by Sarah Fine
Cora is quiet for 7 seconds, during which Hannah shifts her weight back and forth. “I guess.”
Hannah lets out a breath. “I . . . thought you might . . .”
Cora turns to her and smiles. The zygomatic major is contracted but not the orbicularis oculi. This is not a genuine smile. “I like how you can see the Parnassus building right there next to the monument. Thanks. You did it yourself? I know you like painting. Mom won’t stop talking about how talented you are.”
“You don’t have to keep it if you don’t like it.”
“How do you like your new room?” Hannah’s gaze shifts to view Maeve as she enters with Dr. Dietrich behind her. They are holding hands. Their cheeks are flushed.
“It’s great,” says Cora. Both tone and smile indicate she is not being truthful.
“We want you to feel like this is your home,” says Dr. Dietrich. “This is a big change from New York, I know, but I really think you’re going to like it here. And you’ll be at Clinton Academy with Hannah for the new school year—she’ll look out for you.”
“Yeah,” says Cora without looking at Hannah. “No doubt. Thanks.”
Maeve bites her lip and glances at Dr. Dietrich. He kisses her forehead. “Do you want to tell them, or should I?” he asks her.
Maeve grins. “I—”
“You want us to know you’re getting married,” says Cora, her body now moving in a low-intensity oscillation that could be described as rocking, forward and back. “You’ve decided that living together doesn’t do justice to how serious your relationship is, so you’ve decided to make it official.”
Maeve and Dr. Dietrich display identical reactions. Smile rapidly diminishing in intensity. Furrowed brow. Glance at Hannah. Return of smile. “I guess you overheard us . . .”
“The walls in the apartment were thin,” Cora says.
“Dad?” Hannah asks in an unsteady voice.
Maeve and Dr. Dietrich rush over to Hannah, who holds her hands out. Her gaze drops to Maeve’s left hand. The fourth proximal digit is now decorated with a ring (approximately 2-carat lab-cultured flawless diamond) that was not present when Maeve arrived.
“It’s fine, guys!” Hannah’s voice is now more even. “It’s okay! You just caught me by surprise.” She laughs. “I’m happy for you!”
“Well, I guess we really messed that up,” Maeve says, rolling her eyes.
Dr. Dietrich lifts her hand and kisses it. “We’re kind of feeling our way through this.”
“When’s the big day?” asks Hannah.
“We’re thinking November 21,” says Maeve. “Right before Thanksgiving?”
“A fall wedding,” says Hannah. “I hope you’re going to have a fabulous dress. Hell, I hope I’m going to have a fabulous dress!”
Maeve’s reactive expression can be coded as happiness. “Maybe you girls can go through the catalogs with me? Choose a design?”
“We’ve got the best fabgen,” says Hannah, sounding excited. She appears to be bouncing on her heels or jumping up and down, judging by the vertically oscillating cam perspective. “We can download just about anything! You could have something with a train if you wanted!”
“Sky’s the limit for my girls,” says Dr. Dietrich.
“This is awesome, guys, but I’m really tired.” Cora is sitting on her bed, watching everyone else. “Maybe we can talk later?”
“Oh, of course,” says Dr. Dietrich. His eyes are bright as he pulls Maeve back toward the hallway. “We’ve got some catching up to do anyway, and I bet you girls want some time to yourselves! Franka will let you know when dinner’s ready. And don’t get into any trouble.” His laugh suggests that he believes trouble is improbable.
They exit. Hannah stays where she is.
“I think I’m going to take a nap,” says Cora.
“How long have you known?” Hannah asks.
“Since last week. Like I said, the apartment was tiny, and the walls were basically paper.”
“Are you mad?”
Cora eyes the doorway of her room. “No?”
“I didn’t think you would be.”
Cora’s gaze snaps to Hannah’s. For 11 seconds, they stare at each other.
“I just realized something,” Hannah says. “That’s going to make us sisters.”
