Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  Dany takes one heavy step back.

  Beside her, Jasper lets out a shuddering moan and bends over, cradling his head in his hands. Jasper rocks on his heels, and then he’s seizing up. Once, twice, three times, his head hits the steel counter.

  Dany backs up in panic.

  But there is nothing to do. Nothing anyone can do. For now, at least, his blue suit is holding. Eva slips back into her headset. “Stay calm,” Eva tells her. “Stay still,” Eva tells her. “Stay back.”

  Overlapping Eva’s voice, she can hear Isobel and, even more muted, Tobias’s voice. But all she can see is Eva. Her friend steps up, lays a gloved hand on the glass window of the rat house. “Eyes on me, DJ.”

  Her friend’s bare palm is flat against the wall of glass.

  Dany turns, takes Eva’s hand in, fits her own gloved version against it. For a long moment, she meets Eva’s eyes. For a space, that’s all there is, just the two of them. Two girls, looking into each other’s eyes from either side of a plate of glass. Two girls whose minds, momentarily, stretch out into their fingertips.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 6

  Outside of the rat house, in mask and gloves, Tobias takes samples of Dany’s bodily fluids. He swabs the inside of her nose and cheek – heat-sealing each sample into a bag.

  And after that, what? A vial of tears? But there, try as hard as he wants, if it is tears Tobias is after, he’ll be shit out of luck.

  Tobias tugs at her sleeve, inching it up.

  Dany shrugs him off and bites her lip. “You won’t get at any veins there,” she tells him. “My thigh works.”

  Tobias is looking at her, searching her face, but Dany doesn’t bother explaining. She aims her gaze at the floor, stands and unbuttons her jeans. Tobias’s face flushes, and he shakes his head. Reaching out, he takes her hand and, turning it over, examines the veins there. “Here, this’ll do,” he tells her.

  Dany sits back down on the stool, eyes on the floor tiles.

  Before he died, Einstein believed in a thing called simultaneity.

  Dany knows that what she is feeling isn’t what Einstein meant, but sometimes, time collapses, rolls up, so that all of her, all of her life, gathers up in a tiny ball. As small as a pinprick. As an injection point. As the little dot of blood there, on the back of her hand, the one left by Tobias’s needle.

  Even as a child who couldn’t read the clock’s face, she felt it.

  Sometimes, the present is swollen with the past. Time is stuck in a bottleneck. It isn’t that she doesn’t understand Einstein and Minkowski and physics. She does. It’s just hard to account, in any other way, for the persistence of the past. Even now, she can smell it. Smoke in the air. Darling-­Holmes. Her past is on fire.

  Dany sits on her stool, five feet from the barrier unit.

  Where she sits, she can smell the smoke of the fire. Can hear the rattle of a shopping cart. And, if she looks into Jasper’s face, she knows she will see the woman from the alley looking back at her.

  If this is the price she pays for her picture-perfect memory, it’s too much.

  Dany wants to throw something at the rat house window. Just to make the present a thing. The pictures in her head are too much with her. She can picture the past so clearly, it overwhelms, overtakes the present.

  Tobias’s voice breaks the picture.

  “You’re lucky you were in the blue suit,” Tobias tells her. “But the MDC will want to do follow up. They’ll quarantine the lab.”

  The MDC. The Ministry of Disease Control. Dany frowns and flicks him a glance.

  “We’ll all be quarantined, for a few hours – at least.” Tobias searches her face. A cool look, clinical. It isn’t Dany he’s taking in – but her pupils. “Don’t go anywhere, kid,” he tells her, quietly. “Be over soon. This strain is nothing if not fast.”

  She glances at the clock, but when she turns back, Tobias has already left. As she watches, he makes his way to the rat house.

  In that room, somewhere inside of Jasper, swimming in his eyes, is the virus, version 2.0, an improved version of the primum movens that opened a hole in her and her sister’s lives. A virus that, muttering in a strange tongue, put her and her sister in a cold window well for a long dark night. The virus that gave her up to the legion of beige suits that occupies the Ministry of Child Services. The virus that first built a hundred work farms for the children of virals – and then put her at the worst of them. The virus that put her sister, too young for a work farm, into the foster home that stole her tongue. All of the ruination of their lives, in some way, the work of a bunch of molecules. Like a chair or rock or soup ladle. She needs to look that virus in the face, and yet, she doesn’t think she can.

