by Melissa Grey
Moran pursed her lips. “Have I done anything to show myself as unworthy of respect?”
“Of course not.” Yuna wasn’t sure if she meant it. She didn’t have doubts, not the way Sash did. But Yuna always suspected that Sash wanted to have doubts. She wanted to be contrary. Yuna just wanted to make it through the day. Usually, that was good enough.
Moran hummed softly under her breath. Then, she nodded. “Then let’s move on, shall we?”
She made her way back to the blackboard, her skirt swishing against her legs as she walked.
Yuna peered down at the note Sash had thrust into her hands. Unfolding it carefully, she read what Gabe had written.
Ouch.
And then:
I like you both too. But not like that.
A life without music is not a life worth living.
The words had been inscribed on a wooden sign that had hung above the tall mirrors in her mother’s dance studio. Sash had always felt they were a bit dark for children, but now, in the complete encompassing silence of the bunker, she realized how true they were.
“Is it working now?” Sash extended her leg to poke Gabe’s thigh with her toe.
“No.” The syllable was as terse as they come. “It wasn’t working ninety seconds ago when you asked me, and it won’t be working ninety seconds from now when you inevitably ask me again.”
Yuna smirked, nibbling at the chewed end of an old ballpoint pen. The ink in the pen had long since dried up, but fiddling with writing implements was apparently such an ingrained part of human nature that the implement’s ability to write was secondary to its intended purpose. “Okay, but is it working now?”
Gabe threw a small wrench at her like it was a dart. Laughing, she ducked her face into Sash’s shoulder.
Sash’s heart leaned toward the other girl like a flower craning for the sun.
Frustrated, Gabe sat back on his heels, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t think I can get this thing to work.”
This thing was an ancient record player they’d unearthed in one of the bunker’s derelict storage boxes. The boxes were full of frivolous stuff, inessential to survival. Old comic books. Mass market paperbacks about gumshoe detectives and alien invasions and Harlequin romances. Records. Dr. Moran had sequestered those items in a corner of the bunker, locked away for when they might need to cannibalize them for spare parts: paper, stray bits of desperately outdated electronics, that sort of thing. Over the years, Sash, Yuna, and Gabe had pilfered items, one by one, and moved them to their secret place. Their hideout. Their tiny corner of their tiny world, where no one else was welcome.
It was their bunker within the bunker. A place to hide away from the rest of the world, as small as theirs was.
Drawings covered the walls in paint, layers and layers of it. For some reason, the bunker had been well stocked by its mysterious benefactor with a bevy of art supplies. Enough to last a decade. Or nearly. They’d run out of the fun colors about two years ago.
Two years, seven months, and thirteen days to be exact. Not that anyone was counting. Certainly not Sash, who felt every single one of those days like a puncture wound to the heart.
“Giving up already?” It was a mean thing to say, and she knew it. But sometimes you just had to poke the bear. For fun, naturally.
Gabe’s brows inched well above the upper rim of his glasses. “Already? I’ve been working on this for two years. Two whole years!”
“Has it been that long?” Yuna twirled a lock of Sash’s hair around her finger, seemingly oblivious to how it made Sash’s heart stutter and sing. “Time flies when you’re buried underground waiting out an apocalypse.”
Sash snorted, settling deeper into the pillows—also pilfered from other areas of the bunker. Moran didn’t seem to mind their disappearance. Things like throw pillows were luxuries, as far as the doctor was concerned. Creature comforts meant to lull you into a false sense of security, of opulence.
She glanced back down at the mending in her hands. Old socks. The toes had holes worn clean through.
There were no new clothes in the bunker. What they had now was all they were ever going to have. This one pair of socks had been repaired so many times over, it probably wasn’t even the same set of socks anymore.
Working with her hands gave her something to focus on. That’s probably why Gabe liked tinkering with things so much. It kept one’s mind off the thoughts best left untouched. The length of time they’d been in the bunker. The length of time they had left. The tons and tons of soil and gravel and rock pressing down on them. The absent sky and the metal walls.
