by C. A. Gray
Val nodded. “Liam said that out there, everyone’s being brainwashed into thinking that the technology will bring about a utopia. I… guess I never bothered to question that, either,” she confessed.
“I don’t know why you would,” I said generously, surprised at my own kindness. That certainly hadn’t been my response to Andy. “It wasn’t something you were focused on before. I wasn’t either.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “But I thought you said you were born into all of this!”
I waffled my head to the side at that. “Well, I was, in the sense that it was inevitable I’d eventually become a Renegade because of my parents. But believe me, I was very resistant until about two months ago.”
Wow, had it really only been two months? I thought.
My thoughts must have shown on my face, because Val said knowingly, “You feel like your whole life has changed, huh?” We settled ourselves into two of the plastic folding chairs Andy had set up around the fire. Jake was just starting to get the blaze going.
“It has,” I admitted.
“And so has mine, now,” she murmured, her face clouding over for an instant. Then it cleared, and she ventured, “But it’s better to know the truth than to be happy with a lie, right?”
I murmured, “That is the question.”
“Would you go back to ignorance, if you could?” she probed.
I hesitated, and for a brief moment, thought of my life at Dublin University. Rehearsals. Going to class. Running experiments I didn’t actually care about. Quantum Track expeditions on the weekends, taking loads of pictures I’d never have the time to look at. Coffee shop hopping as I wrote my novel… which I’d all but forgotten here. Maybe I’d have empty hours to fill yet, and I’d get back to it. But I knew now that no one would ever, could ever read it. So was there any point?
And then there was that moment at the end of a performance: the feeling of mingled sweat and stage makeup on my face, and the thunderous applause as I tried to catch my breath after belting my heart out. That was, hands down, the part I missed the most.
But knowing what I knew now, I couldn’t wish myself ignorant again, even if it were possible.
“No,” I said at last. “Would you?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No, because now I get to be here with Liam.” She must have seen the flicker cross my face, and she added with a self-effacing laugh, “Oh, I know, I shouldn’t be so ‘out there’ with my feelings, right? It’ll scare him off. That’s what happened last time.” She shrugged. “But that’s just me. I’ve always worn my emotions on my sleeve, whether I want to or not. Fighting it is pointless anyway, so I just learned to embrace it.”
In spite of myself, I realized, I liked Val.
That was unexpected.
Julie settled in the chair on my other side, curtailing the conversation with Val. Nilesh, Larissa, and Liam rolled up just as Jake began strumming a few chords to warm up. Finally, Francis and Alex arrived too, her arm looped through his as if she were wearing him like an ornament. A very odd-looking ornament, I thought. If Alex were going for decoration, I wondered why she hadn’t chosen Liam, or Andy, or Jake, for that matter. Maybe she just went for the easiest target. Or, was it possible she really was attracted to Francis?
No, I dismissed the idea. While some women—Larissa, for instance—did seem to find Francis’s mind irresistible, I still had the impression that Alex was much too self-aware in her fawning for hers to be a legitimate attraction. But if she were just one of those beautiful women who relished admiration in general, then why direct her attention almost exclusively toward Francis?
“What is this, a campfire singalong?” Francis asked scornfully.
“That’s the idea!” Jake replied, either missing his tone or ignoring it. I loved Jake. “Hey Becca, let’s do ‘Only Happy When You’re Gone,’” he named one of the songs he’d written, which he and I had perfected singing in the parking lot behind the Moon. It had an up-tempo bluegrass feel to it, and it was written for a male and female harmony. I think he might have actually written it with our voices in mind.
“Do you sing?” Val asked me, her eyes lighting up.
“Um, she’s only the female lead in like every musical!” Julie answered for me proudly.
