A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Bren said awkwardly. “It didn’t even occur to me that you didn’t know. Everyone knows. It’s one of the reasons Otto was so drawn to you. He feels just as abandoned.”

  I closed my eyes. “Do you really think they meant . . . to leave me there?”

  Bren hesitated. “I didn’t know them. The Dark Times were so horrific, I could see someone keeping their child away from all that. Even if it was dangerous.”

  Twenty years in stass would have been dangerous, too. Not as bad as what I suffered after sixty- two, though. If I’d been released only twenty years after I was stassed, I would probably have been able to eat normally after two months.

  As opposed to now. “But . . . he said nine years. . . .”

  “Yeah,” Bren said, his tone soft. “Granddad says they were very careful to make sure no one knew, or cared, that you were staying young while they raised you.

  That’s why I couldn’t find your birth records. They did everything they could.

  Changing your schools. Erasing your image from the public record. Keeping you secluded, except for speci fic functions.” He looked down. “Keeping you scared. Maybe they meant to come get you in the end, but . . .”

  “Another nine years.” I couldn’t fathom it. “Was I really that awful?” I whispered.

  Bren dropped another shard of glass into the bin. “No one can be that awful.”

  “I shouldn’t have yelled at Mom,” I said.

  Bren skirted the broken glass and came to sit a little behind me. “I yell at my mom all the time,” he said. “I get sent to my room. Somehow, I don’t think stasis is an equivalent punishment.”

  “It wasn’t a punishment!” I said, turning to him.

  Bren’s face was impassive. “Wasn’t it?” He took my hand and helped me stand up. He led me back to the couch and sat down with me. His arm wrapped around my shoulders and held me securely. Spiders entered my flesh where he touched me, warm, delicate spiders, with many tingling legs.

  “Don’t,” I said, trying to pull away.

  “I can’t be your friend?” Bren asked.

  “You are, it’s just . . . I haven’t gotten over you yet, okay? It’s distracting.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He let me go.

  I gripped the sides of my head. “Oh, God, this is embarrassing!”

  “What is?”

  “You know all this stuff about me. It isn’t fair. Tell me something.”

  “What?”

  “Anything,” I said. “Tell me something personal. I barely know you.”

  Bren gave a soft chuckle. “There’s . . . not a lot personal to say,” he said. “The most important aspect of my life is tennis . . . and I fully intend to give that up after high school. Tournaments, at least. I’ve never been in love, ’cause the whole idea kind of scares me. I’ve never spent more than two weeks outside ComUnity, and I’ll probably end up coming back here after college, just ’cause there’s nothing strong enough in me to keep me away.” He sighed. “Kind of depressing, now you ask me about it. I tend to follow the path of least resistance. The most exciting things that have ever happened in my life have been in that subbasement.”

  I frowned at that statement. “You mean, I’m the most interesting thing that’s ever happened to you?”

  “Yup. But that really isn’t surprising, Rose —you’re the most interesting thing that’s happened to humanity since they discovered life on Europa.”

  Echos of Otto again. It was like we were bound together.

  “Even if you weren’t Mark Fitzroy’s daughter, finding someone in stasis after that long would be worldwide news. Being who you are . . .”

  I sighed. “I knew I was a freak.”

  “You might be right,” Bren’s grandfather said, striding into the room. I thought at first he had been listening to me, but he went on. “Reggie has taken out a considerable sum of money from one of the company accounts recently. It wouldn’t be enough to pay for a Plastine, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t combined it with other funds. I’m still looking.”

  Bren stood up to get back to his cleaning. “You think you can trace it all, if he did it?”

  “I hope so.” Ron looked right at me. “Don’t worry. It’ll all be all right.”

  For some reason, I believed him.

  Part of me wanted to go back to sleep again, and part of me didn’t want to stay still. I looked over at Bren and considered getting up to help him clean, but something in his demeanor told me he wanted to think, and I’d get in the way.

  I returned to my sketchbook. I’d finished my time- lapse sequence of Xavier and needed to start something new. I wasn’t in the mood for one of my landscapes —too agitated. I didn’t want to sketch Bren —too complicated. So I turned to sketch his grandfather instead.

