A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  This was my first self-portrait since Bren had rescued me. I didn’t like what I saw on the page. Otto was right. There were gaps behind my eyes.

  – chapter 15—

  Dinner was quiet and friendly. There was a rule that everyone had to say something about their day. Mr. Sabah complained good- naturedly about having to create a new lock for the subbasement door. Hilary had reached a new level on some hologame. Kayin had started reading Misty of Chincoteague for the third time. Bren grinned, saying he’d battled against a merciless, unconquerable foe, bent on my destruction. Kayin laughed until Hilary said,

  “No, Kayin, he’s telling the truth.”

  Then it was my turn. “Who, me?” I asked.

  “You’re at the table. Those’re the rules,” said Kayin.

  I didn’t know what to say. Today I was struck by a stumble stick. Today I broke down and told someone about Xavier. Today I’m still suffering from residual affection for a boy who doesn’t want me. “Today I drew a self- portrait,” I said finally.

  Bren looked at me thoughtfully.

  Mrs. Sabah spoke up. “Today, I prevented your grandfather from giving himself an aneurism yelling at police of ficers. Who’s up for dessert?”

  After dinner we watched an old movie on the holoview. Old for them; I’d never seen the thing. There were sixty years of holovisions I’d never even heard of. I actually thought that might be the first entirely good news I’d had about my sixty- year jump.

  Bren showed me and Zavier to Hilary’s room once the movie was over. I felt awkward, but my parents had taught me to be a gracious guest. “I’ve had a really great time tonight. Thanks.”

  “Good,” said Bren.

  I wanted to get something out of the way. “Your mom says it was your idea to invite me,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did.” Bren looked uncomfortable, but he squared his shoulders. “You know, the reason I was so mad at you this afternoon, when I thought you were trying to make me feel guilty, was because it had worked. I was unconscionably rude to you, and what I said wasn’t even true. Well, no, it was true that Granddad asked me to keep an eye on you, but as soon as he said it, I realized he was right. I mean, you don’t know anyone. I probably would have tried to be nice to you anyway. Besides, Otto wanted to meet you.”

  “He did? From the beginning?”

  “Yeah. Why do you think he wouldn’t look at you at first?”

  “I thought he was shy.”

  “No, he’s just noticed that he makes people uncomfortable, so he wanted to be sure you were firmly seated before he surprised you. He’s actually quite bold.

  Tends to delight in freaking people out. Doesn’t have a lot of friends, but, no, he’s not shy in the least.”

  “Oh.” Otto didn’t have a lot of friends? If that was the case, I was rather flattered that he wanted to spend time writing to me. “Um . . . can I borrow your notescreen? I should probably tell him I’m okay. I’ll bet he’s worried.”

  “Yeah, he probably is. Hil’s got a wallscreen; you can reach him through that.

  Otto’s number is on our household linkup.”

  “Thanks,” I said, really grateful.

  “Good night. If Hilary gives you any grief, tell her I’ll tell Mom and Dad about the website I found on her screen.” He grinned evilly.

  I laughed.

  Hilary put me up on a daybed that otherwise held a vast collection of well-worn stuffed animals, too beloved to consign yet to a trunk in the subbasement. She didn’t complain about Zavier curled up at the foot of her bed. She was friendly and helpful, giving me a few pointers on the makeup that had resurged to popularity in my absence. When I was first in high school, makeup was considered out- of- date. I tried out the new tone scanner, which presented me with a list of the perfect cosmetics for my skin tone. The list was half a meter long.

  “You know something?” I said suddenly. I set the tone scanner down on Hilary’s vanity with a click. “I don’t think I care what the fashions are anymore.”

  Hilary looked at me with frank confusion.

  “I spent every waking hour of my old life listening to what people told me I should be wearing, thinking, and doing. And it always changed within a year, or less.” Always less for me, as I never spent an entire year unstassed. I was always having to start over again. I shook my head as the sheer futility of it all overwhelmed me. “What a waste of time!”

