Mira Grant - Parasite

“Every time I think you’re halfway back to normal, you go and say something like that.” Joyce rolled her eyes, distress forgotten in favor of making sure I realized how weird I was. That had been the idea. “You get your coat. I’ll get the keys.”

“I’m on it,” I said, turning toward my room. Dwelling on my upcoming appointment wasn’t doing me any good, and maybe Joyce was right. Maybe commerce would do the trick.

After an hour at the mall, I was absolutely certain of one thing: Joyce was wrong. My feet hurt, my shoulders ached from carrying Joyce’s bags—something I hadn’t volunteered to do, but seemed to be doing all the same—and I was starting to think longingly of the isolation room back at the shelter. It was hot and snug and always smelled like cats, and it would have been paradise compared to the food court at the San Bruno Mall.

Worst of all, the outing wasn’t doing anything to take my mind off my upcoming visit to SymboGen. If anything, it was making me dwell on it more , since the mall wasn’t giving me anything better to think about. Except for maybe going home.

I’d been sitting by myself for almost fifteen minutes, ostensibly guarding Joyce’s many purchases, when she came flouncing back through the crowd and placed an Orange Julius cup in front of me with a grand flourish. “Ta-da!”

I raised an eyebrow.

“What?” She frowned. “You’re supposed to be overcome with gratitude. I hunted and killed that smoothie for you.”

“My hero,” I deadpanned.

“I think you mean ‘heroine.’ Heroes are male.”

“Whatever.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, Joyce. I’m not trying to be a spoilsport.”

“Yet somehow, you’re still managing to do an excellent job.” Joyce flopped into a plastic chair, propping her chin on her knuckles. “You wanna tell me why this SymboGen trip has you all fucked in the head, as opposed to all the other ones?”

I sighed, taking the lid off my smoothie and swirling my straw through the thick orange goo. “I had another fight with Mom.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joyce wince. “The moving out thing?”

“The moving out thing,” I confirmed. “Until SymboGen says I’m both healthy and mentally stable, she’s not going to let me move out.” For most adults, “let” wouldn’t matter. For me… there had been a period following my accident when I wasn’t expected ever to recover the ability to make my own decisions. My parents had been granted conservatorship over me until such time as my doctors judged me fully recovered. Until SymboGen signed the papers to certify that I was both healthy and sane, “let” was the only word that mattered. I couldn’t do anything my parents didn’t want to let me do.

“It could be worse,” Joyce said.

“Sure. They could decide not to let me go to work anymore. Or maybe they’ll decide not to let me see Nathan.” I shoved my smoothie aside. “I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for them. I know that. And I know that I have to let SymboGen keep studying me, because we need to understand why I didn’t die. But sometimes I’m just tired of feeling like this is my life, you know? Like this is all I get, and it’s all because of our parents, and SymboGen .”

I stopped, startled by the venom in my own voice. Even Joyce was staring at me, briefly shocked out of her normal too-cool-for-this attitude.

“I…” She stopped, reaching for the words, and tried again: “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrugged halfheartedly. “It feels like there’s no way out sometimes.”

“You’ve been so much better these last few years. It’s like you’re… it’s like you’re happy for the first time in your life. I thought that meant… I mean, you seemed happy, so I thought you had to be happy.”

“I am happy,” I said. “I’m happy that we’re friends. I know from what you’ve said, and from what everyone who knew me before the accident won’t say, that you and I didn’t always get along. I like my job. I like working with animals.”

“And Nathan?” asked Joyce, a trace of her normal insouciance creeping back.

“And Nathan,” I allowed. “I like him, too. I love him, even. So it’s not that I’m not happy. It’s just that I don’t like feeling trapped.”

“I get that,” said Joyce. “Sometimes—” She cut herself off, blinking at something behind me. “What the hell is going on over there?”

There was a new air of confusion to the general chatter in the mall. I’d been too busy focusing on Joyce to notice it before. I twisted in my seat, following her gaze to a little girl outside the boundaries of the food court. She was too young to be on her own—no more than six or seven—and she was half-walking, half-staggering toward the exit. From the way she was moving, she’d hurt her foot recently. If she’d been older, I would have suspected her of having had a stroke. And yet her gait managed not to be the strangest thing about her, possibly because the sight of a little girl towing a fully grown woman bodily along was weird enough to make everything else seem incidental.

“Helen, sweetie, come on, stop playing this bad game,” said the woman—her mother, judging by the resemblance between them. There were tears running down her cheeks. Her obvious dismay just called the utter slackness of the little girl’s expression into sharper relief. “Let’s go back to Daddy, okay? Okay, sweetie? Please?”

The little girl—Helen, her name was Helen, and that seemed suddenly very important, although I couldn’t have said exactly why—gave no indication that she’d heard a word her mother said. She just kept plodding forward, moving surprisingly fast considering that she was barely lifting her right foot off the floor. Her mother was dragged along in her wake, unable to stop the girl’s forward motion.

I heard Joyce gasp. “There’s another one,” she whispered loudly. Her hand stabbed past my face, pointing into the crowd. I turned to look where she was pointing, and saw a man shamble through the gathered bodies, moving with the same unsteady speed as the little girl. Like the little girl, his expression was slack, eyes focusing on nothing in this world… and like her, he was heading straight for the exit.

“What the hell…?” I stood, taking a step back, so that I was standing next to Joyce. She scrambled to her feet, latching onto my arm with surprising strength. “What’s wrong with them?”

“I don’t know. Food poisoning maybe?” Joyce gave me a pleading look. “It’s not something contagious, is it? There’s not something in the air vents?”

“You’re the one who works in a lab,” I said, keeping most of my attention on the man and the little girl. “Shouldn’t you know what causes this sort of symptomology?” Helen’s mother wasn’t stopping her, but she was slowing her down, and the man was starting to catch up. I wanted to see what would happen if they saw each other. I wanted to see what they would do.

“Helen!” wailed the mother.

Helen plodded ceaselessly on. The man’s longer legs were rapidly shortening the distance between them. He was walking better than she was, although his balance didn’t seem to be as good; several times, I was sure he was going to topple over. But he didn’t.

And then they were next to each other, and with no more ceremony than a step, they stopped. The little girl turned to face the man, tilting her chin up as she stared into his eyes. Their expressions remained slack, neither showing any emotion as they considered each other. The entire mall seemed to have gone quiet; the only sounds were the music playing softly through the speakers overhead and the pleas of Helen’s mother.