  Ron sat at his desk, having turned off the holo on his cell and inserted it in his ear, so he could have a more private conversation. “No, I understand that,” he was saying. “I’m afraid, it is urgent. Very much so. . . . Well, I wouldn’t want to have to tell that to the board. . . . I’d only do that if I had to. . . .” He sounded quietly intimidating. I was glad he was doing it for me, and not to me. I would never want to cross this man.

  He was very easy to sketch. My charcoal flew down the lines of his nose, up over his cheekbones, along his jawline. His throat gave me some trouble. I hadn’t had much opportunity to sketch older men, and I wasn’t used to the folds of skin. Once I had the general line of him, I went back to concentrate on his brow, to make sure I had captured his eyes behind his glasses. He was very easy to draw.

  Too easy.

  I knew these lines. I looked back up at the old man who was leaning back in his chair with the easy practice of many decades at this desk. No way. I was just obsessed and seeing things.

  I turned back to my sketchbook. I sketched out the line of him again —

  cheekbones, chin, jawline, nose —but ignored the folds of his skin, his glasses, the cut of his hair. I drew his eyes again.

  It couldn’t be. I had to be imagining it. I closed my eyes for a moment, then looked again.

  I knew this face. I knew it very, very well.

  Ice crept through my blood. There was a sickly taste of acid in my mouth, but for once I didn’t feel nauseated. I simply sat there, staring mutely at the old, old man.

  Bren’s grandfather turned off his cell and stood up, turning toward the door. I bolted from the couch, scrambling to get there ahead of him. My movement startled Bren, who knocked over the trash can with a bang.

  Bren’s grandfather raised an eyebrow as I stood before him. “Yes?”

  The words fell flatly from my mouth. “What’s your excuse?”

  A flash of nervousness passed over his face. “About what?” he asked.

  I passed him the sketchbook. He frowned as he looked at the charcoal sketch I had done of him, and the other half- formed line drawing beside it. I reached forward and turned to the previous page so that he could see it.

  It was the last image of my sequence of Xavier: Xavier at seventeen, his fond smile, his sparkling hazel- green eyes, the little goatee, the look of hesitant self-effacement, which always kept his arrogant streak from overpowering him.

  The old man blinked at the drawing, his already sad eyes turning sadder. He flipped back another page, and there he was at fifteen, not yet grown into his nose, just a hint of downy fuzz touching his chin, his self- consciousness more pronounced. Back again to twelve, with the glimmer of mischief behind his eyes. He skipped a few pages, closing the book at the drawing of when he was three, a chubby- cheeked cherub with chocolate on his nose. “I’m surprised you remember,” he said.

  I stared at Xavier, my Xavier, grown into his seventies, skin sagging, yellow hair turned white, bright hazel eyes cloudy with age, a barely concealed tremor in his right hand. My Xavier. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh or cry. The dead, hollow feeling had returned. “
It wasn’t so long ago,” I said.

  Xavier smiled ruefully. “Yes, it was.”

  He was right. It had all been so long ago —in another life, when I was another girl. A chosen princess of UniCorp, champagne queen every time I opened my eyes, fashionable, sedate. A girl whose devoted parents would never abandon her to a slow death by stass fatigue, a girl who had a best friend who loved her and would always be there for her. I’d been trying to hold on to that life, to convince myself that I was still that girl, and I wasn’t. I was someone new, lost and alone, a child out of time, a burden to Guillory and Bren and everyone else who only suffered because of my reappearance. A burden to him.

  “You arranged for my studio,” I said, all the mysteries falling gently into place.

  “And Desert Roads. And Bren . . .” My voice caught on the name, and I glanced at my Prince Charming. Bren stood, bewildered by our exchange, frowning, his hazel- green eyes narrowed in confusion.

  I could see it, now that I let myself. I’d let the dark skin and the textured hair and the Eurasian eyes mask the line of his jaw, the shape of his nose, the color of his eyes. No wonder I had fallen for him like a rock off a cliff.