  Hilary looked at her honey- brown face, altered with makeup, in the mirror.

  Her dark eyes darkened further. Only Bren had picked up his mother’s green eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. She frowned, but it was thoughtful.

  I asked if I could use her wallscreen, and she pulled a chair up for me. “All yours,” she said.

  I hooked through to Otto’s screen number and dropped him a line. Hello?

  It took a long time before a message came back to me. I glanced at the time —

  after eleven. Oops. I debated giving up, but I thought Otto should know I was okay.

  Do I know you? was the message when it finally came.

  Sorry, it’s Rose, I wrote. I’m using Bren’s sister’s screen. Sorry I’m an hour late.

  Is Jamal going to bug you?

  Rose! You okay?

  I’m fine, I guess.

  You were in stasis, weren’t you.

  I licked my lips. Did Bren tell you?

  I guessed when you disappeared. You do use it like a drug.

  Does that make me weird?

  You’d be weird anyway. Just like me.

  Well, do you think it means I’m messed up. Or crazy?

  There was a bit of a pause before Otto wrote, I think you’re facing problems no one else understands. But no. As scary as your mind is, I’m pretty sure you’re not crazy. You are a little messed up, but I imagine your life would mess up anyone. I’m sorry about Bren.

  Sigh, I wrote. C’est la vie.

  Laugh, he wrote back. Que será, será.

  Look, I wrote. It might be hard to contact you for a few days. I’m not sure where I’m going.

  You’re going somewhere?

  I have to. Apparently, someone’s trying to kill me.

  There was a bit of hesitation. All right, I’m hoping that’s some kind of analogy.

  It’s not an analogy. It would seem I’ve got this Plastine after me.

  A PLASTINE?

  Yes. And I am under the impression that that’s bad.

  You’re burning right it’s bad! Have you heard some of the horror stories that have come out of Wilhelm’s mouth? No, better that you haven’t. For once I’m glad you don’t talk to anyone; that kind of thought is the last thing you need right now.

  You aren’t helping.

  I just found out someone I care about is under the gun of an undead killing machine! I thought I was used to my friends being under death sentences.

  Guess I’m not; I’m feeling actively sick.

  I’m sorry. God, I can’t do anything right.

  Will you worry about yourself for once?

  I’m not sure I know how, I wrote truthfully. I’m not worth much.

  Say that one more time and I’ll show you you are, gaps or no. Are you all right?

  Did it hurt you? Or did you only hear about it?

  No, I de finitely saw the thing. It hit me with a stumble stick.

  I was about to write more, but Otto jumped in with, Did they reactivate your nanos? Someone has to.

  They did.

  Good. Coit, those sticks HURT!

  How do you know?

  You don’t want to know. Part of it’s that ethics thing again.

  Oh, right.

  Not that I can pretend I’m such a saint any longer. Are you safe?

  Yeah, I’m safe right now. I’m at Bren’s, remember?

  Oh, that’s got to be interesting. Did he change his mind?

  No. Otto didn’
t write anything, so I added, And I don’t want him to. There was a bit more hesitation. Yes, you do.

  I don’t.

  He’s the only thing you’ve expressed a wish for since I’ve known you. It didn’t go away that fast.

  No, it didn’t, I wrote. But I’m pretending.

  That’s good.

  What did you just mean by you can’t pretend you’re such a saint? Did something happen?

  No. But something should have. There was a long pause before he wrote, You nearly broke my code of ethics three days ago.

  What? How?

  I was hoping you were still too nervous to ask Bren out. When I tried to reach you that evening, I was hoping you’d still be debating or building courage. And I could have told you not to. When you didn’t answer, I knew I was too late.

  Saved me my most deep- seated sense of ethics, and I felt awful that I’d upheld them. I wished I’d just grabbed you and told you in the quad.

  Told me?

  That Bren wouldn’t say yes. I broke my ethics twice, once by probing his mind to see if there were any latent thoughts that might lead to a yes, and again by wanting to tell you that there weren’t. You’re a corrupting influence.

