Shutting the window, she crept toward her bedroom door, careful not to trip on the bag of secondhand clothes Pearl had begrudgingly given to her the day before after her father had lectured her about charity.
She heard Adri’s voice before she reached the kitchen and paused, one hand balancing her on the wall as her body threatened to tip toward its heavier left side.
As she strained to hear, Adri’s voice grew steadily louder, and Cinder realized with a jolt that Adri wasn’t speaking louder, but rather something in her own head was adjusting the volume on her hearing. She rubbed her palm against her ear, feeling like there was a bug in it.
“Four months, Garan,” Adri said. “We’re behind by four months and Suki-ji has already threatened to start auctioning off our things if we don’t pay her soon.”
“She’s not going to auction off our things,” said Garan, his voice a strange combination of soothing and strained. Garan’s voice had already become unfamiliar to Cinder’s ear. He spent his days out in a one-room shed behind the house, “tinkering,” Peony said, though she didn’t seem to know what exactly he was tinkering with. He came in to join his family for meals, but hardly ever talked and Cinder wondered how much he heard, either. His expression always suggested his mind was very far away.
“Why shouldn’t she sell off our things? I’m sure I would in her place!” Adri said. “Whenever I have to leave the house, I come home wondering if this will be the day our things are gone and our locks are changed. We can’t keep living on her hospitality.”
“It’s going to be all right, love. Our luck is changing.”
“Our luck!” Adri’s voice spiked in Cinder’s ear and she flinched at the shrillness, quickly urging the volume to descend again. It obeyed her command, through sheer willpower. She held her breath, wondering what other secrets her brain was keeping from her.
“How is our luck changing? Because you won a silver ribbon at that fair in Sydney last month? Your stupid awards aren’t going to keep food on this table, and now you’ve brought home one more mouth—and a cyborg at that!”
“We talked about this…”
“No, you talked about this. I want to support you, Garan, but these schemes of yours are going to cost us everything. We have our own girls to think about. I can’t even afford new shoes for Pearl and now there’s this creature in the house who’s going to need…what? A new foot every six months?”
Shriveling against the wall, Cinder glanced down at her metal foot, the toes looking awkward and huge beside the fleshy ones—the ones with bone and skin and toenails.
“Of course not. She’ll be fine for a year or two,” said Garan.
Adri stifled a hysterical laugh.
“And her leg and fingers can be adjusted as she grows,” Garan continued. “We shouldn’t need replacements for those until she reaches adulthood.”
Cinder lifted her hand into the faint light coming down the hallway, inspecting the joints. She hadn’t noticed how the knuckles were fitted together before, the digits nestled inside each other. So this hand could grow, just like her human hand did.
Because she would be stuck with these limbs forever. She would be cyborg forever.
“Well how comforting,” said Adri. “I’m glad to see you’ve given this so much thought.”
“Have faith, love.”
Cinder heard a chair being pushed back and backed up into the hallway, but all that followed was the sound of running water from the faucet. She pressed her fingers over her mouth, trying to feel the water through psychokinesis, but even her brain couldn’t quench her thirst on sound alone.
“I have something special to reveal at the Tokyo Fair in March,” Garan said. “It’s going to change everything. In the meantime, you must be patient with the child. She only wants to belong here. Perhaps she can help you with the housework, until we can get that android replaced?”
Adri scoffed. “Help me? What can she do, dragging that monstrosity around?”
Cinder cringed. She heard a cup being set down, then a kiss. “Give her a chance. Maybe she’ll surprise you.”
She ducked away at the first hint of a footstep, creeping back into her room and shutting the door. She felt that she could have wept from thirst, but her eyes stayed as dry as her tongue.