  I turned back to Xavier. “ ‘Call me Ron’?” I closed my eyes. Ron. Ronald was his middle name; he had taken to using Ronny in school because of the kids teasing him about the X in Xavier. It wasn’t surprising he used it for business.

  The tears were falling now, but no sobs wracked my chest. Water simply streamed unchecked from my eyes. “How could you?”

  Xavier closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head, his face a mask of sorrow. “I didn’t know,” he whispered.

  The lameness of his excuse boiled the river of tears inside me. My hand came up and I slapped him hard across the cheek. He turned his head with the blow, pulling away so that he didn’t feel the full force of it.

  I was horrified the moment I’d done it. That was something I could have done, even justifiably, to my Xavier. But an old man deserved more respect from me.

  I didn’t know what to say, how to feel, or whom to turn to. I did the only thing I could. Before Xavier even had time to turn his face back to me, I bolted.

  I hadn’t even run so fast from the Plastine. My footsteps echoed like thunder through the atrium. I heard someone shouting after me, but I didn’t even pause. I stabbed the down button for the lift. It was still on the top floor, waiting for me. I jumped inside and pounded on the close door button.

  Through my tear- blurred vision I could see a dark form running down the atrium after me. Xavier couldn’t possibly run so fast —that had to be Bren. I didn’t wait for him.

  The door closed and I rode the eighty floors down to the ground level. My hurried exit frightened the security guard, who leaped from his alcove, weapon raised. “What’s the trouble?” he asked, only half- reassured at seeing it was only me.

  “Just open the door.” I was surprised I could get any coherent words out at all.

  The security guard opened the door for me, and I fell out into the teal- blue light that lifts the darkness into morning. My limoskiff had moved in the night, and I didn’t know how to call it. It always just knew when I got out of school. I panicked and started to run. I didn’t know or care where, just anywhere.

  “Rose!” I stumbled at the voice and fell onto the grass. I’d ended up in the decorative park garden, just to the left of the building. “Rose!” Bren caught up to me, panting. I was gasping like a fish, my muscles burning, my lungs bursting. Bren’s endurance was far and away better than my slowly recuperating body’s.

  He caught my shoulders and forced me to face him. I didn’t want to look at him. I didn’t want to see my Xavier looking at me through those almond-shaped eyes. I gasped and wept, trying to find myself amid the torment. But I couldn’t find any part of me that seemed to be working. I couldn’t make myself get up again, couldn’t make myself pull away. Too much of me had been stagnant too long.

  “Rose, what is it? What is it?” He sounded so concerned, and his warm brown hands smoothed some of the tears from my cheeks. “Talk to me; you look like you’ve seen a ghost! What happened?”

  I pulled my head away, furious with myself. Bren frowned a moment and then wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pulling me to him. I wished I wanted to pull away. But I didn’t. I still wanted him — or someone, anyone —and I couldn’t bear it. I let him hold me while I fought the tears. I pulled away as soon as I could force myself into composure. My lungs didn’t seem to want to work, and I coughed a few times to try to clear them. “I’m sorry,” I said when I could. “I’m sorry for all of it. I’m sorry I threw myself at you. I . . . didn’t realize

  . . . why.”

  “What do you mean?” Bren asked.

  Xavier hadn’t explained it to him? No, I supposed he wouldn’t have had time. I looked at Bren. Why hadn’t he told me? Why hadn’t he guessed? He must have pictures of his grandfather as a young man; why hadn’t he connected those to my portraits of Xavier?

  As if thinking of my sketches had conjured it, I spotted my sketchbook on the ground by Bren’s knee. He must have brought it with him. Kind of him, really. I guess he’d noticed I never went anywhere without one. I pulled it from the grass and opened it to the telling page, comparing the old man with the young one. “How could you not know?”

  Bren stared for a long moment at the sketches, and then, like his grandfather, he leafed through my age progression of Xavier. His mouth opened in astonishment. He turned back to the picture of Xavier at seventeen, smiling fondly. “I didn’t know, because this boy is smiling,” Bren said. “Granddad doesn’t smile.”