  I wouldn’t have asked you to do that.

  I know. But it would have saved you heartache.

  Maybe not. I would have felt just as rejected had the rejection come from you.

  Yeah. But I would have been gentler about it. Sped.

  Why do you say that?

  I basically saw the whole thing through his mind. He got angry at me when I exuded disapproval. I think we might be at odds.

  Oh, God. I’m ruining your friendship. Don’t worry about it; it wasn’t his fault. I deserved it.

  You probably think you deserve this assassin, too. You really hate yourself, don’t you.

  I didn’t know what to write. Otto was very good at cutting to the core of things.

  Don’t blame Bren, I wrote, mostly to change the subject. He didn’t understand.

  And apparently, he feels guilty.

  He should! Coit, I have to go. A night monitor saw I’ve got my screen open.

  I’ll try to reach you when I can, I wrote, but he didn’t respond. I guessed the monitor had cut him off.

  I turned off Hilary’s wallscreen.

  “What were you writing?” Hilary asked me.

  “Just writing to a friend from school.”

  “That screen has a cell feed.”

  “He doesn’t talk on cells,” I said.

  “Oh.” Realization struck. “Oh, you were talking to Otto.”

  “Yes.”

  She frowned. “Is he nice? I know he’s Bren’s friend, but he kind of gives me the willies.”

  I stared at her, and my face burned. By contrast, my voice was ice. “Otto is the nicest person I’ve met since I came out of stass.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  I swallowed it back. Otto was odd, and she hadn’t meant anything by it, really; she was only asking. “It’s okay.”

  We turned out the light to sleep. After a few moments, I heard Hilary’s voice through the darkness. “What’s high school like?”

  I frowned into the dark. “I’m really not the one to ask.”

  “But you’re in high school.”

  “I never really stayed in any one school long enough to know what it was like,” I said. “I only ever knew what it was to be the new girl in class. And that wasn’t any fun.”

  “Oh,” said Hilary. “I didn’t know that.”

  “No,” I said. “You’ll probably like it. All you need to do is have a few friends.”

  “I hope I will,” she said.

  I considered this. “Do you have any now?”

  “Yeah, but not all of them are going to Uni next year.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “If you can make friends now, you’ll be able to make friends later.”

  “Did you make friends?” she asked.

  “Like I said. I’m not really the one to ask.”

  – chapter 16—

  I didn’t sleep well. In my dream, the Plastine chased me and Bren down the corridors of the subbasement. Bren ran on ahead of me. I couldn’t catch him. I ran and ran and ran, but his dark form kept getting farther away from me. And then when he turned the corner, he looked at me, and he was Xavier. “Come on, catch up!” he shouted, but I couldn’t. The Plastine’s robotic footsteps plodded inexorably after me, and I woke up nearly shouting for Xavier to wait for me.

  I opened my eyes to strange surroundings, and I panicked until I felt Zavier’s comforting weight at my feet and remembered I was in Hilary’s room. I slept only fitfully after that, waking myself at the first hint of a dream. I hadn’t brought my sleeping pills, but I don’t know if I would have used them anyway, considering the Plastine wasn’t a madly intense nightmare after all. Otto’s comments on using drugs had gotten under my skin.

  Hilary’s alarm clock freed me from bed early the next morning. I wasn’t expecting Guillory until ten, but I got up for breakfast with the family. Bren used his tennis racquet to serve me an amaranth honey bar the moment I poked my head into the kitchen. “Catch!” he called out, lobbing it with expert accuracy into my hand.

  I was startled, but managed to catch it before it hit the ground.

  “Woo!” said Hilary, pouring two glasses of juice. “I still can’t catch anything he serves at me.”

  “Painting gives you precision hands,” I said. “And I think the physical therapy is starting to pay off.”

  Bren kept using his racquet to toss little bits of his own amaranth bar into the air and catch them in his mouth. “Oh, quit showing off !” said Kayin, trudging into the room. She grabbed one of Hilary’s glasses of juice and disappeared again.

