After I just wanted off-planet. The scholarship would have paid for everything. I’d be somewhere else, someone else.
Guess I did manage to pull that last one off. I’m the hack-bomber’s daughter. Dreams do come true.
I kick off my shoes and start across the roof.
“You again,” someone says.
I slam to a halt, fists clenched and eyes tight.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
But no, there he is—that same power technician, barrel arms jammed deep in the innards of an open fuse box. Sweat slicked, sun drenched, and glaring my death.
Here he was, just trying to work, and now he has to deal with my sorry self.
He pulls his hands free. “What the hell are you—?”
I turn right back around and walk out.
I walk home barefoot. Again. As if I have endless shoes to strew about.
My heels hurt. The pavement is hot and dusty, and every time I curl my toes something catches in the crease. Rocks, old wrappers, glass.
I could have been halfway to crazy by now, tied to a chair with a needle in my brain. It wouldn’t hurt. They’d numb me from the inside out, and I’d wake up different.
Or not at all.
Mom worked with the Archive’s mind mapping research division for a stretch, before switching to scent mapping instead. She explained it once, over coffee. How scents could be used to trigger reactions in people or objects on a fundamental level, and how the effect could be directed and magnified with the help of an implanted receptor. She talked for an hour while the coffee got cold and people wandered in and out of the café without sparing us a glance. A month ago, she was an Archivest and I was a tour guide, and everyone could care less. I watched them instead of her.
Until Mom cut herself off midsentence. Just say it.
Say what? I asked.
That you hate me.
I took my mug with both hands to keep them still. I’d have to know you to hate you, I said.
A long, long silence.
I can fix that, she said.
I thought she meant she was going to stick around long enough for me to get to know her. Stupid.
The midday sun bakes the city gold before South Central finally bleeds into West 1st and I’m almost home.
“I’m telling you, Ricky,” screams a distant, Dee-like voice, “you better damn well open this door!”
No. Oh no. Dad can’t have answered the visitor intercom. He couldn’t be that stupid.
I sprint the rest of the block and swing left onto my street.
Dee stands at the entrance to my tower, lips pressed to the intercom box beside the keypass scanner, her finger stiff on the button. “What the hell are you doing in my apartment?”
“Kit’s apartment,” Dad responds through the scratchy speaker. “And I’m visiting my daughter.”
Yep. Dad is definitely that stupid.
My legs fold and I land on my butt on the curb. My feet feel every hour I’ve walked, and one of my toes trickles blood.
Four floors up, a woman with a hair-frizzed halo sticks her head out a window. “God dammit, leave the man alone,” she calls. “He wants to visit his kid, let him visit his kid.”
“Thank you,” says Dad. “Finally.”
Dee backs up to yell at the stranger. “You mean the kid he ditched when she was seven?”
“Nine!” Dad blares righteous indignation. “Millie was gone, and I was going to come back. I was on a job.”
“Oh, really? You mean one with two legs and tits?”
Two more windows shoot up on levels one and three. Mrs. Divs pops her wrinkled head out of the lowest one. “You do not talk like that outside my front door, young missy. You get off my steps or I’m calling the Enactors.”
Great. There goes my suite.
“Excuse me, we’re having a private conversation,” Dee snaps.
A young guy hangs out of the window higher up. “Then maybe you should have it where we all can’t hear you.”
“And maybe you should get your big fat—”
“Okay,” I yell, hauling myself to my feet. “Okay, show’s over. Everybody back up.”
Mrs. Divs swings her shaky finger at me. “Kit?”
“Kit?” echoes Dad from the speakers. “Dee’s here! Did you see—”
“Where the hell have you been?” Dee asks.
“What’s it matter?” I crest the steps and press the intercom button. “Shut up, Dad.”
“You bet it matters,” Dee says. “Here you are, prancing around while Greg—”
“Kit?” Mrs. Divs asks, louder.
“Go on back inside, Mrs. Divs,” I call, leaning past Dee’s shoulder. “I’ve got this.”
Big mistake. Dee grabs my shirt and shoves me, hard, into the wall. My head bounces—cracks?—and the world blurs.
Dee shakes me in the recoil until the world bleeds color. “Greg’s facing lockdown, and you let Ricky in? Him?”
“Dammit, Dee.” I try to push her off, but there’s thunder in my brain. “Greg’s always facing lockdown.”
“You unhand her!” Mrs. Divs shouts. “You unhand her right now!”
“It’s okay, Mrs. Divs,” I say. “Just go back inside.”
“You call this okay?” Dee rears and backhands me. My cheek grates between my teeth. “If I lose Greg because of you, I swear to God—”