There’s nothing but dust under the bed. No gun beneath the pillow, no grenades in the bedside table. What was I expecting?
I give up and sit on her bed, sighing. I snuggle under the cover, missing Tila so much it’s a physical ache. I’m angry at her, I’m terrified for her, and I’m a little terrified of her and what she might have done. But I’ve never gone so long without speaking to her, or seeing her. The blankets even smell like her perfume—lily of the valley. I press my nose into the pillow.
I allow myself to cry about it all. I’ve kept most of it bottled up close inside, trying to stay strong, to dampen everything through Mana-ma’s training; but I can’t do it anymore. It hurts too much. It’s not pretty tears. I’m keening and sobbing, my nose running almost as much as my eyes. I rock back and forth, clutching the pillow to my chest. I feel like a lost little girl. I don’t know how to save Tila. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I will. If I don’t figure this out, then my sister will go into stasis. I can’t even imagine never seeing her again. I really would be ripped in two.
It takes a long time before I stop crying. I sit up, sniffling, and take a tissue from the box on the bedside table. Beneath the tissue box is Tila’s sketchbook. Still sniffling, I take it and rest the book on my knees, flipping through the pages.
She loved to people-watch. She used to say she liked to record the people that surrounded her in her sketchbook. “It’s different than a picture. This is more honest,” she’d say, bending over the paper to shade in an eyebrow. She never used a tablet, always drawing the way she had at the Hearth, with pen and paper. “So many people. And we don’t really know what makes them tick. So few people we really, truly know in this world. With the rest of them we’re just pretending. But when I’m drawing them, I feel like I can find something about them that’s real. That maybe they didn’t want me to see. Sometimes I feel like I’m pretending with everyone except for you, Taema.”
I turn another page. Here are hosts and hostesses from Zenith—I recognize Pallua, Leylani and a few of the others, either that I saw that night or from the police information brainload. There are a few of her favorite clients—beautiful men and a few women, smiling and holding glasses of champagne. Their names are neatly printed next to them in our alphabet. Nadia. Jeiden. Locke. Men and women with money to burn to stave off their loneliness.
Here are total strangers. People Tila would sketch in cafes and restaurants. I can remember when she drew the old man at the bar down the street—not that he looked that old (hardly anyone in San Francisco does), but you can still tell when someone’s over seventy. Something about their eyes.
This man was always there, at the same seat at the bar, with the same glass of SynthScotch, staring into the distance with the withdrawn look that meant he was accessing his ocular implant. We often used to wonder what he was reading or watching, lost in his own little world, not moving except to raise the glass to his lips or lift his finger for a refill. I remember how my twin looked, bent over the sketchbook as she shaded in his features, while I sat across from her sketching out calculations for whatever project I was working on. Companionable silence.
I close my eyes tight, not wanting to cry again. But I don’t have any tears left. I make my way through the rest of the house, looking under the sofa cushions, in every kitchen cupboard, all the various nooks and crannies.
In the middle of the kitchen, I stand up, my eyes wide. Why hadn’t I remembered?
I do know where Tila hides her secrets.
She showed it to me once, not long after she moved in. It was to be her version of the cookie jar, where I could leave her messages if I was passing by. Such a childish game, but I’d appreciated it. Yet in all the months she lived here, I never left her any messages. I kept meaning to, but never did. Hers were always so clever, so thoughtful, and when I tried to think up a return message, they all seemed unbearably dull. She never mentioned the lack of baubles and notes. I never knew if she was hurt by that or not.
I go to her spare bedroom, grunting as I pull back the bed. Another reason I didn’t leave messages: it’s harder to get to than a cookie jar in the kitchen. Tila was always the more paranoid of us, though, and now I understand why.
I can’t see any evidence that the police moved the bed, and the cubbyhole she built behind it seems untouched. I take the key she gave me from my purse and put it into the lock, and the door swings open.
Inside are another sketchbook and a datapod. The pod is only the size of my thumbnail. I want to bring it up on my implants right away, but I’m also afraid of what it may contain.