Chapter 47
Forty-Seven
A few days later, my suitcase was packed, a new research notebook was jammed into my tote bag, my refrigerator emptied.
Soulmails had been released every twenty-four hours since the weekend. It was expected, now, to receive one at three in the
morning on your eighteenth birthday. The experience cursory for some, already. Part of the fabric of society. Soulmail had
taken the world down, two by two by two. Two bodies ruined by a single sweetness, went one version of that Pablo Neruda poem I’d studied in college.
Samantha had quit Per Diem in a “spectacular way,” according to her most recent text. She wanted to meet up to talk about
my documentary work.
I keep my word, even if they don’t, she’d written.
Rumors were swirling that a government leader in “one of the Dutch nations” was preparing to out himself as being “partially
responsible for Soulmail.” It appeared as a Reddit conspiracy for a few days, which then leaked to social media, and finally
to actual news, which, for whatever reason, made it feel real.
The leader confirmed there was something unexplainable about how it managed to both match people up and deliver its information in one worldwide swoop.
It joined the ranks of unexplainable phenomena like Nazca Lines or Atlantis, like aliens or other mysteries the world collected like trends.
“Perhaps the non-sentient turned sentient,” he intoned, sending AI-warning bells clanging across the world.
The rumor was that this leader had a book coming out, and the leaked cover showed him in half-shadow.
Dola texted me to say Tate Dimmock was furious.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Alanna’s offer. I wondered what I’d know if I’d taken that card. For once in my life, I chose
blissful ignorance. Facts weren’t everything after all, and this was one I might never know.
Past me would have felt pressured to get the information I did know out there faster, be first, but current me was content to string her notes along, develop a story that might resonate,
might not, but felt right creating it.
Now I stared out the window, watching people on the street below navigate a gray November. Colorful umbrellas bobbed along
like fishing lures in a pond. A little girl fell, the woman beside her scooping her up, nuzzling her neck in comfort. My heart
tugged. I twirled my earring.
On the street, the woman released the girl, catching her little hand. They swung it together, a pendulum dividing yet uniting
two people, as they continued their day. Someday, if the world unfolded according to plan, that little girl would grow up.
She might ask her parents: Where were you when Soulmail first came out? What was life like before? What would the next one
be?
A warm, familiar body came behind me. He kissed my hair, curved himself over my shoulder, nipped my collarbone. “Do you think
your parents will love me as much if they catch me kissing you?” he asked.
“Depends,” I answered. “Question for you.”
“Anything.”
“Where were you when you knew you loved me?”
“Which time?” His reply was so quick, it was juice in my veins.
Even being in his proximity made my blood sugar spike.
“The first time, it was when we were maybe seven or eight, right after we had strep throat.
You were crying, and I kept asking your mom if you were okay.
She said our Livi is so lucky to have a friend like you.
“The next time, it was on the far corner of West Labyrinth Street, outside the ’Lil Peach convenience store. You’d just had
a blue Slush Puppy, and your tongue was like a new Crayola color. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.”
“That must be your Smurf fetish,” I said, and his return pulse was a squeeze. “Or maybe Avatar?”
“Blue Man Group, actually. And the third time,” he continued, “You’ve never heard about.”
I leaned against him. “Oh?”
“It was right when my dad started his flying company. He took me out on his plane. There were dozens of boats on the water
that day—the sight was breathtaking, actually. But I didn’t realize I was looking for something until I’d spotted you. All
I could see was this ponytail. I’m lucky Dad was piloting, otherwise we would’ve been nose to the water. It’s like I don’t
feel totally whole unless I know where you are.”
“Caleb Mariner,” I said, “are you saying I’m your homing beacon?”
“This is definitely where I make the pun that you’re my home.” He tugged the neck of my shirt to the side, scraped his teeth
along the skin of my shoulder. “Car will be here in fifteen,” he murmured. “Think that’s enough time?”
His suitcase was next to mine. We were bound for the Cape to spend Thanksgiving and then our birthdays with my parents, bound
for whatever came next, bound, no matter that facts were facts, because emotions were facts, too, and I had yet to open my
Soulmail, and maybe never would. “There’s never enough time.”
*****