My Year Zero

by Rachel Gold

  I hadn’t imagined the microchip in her wrist in my drawings, but I liked this scene. It was great the way she used the blood connection for the nanites to update their copy of Cypher.

  But the way it ended…she said, “Run.” Did she mean that for real?

  She’d posted the scene late last night, hours after Sierra and I split up. Was this a response to the breakup? Did she think I was the kind of person who screwed things up? If I stayed away from her, would that make her life easier?

  I stared out the window at the steel-gray sky. I was pretty far away now. Physically at least.

  But not really.

  I felt a kinship with Zeno—a flash of understanding what it would be like to send part of yourself to copy someone so that forever after you had the knowledge of their body inside you. Blake was copied into me like that.

  I could never forget what it felt like to kiss her, to hold her, to feel her laughing.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  The next morning I took the bus down from Duluth to the Minneapolis airport and flew to Boston. Flying away from the Cities felt good. Flying away from Sierra, from that whole train wreck. Back when I’d decided to get a girlfriend, I assumed it would be a one- or two-year thing, maybe longer. I’d have someone to date my whole senior year of high school, after which we’d part weepily on the steps of one of our colleges.

  I had not planned for my first relationship to last under four months and end with me slinking away disgusted and sad and pissed off. If there was a lesbian jury somewhere (all dressed in flannels and smartly tailored suits), they would convict me for reckless dating, multiple counts of failure to heed warnings, and gross girlfriend misconduct. I’d probably shamed the whole lesbian establishment.

  By the time the plane landed, I was contemplating trashing the dating plan until college.

  Except…Blake. If I could ever figure her out. If she wanted me at all. But if she didn’t, I so couldn’t handle that right now. I kept taking out my phone and looking at her name, not knowing what to say.

  “Run,” she’d said. So I was running.

  My mom was waiting at the end of a row of blue airport seats with her laptop open in her lap and her phone on the seat next to her. She isn’t tall like I am. She’s got that classic Jewish mother look: big-chested, heavy in the middle, thick black hair, warm brown eyes. Even her hair is different from mine: more tightly curled and kept short, which doesn’t entirely stop it from frizzing out by the end of the day, but it helps.

  I bent down to hug her. She said, “Hi honey” and kissed my cheek. We collected luggage and the rental car.

  On the drive to the vacation house she opened with, “How’s school?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Art?”

  I usually had a ton to tell her on that subject, but all I could manage now was, “I’ve been doing this group storytelling project with art and stuff. One of the other girls is great with perspective, I’m trying to learn from her. But it’s kind of falling apart.”

  She said, “I’m sorry. Is the other artist the girl you’re dating? Isaac told me.”

  I hadn’t even thought to text Isaac about the breakup. I told Mom, “Uh, no. She’s straight I think, the artist. Anyway, what’ve you been up to?”

  She half turned her head toward me but kept her eyes on the road, opened her mouth and closed it. Finally she said, “I was in Afghanistan until last week. It’s amazing what women are doing there. I’ve been working to connect Afghan women with mentors in the U.S.”

  She paused so I nodded and said, “Yeah? Does that make things better over there?”

  “Very much so. When you create economic opportunities, give people a chance to earn a living and support their families, it lessens the likelihood they’ll put on an explosive vest and kill people. So this is how I get to contribute to making the world a little safer and making the lives of people who live with conflict a bit easier. I wish you could meet some of these women. They’re…”

  “Badass?” I suggested.

  “Badass,” she agreed.

  She went on about the women-owned businesses in Afghanistan, places I’d expect, like hair salons and handmade goods, but also gyms, woodworking and furniture businesses. She told me about a woman in Kandahar, the epicenter of the Taliban, who ran a successful business selling pomegranates and jam.

  I felt grossly selfish for wanting her to spend more time in the U.S. so I could live with her. How could I take her away from all the people she was helping? Not to mention how much she clearly loved this job.

  The house she rented for us was a cute bungalow on a stretch of beach in Maine. The first evening we spent stocking the fridge, walking the beach, getting used to the house and surroundings.

  In the morning, I read Blake’s scene again but nothing new came out of it. She hadn’t texted me or emailed. For all I knew she was going to mail me another cryptic book of wisdom. Or maybe she didn’t want to talk to me.

  There wasn’t any email or text from Sierra either. That was a relief. And sad. Not sad that I’d lost her. Sad that the person I thought she was maybe didn’t even exist.

  I walked up and down the beach until my feet ached from trying to keep balance on the shifting sand. I cleaned the already clean kitchen to keep moving.

  Mom told me I didn’t have to clean, it was my vacation too, so I sat on the sunporch with my sketchbook and tried to draw. It came out all swirls and darkness, like drowning. I gave up and went into town with Mom to buy fresh fish for dinner and pick up Isaac from the train station.

  He’s two inches shorter than me and he has our father’s strong brow and a thick, powerful body that I’m sure looked imposing in suits like my father’s did.

  Spending time with them was like being in a long, slow courtly dance. Everyone had specific positions to move through at the right times. My role was to make basic meals and clean up and appear happy to do it. Isaac’s role was to work out and walk the beach and tease me, but never harshly, and go into town for a six-pack and a bottle of wine for Mom as needed. He got me Pepsi.