  “But the name . . .”

  “I always thought Granddad’s name was Ronny. I mean, I know, I guess I’ve seen Xavier before, it’s in some records we’ve got, but it’s not a name he uses anymore. I’ve seen it referenced maybe twice in my life.” He turned back to the portrait again and exhaled through pursed lips, almost a whistle, as if trying to figure out what to say.

  “I must have . . . seen him in you,” I said quietly. “Made me act a little stupid, I guess.”

  “Not stupid,” Bren said. “This is a situation I don’t think human beings are genetically geared to handle. Sometimes I worry technology’s screwing with us.

  It has definitely screwed with you.” He reached forward and took my hand. “I’m sorry.”

  I pulled my hand away. This was aggravating. I’d been trying to get over how Bren made my guts twist and my heart race; now I felt a weird protectiveness toward him, like I had for Xavier when he was still a child. But he was still just as gorgeous as he had been from the beginning, and the two feelings blended and confused me, and I didn’t know how I felt. It was all too much. I wondered if falling in love with my boyfriend’s grandson of ficially put me above Otto on the weirdness scale.

  “Did he send you after me?” I asked.

  “No,” Bren said. “I grabbed your sketchbook and on the way out the door asked him, ‘Should I . . . ?’ And he nodded. I don’t think that quite counts as sending me.”

  “No,” I said. I felt a little better about that.

  He shook his head. “This is just weird. You could have been my grandmother.”

  “That was always true,” I pointed out. But he was right. I could have been. Or the grandmother of someone very like him, anyway. But I wasn’t. And I should have been. I should have been. My life had been stolen from me. I hadn’t felt really together since I’d woken up from stass, but it had never seemed so final before.

  I could see the lights of my limoskiff slowly inching up the road. It must have had a proximity monitor. I frowned at it, but was distracted. “Holy coit,” said Bren. Something had just occurred to him.

  “What?”

  “Mom’s name is Roseanna,” Bren said. “Rose. Like you.”

  As he said that my heart twisted. I surged to my feet. “If he cared so burning much for me, why the coit did he le
ave me to rot!” I shouted. I pelted for my limoskiff and closed the door before Bren could collect his wits. His hand thudded on the window, but I’d already told the skiff to go. I left him behind me in the slowly growing light. I frankly didn’t care if the Plastine caught me anymore. But I didn’t know where I was going. I really had nowhere to go.

  – chapter 22—

  The skiff circled ComUnity seven times in the pale rosy dawn. I couldn’t think. I tried to sleep but just got hit with dreams: dreams of Bren turning into Xavier, Xavier turning into Guillory. I wanted to go get my dog, but I was afraid to go home. I wasn’t afraid of the Plastine —death sounded like a joyride just then —

  I was afraid of all the things that had been part of Xavier. I could see it now.

  His taste was all over the walls. The paintings, the landscapes, which looked a little like mine. The re- creation of my bedroom. My studio. The prism. I closed my eyes.

  Why had he bought my parents’ condo? Was he really trying to hold on to me?

  Why couldn’t he have looked in the subbasement? Why didn’t he spend every moment of his life scouring the world for my tube? And if he wasn’t going to do that, why couldn’t he just forget me? Why did he have to be this half- haunting presence now?

  I had lost my parents, I’d lost my time, and now I’d even lost my dream of my perished lover. All my grief for his death surged backward through me, undigested. It hurt worse than swallowing it had.

  I didn’t want the sun to rise. I didn’t want the world to continue turning. I wanted the whole planet put into stasis until I could catch up.

  A familiar beep sounded from near the dashboard of the limoskiff. Ding, ding . .

  . ding, ding . . . ding, ding . . .

  I shook myself and crawled to the shadowed corner where the sound had come from. It was my notescreen. How had that gotten there? Then I realized I was the one who had left it in the skiff when I’d fled from school the day after I’d made my offer to Bren.

  Ding, ding . . . ding, ding . . . I picked it up and opened the screen.

  A page was already linked through the net. I pulled it up.