The meeting wrapped, and Sophie pulled out her supplies: paper, pens, envelopes. She was always prepared. In a million years, she doubted if anyone in her family would have guessed she could be this good at something. David had never done anything like this. He’d gone off to be a different kind of leader, in a different kind of war, but he’d always been expected to do great things.
Oh, her parents had told her she could be anything she wanted to be, do anything she wanted, but reality hadn’t been as kind. High school had been agony. She had been teased and bullied by students, berated by teachers. Even if she’d finished high school instead of dropping out and getting her GED, she wasn’t sure she would’ve gotten into college, or gone. She wasn’t stupid, but she’d had enough of being left behind when she couldn’t learn what they wanted her to learn at the speed they wanted her to learn it.
It hadn’t been until Gabe introduced her to the movement that she felt truly at home. A growing community of the Pilot-less, people who thought for themselves and acted for themselves and looked you fully in the eye when they talked to you. She had jumped in and they had embraced her.
They didn’t even care about her seizures. Some of them had seizures too, or autism, or other neurodiversities that rendered them somehow unfit for society’s new standard. Others had simply rejected the concept, either out of political or personal or religious belief. They didn’t judge.
She wished her mothers understood how much it meant to her. They said they did, but they didn’t. Julie especially, now that she was one of the zombies. She still couldn’t believe her own mother had betrayed her like that. At least Val would never get one, even if she didn’t speak out against them, either.
Maybe if they saw the way Sophie was treated here, the deference she was given, the responsibility; maybe then Sophie’s family would treat her like an adult. She could handle herself. She had handled herself on the bus today, she’d gotten through the seizure and the daze afterward without doing anything too regrettable. They had to trust her sooner or later, so they might as well get used to it now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
JULIE
Three days passed before Sophie came home, during which time Julie cleaned the house and completed four work projects early. She puttered on the military mom site and the Pilot action site and was relieved to find her daughter hard at work on several new calls to arms, proof she was alive and safe. GNM chatted up a storm with her fearless leader.
I wish just one person in Congress seemed willing to stick their neck out for non-Piloted people, Sophie wrote. If we had someone with power to ask our questions, we wouldn’t have to waste so much time on trying to get their attention.
What about Griffith? Julie wrote, then erased before hitting send. Too risky, especially if her fake persona wasn’t American, and anyway, was it even true? Her job was to follow up on constituent issues, but she wasn’t sure what he’d say if she came to him with this one, given the district jobs BNL brought.
Instead, she wrote, It figures that they all finally find common ground on something and it’s this. Here in Canada, too.
Blame Canada, some rando responded. It wasn’t a private conversation, but Julie still got annoyed at the interruption. Sophie didn’t get the movie reference, and went off on how it wasn’t Canada’s fault the US was exporting bad ideas, and the conversation moved on without her.
On the third night, Julie got irredeemably, irrefutably hammered, finishing an entire bottle of sauvignon blanc on her own, to Val’s single IPA. She tended not to sleep on nights that Sophie was out, and the more nights Sophie strung together, the more strung out Julie became. The drinks had been Val’s idea, and Julie approved all through the pleasant stages, the exuberance and the expansiveness and the warmth. She went to bed before her body discovered her betrayal.
The next morning, said body informed her it was fully aware, and what’s more, it did not appreciate her effort. Her head pounded to a beat that pulsed behind her right eyeball. Her Pilot was a megaphone pointed her way, sound and light churning her organs. She put her pillow over her face to block the sun.
“Oh Lord, Mom, are you hungover?” The words were dipped in an elegant combination of teenage indignation and disgust. Julie lifted one corner of her pillow to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Sophie stood over the bed, hands on her hips. She was so damn pointy, from her elbows to her words, but she was home. Julie struggled to a seated position, swinging her legs out of bed. Mistake. Her stomach took a moment to catch up with the movement and protested having been left behind. Sophie would never forgive her if Julie puked on her shoes.
“I can’t believe you lecture me on responsibility.”
Julie groaned and staggered to the bathroom. She closed the door and found her voice. “It’s not irresponsible for an adult to get drunk in her own home. Regrettable, but not irresponsible.”
She practically heard the eye roll through the door. Don’t leave again, she prayed. I’m not lecturing. You started it. She opened the toilet and vomited.
Once she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face and tried to make peace with the world, Julie stepped back out into the bedroom. Sophie had disappeared—who would want to hang around listening to her mother puke?—but the door hadn’t slammed, and she was hopeful.
She located her daughter in the kitchen scrambling eggs, and resisted offering to help; Sophie would accuse her of being controlling. Instead, she poured coffee from the pot Val had started before her run, then pulled three whole-grain English muffins
