So if she didn’t encounter him at breakfast or dinner for a few weeks, that didn’t seem overly strange. It wasn’t like she was there for most meals, either, and they’d gone stretches before without running into each other. He’d been using the basement bathroom for several months, saying it wasn’t fair to make her share when she’d had theirs to herself for so long, so there hadn’t ever been any beard hairs in the sink for her to notice an absence.
No, the thing she noticed was the laundry. His basket had sat downstairs, unfolded, uncollected, for a month now, the same coffee-stained BNL shirt still on top. He’d have to have run out of work shirts or underwear or something, but nothing had moved, and everyone else had gone on doing laundry around it. She checked every day, not because she had to, but because she was curious. Where was he, and why was nobody talking about his absence?
She tried raising the subject at dinner one night, but the reactions were odd.
“He’s away,” Julie said. “He said he’ll be back soon.”
The way she said it reminded Sophie of when they’d evaded her questions during David’s early deployments, except this time Val looked at Julie like she was also interested in more information, and found that to be oddly short on details.
“Is it a work thing?” Sophie asked.
“I think so. He doesn’t need to tell us everything he’s doing.”
That answer won another look from Val. The whole thing was highly suspicious. Either they were lying to her, or Julie was lying to them both. Sophie wouldn’t be particularly surprised by either of those scenarios, but she was curious what would bring about the latter.
Curious enough that when she overheard them through the air vent between their bathrooms later that evening, she kept quiet and listened.
“I still don’t understand where he went that he wouldn’t be able to talk with us,” Val said.
Sophie heard water running, spit, rinse, Julie’s voice. “He said we could call, but he might not respond.”
“You know that’s weird, right? We’ve always been able to talk, other than the secret deployments.”
“I know. I don’t understand, either . . .”
Sophie waited until they left their bathroom to brush her own teeth. They’d never realized about the vent, and as long as she didn’t make any noise when they were in their bathroom, her secret was safe. And now she had new information.
• • •
She almost missed it. If she hadn’t been on the message board at the exact moment the comment came through, then vanished, she would have gone on oblivious.
After listening to her mothers argue through the air vent, she’d thought about David. Thought about the fact that he’d turned his Pilot off but left the light, which nagged at her in a way she still couldn’t understand, so she asked again if anyone else had experience with that.
Sixteen other people were active on the chat at that moment, according to the icon in the corner. The bottom of the screen said Greggg is typing, then Greggg, Gabe, and GNM are typing appeared. First, an annoying person who went by Greggg, who always had to be first to comment, but rarely had anything useful to say. He meant well, but as usual, his comment wasn’t worth reading. Then Gabe, who said something typically Gabe-smart and insightful. Only GNM is typing still, which meant either it was a long comment or she’d gotten distracted and walked away without completing the comment.
GNM usually had interesting takes on whatever subject was at hand. The chats were full of younger people, so sometimes it was nice to hear from someone with more perspective. Sophie waited to see what she had to say.
I’ve been thinking since the last time you mentioned it, GNM wrote. If you can deactivate a Pilot without turning off the light, what does the light mean?
That was Sophie’s question, too.
Another pause, then:
It means the brand is winning. Why would you turn it off if you had the option to leave it? I mean, I don’t believe in the things, but if it’s working fine there’s no reason to go and have surgery again a third time, I would think. Why wouldn’t you do it the second time while you were in there already, unless you wanted to keep the benefits but lose the noise?
Sophie froze.
The last sentence blinked from existence, then returned without the last four words.
But lose the noise. Was there anyone who talked about noise other than their family? And that specific scenario with David’s descriptor? Grandma was not who she said she was.
Sophie had moderator access to everyone’s profiles. She’d been thinking of her as “Grandma” for so long, as she’d insisted they call her, that she’d forgotten “GNM” actually stood for “Godnotmod.” When she’d originally applied for the group, she’d said she was a religious woman who didn’t believe in altering the body that God had given. Since then, she’d posted over two thousand times. As a precaution, the group didn’t archive posts older than a week, so Sophie couldn’t look back to see if she’d said anything similar before, or anything out of character.
The e-mail address didn’t give anything away, either. They insisted on real names for application purposes. Sophie couldn’t remember whether she’d been the one to approve the application, or someone else had. The name was generic: Deb Harry, from New York. Sophie remembered she’d been the one to approve the application, and that it had been irritating to verify her information, since there was an old singer by the same name. Had she given up trying? She couldn’t