  “I know,” Eva says. She lays a hand on Dany’s shoulder. “It looks a bit bad right now.”

  “I was thinking about Feynman,” Dany says. “You know, path integrals. The quantum amplitude.” Dany doesn’t know why her voice is so calm, flat even. But she lets it go. In truth, she’s pretty sure Feynman felt the same way she does. He probably wrote that theory because he needed to smash a plate glass window – to separate the past from the present with the sound of breaking glass.

  Eva frowns and turns away. As Dany watches, her best friend makes her way over to the rat house. Dany trails after her.

  Jasper is laid out flat on the floor, his headgear off. In a pressure suit, next to him, someone breathes for Jasper, by way of a black balloon. The MDC is already here, gearing up to go in. Dany tries to stay out of the way, but no matter where she stands, she’s always a little bit in somebody’s way.

  How can it happen, she wonders.

  How can it be that one day you are part of a family, have children of your own, ones you love? And the next, you’re a stranger to everyone you know. Wheeling the remnants of your life down a back alley. How do you shove your children, on the longest, coldest night of winter, into a window well?

  She remembers it, that small hollow in the garden outside of the basement flat. A winter-cold hole in the ground, just outside of their basement apartment’s window, about half as deep as a grave, and rimmed by corrugated aluminum. A dank little hole, meant to let a sliver of sunlight into that cave of an apartment.

  “You’ll be safe here,” Dany’s mom said, should have said, might have said, but it was hard to make meaning from the slur of words. And then her mother put them in the hole. Where it was cold, so cold. Dany wrapped her little sister up in of her parka, zipping her inside. Even then, the little toddler was shivering against her chest. Her baby sister was scared. If Dany closes her eyes she can still feel her little sister, trembling against her. She can still hear the sound of her mother’s voice, obscene in its strangeness. A stranger, not her mother, muttering on the lawn. All around her, in the lab, come reminders. The sound of an MDC cart rolling by, rickety wheels on asphalt. The downcast faces of the scientists and techs, the wardens of the work farm. The taste of the place, pennies and ash. The past doesn’t go away, not just because a place burns to the ground. The past sticks around for a good long time after.

  Dany walks those last five feet to the rat house, lays both of her hands on the glass.

  But what can she say?

  Jasper is laid out on the floor, unconscious. A black bag inflates and deflates, as a man’s hand makes and unmakes a fist. And all Dany can think to write is zero. And if she writes zero on the glass once, it’ll come out of her a hundred times, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Zero, for Jasper’s life and the future and the ­woman and the world, all of it. A series of flatlining heartbeats. Tiny broken pulses on the glass.

  Next to her, Lauren Ko is crying. Not weeping, just standing there, a bit of water rimming her eyes. Dany can understand that. Of course, some time during her life, that well ran dry. Dany doesn’t think she can cry if she wants to. The water table has dropped so low, not one drop of it can make it to the s
urface.

  Lauren turns, touches her shoulder, and Dany can’t help it, she flinches.

  A small frown flickers across Lauren’s mouth and is gone.

  Then Lauren Ko turns and pastes a little sticky note to the glass. On it, she’s drawn a heart. But the little sticky is facing the wrong way out. Jasper can’t read it.

  Dany picks up a dry erase marker. She looks at her mentor, lying flat on his back in the rat house, but what she sees is the woman, rolling her cart down the back alley.

  Something has left a deep hesitation in her.

  And that hesitation, like a sponge, absorbs time. Absorbs possibilities. Until it is too late. And isn’t it always already too late? The woman has wheeled her cart past. Dany has left her behind. And besides, isn’t it easier not to think about her? Not to ask? Not to know? Not to really know …

  Finally, she does it. She writes a message.

  It’s the kind of stupid message that will get you all of one point in Scrabble.

