20. Eva

Friendship, I learn, can sneak up on you. I didn't want to like Barbie. I wanted to hate her. A girl like Barbie who is all rolled eyes and sighs, beautiful bones and full lips, is easy to hate. But I eventually found that she was easier to love.

The day after we arrived in Esseff, after she brought us her promised pie for breakfast (it was delicious, though I didn't want to admit it at the time) she escorted us back to the forest to help us look for Blacky, as she explained more about what we could expect living in Esseff.

Even when Theo declared it pointless to continue searching for Blacky, and I eventually agreed, Barbie persisted. She assured me she would keep looking as long as I wished, brushing off my thanks with a casual eye roll that seemed to say, "Of course I'll help you."

Later, she helped Theo find work—he wanted to do work that would help him learn magtech. I didn't want to work at all. I didn't want to stay in Esseff at all. When I told Barbie this, she was understanding.

"I get it," she said. "Esseff has a lot of great qualities, but it is boring and weird. I wouldn't blame you if you want to leave."

When I told Theo the same thing–that I wanted to leave, that I didn't want to work–he was irate.

"We found a good place, Eva," he said. "Why do you want to screw this up? You seem like you want to screw everything up. You just don't want to be happy. You just want to disagree with everything. Let's just stay here and be happy. Why can't you just get a job and be normal for once in your life? Don't be such a spoiled rich girl."

After he said it, an expression splattered across his face like he regretted it. My heart ached while I waited for him to apologize, but he didn't.

"I'm not wrong," he stubbornly insisted. "You aren"t contributing. You never contribute."

Theo's words stung, but they didn't persuade me. I wanted to leave, not put down roots.

I saw Theo in the evenings for dinner and in the mornings for breakfast, but we were separated most of the day. He ate lunch with his work buddies and stayed later than was required at work. In the evenings when I saw him, he had feverishly excited eyes. He told me they had so much to discuss, so much magtech to discover, that would help humanity, but he couldn"t talk to me about any of it because of NTK. I worried that the magtech was getting to him. Turning him into a person I didn't know.

When he wasn't talking about magtech, he talked about how I needed to get a real job. How I needed to stop baking pies and walking around all day with Barbie.

He usually seemed to have forgotten that he had asked me to marry him.

Barbie had approached me in one of Esseff's many parks a few days after Theo started work, when I was all alone and wondering what to do with my life. She handed me a slice of pie when I looked up at her.

"Thanks," I said.

I looked at her and she looked at me. The sun lit her blue-silver eyes up beautifully, as if they were moons. They were not unsimilar to the Magus' eyes, I realized.

"So, Theo isn't eating lunch with you?" she stated the obvious.

"He's at work," I said, half-wondering if she had come over just to make fun of me, even though I had realized after she helped me look for Blacky she was rougher around the edges than actually rough.

"People here tend to get caught up in... stuff. I think they might lose sight of the big picture," she said, "They fall into, what's the word, group think."

I thought that was funny coming from a girl who seemed so shallow, getting excited about making pie, so I laughed. But I also said, "Yes, I see what you mean."

And my liking for the girl because she had helped me look for my horse bloomed into more than that, an understanding. A happiness that she had chosen to let me in on something that seemed like a secret: her true opinion—words that surprised me and gave me joy. And more than that, even though I hadn't thought it, the moment she said it, it illuminated an opinion I had formed in my heart too: the people here, who lived so peacefully and happily together, were so focused on their little groups and little happiness that they forgot that there was more than their work, more than their disciplines, more than what was contained within the walls of Esseff. Theo had gotten sucked into it all so easily, and I could have gotten sucked into it too if I "got a job" like Theo wanted me to.

She sat down beside me in the grass. Her smile seemed so genuine, "I'm glad you agree. Sometimes this place makes me feel like I am taking crazy pills."

"Crazy pills?"

"I mean like, I must be crazy because like everyone else is so sure they are sane. When really it might be the other way around?"

I chewed on the innards of my pie. The crust was perfectly flaky and buttery, and I wanted to save it for the end. "Yeah," I admitted, "But honestly if I could drink whatever Theo's drinking so I could believe the same things and think the same way Theo does, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm not special, I just don't know how to settle down like he does."

"Me too!" she widened her eyes, "It would be like, so much easier if I could be just like everyone else."

Seeing her smile, her flawless pale skin, I realized she seemed a lot younger than I had initially thought. And I liked her annoying donkey laugh immensely.

"Eva! We're so close to a break-through. I wish I could tell you more, but what I can tell you is…"

Theo has always been like a flash in a pan. A momentary fish jumping out of a stream. I've never seen him so happy. I wonder if he ever thinks of Patty.

I think he's avoiding me. He acts so enthusiastic when I see him as if offensive optimism is the best defense against my pessimism. I think I hate it here.

I feel like I'm waiting for something. But I have no idea what. The Magus isn't coming for me.

"That cloud sorta looks like pie, doesn't it?"

Barbie, I think, is like a cat. Sometimes she purrs, sometimes she scratches—but I don't think she means any harm, I think she just doesn't know the sharpness of her claws. Sometimes I don't see her for days, but then she will pop up again as if she had never left.

