Suicide Club

by Rachel Heng

  Lea peeked out from behind the cabinet. Jiang and Natalie stood, heads huddled, by the reception desk. Natalie was speaking now, in a low, urgent voice that Lea couldn’t make out. As she spoke, she chopped the air with her hands. Jiang was nodding, slowly, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger. Then he clapped one arm around her shoulder.

  “Exciting times,” he said. “The Third Wave. Who knows, we might be about to witness a historic moment,” he boomed.

  Natalie smiled. It was a smug, self-satisfied smile, but it was also more than that. Suddenly Lea realized what it was—Jiang was deferring to her.

  As they went into Jiang’s office, Lea crossed her arms across her chest and leaned her cheek against the cool gray metal of the filing cabinet. She remembered now—Natalie’s husband was a politician, high up in the Ministry.

  The Third Wave. So it was true.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to drive Uju’s voice out of her head, trying to think straight. She would not make it, she knew. Not while she was on the Observation List, not while Todd was reporting on her strange disappearances, not after she had threatened Todd with a broken glass. Not while she was hiding her father.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Wonderful of you to join us,” George said, tapping a note into his tab.

  Lea nodded curtly. She had already missed one WeCovery session, citing work as a reason. The next day, the Observers showed up again at her office, where they spent the entire day interviewing her colleagues about whether Lea was contravening MaxWork guidelines. Jiang had been furious and ordered her to abide by a strict nine-to-five schedule.

  Lea was exhausted. She hadn’t been sleeping well since the party, and after she’d overheard Jiang and Natalie talking about the Third Wave, it had gotten even worse.

  But most of all, she hadn’t wanted to come because of Anja. Lea wanted to hate her. She wanted to feel angry for having let Anja into her home, for having told her about her past. She wanted to feel that Anja had used her, for the music, maybe for a place to stay, for who knew what kind of trouble she was mixed up in? Perhaps she, too, was on the run; perhaps she had lied, didn’t really have a place of her own but spent her days hopping from one oblivious soul’s couch to the next. She wanted to hate Anja for agreeing to help her father kill himself.

  But when Lea finally looked at her, all she felt was the same hollowness she’d been carrying around with her ever since the party. Anja was sitting next to George, her hair tucked neatly behind her ears. Lea studied her face, but her eyes were as mute as ever, her cheeks as drawn and sallow. She did not look like the newly crowned leader of an underground activist group. She did not look like the woman who would be responsible for the death of Lea’s father.

  * * *

  The WeCovery sessions had gotten repetitive. Lea realized, by now, that George had a limited arsenal of “exercises” and would cycle through them as the weeks went by. That week, they were doing Gratitude yet again, George typing away on his tab, giving little imperious grunts from time to time as the group spoke. Most of them said the same things they had said last time.

  Lea studied their faces. Under her gaze, George’s self-importance resolved itself into self-preservation, Susan’s chirpiness into obscene parody. Lea began to feel a prickling of sympathy for the members of the group. Perhaps, like Anja, they were only people trying their best.

  “And you, Lea?” George asked. It was her turn.

  They were all looking at her. Something in her was churning, tumbling, flipping over.

  “Can I ask you a question, George?” she said. She went on, without waiting for an answer: “Why do you do this? WeCovery, reporting—why do you do any of it?”

  George froze. A chill spread across his features, closing him off, withdrawing into the large, meaty hunk of his body.

  “Do you think they’ll take you off the List?” Lea pressed on. “Does anyone know anything about this List? Who decides who goes on it? The same algorithms that dispense lifespan adjustments?” She glanced around the room. No one would meet her eye, not even Anja.

  “Now, Lea,” George said, a warning in his voice. “I know you’re going through a difficult time. Everyone here is. But there’s no point being petulant about it, is there?”

  Lea locked eyes with George. This time she didn’t see the sagging cheeks, the oily pores, the rounded shoulders under the loosening seams of a badly cut jacket. She saw the aggressive glint in his eyes behind the tortoiseshell glasses, the faint tremor of his fleshy lip, the sweat stains in the creases of his shirtsleeves. She heard the threat behind the entreaty in his voice. But what was it, really? What did he have to threaten her with?