“Was,” I corrected as Jake’s fingers began to dance across the guitar as if it were a banjo. I felt strangely bashful all of a sudden, feeling Liam’s eyes on me. He’d never yet heard me sing, despite all his prodding. No one from the lab had—I’d tried hard to keep those two worlds separate, and I dreaded whatever unpleasant thing Francis might find to say when he glimpsed my ‘alter-ego’ now. I wouldn’t find out tonight, though: within a few bars of Jake’s first verse, I saw Francis roll his eyes and head back to the golf carts, muttering something about how he couldn’t stand bluegrass. Alex tossed her luxurious hair and murmured back her total and derisive agreement.
Julie glared at their retreating forms and started clapping to the beat in defiance of their rudeness, and everyone else joined in. I harmonized with only a few notes in Jake’s first verse, but the two of us joined forces in the chorus. I didn’t stay self-conscious for long, losing myself in the music as I always did. The acoustics in the cave were great, amplifying our voices to echoey perfection. The second verse was mine, and I kept my eyes mostly on Jake, clapping and grinning. Everyone burst into spontaneous applause and cheers when we finished.
“Geez, Becca!” Nilesh enthused, shaking his head at me in admiration, and Larissa agreed, “Yeah, seriously!”
“She’s our golden girl!” agreed Julie. “And Jake too, of course,” she leaned over to plant a kiss on the side of his face, “but we expect it from him.”
I tossed them all a pleased smile. My eyes just slid across Liam on their way back to Jake—I wanted to know what he thought, but I didn’t want him to know that I wanted to know. Unfortunately my eyes hadn’t lingered on him long enough to tell.
Jake struck up another folk song that everyone would know called ‘A Long Time Comin’.” It had the same bluegrass feel. He started the verses in his scratchy rock voice, and everyone joined in—even Andy, though he only mouthed the words. Andy didn’t sing—too self-conscious, I guessed. I noticed that Val had a sweet voice, breathy like her speaking voice of course, but I could hear it because she was right beside me.
The rest of us called out requests when Jake finished, but it was Val who got his attention, as she politely raised her hand, waiting to be called upon.
“Yes? Val?” he said, amused.
“Let’s do ‘January Rain,’” she suggested, with a hopeful glance in Liam’s direction. I followed her gaze, and Liam suddenly looked distraught. “Oh come on!” she pressed, “you used to be the one dragging me out to all the karaoke bars! And you always sang duets with me so I wouldn’t be so nervous.”
“You did?” I echoed, shocked. This wasn’t fitting with my mental picture of Liam at all. For his part, Liam shrugged, clearly embarrassed.
“Yeah, but that’s different. In that context, you’re supposed to be bad!”
“You were never bad,” Val insisted, nodding at Jake encouragingly. Amused, Jake began the song—a ballad about long forgotten love, rekindled.
Liam sighed and shook his head at Val with mock irritation. She beamed back at him, and he began the first verse. He hammed it up, intentionally playing up the cheese factor—but for all that, I could tell that he actually had a nice voice, though I couldn’t quite tell what it really sounded like. He could harmonize, too, which surprised me. I flashed back to the day we’d arrived in San Jose, when the crowd of Renegades had wolf-whistled while Liam bowed in appreciation. And then his presentation in Francis’s bar—he’d held the room, and there had been a certain magnetism about him. I’d thought it was because he was so passionate about his subject, but maybe there was a part of Liam that just liked the spotlight in general. Like I did.
When Val joined in, she sang it str
aight, as I knew she would—her sweet voice infused with all the tenderness and longing I knew she actually felt.
We clapped when they’d finished, and Liam smiled at Val, his eyes then flickering to me—he wanted to know what I thought, just as I’d wanted to know his reaction when I’d finished. He gave me a tiny, bashful shrug. I winked back at him with a grin.
“Okay, okay, I have an idea!” Julie held up her hands, and her shrill voice commanded the group to quiet down. “Duet karaoke, but your partner is randomly assigned, and the group gets to pick your song!”
“And it has to be one I know,” Jake added.
“How do we do random assignments?” asked Andy.
