Cautiously I draw nearer, easing into the shadow-washed dome until I’m only a few steps behind her.
“He didn’t mean…” I begin, but what didn’t he mean? It’s obvious how he feels. And I knew all along. I had every opportunity to discourage him if it was what I wanted.
Still, she won’t look at me.
“I wanted to tell you,” I say. “When I knew, when the memories came back and I knew how he felt, I wanted—”
“Do you think I didn’t see?” Chloe demands, whirling to face me. I catch the flash of tears in her eyes. “Do you think I didn’t know? I knew, Lizzy. All along, I knew. But I kept telling myself no, no, she would tell you. Lizzy would never hurt you on purpose.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Stop lying!” she cries out, the sound desolate. “Just stop.” Her shoulders sag as I stare at her helplessly. Finally, she wipes her nose and mutters, “I don’t blame you. I blame myself. I didn’t want to face it. So I saw what I wanted to see.”
The wind picks up, carrying a copper-like chill that makes me shiver. Even after everything that’s happened, even after Dosset, I haven’t learned.
How could I have let things get this far? For days I’ve had the chance to tell her. I’ve known the path we were on would eventually cut her deeply. Yet here I am. Because I didn’t want to admit the truth either.
How can you be honest with someone when you know what that honesty will do to them?
“And yet,” Chloe says, straightening as the wind dies back. “I do blame you for other things. Like letting me trust you.” She shakes her head. “Do you know, I used to wonder why you didn’t have any friends. Why it was just you and me. And now I know.”
“It… it wasn’t that simple,” I say, my voice shaking. “What was I supposed to tell you, Chloe? That we’ve been through this with him before? I didn’t want to risk hurting you, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t—”
“You should have told me the truth,” she hisses, and I’m taken aback by her fierceness. “Is that so hard? To be honest with me?”
“No. Yes! What would you do if you knew you had the power to ruin everyone’s life, just like that? To use everything they care about against them?”
“I would’ve chosen not to,” she says without hesitation. And I know she’s telling the truth. She wouldn’t have done anything that I did. She wouldn’t have even struggled.
For her, the right choice is the easy choice. She would have been loving and forgiving, and as a result, Dosset would probably have caught her and erased her mind immediately. It took someone who thought like him to finally bring him down. Someone like me.
The knowledge is sharp in my throat, like a knife between us.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is if you want it to be.” Tears leap back to her eyes. “Do… do you love him?”
The question is so unexpected it hits me like a force, like the wind, pushing me back. I stammer and half shrug, at a loss for words.
“Don’t be stupid,” I say, and then I realize how harsh I sound. “This… we’re… this isn’t about love, Chloe.”
“No? Then what is it about?”
“I don’t know. Something else.”
“Not for me,” she says softly. “But I guess you must have known that.”
I shake my head, surprised by a surge of irritation. She doesn’t even know him. And if I’m deeply, truly honest, neither do I. “I don’t feel like I know anything,” I reply instead.
“No? Here I thought you knew so much,” she says, a cynical light entering her eyes. Another new look for her. “But you’re probably right. The truth is, you have all this information, but you don’t really know any of us. Hm? You don’t even know yourself. I’m not sure anyone does. Once I thought I did. But I didn’t. Did I, Lizzy?”
A sob is caught in my throat, white and grating, and hot tears fill my eyes. But I turn away, not daring to let them show.
Because I don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. Isn’t it? Everything she said, I deserve. I have no right to feel pity for myself. Even when I tried to be different, I was thinking of me first. Still not seeing the big picture. Still blundering along, not noticing all the damage I leave in my wake.
Not until it’s too late.
“What else?” she asks. “What else haven’t you told me? Other than lying about Noah, what secrets have you—?”
She halts mid-sentence, her eyes widening as she looks beyond me.
“N-Noah,” she falters.
Knowing what I’ll find, I turn to see him silhouetted in the open portal. He blinks at me, then at Chloe. Then again at me.
“Sorry,” he says, the word hardly audible over the fluttering of the torn canopy. “I didn’t mean to interrupt, I just—”
“What did you hear?” I ask.
He swallows.
“I didn’t mean to—” he begins again. But he’s cut off as Chloe pushes past me, then him, hurrying through the portal and disappearing back into the colony. The portal closes, a whisper.
Then Noah and I are alone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’ve never seen Noah so grave. In the soft light that filters through the ruined canvas, his face could be carved from marble. Silence fills the monochrome world between us.
“What did you hear?” I ask again.
“That you lied about me,” he says reluctantly. “That you’ve been keeping secrets. But I already knew that, after what Dosset said.” He takes a hesitant step forward, his gaze wandering over the gray dirt before finding its way back to me. “So what did you lie about?”
I take a moment to choose my words. It feels as if the ground might fall out from under me if I’m not careful. But I guess it kind of already has. “It wasn’t so much lying as leaving out the truth,” I finally say.
“The truth about what?”
“About what you… think of me.”
His expression shifts, a reminder of the way he looked at me just a few minutes ago in the cafeteria. I wonder how much longer he’ll look at me that way. What calamity was Dosset trying to avoid when he chose to erase our friendship?