“Who are the Russkies?” Yuna asked, idly flipping through the pages of a new comic book to their collection. It had been wedged into the back of a box deep in the storage room. How they’d missed it all this time, Sash hadn’t the foggiest.
She squinted one eye as she threaded the string through her needle. “I think they mean Russians. Babulya said the US and Russia sort of used to be at war but the Russians called themselves Soviets. Don’t really know what that means though. Americans used to call them all sorts of things. Russkies was probably one of the nicer names. Babulya still seems kind of bitter about the whole thing.” She bit back a curse as the thread jabbed impotently at the curve of the needle’s eye. “To be honest, I don’t know much about it. Mom hates when Babulya talks about it.”
Gabe scoffed, looking up from his tangle of wires. “So does Dr. Moran.”
“All I know is that there was a war and it was cold for some reason, and that’s why Babulya came here.”
Yuna flipped to the second page of her comic book. They’d all read it more times than they could count. The pages had gone as soft as silk. It had to be handled delicately or you’d run the risk of it falling apart. “Maybe it was warmer here than in Russia.”
“Yeah,” Sash said. “Probably.”
Gabe shouted in triumph, rising to stand so quickly he nearly knocked the entire contraption to the ground. Sash and Yuna both raced to grab it before it could topple off the small worktable. “I got it!”
“You said that before,” Sash mumbled, dubious.
Gabe shot her a withering look. But it was true. He had. And he’d been wrong.
“Do you think it’ll play this?” Yuna held up a record. Tiffany. I Think We’re Alone Now. On the front, a girl with feathered red hair and a light blue denim jacket—Tiffany, one could safely assume—held her hands crossed primly in front of her. Her lips were forever positioned in the most perfect of coy smirks. Like she was privy to a secret no one else knew.
“Might as well give it a whirl.” Gabe took the record from Yuna and removed it from its protective sleeve. With tremendous care, he placed the vinyl record on the machine. It began to spin.
“That’s new,” Sash remarked.
Gabe shushed her. “Don’t jinx it.”
They held their collective breath as he lowered the needle.
And then nothing happened.
No sound emanated from the device. No speakers vibrated with Tiffany’s voice.
Gabe made a frustrated, wordless noise as he tugged at his hair again.
“Keep doing that, and it’s gonna fall out,” Yuna said.
“Don’t jinx me,” Gabe said plaintively. With a sigh, he stood, his knees cracking from having been stuck in one position for so long, fighting a losing battle with a piece of technology magnitudes older than he was. “I’m going to go see if I can scrounge up some spare parts anywhere. I’m this close to fixing it.” He held up two fingers, barely an inch apart. “This close.”
Without waiting for them to say much of anything, he made his way to the hatch for their little hideout. Once Gabe got an idea into his head, that was it. Nothing else seemed to exist.
“Good luck,” Sash called over her shoulder.
“And Godspeed,” Yuna added.
Silence settled between them in Gabe’s wake.
After a while, Yuna broke it with a simple, succinct
“Bummer.”
“That about covers it,” Sash agreed, falling back to rest her head against the pillow.
Overhead, strings of crisscrossed lights twinkled dimly and irregularly.
Sort of like real stars, Sash thought. Not that she really remembered what real stars looked like. She had a vague idea. A dark blanket, strewn with pinpricks of white. But the further away the source of the memory became, the fuzzier the details grew. She remembered sensations more than anything. The crick in her neck when she looked up at the sky. The way the vast, incomprehensible span of the universe made her head hurt when she tried to think about it.
Sash leaned back, settling against the mound of blankets, Yuna a warm presence to her right.
“What do you think it’s like?” Sash asked, gazing up at their false sky. “Outside, I mean.”
Yuna fidgeted, like she couldn’t quite find a comfortable place to rest. “Like, now?”
“Yeah.”
“Moran said it was a barren wasteland,” Yuna intoned, voice flat. It was the voice she used when she was reciting something from memory. Something she didn’t quite believe but had been drilled into her anyway.