“Umm…” Julie looked around the circle as if for inspiration, and Nilesh called, “Wait, I got it!” He apparently had a tiny notebook and pen in his jacket pocket, and tore off the cardboard back of the notebook, folding it quickly into an origami basket of sorts. He wrote two of the same number on eight slips of paper, since there were eight of us, ripped them out, and folded them up tiny enough to fit into the basket as he tossed them in. Then he drew one number himself, and walked around the circle until each of us had our numbers.
“Okay, who’s got number one?” Nilesh called, and Julie and Andy raised their hands.
“Do I have to?” Andy looked at Jake, pleading.
“Ya have to, my friend,” Jake confirmed with a smirk.
After throwing out several possible titles, we eventually settled on, “Once Upon A Midnight,” which turned out to be hilarious: it was a show tune designed for a robust tenor and a soaring soprano, and neither Andy nor Julie could sing a lick. Julie had no pitch, but she tried, for all that. The only difference between Andy’s talking and singing voices was that when singing, he’d hold the noise long enough to match the beat. This earned him a few catcalls, like, “Come on, Andy, at least try!,” which he steadily ignored.
Number two turned out to be Nilesh and Larissa, and we voted on an old folk song called “Come Rain, Come Shine.” Nilesh turned out to have a husky voice that reminded me a little of Johnny Cash from the Second Age. Larissa had a high warble that would have made me wince, if I didn’t specifically school my face into neutrality. But she looked so happy that it made up for it—most of the time her eyes were blissfully closed during her solos. I wondered if she even knew she was bad, or if she were so lost in her dream world that in her mind, she was a starlet under the lights of Broadway.
“Number three?” Julie called, and Val and Jake raised their hands. My eyes tracked to Liam reflexively—that meant he and I would be number four.
Jake suggested a song that was meant to be guitar-driven and acoustic, and they sounded surprisingly good together: her sweet, high voice against his raw, rockstar one had a pleasant contrast, like lace paired with leather.
“Very nice!” Jake told Val appreciatively when they’d finished, and even in the firelight, I could see her blush.
“You too!” she replied, though that was obvious.
“Aaaand… Becca and Liam!” Julie pointed at us with a flourish. “What do we want to make them sing, folks?”
“I never expected we’d be singing together,” I murmured to Liam.
“Our relationship is full of firsts,” he agreed with a smile.
There was a beat of silence after this—Jake began to crack up, Julie gave a low whistle, and Nilesh made an awkward noise under his breath.
“Guys! He didn’t mean it like that!” I insisted, grateful for the low lighting.
“Oh yeah? How did he mean it?” Nilesh countered rhetorically, while the others continued to laugh. All except Val, I noticed, who looked more confused than anything else. She kept glancing from Liam’s face to mine, as if trying to work something out. I felt a sudden pang of guilt.
“I know!” cried Julie, “Let’s make them sing ‘I’ll Never Stop Loving You’ by Delaney and Heath Kressler—”
“Ugh, please, no, I hate that song. It’s so sappy,” I groaned.
“And, you don’t get to pick!” Julie reminded me with a wide grin.
“Not a fan of sappy, huh?” Liam asked me, amused. “Somehow that surprises me…”
“Do you like that song?” I countered.
He winced, and admitted, “It’s pretty terrible.”
“Thank you!”
Nilesh and Jake threw out a few more songs, until Larissa interjected, “Wait, I got it!What about ‘Right There Waiting’?”
Oh please, no, I thought. It was a beautiful song, originally acoustic and guitar-driven, so it would work well for this context. But the lyrics… I just couldn’t sing those lyrics to Liam. They were way too close to home.
But everyone around the circle considered it, nodding and expressing approval.
“Do you guys know it?” Jake asked us, and Liam nodded.
“I know it,” he said, his voice unreadable. I felt his eyes on me, but I wouldn’t look at him. Was he thinking what I was thinking?
“Becca?” Jake prodded, and I nodded too, reluctant.
“Yeah. I know it.”