  Mom read the newspaper and walked the beach with us and showed us photos from her countries. And we pretended we were a great family. Except I was afraid they weren’t pretending. They might be happy.

  I wasn’t. I was going back to being nothing inside. A thing that didn’t know what it was and couldn’t quite turn into what it was supposed to be.

  * * *

  After that first day, I ignored my laptop. I drew and I walked a lot and tried not to think about Sierra. Part of me kept saying that I was being stupid, that Sierra did love me. Maybe it was hard to date me. I could have tried harder.

  Another part of me was clear that the first part was a raging idiot. Cyd was right about Sierra and the stupidest thing I’d done was fail to see it sooner. And thinking that I loved her.

  Maybe I was hopelessly bad at relationships. I should stay away from Blake, at least until I knew better.

  After a few days, I opened my laptop hoping Blake had written more than the scene telling Zeno, telling me, to go. Hoping I could find some clue about what she thought.

  Maybe I’d have the guts to email her and ask.

  When I opened my email, a message from Dustin got my attention. He’d forwarded me an exchange between him and Sierra.

  He put a note to me at the top: Lauren, I thought you should see this. I’d appreciate it if you don’t let Sierra know I shared it with you.

  I scrolled to the bottom so I could read the emails in the order they were written.

  Sierra, seven days ago, on Wednesday:

  Dust, I want to add a new character to my court. She’s a friend of mine from the university, Tracy Wade. She should be a marquis in the Court of Rogues, higher in rank than the knights. Her name is going to be Veritie and her powers are that she can read minds and do mind control and she’s also an infomancer.

  “Veritie my ass,” I said.

  Sierra had taken the name from the
Latin word for “truth.” That was so transparent and disgusting that I wanted to puke. This must have been the girl Cyd mentioned over waffles—the one she thought Sierra was trying to “hook”—the one she thought Sierra was going to replace me with. Of course Sierra would think the new girl should be in the story and outrank me and Blake.

  The date of the email was the morning after I’d tried to talk to Sierra. Two days after lying on the golf course with Blake and staring up at the stars. Before Sierra and I officially broke up.

  I tried to remember Sierra’s tone and expression as we talked. Was she planning this all along? Or did she automatically line people up so she always had a fallback plan? Was I the sucker who’d fallen into place when she decided she wasn’t that into Dustin?

  Those two months between when I gave her my email and when she used it—had she forgotten about me until she needed a new person in her life?

  Feeling covered in slime, I read the next part of Sierra’s email:

  Also, I hope you’ll be open to the next logical step in the story of Cypher turning traitor on the Queen of Rogues. Even if she’s doing it for our alliance, for all we know, she’s now against us. It’s logical that we would send an assassin after her. The best that we have.

  Dustin’s reply back to her was sent Wednesday evening (the night I slept in Cyd’s room):

  Of course, it’s great to have new people, the more the merrier. Does Tracy write? Will she be setting up an account?

  As to your question about the Cypher plot, I admit that does make sense. I can’t see the Queen of Rogues merely letting Cypher fly around the galaxy advertising her dissent. Do you have a specific plot in mind for the assassination attempt and how Cypher will avoid it? Have you talked to Blake about this?

  Sierra, late Wednesday night:

  Some things have happened, I’ll explain later. I’ll make an account for Tracy. Her psi powers can help the Queen track Cypher. I mean to kill her. Not just make the attempt.

  Sierra again in a new email, Friday, late afternoon (after we broke up):

  I don’t know how much you know about all of this, but Blake and Lauren have been having an affair behind my back. I tried to put an end to it but I think it did irreparable damage to my relationship with Lauren. We’ve broken up. I know she’s young and not ready for a real relationship, but I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel.

  My hands were shaking and I pressed them between my knees, but that made my whole body shake. Sierra’s email went on:

  I thought Lauren was more mature than that. She acts so knowledgeable. But I should have suspected Blake. She’s been getting colder and colder to me these last few months. I now wonder if she was waiting for an opportunity to hurt me. I don’t know what I ever did to her. Maybe nothing at all, or something she took as a slight that you know I didn’t mean that way.

  I was seriously missing her friendship and then this happened with Lauren. I don’t know how they could do that to me. You know they even had sex at Bear’s party while I was there! At the same party! And they snuck away together! While Lauren was a guest in my house. Now I hope you can understand why I no longer want their characters in the Court of Rogues. If they want to go join the Solar Court, fine, but you have to see that it’s in keeping with the Queen of Rogues character to hunt down those who betrayed her.

  Dustin’s reply came on Saturday afternoon:

  I’m sorry to read all that. I caution you not to do anything in your anger that you’ll regret later, but I can’t fault your logic. Write what you must, but please leave Blake and Lauren room to do their own storytelling.

  I could barely read his reply. My eyes kept going back to what Sierra had written, especially where she said I was having an affair with Blake. “Affair” was a word I’d heard yelled a lot in the house when Mom was leaving my father. I wanted to crawl into myself and disappear.