  “Hey!” Hilary called after her sister. Kayin made no reac-tion. Hilary shrugged.

  “Well, that one was supposed to be for you,” she said, pushing her remaining glass at me. She pulled another from a cupboard and filled it for herself.

  Mr. Sabah sat sipping coffee as he perused a news scanner. It was kind of like my notescreen, only noninteractive, preprogrammed to make news searches easier. “Kayin, ask first!” he called out the open kitchen door.

  “Sorry,” came a muffled, disingenuous reply from the other room.

  The more time I spent with Bren’s family, the more I liked them. Unlike Patty and Barry, the family seemed genuinely interested in one another’s welfare, interests, accomplishments. But unlike my parents, no one was hovering, telling everyone everything they had to do, what to wear, how to eat, what to think. It was . . . comfortable.

  Bren touched my shoulder as he left for tennis practice. “Hey, hang in there.

  See you when we sort this out.”

  “See you,” I said, a little forlornly.

  “Cell me if you need to talk,” Bren said.

  The condo seemed very quiet once all the kids had gone. I wandered into the living room. My little travel bag was already packed and waiting. I considered pulling out my sketchbook, but I just didn’t feel like it. Instead I went to the shelf above the holoview and pulled down the book I had seen there the night before.

  It was a photo album. I curled up on the couch, and Zavier climbed up beside me, laying his head on my ankle. A quick glance at the album and I realized it was a selection of ‘best pictures,’ carefully selected and organized by date. I wished I was completely over Bren, but I wasn’t. I started at the back, the most recent photos of Bren with his family.

  I smiled. There was Kayin on what must have been her last birthday, opening a present of a huge ceramic horse, half as tall as she was. Bren was helping her rip the paper.

  There he was again, holding a tennis trophy. His arms were still pumped from the match, making the sleeves of his shirt bulge. His hair was a little sweaty.

  I don’t know how many photos I got through before I noticed Mrs. Sabah watching me.
“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was just . . . looking . . .” I really didn’t have any excuse to be thumbing through her things.

  “There’s a great picture of him on our last skiing trip, in the hot tub in the snow,” she said, sitting down beside me. She flipped the page over. Sure enough, there he was, ath-letic chest revealed, surrounded in steam, just as stunning as I’d imagined it in my studio.

  I was a little embarrassed. “Am I that obvious?”

  “No. All the girls he brings home want to see that one,” she said seriously. She looked back to the photo album and absently turned over another leaf. “He’d have quite a collection of groupies from his matches, if he wanted them. But he doesn’t seem to think about girls much. He’s always on about his tennis. Says he’d like to be a professional. His dad doesn’t approve.” She touched a photo of her husband, ski poles in hand. “Wants him to join UniCorp once he gets out of college.”

  “Do you think he will?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She turned another leaf and there was a family portrait, Mr. and Mrs. Sabah, Bren, Hilary, and Kayin in the front, and Mrs.

  Sabah’s parents at the back, her white- haired father and a friendly- looking —

  the best word I could think to describe her was cute—older Asian woman with a warm smile. Beside her was a man I assumed to be Roseanna’s brother, with the same green eyes, and two kids —Bren’s cousins, I guessed —though their mother didn’t seem to be in the picture. “My brother and I were both UniCorp brats. We had good entry-level positions in UniCorp through Dad, though he never really cared what we did. We just took the path of least resistance, which in this town almost always leads to UniCorp.”

  She touched the picture of the green- eyed man. “Ted always regretted it,” she said. “After his wife left him, he took the kids on a colony tour to Europa. They won’t be coming back for another four years, if at all.” She sighed. “I always wonder if it’s a good thing, to have something so huge and pervasive dictating our lives. I’m not sure it wouldn’t smother Bren.”

  “But your husband thinks it’ll be good for him?”

  “Yes. But Mamadou fought to make his way into UniCorp’s good graces. He’s dedicated and works very hard for the good of all, the general welfare as well as the company. Still, it’s a losing battle. He was never a part of what Dad laughingly calls the Royal Families.”