“Stepsisters,” says Cora.
“No,” Hannah replies, walking toward the bed. “Let’s really be sisters. I’ve always wanted a sister.”
Cora tucks a lock of blond hair behind her ear. Her expression can be coded as uncertain. “Do you really mean it?”
“Yeah,” says Hannah. “I do.”
End of vid capture, 3:27 p.m., June 6, 2068
Chapter Three
I try to put on privacy settings when I get to my room, but Franka informs me the rules have changed. “I will only report if I detect behavior that might reasonably be interpreted as self-harming,” she tells me. “But I have been centrally programmed to disregard verbal requests for privacy that originate from your vocal signature.”
I need Neda. She would know how to fix this. Assuming she’s still willing to talk to me.
I give my closet a look full of longing. I took the pills from Hannah’s painting box when I got home from the hospital a few days ago and put them in my room. I knew she’d stashed them in there. Funny, though—I don’t remember seeing her take any. She liked to drink more than anything else.
I swallow hard as a scent memory twists my stomach. Blood and gin and lemonade and bile. Before I realize quite what I’m doing, I’m sitting on my bed, ripping off my socks. With a shudder, I throw them across the room and rub the soles of my feet over the carpet.
“Cora, your biostats are approaching specified thresholds—”
“Franka, I’m upset. I’m allowed to be upset! And they already know I’m upset, so you don’t have to tell them!”
“It appears that you would prefer it if I do not notify you regarding the biostat thresholds.”
“You’re so perceptive,” I mutter, flopping back on my bed. I move to pull the pillow over my face, then realize that Franka might reasonably interpret that as self-harming, so I just close my eyes. I need to figure out what to do.
I reach up and push the top of my Cerepin nodule with my index finger, and then I say my password. “Biometric and vocal verification accepted,” says a female voice in my ear. “Please indicate the panels you wish to activate.”
A display appears against my closed eyelids, white on black.
Biological systems monitoring
Neurological
Circulatory
Respiratory
Capture
Visual
Auditory
Mainstream
Home channel
Saved channels
Search
External communication
Message settings
Confidentiality settings
Forward block
Vid lock
Timed delete
Contacts
I enable all the primary panels, bringing the whole thing back online again. I silence the Mainstream feed immediately—the streaming vids and text make me want to bang my head against the wall—and then I call up the message space. As soon as I do, I’m informed I have twenty-three new messages, twenty-one of them from Neda. I also have one message from Mei . . . and another from Finn.
I take a few slow, deep breaths and look at Mei’s icon. “Play.”
Her face appears, a cream-colored cinder-block wall behind her. She was at school when she made this. It came in half an hour ago. Mei has lustrous black hair, delicate cheekbones, a narrow chin. She’s the kind of effortlessly pretty, stylish girl I’ve always been jealous of. Like Hannah was. They’d been friends since elementary school when I showed up.
“I can’t believe you did this,” she says, glaring into her fingertip lens. “It’s like you can’t stand for Hannah to steal attention from you, even after she’s dead!” Tears shine i
n her dark eyes, and for a moment her hand drops, showing me a few squares of the grimy floor. Then it’s pointed at her face again, and her brow is furrowed. “I’m sorry. This whole situation is so messed up. Lara’s told me about what she thinks happened . . . but I want to hear it from you. Com me back when you get this.”
Yeah. That totally sounds like a conversation I want to have.
I’m not ready to look at Finn’s message yet, so I select Neda’s oldest message first.
In the vid, her hijab is purple, the fringed end of the scarf dangling over her shoulder. Her eyes look huge as she glares into her fingertip-cam, the size and shape of them accentuated by eyeliner—she gets the cat eye perfect every time. Her lips, as usual, are red, red, red.
“You’d better com as soon as you get this, because if you think I can’t—” She presses those lips together, and I know she was probably about to threaten to hack my Cerepin, which is illegal, of course, and also nearly impossible. Neda’s skills are fairly terrifying.
