Robin Wasserman - Frozen

“It does !” he shouted, raising his voice for the first time. “Humans are mortals. Mortals die. Living creatures die . The whole concept of living is meaningless without its opposite. Light is defined by dark. Life is defined by death. Death makes them what they are. Absence of death makes us what we are. That’s the difference. It’s absolute. You don’t get to just wish it away.” Jude slammed his fist against the door frame, splintering the rotted wood. “You never understood. You never even bothered to try. It didn’t occur to you that that’s why we go to the waterfall, why we take risks, why we push ourselves past the brink? It’s a reminder—that for us, death is not an option. It’s a reminder of everything that makes us different. You can blame yourself for Auden all you want—because you didn’t want to remember. So you let yourself forget.”

“But—”

“No,” he said fiercely. “ You came to me this time. So you can either go or you can listen. You want to hear this or not?”

And maybe that was the real reason I’d come. To hear what I already knew but couldn’t believe. Not unless I heard it from someone else. I nodded.

“You got careless,” Jude said. “You let yourself believe that you and Auden were the same. You got emotionally tied to an org and refused to accept the reality of who you are—and the fact that it’s not who you were. You ignored the truth, and that put everyone around you in danger. Especially him.”

“It was an accident,” I argued. “Bad luck.”

“What would it have been if he’d gotten shot last night, in the city?” Jude asked. “Or if some thug had jumped him while we were up on the roof? Could’ve happened.”

“I didn’t think—I don’t know.”

“You do know,” Jude said. “You knew then, too. You did what you wanted to do anyway. Like you should have. But he didn’t belong there in the first place. You knew that, too. You just didn’t care enough to stop.”

“I care about him more than someone like you could understand,” I spat out.

“You care about yourself,” Jude said, smiling. “Something I understand entirely too well.”

I stood up. “I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.”

“No.” Jude stretched himself along the door frame like a cat. “Run away. It’s what you’re best at.”

I stayed.

“You brought him to that waterfall,” Jude said. “You brought him to the city. You would have dragged him somewhere else tomorrow. Or the next day. He’s probably lucky this happened. The next stupid decision might have gotten him killed.”

“I would never—”

“And that would have been your fault too.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Lock myself in a closet and shut down, to keep the world safe from the horror that is me?”

“None of my business,” Jude said. “There’s no one I care about in the world. The org world, at least. But if I were you, and I still had someone, someone important…”

Auden, I thought, in his metal cage. My father, on his knees. Zo, hiding behind a locked door, guilt tearing her apart. We had more in common now, I thought suddenly. Just imagine the sisterly bonding possibilities: So, who did you almost kill today?

“I would think about what I was doing to them by denying reality,” Jude said. “By pretending. I’d think about who I was hurting and who I would hurt next.”

And again, I saw him. My father. On his knees. Wishing me dead.

“You’ve got options,” Jude said.

“You?” I asked in disgust.

“Us. You’re one of us. Under the right conditions, you could thrive. Or…” He glanced behind him, into the yellowish brown forest of dead plants. “You know what they say. Live like an org…”

“Die like an org?” I guessed sourly.

Jude frowned. “Except that you’ll never be the one to die.”

“I’m not like you,” I said. “I don’t want to be like you.”

Jude stared at me, and when he spoke, his voice was low and intense, filled with a new emotion. Anger, maybe. Or regret. “ None of us are volunteers.”

I left a message for my parents that I would meet them at Bio-Max, that I needed all of them, Zo included. That I was in trouble. And after not hearing from me in a couple days, I knew they would come.

Which meant I would be free to go home. Slip into the empty house, pack up the few things I couldn’t live without, and disappear again without any messy good-byes. Without anyone crying and pleading with me to stay, which I didn’t think I could handle. Or without anyone smiling and waving me out the door.

Which I knew I couldn’t handle.

My parents fell for it. But when I opened the door to my bedroom, Zo was sitting inside. Waiting for me.

“You’re not allowed in here when I’m not home,” I said automatically.

“This is my sister’s room. I’m allowed in here whenever I want.”

I decided to ignore her. She couldn’t stop me from leaving. Maybe it would even be easier with her there. The perfect reminder of why I couldn’t stay. Why everyone would be better off if I left.

“Whatever you are, I know how you think,” Zo said. “Because you think like Lia. Which means you can’t fool me.”

I stuffed some clothes into a bag. Not my favorites, just whatever was lying on top of the pile. I was supposed to be starting a new life, creating a new identity. Which meant my old favorites were irrelevant.

“You’re running away,” Zo said.

“What clued you in?” I muttered, even though I’d promised myself I wouldn’t engage. Also not needed in the bag or in the new life: My track trophies. The dried petals from the rose Walker gave me after our first breakup and makeup. The stuffed tiger that had belonged to my mother and my grandmother when they were children, that I had never actually slept with myself because it smelled. The book, an actual paper book, Auden had found in his attic and given to me, because he liked that kind of thing and so I pretended to, something called Galapagos . I hadn’t read it, partly because I was afraid of breaking it and partly because it looked boring. Still, it had meant something to me, because it had meant something to him. Not anymore. I didn’t need any of it, I realized. Or at least, I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t have come home at all.

“This is going to kill Mom and Dad,” Zo said. “Did you think about that?”

I dropped the bag, kicked it under the bed. I could get new clothes. Wasn’t that the point? New everything. “You’re the one who said I should disappear. That everyone would be happier that way.”

Zo shifted her weight and started rubbing her thumb back and forth across the knuckles of her other hand. The way she did when she was uncomfortable. Or embarrassed. “If this is about all that stuff I said… Look, I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to make you—you know. Leave.”

“Not everything’s about you.”

Zo gave me a weak smile. “Isn’t that usually my line?”

It was tempting to believe that was the beginning of something, that the smile was some sign of weakness—or forgiveness. An indication that maybe we could be sisters again, like we used to be.

Nothing is like it used to be, I reminded myself. I wasn’t going to forget that again.

“I have to go.”

“Don’t,” Zo said. She hopped off the bed, but stayed where she was, safely across the room from me.

“Mom and Dad will get over it. They have you.”

Zo shook her head, rubbed at her eye with the back of her hand, like a little kid, furious that her body would betray her. “Like that’s ever been good enough.”