Tila and I have keys to each other’s places, of course. Our schedules have always been different—I work the standard nine to three, whereas Tila works nights. When we meet for dinner, it’s actually closer to her breakfast. When she first moved out eight months ago, I found it really difficult, and I wasn’t good at hiding it. I felt betrayed. When we fight, we know the perfect way to wound the other, but it’s like hitting a mirror—the glass cuts us just as deeply.
After that first, terrible fight, she left me an apology note in the cookie jar. Problem is, she eats more cookies than I do, so it took me three or four days to find the note. It worked, and I forgave her, not that I can ever stay mad at her for long. Over the next few weeks, she kept leaving notes in the cookie jar, dropping them off on the way to work for me to find on the way home. They were silly, full of in-jokes and puzzles. Then when she started acting more distant, working more hours at the club, they stopped. I haven’t even checked the cookie jar in days.
I open it. There are no cookies, only a few scattered crumbs, but there is a note. I unfold it with trembling fingers.
T,
I’m doing something possibly dangerous tonight.
If everything goes well, I’ll come here and take this note away before you find it. If you do find this, and you don’t know where I am, then everything has gone belly up.
And I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.
T
I blink, my eyes unfocused. She has kept something from me. For days? For weeks? For months? Lying to me, doing … whatever it is she’s been doing, and leaving me in the dark.
I crumple the paper in my hands. I have to get rid of it. If they come back and find it, it’d look beyond incriminating for both of us. I glance around nervously. What’s to say they aren’t already monitoring me through the wallscreens or my implants? I’ve heard the rumors that Sudice monitors all implant feeds, and reports crimes to the government.
I incinerate the note over the stove. After it’s nothing but ashes, I take ten deep breaths, forcing the fear and pain away. I can almost hear Mana-ma’s voice in my ear:
The world is around you. You can change it. Be the change you want.
I shake my head, as if her voice is a buzzing fly. I don’t want to hear her in my head just now. I had enough of Mana-ma in my head as a child. The woman at the head of the Hearth, pulling her strings, weaving her web, ensnaring us all.
The breaths calm me enough that I can push the hurt, the terror and the panic deep into the back of my mind. I shut down my conscious thoughts, focusing only on the physical. I hold the heels of my hands to my eyes until dark spots dance behind my eyelids. Everything’s so jumbled. I’ve always hated being alone. My thoughts are too loud.
I go to the spare room. It was Tila’s before she moved out. It’s been searched, but there wasn’t much for them to go through. A plain bed, an empty dresser, the closet filled with spare linen. I remember how it used to look when she was here: a rainbow of clothes littering the floor, leaving a trail from the bed to the closet. High-heeled shoes kicked off in a corner. Empty coffee mugs left on bedside drawers caked with dried makeup powder. The police would have been lucky to find anything at all under all the chaos.
I stand there for a moment, looking at the perfectly made bed. The searchers took the time to put it back to rights. I suppose that’s polite. Tears prick the corners of my eyes, but I take more deep breaths until they go away. I reach forward and muss it a bit. Tila never made her bed. “What’s the point?” she’d say. “You’re just going to get right back into it at the end of the day.” I used to be the one to make the bed, back in the Hearth, with Tila sighing and occasionally patting down a pillow to keep me happy. I pull the covers back again. Tila’s not here.
I go back to the kitchen. I bring up my contacts list on my ocular implants, scrolling through the names. I want to speak to someone, though I don’t think I can share anything about what’s happened. My gaze pauses on a few exes—David, Simone, Amrit. I used to be so close to them. I almost married David, but then I realized he didn’t know how to love and could only keep people at arm’s length. Now I have no idea what they are doing. There are no friends I want to tell—most are colleagues. Tila’s the one with all the friends. I’m slower to trust and, perhaps like David, I never truly let anyone in. Normally it’s Tila I’d turn to, and I can’t turn to her now.
I send the names away. I still want to believe this has been some big misunderstanding. I can’t pretend, now that I’ve found that note.
“Tila, what have you done?” I ask the empty room. There, alone in the dark, I realize another lie I told myself.
I’m far less than ninety-nine percent sure she didn’t do it.
*
I lie awake all night, trying to piece together everything Tila has told me in the last few weeks; but if she’s given me any hints, they don’t jump out at me. After I finally stumble from my bed, I’m too tired to even yawn. I project the news from my implants directly onto the white table as I drink coffee, and then I set the coffee down.