“All right, we have a winner!” said Jake, beginning to strum the opening chords, “assuming you guys can pull it off, there’s some serious harmonies in that song.” He meant if Liam could pull it off, of course: Jake knew I could. But Liam had the hard part.
“Psh, who cares if they can’t pull it off? It’ll be funnier!” said Julie, and Jake shot her a sidelong smile of agreement.
Once Jake finished playing the opening bars, he nodded at Liam. I reluctantly looked up at him over the fire as he sang—and I could finally hear his voice, clear and simple.
All the things you think you don’t say, I hear
Loud and clear
Come out of hiding
I promise, I’ll be right here waiting.
I closed my eyes for my verse, so I didn’t have to look at him or anybody else.
It’s strange to matter to someone
When I’m so used to being alone
All of my life I’ve been running away
What if I don’t know how to stay?
Our voices blended together in the chorus, as I sang:
What if you see me and don’t like what you see?
What if you change, what if you leave me?
It might be heaven or it might be hell
Which one it would be, I can’t tell
I can’t tell
And Liam joined in with the harmonized through line:
Trust me, I’m right here beside you.
Trust me, I’m not going anywhere
I’ll always be right here waiting.
Liam sang right to me, as if nobody else were listening. He was really, really good. I found myself getting lost in the music, despite my initial reluctance. When I opened my eyes, Liam watched me still, with a smile that felt intimate and tender. I returned the smile briefly, but then dropped my gaze—true to my lyrics. Something made me glance at Val next—maybe I sensed her eyes on me. The hurt on her face was undisguised. She’d seen the look Liam gave me, and she’d understood it.
Everyone was silent for a long moment after we’d finished, before Jake finally said, “Wow.”
Julie piped, “You two totally need to record something together and put it on the labyrinth!”
Liam snorted, the spell apparently broken. “I think M might have a thing or two to say about that.”
“Ok well, tomorrow night I want to hear you two bust out a pop song!” grinned Jake. “I know Becca can belt it when she wants to, and I bet Liam’s got some falsetto hiding under that prettyboy exterior, just dying to get out!”
Nilesh clapped his hands with glee at this prospect, and I covered my face in mock embarrassment, shaking my head at Liam. “I’m not sure our relationship is ready for that!”
“Definitely not,” he agreed, holding up his hands to me with a wink. “Let’s take it slow.”
; The group splintered into conversation again after that. For a little bit longer, Jake played and sang softly to himself while the rest of us talked over him. Larissa and Nilesh trickled off to the golf carts to go back first. Val took Nilesh’s vacant place beside Liam, and I forced myself not to look at them after that. I’d otherwise drive myself crazy, trying to analyze their body language. Julie and Jake were ignoring Andy, so he moved to Val’s vacant seat beside me.
“It’s kind of like old times in the Moon parking lot, huh?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, not feeling very talkative.
“Maybe we can convince Emily and Elizabeth and Patrick to drop out of school and come too!”
“Uh, no,” I said with a short laugh to soften the blunt response. “The more of us there are, the harder we are to keep hidden and fed. I’m glad of how it worked out so far, but we can’t tell anyone else where we are if we can avoid it.”
Andy heaved a melodramatic sigh—melodramatic for Andy, anyway, who always seemed a little nervous and understated. “But I don’t know what to do with myself here all day,” he complained. “We can’t access the labyrinth to play games, there’s no classes to study for…”
“Once you graduated from college, you’d have essentially been in this situation anyway though,” I pointed out. I knew Andy’s degree wasn’t likely to have earned him one of the few non-automated human positions left. He’d have certainly ended up on the Common Wage, even if nothing else had changed. “What had you planned to do with yourself then?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, I figured… something would work out. There’d be some new opportunity… but not without the labyrinth! At least you have a purpose out here.”
“I made my purpose,” I pointed out. “I was just trying to figure out what I could do to help our cause, and that’s what I came up with. You can do that, too.”
Andy looked unconvinced, and shook his head. “It’s so easy for you.”