Malinda Lo - Natural Selection

We have something like acting and theater on Kurra, but it’s very different from human performances. I’ve always thought that there’s a rawness to human TV and movies that our performances lack. Maybe because humans don’t have susum’urda , they spend a lot of their energy trying to simulate it in their TV shows and books and movies. All of those things give humans an approximation of getting inside another person’s head.

Imrian performances, in contrast, would probably look totally bizarre to a human. They take place with very small audiences, because the point is for the actors to lead the audience into a shared emotional experience, and too many people fragment the experience. The seats and the stage in an Imrian theater are made of a special material that can conduct the actor’s emotions—sort of as if everyone were holding hands—and a lot of the performance is silent, although there are incredible costumes and what humans would call special effects.

Nasha asks me about my favorite human performances, and I start to tell her about all of Morgan’s favorites, because she was the one who liked movies. I always liked books more; they felt more like susum’urda to me, whereas movies always seemed too distant.

“Who’s this Morgan?” Nasha says. “Were you two hilima ?”

My eyes widen. I must have been talking about Morgan a lot for Nasha to ask that. “No,” I say. “We were just friends.” Part of me finds it hilarious to think of Morgan in this Imrian context. She would have been so far out of her comfort zone. The night that Zach kissed her, she acted as if it was as important as a marriage proposal.

“But you liked her, I can tell,” Nasha says of Morgan.

“Yes, well, she didn’t like girls.”

“I’ve heard about that. How humans have these restrictions about pairing off. It sounds so limiting.” Nasha says limiting with something like disgust, almost in the same tone of voice that Zach used when he called me a dyke.

“Humans are different,” I say.

“You didn’t find it bizarre?” She looks shocked.

“At first, yes, but I got used to it.”

“Did your friend Morgan know that you liked her?”

I hesitate. “She—she found out.”

Nasha swings her legs out of her hammock so that she’s using it more like a chair. “What happened?”

I tell her about the camping trip, and Nasha’s face grows increasingly incredulous. “Why do they think love can only be between people of opposite sexes?” she asks. “It’s so strange.”

I turn so that I free one of my legs from the hammock, and I push my toe against the floor to rock myself back and forth. “Not every human thinks that way,” I say. “But that is the way a lot of them think. It doesn’t make any sense to me either.”

“Is it because they don’t have susum’urda ?”

“Maybe.”

“You’re going back, aren’t you?”

“In six months. I have to. That’s why I was born.” My parents created me to do this: to be in between places. After kibila’sa , I will have a job to do on Earth.

Nasha asks, “Do you want to go back?”

I think about it. I’ve always known what my responsibilities are. Despite Aba’s advocating for me to make my own choices, their expectations have never felt like a burden; they have felt like a gift. “I do,” I say. “I like humans, even if they don’t always make sense to me. And maybe someday—if what my mother and the others are doing works out—maybe they will make sense to me. To all of us.”

“They’ve been working on this for so long. Do you think they’re close?”

“Yes. I really do.”

Nasha considers this. “That’s good, then.”

I stop my hammock from swinging back and forth and tuck my leg up inside the warmth of the fabric again. “What about you? What will you do after kibila’sa ?” After the ritual, most Imrians transition out of school into apprenticeships. The transition can take anywhere from a few weeks to a year, depending on how certain an Imrian is about what they want to learn.

Nasha smiles at me. She’s very pretty, with bright eyes and curving cheekbones that seem more prominent now that her hair is so short. “I’m thinking of becoming a performer. I might apprentice at the theater in Sakai’uru.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, given Nasha’s many different looks and her curiosity about human performances. “When will you go?”

Her smile turns sly. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think maybe I should stick around for a while. Six months? I don’t know why we’ve never been… friends. Maybe we should.”

There’s a flirtatious look in her eyes, and a flush heats my skin. “Maybe you were busy,” I suggest. “You had so many hilima .”

She laughs her warm laugh. “There’s always room for more.”

Her invitation hangs in the air between us, and if this weren’t kibila , I know she would reach for me, and I would be more than happy to be another of her hilima . But it is kibila , and it’s getting late.

“We should try to sleep,” I say, smiling.

She stretches her arm up to touch the pillar at the head of her hammock, and the lights dim. “We should,” she agrees. “Dream well, then. Tomorrow you will be a new person.”

“And so will you,” I respond. “Dream well.”

As I lie in the dark, I think about kissing Nasha. Or—not about Nasha , but this girl in the hammock nearby, who wants to become a performer. I imagine her on an intimate stage in Sakai’uru, dressed like the legendary Gashan Tabira, the lead in the most famous theatrical production of the last thousand years, with her gleaming fishtail and mouth colored purple by the fruits of the sea. She will be magnetic. I pillow my head on my hands and fall asleep thinking about her lips.

Earth

Morgan avoided me all afternoon. At dinner—hot dogs this time, with potato chips and a three-bean salad that nobody except the teachers ate—she sat with Zach. I sat at a different picnic table where the other kids didn’t talk to me, but kept sneaking glances at me when they thought I wouldn’t notice. I noticed.

As night fell, we gathered around the bonfire and Mr. Santos led us in telling ghost stories. I didn’t listen. I sat on a blanket and hugged my knees to my chest and wished Zach had never existed. When it was time to get ready for bed, I walked with the other girls to the bathroom, but when we got there they all looked at me and one of them—prissy Kayla Moore—said, “Maybe you should wait till we’re done.”

I glared at Kayla—Morgan was sort of half-hiding behind her—and I was about to say, Afraid I might turn you gay? when I saw Morgan flinch. My anger died, and all I felt was lonely.

I turned away to go back to my tent. I heard them whispering about me as I left.

When Morgan returned a while later, I heard her unzip her tent and toss her bathroom stuff inside. I thought she was going to ignore me and go to sleep, but instead she said in a low voice, “Can I talk to you?”

I sat up, hope crashing through me. “Sure.”

She unzipped my tent and knelt down, halfway inside. Her face was in shadow as she said, “Is what Zach said true?”

I could deny it. Would that make things okay? But I’d already lied to her about so much—about practically everything real about me—and I didn’t want to lie anymore. With this, at least, I could tell her the truth. “Yes,” I said. “What Zach said is true.”

She sighed, seeming to deflate a little. “You know I don’t feel that way,” she whispered.

Maybe I had expected her to be disgusted, because the tone in her voice—the sadness in it—took me by surprise. And then I remembered: This was why I liked her in the first place. She was honest. She was a horrible liar. I always knew exactly how she felt about me, even without my Imrian abilities. Maybe that gave me the idea—false, I now understood—that she was like my people. “I know you don’t feel that way,” I said. “That’s why I never told you.”