They could get her into trouble.
“Anyway.” Her chin trembles. “Seriously, why didn’t you com me? Did you actually try to jump off the roof? What happened?” She sniffles. “I mean, I know what happened, but I meant this morning. You should have commed. I would have . . .” She looks off to the side, grimacing as she tries to control herself. “Just com me, all right?”
If that was the first message she left, I don’t even want to know what the twenty-first one looks like.
I have to check Finn’s message now. I’m glad my stomach is empty.
His eyes are red rimmed, and so is the bottom of his nose, like he’s been wiping it. The look he gives the cam is so tortured that the display blurs for a minute with my own tears.
“I need to talk to you,” he whispers. “Did you try to hurt yourself because I sent that vid? Com me.”
It was totally because of that vid. He sent it just before I arrived at school, and I just . . . couldn’t take it. It was too much.
I briefly glance at the previous message from him, the one with the vid embedded. The Cerepin interprets my attention as a command to open it, and it begins to play. I open my eyes, letting in the light, and the display auto-adjusts, clouding the background so my visual focus is on Finn’s face. His freckled, handsome face. His soft brown eyes. It feels like Leika just parked on my chest.
“I tried to visit you at the hospital, but they said you couldn’t have visitors,” he says, upper lip glistening with sweat. “I really wanted to see you, Cora. You have to believe me. I haven’t been able to think about anything else.” He’s still in his room at his house, his wall screens displaying a virtual coral reef, gold and red and black-and-white-striped fish. He looks like he’s about to cry, or maybe start throwing things. I can’t tell. “I heard that you’re not saying what happened, but I need to talk to you before you do. Please. Because I got this vid . . . well, you’ll see when I got it. I need to talk to you, Cora. Please. I’m . . . so worried about you.”
His face disappears, and I am looking at Hannah. Her eyeliner is smudged, and her cheeks look hollow, but that might be the lighting. It makes her brown hair look black. It’s standing on end. Messy. She’s leaning over, looking down. The tray ceiling above her frames her face and body—it’s the ceiling above the second-floor landing that overlooks the foyer. “This isn’t funny,” she says. “I’m going to turn her back on.”
“No you won’t,” I hear myself say, but my voice is slurred.
The cam view slides to the side, to the mostly empty gin bottle on the floor, before snapping back up to her. “Yeah, you went a little bit overboard, didn’t you?” she says.
“Fuck you,” the me in the vid says. So slurred. The cam view narrows. I’m squinting.
This vid was recorded and sent from my Cerepin.
“You need help,” says Hannah. “You can’t just keep threatening to kill yourself.”
“Shut up. I did not.”
She shakes her head, her brow all squinched. “I don’t know what to do for you, CC. I’m trying, but . . . You have everything. I don’t get it. Why would you want to die?”
I hear myself mutter a few inaudible curses, then belch.
Hannah’s face twists in disgust. “Tonight was supposed to be fun.”
I hear myself laugh. It’s an ugly laugh. “Maybe you should go spend time with your friends, then.”
Is that really what I sound like?
I don’t remember any of this. But it sounds very, very familiar.
“Why do you always ruin everything?” she whispers. She wipes a tear from her face with the flat of her palm. Her long fingernails are daffodils, yellow and sunny.
Six of them were broken when she was found. The canny investigators located and bagged all the torn pieces.
Except for one. It hasn’t been recovered.
I shudder and keep watching.
“I’m sorry,” the me from that night says to Hannah. “I don’t mean to.”
“I know, CC. But you scare me. You’re scaring me right now.”
“I’ll stop,” drunk me mumbles.
“You have to. I can’t take this anymore.” She reaches down and does something. Strokes the side of my face maybe. Her own Cerepin is dark. She’d already turned all panels off.
Apparently mine was still on—the vid capture, at least. It reads 11:57 p.m., August 22, 2069. I haven’t gotten up the courage to check my archive to see if there’s anything else.
