“I thought there wasn’t a difference.”
He doesn’t pause. “Would you be available to come on shift tomorrow? Early?”
I run the words through my head twice over and still come up blank.
“What?” I ask.
He sighs. “I’ve no one to take the shift. Joan is out sick, Henri has a family event, and Denze is still mastering tour-level knowledge.”
Denze Remmings, a nephew, has three years of tour-level knowledge pounded into his skull. It’s amazing the detail of random Gilken info he can dish out when a bet’s on. Even more amazing is how it all evaporates the moment work might be involved. If you need a hand, you count on Denze to be somewhere else.
“So you’re letting Millie Oen’s daughter back in?”
His voice creaks, as if the words are hard to pull. “You are not your mother.”
“And you have no one to cover the shift.”
The silence of admission.
“So you’re giving me my job back,” I say.
Another pause. “Potentially. You’ll have the day’s wage. If all goes well, we can discuss it further.”
Which isn’t a yes, but it’s something.
I won’t be able to cover power for the suite without work for long, little less buy food. And it’s not like anyone else will hire me.
“You’ll be here tomorrow?” Mr. Remmings asks.
“I’ll be there.”
“Good,” he says and hangs up.
I stare at the flipcom.
A job. I have my job. Possibly.
My whole body exhales, and I lean into the shower door. My head crunches against the cold glass. Literally. I explore my scalp and my hair crackles.
The colorkit gel. Right.
I crawl back into the shower, wipe myself up off the floor, and get the water on. Scrub until the mirror fogs and I’m 90 percent sure I’m clean.
I gather my clothes and hurry into the bedroom, opening the closet door with its full-length mirror. Yonni’s stark white head bobs in the glass.
I scream, clothes flying, towel crashing to the floor.
“Kit?” Dad, muffled and faint through the bedroom door. “What are you doing in there?”
My face stares from under Yonni’s hair. She always had long hair, even at the end, and dyed it white until the grays took over. A pure, soft powder, like light caught and distilled.
My hair is almost translucent, at odds with my black eyebrows and overwide cheeks. I don’t look like Mom anymore.
I look like hell.
“Kit,” whines Dad from the door, close enough to be right outside it. “You up? I thought we could do breakfast.”
I thought you could make me breakfast, he means.
I used to do that, cook for him, when Mom wasn’t home. He’d hand me down the pans and plates I was too little to reach, then I’d half burn something semieatable, and we’d watch old feedshows together.
“In a minute,” I call. Add a second, softer, “In a minute.”
My “new soul” drips water over my shoulders in ghost-white glee, the opposite of Millie.
“Well, Mom, I said you wouldn’t exist.”
Look at me, keeping my word. And I’m still breathing, so that’s Niles covered, too. I show up at work tomorrow, maybe the universe will give me a medal.
I grab a handful of what Yonni used to call my “crowning glory” and stretch it out.
So not worth it.
I throw on some clothes and wrap my new disaster into a tight bun. Grab an old gray hat of Yonni’s, with the thin plaid brim, and stuff it on. A few flyaways escape, but for the most part it hides the evidence. I don’t look reborn, but at least I’m not a ghost.
I close the closet door and go face Dad.
“There’s my baby.” He’s on the couch, of course, but on the floor by his feet lies a much scuffed digibook—its cover open to reveal a text-filled screen.
A limited edition manufacture of Gilken’s collected works, engraved on the back with the old Archive’s original seal, annotated by the best scholars of the day.
The digibook that never leaves my bedside table.
I snatch it up. “You went into my room?”
Dad shrugs. “You were gone all day and I never read much of him, and I thought we could—you know—” He smiles as if we’re bonding. “He’s a pretty interesting guy. Didn’t turn out to be such a bad gift, after all.”
Right. Because when Mom gave it to me for my seventh birthday, they didn’t have the fight from hell over it or anything. He didn’t spend three hours screaming about how she wasted money we didn’t have on a stupid digibook when I could barely even read. Had she even looked at my school reports? And Mom didn’t scream back that she got me the book for exactly that reason—because Gilken had trouble with his letters, too, before he became our House’s most renowned Scholar. And, of course, I didn’t hide under my bed for hours, until snotty tears crusted my skin, because I thought I was getting a puppy.