  She felt a sudden rush of recklessness. Lea went on: “What do you think? That if we keep doing this, keep meeting here every week, talk about the same things over and over again, we’ll somehow be different people? We’ll be given our lives back?”

  “Lea…” George started.

  “She has a point,” Ambrose said, so quietly that Lea thought she had imagined it. But the others were all looking at him too.

  George snapped around to face Ambrose, flushing a deep purple.

  “What was that, Ambrose?” George said. The tremor in his lip was gone, and his eyes were hard and cold.

  “It’s not completely wrong, is—is all I’m saying,” Ambrose said in an even quieter voice. He looked around the circle, seeking support, but no one said anything.

  “Right,” George said, shifting in his seat. “Right, right, right. You know what? Forget Gratitude. Let’s do one we haven’t done in a while, shall we? Shake things up a little?” He cracked his knuckles at his side.

  Lea noticed that Susan was blinking rapidly, her mouth hanging open.

  “Fateful Days, shall we do that instead? Tell you what, let’s do that instead,” George went on, staring at each one of them in turn, his gaze finally landing on Ambrose.

  “N-no, man, no,” Ambrose said, drawing his knees up to his chest. His shoes, Lea noticed, were strangely formal, polished to a high shine.

  “Come on, Ambrose,” George said in a new voice, one that Lea hadn’t heard before. “You don’t want to talk about Yasmin? The look on her face when she found you on that chair, when she found her own silk scarf, an anniversary present from you—so thoughtful, really, so sweet—when she found that scarf knotted in a loop, hanging from a hook in the ceiling?”

  Ambrose’s face was in his knees now. His shoulders were shaking, a movement that seemed to come from deep within him, spreading through his entire body. Everyone else was silent.

  “Ambrose,” George went on. “Hey, man—”

  “Stop it,” Lea said. “Leave him alone.”

  George turned to her. “Oh? Did you have something to add, Lea?”

  Lea’s fists were balled at her side. A hot rage flickered at the base of her stomach. She pressed her feet into the ground, feeling the world pushing back up against her.

  “Why don’t we move on to you, Lea? Your Fateful Day. Tell the group—come on, you don’t want Ambrose to feel like he’s being singled out, do you?” George smacked his lips together. A bubble of spit gathered in the corner of his mouth.

  “What, the car accident? Big deal, I jaywalked. God forbid. Traumatized for life,” she said.

  “Oh, Lea,” George said. “You really don’t get it, do you? You still think you’re exceptional, above all this.”

  “Who’s the one who thinks they’re above it? You’re just a sad little man, lording it over your poor—” She looked around at the group. Suddenly she hated them all—Ambrose, the weak curve of his spine, Susan and her flat, blunt-cut hair, Sofia and her spreading thighs that spilled over the plastic chair.

  Anja and her thin wrists, her violin, her serious nods. Anja nodding at Lea’s father. Lea hated her, too.

  “Dwight. That was his name, wasn’t it?”

  Lea froze.

  “Yes, that was definitely it.” George said it evenly, a small smile cur
ling at the corner of his lips.

  “What did you say?” Lea whispered.

  “Dwight,” he said again, matter-of-factly. “Your Fateful Day.”

  “How—”

  George looked down at his tab, scrolling and tapping. “Did you actually think that it wouldn’t be in your file?”

  “Who’s Dwight?” Susan said. “Tell us, Lea. Tell us about your Fateful Day.”

  They were all staring at her. She seemed to hear her heart pounding in her chest. Even Anja was staring at her.

  Lea stood up.

  “Session’s not over,” George said. “Where are you going? Hey. Hey!”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lea rushed out of the room and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Even in her haste, she was careful to keep one hand on the banister, so as not to fall. She praised herself for her self-control, until a sharp pain in the heel of her palm stopped her at the bottom of the staircase. She examined her hand. A shard of dark wood, barely visible, had pierced her skin. As Lea watched, the splinter was already being pushed out of her flesh. Soon it sat, harmless and inert as a fallen eyelash, in the palm of her hand.