On days she's here, I spend them with her, doing nothing or walking around, or making pies, or talking about nothing.

When she's gone, when I'm alone, I go to Esseff's library and pick up an ancient, indecipherable medical book from the shelves. I open it at random. I sit down with it at a table. Then I stare into space, thinking about the Magus.

I think about how he created me, how he let me go, how he married me. How he taught me to speak and read. How he never touched me yet did touch me. How he looked at me, then looked away.

I'm impatient. But I don't know what for.

Theo shows me a rare moment of tenderness before we part to our separate rooms: a kiss on the forehead, a kiss on the cheek, a whisper of affection, a whispered promise of affection to come.

I go to my bed alone and have dreams and nightmares I usually forget and sometimes wish I would forget. The Magus is in every single one of them.

My hair has grown back down to my shoulders when Barbie says, "Let's play at something you won't fail at."

Barbie has tried and failed to teach me how to sing. She has mercilessly destroyed me at chess more times than I care to count and has laughed at my attempts to knit.

I roll my eyes (I'm stealing her habits).

She says, "Let's build sandcastles, like we've seen the little children do after school."

I say, "Don't you think it might be a bit cold for the beach?"

"Yes," she says.

We go anyway, we walk in the sand, holding shoes that hold stubborn crumbs of sand. We should have taken them off before even stepping onto the sand, but it is cold. The ocean stretches before us, loud and gray and lonely and magnificent. I can never get enough of coming here. Of leaving footprints in the soft sand that is made of crumbs of hard rocks.

"Here is good?" Barbie asks and before I can answer she's down in the white sand, digging like a dog.

I settled down beside her, more sedately pulling the pile of sand she's kicked up into a mound.

"You dig the moat and I'll make the castle," I say, burrowing my feet to find warmth in the cold sand.

"Whatever," Barbie sighs, as she begins scooping sand for the moat.

"I've never made sandcastles before," I say.

"Obviously," Barbie pauses. "I haven't either."

I look up from my construction to see Barbie is looking at the moat. Didn't she grow up here? How is it that she has never made a sandcastle? Barbie and I have an unspoken agreement to not talk about anything too serious, and our pasts seem to fall into that category. I don't ask her about her past because then she might ask about my past in turn.

We work in silence for a while. Our moat fills with a swish of freezing sea water as the tide changes.

Then Barbie cuts the silence:

"I do not want to be reflective anymore

Envying and despising unreflective things

Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting

And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand

Flushed by the children's bedtime, level with the shore.

The tide comes in and goes out again, I do not want

To be always stressing either its flux or its permanence,

I do not want to be a tragic or philosophic chorus

But to keep my eye only on the nearer future

And after that, let the sea flow over us."

I stare at Barbie. A shorefly flies into my open mouth, and I get sand in my gums when I try to wipe it out. "Where did that come from?" I cough at Barbie. She spoke so seriously, with none of the usual sarcastic inflection of her talking or the musical inflection of her singing. Her voice had been as remote as a stone.

She dribbles a mixture of sand and water into peaks on top of our castle, "The man I love is full of poetry and that is a poem that the man I love, loves. What do you think it means?"

"What? The man you love?"

"Yes." She looks at me with eyes as sincere as the color of the ocean, and any more questions I might have drop back down my throat.

"Um, I don't know. What do you think?" I squeeze frigid gray sand in my palms.

"That's why I am asking you. I don't know. I don't like, get poetry." Barbie, whose emotions vacillate only between bored, fed-up, and excited, looks like she is about to cry.

"I think it means something like you should appreciate the moment or something, don't dwell on the past or things you can't change," I say all in a rush, my words stacked on top of each other. I don't want Barbie to cry.

She doesn't cry. She nods, thoughtfully, "The man I love wants to change me. He always wants to change me."

After we crush the sandcastle beneath our stomping feet before the ocean can wipe it away, as we are walking back to the pod waiting for us, I want to put my arm around Barbie's shoulder. Hug her to me, tell her she's good, she's lovable, and a man who can't see that isn't worth it, even if he is full of poetry. But I don't touch her.

The Magus gave me so many books full of stories and poetry, but he had none at all,I reflect with a dull pain in my chest like crumbling sandcastle bricks.

The smell of old, unread books permeates the air in the University's library. He sits across from me, engrossed in his reading. I stretch out my leg under the table, put my foot on his huge foot. I thought he was handsome before, but puberty stretched and carved him into a paragon of a man. He raises a black eyebrow at me, smiles with his eyes. I can't see his mouth behind the tablet he holds. And then his eyes fall back onto the screen, like gravity took them there.

I tap his foot again and he swipes the page on the screen, indifferent.

I sigh. I love that he is so focused on his work, but sometimes I wish he would focus on me. Haven"t I, after all, molded myself to be everything he would want in a woman? I've made my mind into a mind that he can bounce ideas off, and I can contribute ideas of my own. He has told me so many times that I am the only one he can talk to. The only one who understands. That should be enough, but it isn"t. I'm his second love, his first love is his research.