Was he protecting Chloe or me? Or Noah?
“I see,” he murmurs. “And why would you ‘leave out the truth’ about that?”
“Because I’m a bad friend,” I say bitterly.
“No, you’re not.”
“And how would you know?” I ask, shifting my weight to favor my knee, which has begun to ache. “You don’t remember enough to know.”
“The doctors didn’t erase all of my memories, Lizzy. What, you think I met you for the first time every Monday?”
I shrug. “Maybe.”
“No,” he says, taking another step forward. “I’m not sure exactly when we met, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know things about you.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like…” His brow creases. “Like that you’re highly competitive. That you always do a long run on Sundays, and your favorite trail is on the West Coast. That everyone in your family has dark hair except for you.”
“How do you know that?” I ask, surprised, and a little self-conscious. I had assumed the doctors erased all those details, if he ever knew them at all.
“I just… pay attention to you,” he says.
The emotions dissolve in a single swallow, replaced by a lump of nerves. “You think you love me,” I correct him.
Another step forward, and his face is hidden in shadow. “I do love you,” he says, and then he emerges with another step, and even in the dim light, I can tell he’s blushing.
“You can’t know that,” I say, indignant.
“What?”
“I said you can’t know that,” I repeat. “You don’t know me that well. Even if you do remember a few details, as far as you know we’ve only been friends for a week. Less than a week! You think people just fall in love that quickly?”
His eyes widen in surprise. Then they narrow and
he folds his arms in a defensive posture. A new look for him as well. “Oh, so because of my memories, you know everything about me? Is that it?”
“Let’s just say I have a better perspective.”
“And that means you’re sure, without a doubt, that I don’t love you? What inside your head has you so convinced? Did I ever say that? Did I ever do anything to hurt you?”
My breathing is growing shallow again. I’m not being fair. But I can feel myself shutting down anyway, Chloe’s words still ringing in my head like the echo of a bomb.
“I… I don’t know,” I say hoarsely.
I lock my jaw in exasperation, sealing any more thoughts from escaping. Why am I being this way? Why am I so sure he can’t love me?
Because… because… I’m not. Because maybe he actually does. But even if I deserved him—which I feel certain that I never will—I think Chloe was right: I don’t know myself. And if I don’t know who I am, then he can’t either. Can he?
What happens when he learns the truth about me? When I let him inside my head and he discovers my selfishness, my flaws?
When he learns what I did to Chloe.
“Lizzy, what do you not know?” he presses. I can hear the vulnerability in his voice, and it makes it so much worse. “Did I do something wrong?”
He takes another step closer. I could reach out and touch him now. And I’m surprised to find that I want to. That despite all of these fears, I want to let him in.
I’m overly conscious of my pulse thrumming in my palms and down my bone-weary body like the sparkling tickle of Verced. Every heartbeat a syllable for words I can’t speak, to explain what I want from him. What I want from myself. To know and be known, totally and completely. To be someone worth knowing.
“Tell me,” he says gently.
His eyes glimmer as they search mine for understanding. I open my mouth, but nothing comes out.
Again I feel a rush of that same longing in my fingertips, in my veins. More than anything, I want the comfort of his nearness. I feel as if gravity is pulling me toward him, toward his lips, an unseen magnetism.
But… it wavers.
Because in his bright gaze, I can see my reflection. And I remember the wonderful person he believes me to be. The wonderful person that I’m not.
“There are things you don’t know,” I finally say, a whisper.
“Like what?”
The question strikes me as so absurd, I almost laugh. The vast quantity of memories he doesn’t know about.
My thoughts skim them, and in an instant, I see a girl with a heart-shaped face and freckles just like Noah’s. His sister. And I see a thin, lofty man with horn-rimmed glasses, and a petite woman with fiery red hair. His parents. They’re in a sunroom, waving for me to enter.
I can feel the love in these memories rising with profound bitter-sweetness to take my breath away. These caring people, these sweet memories, they’re what formed the boy who stands before me now. And they’re gone.
And Noah still doesn’t know.
How selfish would I be to let him comfort me—to use him yet again—with such looming tragedy waiting for him?
“What are you so afraid of, Lizzy?” he asks, growing insistent. “What secrets are you hiding?”
There are only centimeters between us. He’s so close that I know he’ll kiss me if I don’t pull back.
So I do.
“I just…” I shrink away, inexplicably numb. My hands are shaking. “I can’t.”
He blinks, the light dimming.
“You can’t?”
“Not yet,” I say faintly. “Tomorrow, okay? We’ll talk tomorrow. I promise. After you have your memories back.”
“Why?” he asks, almost pleading as he steps closer again. “What did Dosset take that you can’t just tell me?”
But I withdraw even farther, keeping space between us.
“Trust me, okay?” I ask. Knowing I don’t have the right.
I watch as a blank expression falls into place like a stone. And it cuts, it crushes me, knowing I could be the one to help him through this. But I can’t. Not yet.
“Okay.” His voice is hollow with confusion. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow,” I nod.
He turns to go, looking as if he wants to say more. I almost stop him. But instead, I wait until he’s gone and then find my way back to my pod, my heart aching with a fresh new bruise.