  “Lea. Wait.”

  It was Anja, coming down the staircase. Lea felt an unbidden rush of warmth at the concern in her voice and the worry etched on her face. Lea wanted, for a brief moment, to fall into her arms, to band together against George’s tyranny, to spill the rest of her childhood darkness. Anja would understand, Lea felt. She thought of the rush of chlorinated water in her ears, the burn of exertion in her calves.

  But as Anja drew closer, the memory of their swim together was replaced with the ominous discord of jazz notes and the smell of burnt animal flesh. Lea recognized in the knitting of Anja’s brow the same look of attentiveness that she had given her father, right before she said yes.

  “What do you want?” Lea said.

  Anja shrugged. Her sweater was too large for her, and the sagging shoulders flapped like wings.

  “I just wanted to see if you were okay,” she said. “George can be—well, he has his own problems, you know? Don’t take it to heart.”

  When Lea didn’t answer, Anja reached out and touched her elbow.

  “We all have Fateful Days, as he calls them.” A small smile curled at the corners of her mouth.

  She didn’t understand, Lea thought. Anja didn’t understand that Lea wasn’t like her, wasn’t like any of them. Up till that moment, the Incident had not been mentioned for almost ninety years. There was no official record of it anywhere.

  Kaito had taken the blame for what happened at the hospital. It was easy enough to pin on him when he already had a reputation of being not quite life-loving enough, with his hefty bulk and rebellious lifestyle. To label him antisanct was a step further, but a logical one. And he was already disillusioned, unhappy, older. He wasn’t precious, like Lea. Everyone had accepted the lie without questioning it, for why would they? How could a twelve-year-old child, even one with a history of violence, have the sickness and presence of mind to try to unplug a brain injury victim from life support? No, the episode had all the hallmarks of a closet antisanct trying to upend the system. Even Uju believed it, or if she didn’t, she never let on.

  When Kaito disappeared while out on bail, no one was surprised. It made things even easier for Uju, who used her Talent Global connections to make sure everything was attributed to Kaito, even the Incident at school. Lea was a susceptible child, she expounded, living under the same roof as a maladjusted, antisanct father whom she loved dearly. The Ministry swallowed it all, so Lea kept her perfect record. She remained a prime candidate for the Third Wave, for immortality.

  Would have been a prime candidate for the Third Wave, she corrected herself.

  “You weren’t here last week, but I wanted to thank you for letting me stay that night, and for sharing your music with me,” Anja said.

  Lea suddenly realized that Anja hadn’t seen her at the party. She had no idea that Lea knew who she was, had no idea that the tall, hunched man in the worn blazer was Lea’s father.

  Anja didn’t understand that Lea wasn’t like her, she thought again. An idea began to form in her mind.

  “I’m fine,” Lea said. “It’s just—I don’t understand what I’m meant to do. What do they want me to do?”

  Anja nodded. Her hand was still on Lea’s elbow.

  “I’ve been thinking.” Lea lowered her voice. “I saw one of those videos lately. The antisanct ones. What do they call themselves? The Club?”

  Anja’s expression didn’t change, but Lea felt her fingers tense.

  “I wish I could get in touch with them somehow,” she went on, her heart thudding in her chest.

  “Why?” Anja said. She had a clear, curious look on her face now, that attentive gaze she’d had at the party.

  Lea shrugged, mirroring Anja’s earlier gesture. “I don’t know. It’s stupid, maybe, but—” She paused. “I feel like maybe they’d understand.”

  Anja was studying her face. Lea tried to keep her expression neutral, but her palms were damp and her pulse quick in her throat. Surely Anja would see right through her, she thought.

  After a long pause, Anja cleared her throat. “Not here,” she said in a low voice. She dipped her hand into the large purse she had slung over her shoulder and rummaged about. Glancing behind her, she turned back to Lea and pressed something into her hand. “If you want someone to talk to, I’m here. I’d like to return the favor,” she said.

