chance to watch. Julie had an expression on her face that Val didn’t recognize, a half smile that suggested amusement. The cards passed from her to Sophie, who passed them along without looking, her eyes on the spoons, as usual. Then to David, on the edge of his seat, all concentration.
David was the first to reach for a spoon, but Julie’s hand darted out almost simultaneously, and came away faster. Sophie and Val both grabbed at the third spoon, but Val got there first.
“Wait,” said Sophie. “Who had it?”
David fanned out four sixes.
Sophie frowned. “But Mom took a spoon before you. Mom, what did you have?”
“Nothing yet. I saw David reaching, so I took a spoon, too.”
“But you took before him. You can’t take the first spoon if you don’t have the cards.”
“Fine. I’ll take the s, kid. I didn’t mean to cheat.” Julie threw her spoon back on the table.
“I didn’t think so.” Sophie accepted the win with magnanimity, scooping the cards toward her to shuffle. Julie won the next round, and David the one after, but each time, Val could swear Julie’s hand reached out quicker. There was a hitch in the movement: she reached, then pulled back, slightly, to not get there first.
That was why she’d chosen this game, Val realized: to test her new implant. Julie holding back didn’t take away from the game. Sophie still grabbed for the spoons every time, David still tried to find the winning hand, and Val still took more pleasure in watching everyone interacting with one another than in the game, which, truth be told, she found more stressful than fun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
JULIE
And just like that, David was gone. Julie blinked and the last few months with him evaporated. She had tried to savor them, to follow Val’s lead and not complain when he wanted to hang out with his friends instead of them. She played it casual, while on the inside she was screaming and clinging to him. She didn’t care what Fuentes said: David was still a boy; her boy.
She might have gone overboard. She forced him to write polite letters to the schools that had accepted him, then kept them in her purse until the last possible day to mail them, still hoping he’d change his mind.
He didn’t. If anything, he got more into the idea. He ran every day, sometimes with Val and sometimes farther and faster than her. He lifted weights in his room, EarPods blasting at obscene levels that he paradoxically said chased away some of what he called noise, while studying for final exams. Fuentes had made it clear to him he couldn’t blow off his classes, at least.
Graduation was a surreal experience. The sight of the auditorium full of boys in black caps and gowns, all with a pearl of blue above one ear, nearly bowled her over. She wondered how many of them had enlisted.
Then he was gone, leaving a David-shaped hole in their lives. They all compensated by spending more time with one another. Sophie, who had become fairly independent, asked for a night-light and refused to go to epilepsy camp that summer. It was only in August that she told them she hadn’t gone to camp because she didn’t think they were ready to be alone. They had laughed, and Sophie had been offended, and in the end Julie had to admit Sophie was right. They weren’t ready to be alone.
It was good she had the Pilot, since otherwise she would have found herself spending all of her time—time meant for work—trying to figure out anything she could about David’s unit. She was