As I punch the code, I glance at Chloe’s door. The image of her face, anguished at my betrayal, appears in my mind. Another blow. This one throbbing with a sense of incompleteness. That I was meant to do something, but didn’t.
That I should have said something, but couldn’t.
Inside my room, I sit on the bed. Now that it’s over, now that everyone will soon have their memories back, reality edges in like a shadow unbound by the retreat of the sun. Other faces float before me, joining Chloe—Dosset, Atkinson, my mother and father. All the people I knew on Earth and will never see again.
And I realize that in many ways I’ve already begun to let them go. Even in my memories, they’ve been thrust into the patina of the past, sanded into obscurity.
Because they have to be. Time will never stop, and neither can we.
Tears sting my eyes once more, building up and rolling over my cheeks with the heat of a dying star. Isn’t that what death is? It’s forgetting. It’s letting go. We make peace with the dead to say goodbye.
Maybe the problem with holding onto memories so tightly is that they don’t allow us to make room for the future. Maybe the gentle decay of the past is a blessing that dulls the sharp blade of regret, allowing the possibility of rebirth.
When the lights click off I climb into bed, again feeling weightless. For hours I lie awake, staring into the blackness of the universe as it whirls above my bed. A strange calm patterns over me. I imagine that the stars are out tonight and I’m swimming through them, each one on a slightly different path than it was before.
I’ll never see them again from my old world. Earth is gone forever. We have a whole new planet to explore. And now, a new Elizabeth to go with it.
Eventually, I drift off to sleep. When I wake, the lights are on. I sit up, overcome with the strange, panicky feeling that I’ve overslept. I’m just zipping my jumpsuit when I hear a knock at my door.
My first thought is that it’s Chloe, but when I anxiously pull the handle I find McCallum standing in the passage.
“Can I help you?” I ask, my surprise coupled with fear.
“The cadets are about to be called to their theaters,” he says gruffly. “Shiffrin asked that you wait with her during the procedures.”
“Do I have a choice?” I ask without thinking. After all, I don’t have anywhere else to be. The question seems to catch him off guard.
“Not today” is his reply.
“Sure.”
I close the door and follow him down the stairs.
During my clandestine trips through the halls, the colony has seemed empty at times. But today it’s like walking through a morgue.
The lights glare, but I hear no distant footsteps. No voice to announce the time. Just dead air heaved from overtaxed oxygenators. Filling the halls, suffocating me with its frail, stilted vacancy.
On instinct, I continue to glance at the cameras as we pass, but I no longer feel watched. It’s the opposite. I feel almost forgotten.
McCallum leaves me as I enter the cafeteria. Behind, I hear the whoosh of distant doors, the clunk of weighted boots entering halls, the hiss of nervous voices. As if they were waiting for me to pass before emerging.
I let the doors close, muting them all.
Shiffrin sits alone at a table, a steaming cup and two covered bowls before her. I catch her eye, and she smiles wearily.
“Good morning, Elizabeth,” she says.
“Hello,” I say cautiously.
“Care to sit?”
“Why not.”
I sink onto the hard plastic, watc
hing her. She gently squeezes her cup between aged fingers and blows on the liquid.
“There’s coffee if you’d like some.”
“I hate coffee,” I say.
“Tea?”
“You know, doctor, I’ve never really liked tea either.”
“Oh? You never mentioned it. How about hot chocolate?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
She shrugs, sipping from the cup. “Well, if you’d like breakfast, you’re welcome to it. Personally, I’m starving.”
I peek beneath one of the lids and find a tofu scramble with mushrooms, onions, and wilted spinach. Potatoes on the side.
“Trying to butter me up?”
“We don’t have butter on Mars, Elizabeth,” says Shiffrin lightly. “The rations depleted two months ago. That’s another memory we had to alter.” The joke is soured by its plausibility. She seems to realize it and turns her attention toward the doors. “Unfortunately for your fellow cadets, a Revision requires a brief fast of one to two hours. I’m afraid it will just be us for breakfast today.”
“A pity for them,” I mutter, seizing my fork.
My portion isn’t large, and I’m done quickly. While Shiffrin finishes eating, I stare at the ridged tabletop, listening to far-off footsteps.
They must be calling the cadets to the Wellness Suites one by one. I guess they’ll have to inoculate them and take them back to their pods in the transport carts. As before, the notion makes me twitchy.
But it’s necessary, right? When I woke with the Memory Bank, it was excruciating. Of course, the amount of memories was much greater.
I realize that I’m cracking my knuckles and stop myself.
“How are you feeling, Elizabeth?” Shiffrin asks, returning to her cup.
“Fine.” I smile ironically, recalling that this was the question she would lead with before erasing my memories. “Want me to tell you about my week?”
“If you like,” Shiffrin says.
“No thanks.”
I begin drumming my nails on the table. After a few minutes of the incessant drone, she asks, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to talk about something?”
“Nothing to talk about,” I reply. “Actually, yes. I’ve got a question. How come you aren’t helping with the Revisions? I thought you were in charge of all this.”
Biome Page 32