  Muffled clapping came from upstairs.

  “I’d better go back,” Anja said. “I’ll say that I couldn’t find you, you’d already left.”

  Lea nodded, her fingers closing around the card Anja had given her. “Thanks,” she said.

  Anja smiled, and for a moment, her eyes lit up; her sallow cheeks seemed to brighten. Lea almost felt guilty.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Lea counted fifty floors at least, so a reasonable height. But the building’s steel bones were gray and dull, its windows tinted purple with low-tech UV protection. The building was in a part of the city that had once been billed as the new downtown, the fringe between the Inner and Outer Boroughs, when life spans first began to lengthen and the pharma boom was in full swing. More space was needed for the unretired who wanted to stay in the city, for the proliferating Healthtech companies, to reap the demographic dividend that was ripe for reaping. They’d built and built, pushing farther and farther toward the sea, but the infrastructure couldn’t keep up. Soon the roads were choked with even more cars than before; traffic moved at a measly five miles an hour at most times of day. You were almost always better off walking, people realized, especially since the subway was so jammed that gloved handlers were hired to stuff commuters in. The greatest city planning oversight in history, it was called, but by then it was too late. They could hardly knock the skyscrapers down to widen the roads, and any major overhaul of the underground would require lengthy track closures that would bring the city to a halt.

  So walking became the preferred mode of commuting, and the buildings in the Central Boroughs grew ever taller. The new downtown—now named mockingly—still did fine, since there was a limit as to how quickly they could elongate the already four-hundred-story-high skyscrapers in the Central Boroughs, but it never fulfilled city planners’ early ambitions.

  Lea had always pictured the top Ministry divisions in a building like her office, something soaring and see-through, in Borough One or Two. Still, this was the address she had been given.

  The receptionist was a taut brunette, impeccably dressed. The sharp creases in her pant legs seemed out of place in that echoing lobby with its laminate faux-marble floor. She brightened as Lea approached, sitting up straighter in her plastic chair.

  “Hello,” she said, flashing a smile.

  “Good morning,” Lea said. “I’m here to see AJ. Or GK. I’m sorry, I don’t have their full names.”

  “Of course. And you are?”

  “Lea Kirin
o.”

  “Of course. Fifteenth floor, Ms. Kirino. Just follow the signs.”

  It was astonishing how she maintained her smile even as she spoke.

  As Lea waited for the elevator, the lobby began to fill up. Lea shuffled her feet. It wasn’t too late. She could still leave. Make up an excuse for coming here—to check on her case status, for instance.

  Her phone rang. When she pulled it out, she recognized the number immediately. Kaito. She turned the sound off and shoved her tablet back into her purse.

  She remembered the hard satisfaction in George’s eyes as he said Dwight’s name, the fearful fluttering of Susan’s hands. She would not end up like one of them. Not now, not after all she had worked for.

  * * *

  Before the first interview, Uju had put Lea’s hair into two thick, heavy braids. They rested like docile snakes on her shoulders.

  “I don’t like them,” Lea said, pulling at a tufted tip. “They look stupid. They make me look stupid.”

  Uju gave her a look in the mirror. Lea folded her hands in her lap automatically. It was a look that Lea would describe to Todd many years later as businesslike, something clicking into place as she finally found the right word. Uju had always felt more like an employer than a mother, and that look—a tight dip of the chin, a gentle lift of the eyebrows—exemplified their relationship. Lea was an employee in the corporation of their family, subject to regular performance reviews that determined her worth.

  “Why did you do it?”

  It was different when her mother asked. Lea thought about trying to tell her. Fishy fish fish fish fish. That feeling of being behind an invisible screen, apart from the things and people around her that moved with a logic she couldn’t quite grasp. The hot embers that smoldered inside of her, that flared up unexpectedly and made her want to reach out and grab and smash and feel. The rotten soft feeling that always came after, a feeling that she did not know yet to call shame. How the only thing to do was to go out and get more of the feeling, because if she stopped, then that meant whatever she was doing was wrong.