Mimi had worn her hair in thick loose curls. She had put in a sparkling hair clip to hold part of her hair away from her face. I don’t know how long it took to make her hair like that. But if it got ruined, I would hear about it. I pull myself away from her lips and pop in the last Snap. My breath became ice. I blew on the water below and the lake froze over.
We land safely, but it is hard to stand up.
“Wait a minute,” she says as we slip on the ice and land on our butts.
“I’m just trying not to get your hair wet.”
“It’s better that I break a rib than get my hair wet. You are absolutely right.” She smiles then blows at the bottom of our feet. A thin layer of ice forms on the bottom of our shoes.
I get up first and hold out my hand to pick her up. She reaches out and takes my hand. I lifted her up off the ice effortlessly.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You’re welcome.”
Our kisses start out tender and sweet then grow more intense. We’re wrapped into each other so deeply that we are unaware it’s been more than five minutes and that the ice is melting. I don’t think either one of us gave a damn. The ice melts quickly. We don’t stop touching each other for a second. The ice caps could have melted and we would still be standing there kissing.
The ice gives way under us. The block of ice we are standing on starts going under from the weight of our bodies. We don’t try to stop it. We hungrily search out each other’s lips and find the taste we longed for. The more we kiss, the more we want. We sink slowly into the Indian Ocean.
****
After the date, I drop Mimi off and fly over to Emerson’s. I’m so glad it went well. Mimi deserved a fun night after everything I’ve done. And what I’m about to do.
I knock on the door. Her mother, Marla, opens up for me. She frowns and tells me Emmy is in her room.
I open the bedroom door slowly and, sure enough, she is in the corner of her room sitting below the windowsill. Her knees are hunched up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. She doesn’t bother to look up as I enter.
“Hey, how are you?”
She doesn’t reply.
“Emerson, we need to talk.”
She stays quiet.
“You are essential to the fate of this planet. You can’t just shut down. I know it sucks what happened. And I’m sorry about Sara, but you have to try and come out of this hole. We need you. The world needs you.”
She doesn’t move and inch. I sigh and get down on the floor beside her.
“Emmy, I miss you.”
She looks into my eyes. I see life where there hadn’t been any before. She isn’t fully with me, but she cares about what I am saying. It’s the first sign of life she has shown since the funeral. It is hard for me to be so honest. The line between helping save the world and shattering Mimi’s heart is thin.
“What?” she asks in a weak voice that cracks as she speaks.
“I miss you.”
“Why?”
“Since I met you I have been unable to count in days. I can only count your eyes. How long until I see your eyes again? That’s the only clock I have in my head.”
“You are just using my feelings for you so I can help you save the world. Screw you. Screw the world,” she says flatly.
“Emmy, it’s all true. There were times when I was supposed to be out tracking Runners and I would come to your window instead and watch you sleep. I used to be outside your window, but that was too far away from you. I programmed a Port to lead right into this room.”
“I brought a pack of No See Snaps. I took them one after the other so I could be invisible and spend the evening with you. I took them like an addict because the more I took, the longer I could be with you.”
“You only care about me because of the stupid mission. You’re watching me because it’s your job,” she says, not bothering to hide her indifference.
“My interest in you is a thousand times more than what it should be. How could you not know that I am in love with you? Everyone else does.”
“I’m just a stupid human you have to pretend to be interested in. Get out.” She puts her head down.
I wait to see if she would lift her head back up. She doesn’t. I go towards the door. I’m nearly out of the room when I turn back and speak to her from the doorway.
“You blow on your ice cream before you eat it. When you watch horror movies and the scary parts come up, you close your cat’s eyes along with yours. You have a photo album of the clothes you’d like to wear but don’t think it’s right to ask your mother for. You have a picture you took of me on your cell and don’t think I know about. You look at it the same way you look at the clothes in your album—like you have no right to ask for it.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I want you back.”
“You want to be with me?”
“Yes.”
“What about her?”
“I’m not leaving her.”
She looks confused. I come and sit beside her.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Emmy, I want you every day that I exist. I was tired of denying that. I saw how much it was hurting you too. But I made a promise to Ameana. My word is good. It is strong and will not be broken.”
“So, what’s the point, Marcus? What’s the point of any of this?”
“I was gonna ask you to face the world because I love you. And you love me. But how can I ask you to do that when I can’t be with you?”
She looks at me. She has no response. There was nothing she could have said that the two of us didn’t already know. I take her hands. She had started crying. I wipe her tears away with my hand.
“I heard this guy say once that he thought if he said ‘no’ to doing drugs then the fight was over. But it turns out he had to say ‘no’ each and every day. I didn’t get it until I met you. When I first fell for you, I said ‘no’ to it. Then the next day the feeling came back. Now every single day, I have to say ‘no’ to being with you.”
“I try not to think about you….”
“Thinking about you caused me to fly into a wall once.”
She laughs. Even she was surprised to hear it come out of her. She stops abruptly. I knew exactly what the problem was.
“Emmy, Sara won’t be any more gone if you laugh. It’s okay to continue living. That isn’t disrespecting the dead. They just want us to be okay and move on.”
Her eyes fill with tears.
“I didn’t help her.”
“You couldn’t. But now you get to help lots of people.”
“I can’t save the world, Marcus. I’m not strong enough.”
“The thing about saving the world is that it can be hard to care about it. You can’t save the world, you don’t know the world. So you have to focus and narrow it down to the people you do know—your mom, your uncle, your neighbors.”
I hand her a tissue and speak directly to the tiny spark of light that was now in her eyes.
“Look in their faces and understand that they will no longer exist if you don’t do this. Your mom won’t be around for her next birthday. No bowling nights. No book clubs. Nothing. You have to fight for the people that you love. You. Have. To. Fight.”
She blows her nose and throws the tissue in the trash next to her. She gets up. She doesn’t ask for my help. I know she doesn’t need it. She walks over to the mirror and studies herself, then turns to me.
“So, while you were invisible did you ever see me naked?”
I laugh.
“No comment.”
“You suck,” she says as she heads to the bathroom.
I call out to her before she leaves the room.
“Hey, I’m not telling you what I saw, but what I did see was….” I bite my lower lip. She smiles a devilishly sweet and sinful smile. I had never seen a girl pull off both sweet and sinful. That takes skill.
She laughs at the look on my face. She goes into the bathroom, and closes the door.
Through the door I hear the most beautiful sound in the world: she was singing in the shower. It’s off-key and off-tempo, but it’s the best version of “Staying Alive” I’ve ever heard.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: CONDITIONS
We have all been summoned by Emerson. Two days have passed and she is back to her old self, for the most part. The loss of her friend did not leave her unchanged. She has an edge to her that she didn’t have before.
“I asked you all here so we could go over some things,” she says like she is addressing a board of investors. Her voice was strong and steady. Whatever it is she wanted, she was certain she would get it. Or at the very least, put up a good fight.
“First, thank you all for helping me get through Sara’s death. I know it set you guys off-track in terms of what you needed to do, and I really appreciate it.”
“No prob. We got you, baby girl,” Jay says.
“I know. But it really was hard and you guys could have like melted my brain or something to get me to talk, but you didn’t, so thank you.”
“We understand loss better than anyone, Emmy,” Reese says simply.
“And on that note, here are my conditions for helping you guys find the Triplex.”
“Conditions?” I say.
“Yeah, some things I need you guys to promise me before we can continue.”