  What Sierra said wasn’t what had happened. Except it was. After making a huge deal about Sierra having sex with Dustin, I’d done worse. I’d had sex with someone else at a party when Sierra was there. Seeing it on the page I got how immensely shitty that would feel—to be standing out in the yard, smoking, cracking jokes, only to learn later that the girl you loved was downstairs having sex with your best friend.

  But Sierra twisted it. We didn’t sneak away together. I for sure hadn’t planned it. Had Blake?

  Sierra had said that Blake was being cold to her, and then Blake hugged her in the dining room at Bear’s house. What if Blake did plan to get me away from Sierra and the hug was to throw her off? How could I be sure that Sierra was using me but Blake wasn’t? They’d been friends.

  Was I the pawn in a battle between the two of them?

  If I wasn’t and Blake did like me, I should stay far away from her so I didn’t screw that up like Sierra. And if she didn’t, if it was a power play between her and Sierra, I should stay even further away. My only two choices were to destroy my relationship with Blake or be destroyed by it.

  I was better off when I didn’t feel anything at all. I closed my laptop and shoved it to the back of the desk.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  I drew a few sketches of Zeno dissolving into space. I walked the beach and stood in the cold Atlantic Ocean until my feet went numb. Maybe being dead inside like my father wasn’t such a bad idea. He never seemed to feel anything but cold anger and a drive to win.

  I liked anger a lot better than feeling like someone yanked my heart out and shredded it in front of me and then rubbed heart-confetti in my face. Anger was probably my favorite emotion…other than lust, but me and lust weren’t on speaking terms anymore.

  By the middle of the week, I’d used the anger to push away everything else. Mom came down the stairs and asked if I wanted to walk the beach. We walked to one end of the beach and turned around to walk to the other.

  “What colleges are you applying to?” Mom asked.

  “I thought I wanted to go to school in the Cities,” I said. “But now I’m thinking maybe I want to come out east.”

  “There are a lot of great colleges here,” she told me. “I think you could have your pick.”

  “My grades aren’t that good. And I don’t have a lot of extracurriculars.”

  She put her arm around me and squeezed. “Honey, you got that story published in that comic anthology. That counts for more than an extracurricular. And what’s your GPA?”

  “Three-point-five,” I said. “Well, technically three-point-four-six.”

  “That’s great.”

  “No, it isn’t. To get into the great colleges I need more like a four-point-oh and a bunch of outside activities.”

  “Did your father tell you that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s…peculiar. Tell me the schools you want and we’ll look at what they’re accepting in new students. I think with your art and a great essay and a three-point-five, you’re going to have a lot of choices.”

  We reached the end of the beach and started back toward the house.

  “I don’t like living with him,” I said.

  She stopped and faced me. “Did he do something?”

  “No. I mean, he didn’t like that I got a C in American history, but that’s a normal thing. He’s not bad or anything. But I can’t talk to him.”

  “About what, honey?”

  “I don’t know, stuff. Anything.”

  She started walking again and I shortened my steps to stay right next to her.

  “My girlfriend, we broke up,” I said. “I’d been seeing her since spring but…how do you know if you love someone?”

  “That’s a tough question. You feel good around them, you look forward to seeing them, they listen to you. When you fight, it’s not impossible to resolve. They don’t cheat on you. Did you love this girl?”

  I’d been about to tell her everything, until she said the cheating bit. There was no way I could tell my mom a story about how I had sex with another girl at a party while my girlfriend was th
ere. Especially not when my father had obviously done something similar to her.

  “It’s complicated,” I told her. “I thought I loved her but now I don’t think so.”

  “When did you break up?” she asked.

  “A few days ago.”

  She nodded, like that was the part that made sense. “You know what we should do? Let’s go into town and get four pints of gelato and sit on the couch and eat out of the containers and watch dumb movies. That’s the best cure for a breakup.”

  “How dumb are these movies?” I asked.

  “As dumb as you want, and if Isaac complains we’ll tell him to get lost. Oh we should have popcorn too. And pizza.”

  “Sure, that’d be great,” I said.

  “You’ll feel better,” she told me. “Breakups feel awful for a little while but then you move on. You’ll meet someone else.”

  I’d already…I didn’t want…I shook my head and quickly turned it into a nod. It did sound like a fun evening. But the idea of gelato, pizza and movies did nothing to budge the heavy, sunken feeling in my chest and belly.

  * * *

  I had loved Sierra. It was easy to tell Mom I hadn’t, but that was a lie. I could remember how excited I was when she came up to Duluth and how much I wanted to see her before that trip to the Cities in June.

  How could I have loved someone so much and a few months later feel sick when I thought about her? Isaac found me pondering this, sitting at the top of the seawall, staring out over the gray waves. He sat next to me, legs hanging down, his shorter than mine but thicker in the thighs.

  “Mom told me you broke up with that girl,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “She dump you or did you dump her?”

  “I did,” I said.

  “That’s my sis. Sometimes those pretty girls are too much work. You gotta move on.”

  I put my face in my hands and shook my head. He made it sound like I’d won a court case. His fingers brushed my shoulder and moved away. As kids, even though he’d taken care of me, other than my morning bus stop high-fives he didn’t touch me. In my father’s house, touching was alien.