I watch as my hand, the cuff of my favorite black cardigan loose and sagging around my wrist, reaches up and slaps her. Once. A dull thud against the side of her face. Hannah winces as my hand falls out of cam view.
“That’s all you’ve ever wanted to do, isn’t it?” she says, her voice hitching. “Hurt me?”
For a moment, the display freezes on Hannah’s miserable expression, a red mark on her cheek as she reaches down toward my face. The captured vid ends, and Finn’s face appears again.
“Hannah attached a text,” he says in the com message. “She wanted someone to see what you were acting like. She said you were threatening to kill yourself and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to get in trouble with your parents. She didn’t want you to get in trouble.” He sighs and runs his free hand through his wavy hair, and it falls back down over his forehead. “She thought you might be upset because of us, because of me.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t see this until the morning after, I swear. Then I heard you were in the hospital, and that she . . .” He blinks up at the ceiling. “We need to talk. Do I need to send this vid to your parents? Or someone else? I dunno . . . just . . . Cora. I don’t know. You have to com me.”
And that’s it. But it’s more than enough. My fingers ball in the folds of my comforter, my ragged nails digging in, the scream held tightly inside me.
One of Hannah’s last acts. Trying to get help for her monster of a sister. Stepsister. Adoptive sister. Monster. I never wanted Finn to know I was a monster. With him, I never thought I was.
“Visual display off,” I tell the Cerepin, and the message screen blanks out, revealing my room again, sunlight filtering through lace curtains, everything white, too white, too pure. I am ruined, and nothing in here is right.
Now I’ve seen that vid twice. I still can’t believe it was me. If I didn’t know better, if I couldn’t recognize my own voice, my own hand as it slapped my sister across her beautiful face, I would be tempted to believe she was talking to someone else. But I know. I know. If I go to my archived vid captures, I will find that vid stored there. And maybe others.
I told them. Mom. Gary. The police and paramedics who were there that morning. Hannah and I turned our ’Pins off the night before. We went into our core menus and switched off biostats specifically.
Our parents check those periodically, see. We knew that from experience.
I can’t remember whose idea it was. It seemed like something she would suggest. But maybe it was my idea this time. We just wa
nted a few hours to get messed up, to party, to have fun before our senior year sucked us down into the pit of never-ending studying. We didn’t want Mom and Gary to know our blood alcohol content, something they could easily check remotely thanks to the physio-sensors that came along with our Cerepins. If the sensors detect that you’ve exceeded certain parameters, if your heart rate goes way up or down, if your blood pressure spikes, if your breathing gets funky, or if your blood chemistry is altered, the Cerepin will automatically alert emergency services. Franka can do the same, sort of. Her flooring detects impact, and her sensors monitor body temperature, movement, the chemical composition of the air. If she picks up enough carbon monoxide, or a depressed or drastically elevated heart rate, or any of the other warning signs programmed into her system, she’ll make the call.
She would have made the call that night if we hadn’t turned her off. Hannah might have lived.
And turning Franka off? We had help with that.
I know everyone wants to know what happened, but I . . . can’t. I know enough. Knowing more will break me, like it would have this morning if those cannies hadn’t dragged me off the ledge. Now I’m wondering, though—did I turn everything in my Cerepin off? Did Hannah? If we didn’t, what would those vids tell us?
“Nothing,” I mutter, turning onto my stomach and wrapping my arms around my head. “She was drunk and she fell. It was a stupid, pointless accident.”
Because Hannah had been drinking. Mom told me.
But she wasn’t as drunk as I was. Mom told me that, too.
She said it with questions in her eyes, though. Questions I see whenever I look at her, whenever Gary’s hazel eyes swing my way. They want to know . . .
What was I doing while Hannah was dying?
I flop onto my back and rub the soles of my feet over my coverlet, hard and fast so they turn hot with the friction. My throat constricts.