Kelly Link - Get in Trouble - Stories

“No,” says. She looks shy, like she’s afraid I’ll laugh at her.

I wait. Eventually she’ll tell me what she needs to tell me and then I’ll hand over the little metal canister that Nikolay gave me, and she’ll unlock the door to the burial chamber. Then we’ll go back up into the world and that video won’t be the end of the world. It will just be something that people talk about. Something to make the Olds crazy.

“I was going to kill myself,” says. “You know, down here. I was going to come down here after the fireworks, and then I decided that I didn’t want to be alone when I did it.”

Which is just like . Throws a pity party, then realizes she’s forgotten to send out invitations.

“And then I found out what you were up to,” says. “I thought I ought to stop you. I wouldn’t have to be alone. And I would finally live up to my name. I’d save everybody. Even if they never knew it.”

“You were going to kill yourself?” I say. “For real? Like with a gun?”

“Like with this,” says. She reaches into the jeweled box on her belt. There’s a little thing curled up in there, an enameled loop of chain, black and bronze. It uncoils in her hand, becomes a snake.

was the first one to get a Face. I got mine when I was eight. I didn’t really know what was going on. I met all these boys my age, and then the Olds sat down and had a talk with me. They explained what was going on, said that I got to pick which Face I wanted. I picked the one who looked the nicest, the one who looked like he might be fun to hang out with. That’s how stupid I was back then.

couldn’t choose, so I did it for her. Pick her , I said. That’s how strange life is. I picked her out of all the others.

said she’d already had the conversation with her Face. (We talk to our Faces as little as possible, although sometimes we sleep with each other’s. Forbidden fruit is always freakier. Is that why I did what I did? I don’t know. How am I supposed to know?) said her Face agreed to sign a new contract when turns eighteen. She doesn’t see any reason to give up having a Face.

is ’s younger sister. They only broke ground on ’s pyramid last summer. Upper management teams from her father’s company came out to lay the first course of stones. A team-building exercise. Usually it’s lifers from the supermax prison out in Pelican Bay. Once they get to work, they mostly look the same, lifers and upper management. It’s hard work. We like to go out and watch.

Every once in a while a consulting archaeologist or an architect will come over and try to make conversation. They think we want context.

They talk about grave goods, about how one day future archaeologists will know what life was like because some rich girls decided they wanted to build their own pyramids.

We think that’s funny.

They like to complain about the climate. Apparently it isn’t ideal. “Of course, they may not be standing give or take a couple of hundred years. Once you factor in geological events. Earthquakes. There’s the geopolitical dimension. There’s grave robbers.”

They go on and on about the cunning of grave robbers.

We get them drunk. We ask them about the curse of the mummies just to see them get worked up. We ask them if they aren’t worried about the Olds. We ask what used to happen to the men who built the pyramids in Egypt. Didn’t they used to disappear? we ask. Just to make sure nobody knew where the good stuff was buried? We say there are one or two members of the consulting team who worked on ’s pyramid that we were friendly with. We mention we haven’t been able to get hold of them in a while, not since the pyramid was finished.

They were up on the unfinished outer wall of ’s pyramid. I guess they’d been up there all night. Talking. Making love. Making plans.

They didn’t see me. Invisible, that’s what I am. I had my phone. I filmed them until my phone ran out of memory. There was a unicorn down in the meadow by a pyramid. ’s pyramid. Two impossible things. Three things that shouldn’t exist. Four.

That was when I gave up on becoming someone new, the running, the kale, the whole thing. That was when I gave up on becoming the new me. Somebody already had that job. Somebody already had the only thing I wanted.

“Give me the code.” I say it over and over again. I don’t know how long it’s been. ’s arm is green and black and all blown up like a party balloon. I tried sucking out the poison. Maybe that did some good. Maybe I didn’t think of it soon enough. My lips are a little tingly. A little numb.

“ ?” says. “I don’t want to die.”

“You aren’t going to die,” I say. “Give me the code. Let me save you.”

“I don’t want them to die,” says. “If I give you the code, you’ll do it. And I’ll die down here by myself.”

“You’re not going to die,” I say. I stroke her cheek. “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

After a while she says, “Okay.” Then she tells me the code. Maybe it’s a string of numbers that means something to her. More likely it’s random. I told you she was smarter than me.