Sash rolled her eyes. “I know that’s what she said.”
“You don’t think she’s telling the truth?” Yuna asked.
“Do you?”
Yuna hesitated. Chewed on the pen. “Part of me wants to say she’s lying but …”
“But it’s kind of hard to picture anything else,” Sash supplied.
A nod from Yuna. “Do you think we’ll ever go back up there?”
“I hope so,” Sash said. “I think about it sometimes.”
What she didn’t say: The alternative is dying down here, in a coffin of metal and wires and fear.
More silence. More twinkling lights. One day, these bulbs would burn out and that would be it. There would be no more. No more fairy lights. No one left to make them. Just a sad green string with dead bulbs dangling off it.
“Do you remember Christmas?” Sash asked.
“We’re not supposed to talk about stuff like that.” The words were rote. Parroted. Yuna’s voice was devoid of even the slightest trace of conviction.
Sash propped herself up on one elbow to face Yuna. The other girl rolled over on her side, her head resting on her bent arm. “I don’t care what we’re not supposed to talk about.”
“What happens in the hideout stays in the hideout?” A tiny smile tugged at the corner of Yuna’s lips.
“Exactly.”
Memories were an illicit thing. Trading them was like dealing in illegal contraband. If caught, there would be consequences. So the trick was to never get caught.
With a small hum of consideration, Yuna rolled onto her back and stared up at the lights. “I remember the food.”
Sash’s stomach rumbled at the mere mention of something that didn’t begin its life in powdered form. She settled back against the nest of pillows, an inch or two closer to Yuna than she had been before. Yuna, for her part, didn’t seem to mind the proximity. “Tell me about it.”
“My mom used to make this amazing mung bean jelly. Cheongpomuk-muchim.”
Sash crinkled her nose. “What’s a mung bean?”
“A bean … thing. I don’t know. What I do know is that it was delicious. It came out before the rest of the meal, and one year I ate so much of it, I made myself sick and there was nothing left for our cousins when they got to the house. My mother was livid. But … Junsu told her he was the one who ate it all.”
Yuna almost never spoke her brother’s name aloud. It was on the long list of things they weren’t allowed to discuss. Memories they weren’t allowed to hold close so they didn’t lose them.
But losing a memory of a person was like living through their death all over again.
“What about you?” Yuna asked. “What do you remember about Christmas?”
Sash laced her fingers over her stomach, staring up at the lights instead of at Yuna. It was easier that way, to gaze up at their twinkling and pretend that she was somewhere else.
“I remember my dad putting up the tree. He used to do it earlier than Babulya wanted him to. She celebrated Christmas in January, I think. Something about the Russian Orthodox Church. I honestly don’t remember why. But one year, he caught me crying because all the other kids had trees and lights and tinsel everywhere and we didn’t. So he started doing it earlier. And we left the tree up late. By the time he dragged it out of the house, it was so dry, all the needles would fall off and it was like having a second carpet.”
The memory didn’t sting as much as Sash thought it would. It was a dull ache, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
“I liked the way Christmas trees smelled,” Yuna said. “I think I liked that almost as much as the food.”
Sash hummed deep in her throat. “Me too.”
After a minute passed in companionable silence, Yuna turned her head so she was facing Sash. Doing the same would have put Sash’s nose mere inches from hers.
Too dangerous. Don’t do it.
So she didn’t.
“Why do you think Dr. Moran has such a problem with us talking about Before?” Yuna asked. “Is it because it makes people sad?”
Sash shook her head, tugging at a sore spot on her chapped lips. Pulling at it always made it feel worse, but it was a compulsion she was powerless to stop. Like wondering what it was like outside. Like remembering things others wanted her to forget.
“I don’t think it’s that. I think …” She drew in a breath. Organized her thoughts. They had been formless things once, but now they were solidifying. Taking shape. “I think it’s because memories make us who we are. They define us. And Moran wants to be the one to be able to do that.”
“She means well,” Yuna said. “She’s just trying to keep us safe.”