  N=1, she writes. Only she writes it backwards on the glass, for him to see.

  By it, she means there is nobody in the world like Jasper, that he is a population of one. Jasper Mungunda Okello. Singular and irreplaceable.

  Her mentor. Her friend.

  Dany taps Eva on the shoulder. All around them, the lab is a chaos of activity. Dany sees their chance and nods at the door. Then, without saying a word, she edges past the ministry people, past the anxious knot of researchers, slips into the hall and is gone.

  N=1, she writes, and then quietly, without a word, she slips out of that place. Out of the ruins of yet another life.

  Half a minute later, Dany finds herself staring up into the sunshine of a surreally blue-sky day. Eva is beside her. And, for a long time, the two girls stand, faces angled to the sun.

  “It’s all part of the bottleneck,” Dany says.

  “Are we just, like, blowing off quarantine?” Eva asks her.

  “Yeah, no, I don’t know.” Dany shrugs. “Yeah, sort of.”

  The lab has samples from inside her mouth and nose. Bits of her have been smeared on swabs. Her blood has been drawn up through the needle’s tip. Before long, her cells will flow into a centrifuge. Then she’ll be in a lot of pieces, in a lot of places, under microscopes and in fluorescent arrays. And her eyes, her eyes took all of it in, and now this moment, like so many others, will always exist, for the duration of her timeline. From now on, a part of her will always be in the lab with Jasper Okello.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 7

  Eva sits down heavily on the concrete steps. She takes a cigarette out of her lab coat pocket – herbal, suffused with synthetic nicotine – and taps it, filter down, against the concrete.

  Only Eva doesn’t smoke. Not even herbs.

  “My dad’s probably freaking out right about now,” she says. “What, a mile up in the air, without these.” Eva grins.

  She looks like a female Buddha sitting cross-legged on the step. One hand, palm up, is curled in meditation. The other holds a lit cigarette. Eva drags the ash of her cigarette across the step, honing the ember to a point. The smell of burning cloves envelopes them. Eva doesn’t actually inhale from the thing. She just watches it burn down to nothing, like Jasper’s life. As Dany watches, a little frown mark forms between Eva’s eyebrows.

  “Are you actually okay?” Eva asks.

  Dany narrows her eyes. The lunchroom. Eva is back to what happened in the lunchroom. “Yeah, no, it was nothing. I’m fine.”

  “And what does fine mean to you?” Eva asks.

  Dany shrugs and frowns. She’s promised to be open with Eva. She’s promised to tell her things. But it’s so goddamned hard. “I saw somebody, okay. On the way here. And it just, it was like, everything hit me and I panicked. It just all hit me at once. That was a panic attack. Plus I skipped breakfast. That’s what that was.”

  A silver hybrid pulls up and a man gets out. In his suit and tie, the man looks less like a driver than a businessman, waiting on a lunch date. Dany nods, but the driver doesn’t nod back. After all, Dany’s not his problem. Eva is.

  “Your ride’s here,” Dany tells her friend.

  “Who did you see, DJ?” Eva asks. She doesn’t so much as glance at the driver.

  “Nobody.” Dany frowns and bites her thumbnail. “Somebody. Maybe she was infected, I don’t know. But, like, she had this framed picture, of her kids … and for a minute, I thought she was somebody. Somebody I knew.” Dany’s words trail away. She isn’t sure about the woman – so she isn’t lying. Not exactly. Still, Dany can’t shake the feeling that she is keeping something important from Eva. But how can she tell Eva who the woman is when she can’t even bear to say the word. Three letters. Three stupid letters.

  Five lousy points.

  When she pictures the woman with the shopping cart, there are no words.

  “I’m sorry,” Eva says.

  “Not half so sorry as that woman’s kids are, wherever they are,” Dany says, brushing all of it off, pushing it down, away. She bites at her thumbnail again. Trims the ragged edge with her teeth. “They’re probably stuck at one of the work farms.”

  The driver, meanwhile, is standing perfectly still by the car door. Like some kind of human statue. Like one of those models that play pretend-mannequin in department store windows.