We're Juniors in college and we have not lived the college life at all. We haven"t gone to parties. We haven't made friends. We've earned a reputation amongst the professors as a brilliant duo, but we haven"t gone on any dates. If I talk about something other than our research, his blue eyes turn into fogged glass.

We exist outside of our ideas! I want to scream at him.

But no, I want him to pay attention to me, so I say, "This says here that babies born on Mar's pristine bio-domes are so used to clean air that when they visit Earth, they can't survive without soon developing fatal lung problems."

"Fascinating," he says, really looking at me for the first time all day. "Similar to how a child that grows up around dogs is less prone to developing allergies. I wonder if a similar principle could be used to more actively inoculate farm workers before they get stuck breathing in chemicals all day long."

"Those poor children, never able to see Earth," I say.

"Are you kidding me?" he says. "Those children are the children of the men and women who are destroying the Earth." His eyes fall from me, back to his reading.

I can never hold his attention for long. I want to break his tablet and burn every book in the world so that he has nothing left to read. I want everything he can devote his attention to outside of me to cease to exist. I smile at him, but he doesn't see my smile because his face is back in his research.

I wake up feeling like my head has been crushed under the sea, compressed like a stomped-on grape. I"m a fish out of water, gasping, dying, but there is no air to scream into. I lay like this for what feels like hours, wishing the pain would end. But getting up to make it end would only exacerbate the agony. I can"t move. The pain eventually fades, and in fading, it leaves behind the residue of a dream that clings to me as I meet Theo for dinner.

I've been taking too many daytime naps.

"Eva, we need to talk," Theo says. We ate dinner together in the cafeteria, barely exchanging a word. I can tell that something is on his mind, but I don't want to know what it is. I don't want him to say he's ready to consummate our ‘marriage' and I don't want to hear more about how he's excited about work.

I scrape my fork at the crumbs of pie on my plate, wishing Barbie was around, and wishing I had more food to chew so I'd have an excuse not to talk.

Theo levels his steady green eyes at me. He says, "You can"t keep going on like this, just wandering around Esseff all day, not contributing anything."

I bristle at his tone, feeling my hackles rise. "I"m not just wandering around," I snap. "I"m trying to figure things out, trying to make sense of everything that"s happened."

Theo scoffs, leaning in closer so there's less chance of being overhead. He's never been one to enjoy creating a scene. "What"s there to figure out? We"re here now, we"re safe. It"s time to move on, to start building a life here."

"A life?" I laugh, but there"s no humor in it. "You call this a life? Following orders, keeping secrets, never questioning anything?"

"It"s better than what we had before!" Theo"s voice rises, his frustration palpable. "Better than being on the run, always looking over our shoulders. Better than living in a village without running water. But no, you never experienced that. You lived with the Magus. But even if you're used to running water, living here and working is better than being a burden."

His words hit me like a slap in the face. "A burden?" I whisper, feeling the sting of tears behind my eyes.

"Yes, a burden!" Theo throws his hands up, exasperated. "Just like you were to the Magus, always needing to be taken care of, always causing trouble for my mom. And now you"re doing the same thing here, expecting everyone else to carry your weight."

I open my mouth to argue, to defend myself, but the words won"t come. Because deep down, I know he"s right. I have been a burden, a parasite, clinging to others for survival. But I don"t know how to be anything else.

Before I can gather my thoughts, a wiry man with a mop of curly hair approaches our table. "Hey Theo, sorry to bother you at dinner, but Iago just called an emergency meeting. Something about a security breach."

Theo nods, already standing up. "I"ll be right there."

But I"m not listening anymore. The name echoes in my head like a gunshot. Iago. The wizard. The man behind the curtain.

"Iago?" I say, my voice is like paint thinner. "The wizard"s name is Iago?"

Theo and his fellow worker exchange a glance, realization dawning on their faces. "You didn"t know the wizard's name?" the worker asks, surprise coloring his tone.

I turn to Theo, betrayal coursing through my veins, igniting me. "You knew?" I ask, my voice barely above a snarl. "All this time, you knew who he was?"

Theo shifts uncomfortably, he stares down at his cuticles as if he can find the answer there. "Eva, I…"

I don"t want to hear his excuses. I push back from the table, the screech of the chair against the floor as jarring as my rage. "I have to go," I mutter.

"Eva, wait!" Theo calls after me, but I"m already gone, my feet carrying me through the winding streets of Esseff. It is so beautiful here, and I hate it.

Iago. The name tastes bitter on my tongue, rancid, a reminder of all the lies, all the secrets, all the ways people have acted like I'm too fragile and stupid to know the truth. But I won"t be kept in the dark any longer. I won"t be anyone"s pawn. I know in my bones it isn't a coincidence that Iago is the one who shared the truth about the Magus with me.

I quicken my pace till I"m running, my heart a drum, my blood magma, my head a scream. I'll face the wizard, and I'll demand the truth. I'll demand myself back.

No matter the cost.

But first, I'm going back to bed. The truth can wait until morning.