“Do you really believe that?”
The silence that met Sash’s question was answer enough.
In a soft voice, Yuna said, “I’d like to.”
“We’ve already lost so much,” Sash said. What she didn’t say: My dad. Your brother. Every Christmas for the past ten years and every Christmas left to come. “I won’t let her take those too.”
Dr. Moran smiled at Gabe from across her cluttered desk. It wasn’t messy. Just cluttered. It was organized clutter but clutter nonetheless. Gabe’s hands twitched with the repressed urge to reach out and tidy it up. He didn’t hate much—hate was such a strong word—but he did hate clutter.
Usually, he also mildly loathed these meetings. One-on-ones, Moran called them. She did them with every denizen of the bunker on a rotating schedule. To check in, she claimed. To make sure their minds were kept as healthy as their bodies.
Humans were never meant to live like moles, Gabe thought. So fat chance of that.
These one-on-ones were more often than not an exercise in killing time for Gabe, but this time he had a plan. He had things to accomplish. Hearts and minds (well, one heart and one mind) to win.
The doctor laced her fingers together. She rested her elbows against the ink blotter that showed no sign of ever having blotted ink. “Have you had any revelations this week, Mr. Correa?”
It was always weird when she called him Mr. Correa. Mr. Correa was his dad. Gabe was just Gabe. But he preferred Mr. Correa to Gabriel at least.
Her use of the word revelation had stopped being weird a few years ago. It was a big word for the trite nonsense they covered during their talks, but it seemed to please her on some weird cosmic level, so Gabe never wasted much mental energy on it.
“As a matter of fact” was how Gabe began many of his one-on-ones, and this one was no different. “I have had a revelation.”
Moran’s eyebrows lifted. That was beyond the scope of their standard script.
“Well then, Mr. Correa. I’m all ears.”
All ears. A weird saying. Much weirder than revelations. Imagine it. An entity made entirely of ears.
Gabe shook the thought loos
e as he pulled a rolled-up, mildly squished stack of papers from his back pocket. Blueprints, covering (almost) every usable space in the bunker. It wasn’t a basement so much as an underground complex developed by a mind even more frantic about details than Gabe’s. He could spot the compulsion in every meticulously diagrammed line.
“What’s this?” Moran asked as Gabe flattened the papers atop her desk, anchoring one corner with a heavy crystal paperweight, another with a stapler (absent staples), a third with a chipped mug that read “Give Peace a Chance,” and the last with a compact but heavy tome that looked vaguely like a Bible.
“This is the bunker.”
That should have been obvious.
Moran’s eyebrows inched upward. “I can see that.”
Okay, so it was obvious.
Gabe placed his finger against one of the long vertical lines on the blueprint. “This is ventilation shaft eighty-six-C.”
“And … ?”
“And I think I can make our air-recycling system seven percent more efficient if I reroute the flow of air from eighty-six-C to thirty-seven-F here”—he traced the line to another, wider one two inches to the left (on paper; it was a lot more than two inches in real life)—“to here.”
Moran held up a hand to still his train of thought.
Rude.
“You realize this isn’t why I asked you here, don’t you, Mr. Correa?”
Gabe pushed his glasses up his nose. (They’d slid down. Again.)
Of course he did. This wasn’t what she meant by revelations. She wanted spiritual tomfoolery. The kind for which Gabe had absolutely no time.
“Yes,” he said, “but I am very passionate about not suffocating, so I thought it was worth mentioning.”
Moran frowned at the blueprint, then at Gabe. “How did we get from a seven percent improvement in efficiency to suffocation?”
And like well-herded prey, she had fallen into his trap. Holding back a satisfied grin, Gabe said, “Well, now that you asked …”
He hardly noticed when Moran tuned him out. And he only really noticed because about ten minutes into his explanation, she let her head fall forward and bonk very gently against her desk. Her voice was muffled by both the ink blotter and the nimbus of curly hair spilled around her skull. “Please. Stop. Do what you have to. Make us seven percent more efficient. Please just get out of my office.”