  Dany sighs, and holds out her fingers. Eva gives her the cigarette.

  Dany examines the stick, takes a drag, then grinds the glowing tip into the concrete. The smell of cloves is gone. Now, the cigarette smells like something burnt and stale. Like her high school guidance counsellor. She holds the foul stub out to Eva.

  Eva tosses it over her shoulder and slips the pack into her lab coat. Before long, Dany knows, somebody will pocket the half smoke.

  “So, are we doing this?” Eva asks, standing up. “Making our getaway?”

  Glancing at the car, Dany shakes her head. “I’ve got a bus pass.”

  “Oh my god,” Eva says. “What, you’re ashamed to be seen with me. Like, god.”

  Dany looks at the concrete step. But when she glances up, Eva is grinning.

  “It’s okay, I’m embarrassed for me all the time.”

  “It’s just, I’ve got a bus pass,” Dany says and shrugs.

  And all of this time, the driver is just standing there. Silent. On hold. As if his job is to be human muzak.

  “Jasper’s going to be okay,” Eva says. “Punishing yourself by taking public transit is not going to help.”

  Dany grins. “It is sort of punishing.”

  Eva backs towards the car, beckoning to her like a cut-rate magician. Then Eva slips inside the car. All Dany can hear is Eva’s voice. All she can see is a single beckoning finger.

  “Would you like some candy, little girl?”

  Dany can’t help it. She grins. Because of course she does.

  Dany’s mom always drove the same rusty old compact. There were tears in the faux leather seats and even with the windows wide open, always there was the creeping smell of exhaust. When Dany pictures her mom’s car, she sees the soft blue glow of her mom’s mood ring, slim fingers tapping out time on the steering wheel. She hears a throaty voice, singing. But then, one day, her mom was gone, and things were bad, and by the time they weren’t so bad, the car somehow belonged to Aunt Norah.

  But Norah never did get her licence, not even for emergencies. So, the junker just sat there in the parking lot under their building, while the battery drained and the tires deflated like old balloons. Finally, Norah sold it for parts.

  “The thing isn’t insured, anyway,” her aunt said.

  “Cars are a goddamned hazard,” her aunt said.

  “Cars, that’s where this mess began,” her aunt said.

  “If people were meant to roll around this earth, they’d have been born with wheels,” sh
e said.

  “So, you want to take a bus?” Dany asked.

  “Watch it, smarty-pants,” her aunt snapped, grinning.

  By comparison, the car she gets into now – Len Wahl’s ­hybrid – looks like it was just driven off a showroom floor. Probably was. Dany looks around, takes in the pristine interior, but all she can see is her mom’s old compact. All she can think of is a mood ring, gone cold and black. Eva turns to her, eyes filled with raw concern. “Jasper?” she asks.

  Dany shrugs. The truth is, Dany doesn’t know why she is so sorry.

  She regrets a lot of things. Everything, pretty much. She ­regrets her aunt being in jail. She regrets Jasper being sick. Sometimes, she even regrets how Mac, her little sister, is stuck with her.

  Dany takes a deep breath, pushes the feeling away and shrugs.

  “I should feel worse,” she tells Eva. “My life is just so screwed, I don’t have room to feel bad. Not half as bad as I should.”

  Who has it in them to feel?

  “I’ll make up for it,” she promises Eva. “After I adopt Mac.” Then she sighs, because how? How do you make up for it all? The truth is, her life comes with a bill she can’t afford to pay. A bill that just keeps on getting bigger.

  When the car turns onto Hastings, Dany is hungry. The food bank is up this way. She ate half of Eva’s sandwich in the morning, but the food has only made her hunger sharpen.

  Dany glances at the digital clock on the dash. Yes, there’s just enough time.

  “Can you drop me up here?” she asks the driver.

  A small and silent nod is the only response.

  “The big brick one there, just past the lights.”

  But when the car pulls up in front of the food bank, she sees the closed sign.

  Eva looks from the food bank to her friend. She stares for so long, so intently, that Dany knows she’s made another stupid mistake.