Stupid Perfect World

Eight

MIDNIGHT WAS ALMOST HERE, and Kieran still hadn’t called.

The bathwater burbled just beneath my nose, its warmth enveloping me, keeping my skin hunger barely in check. I closed my eyes and sank down until its rumble filled my ears, shutting out the deafening silence.

I still couldn’t believe what he’d done, stealing my poetry to dream about Barefoot. And added to his theft was cowardice, hiding the betrayal inside his own subconscious. And he still hadn’t called.

Maybe the rest was silence between us.

I stayed under the water, holding my breath, imagining Kieran’s face when my tragic death by drowning was announced. After my explosion in the auditorium, everyone would realize he’d killed me with his dirty little dreams. I visualized the whole world knowing, my poems found and posthumously broadcast throughout headspace, along with cruel comparisons of my angelic death mask with Barefoot Tillman’s puffy, snot-filled face.

As the fantasy progressed, the oxygen in my lungs ran out, my brain growing fuzzy, my heart thudding harder and harder inside my chest…

…until my bioframe sent me bursting up into the air, sputtering for breath.

“I wasn’t really going to!” I muttered between gasps for air. Stupid perfect world.

I sank back down to shoulder height in the water, the memory of my auditorium outburst twisting in my stomach. All those times I’d imagined going crazy with olden-day emotions, the madness had taken place on a Scottish moor, a high balcony, or in a richly appointed boudoir—never in front of an audience.

Apparently, hormones went hand in hand with humiliation.

I tried to remember what had happened in the fight, exactly when and how everything had gone so wrong. As I’d stormed away, he’d tried to call out something to me, but my brain had been too addled to hear the words.

I thought of all the books I’d read, the stories where letters went missing or were delivered too late or to the wrong person; where pride, prejudice, and accidental judgments tore lovers apart. So what had he said? It would be worth something just to know that Kieran wanted to make things right, if only to throw the explanations back in his face.

Midnight chimed, his sleep-time officially here. I’d set the reminder after that first night, the night of his falling asleep, of my dance in the storm.

Why hadn’t he called?

I groaned with frustration, sinking lower into the water. I’d sworn an oath that I wasn’t going to call him. An oath on my life, which suddenly felt as powerful as the dictates of my bioframe inside me. I’d die for sure if I broke it.

Minutes ticked away. Was he really sleeping without my voice tonight? I lay there fuming, imagining him calling Barefoot and asking her to sneeze and honk him into dreamland. Fat chance. He needed me….

But no way was I calling him. A true heroine never breaks an oath.

His father looked surprised to see me.

“Mr. Black? I’m Maria, a friend of Kieran’s.”

“Oh?” He looked down at my long black dress clinging to wet skin, the water dripping from my hair.

“I’m in his Scarcity class. I need to talk to him. In person.”

“Scarcity class…?” A light went on behind the old man’s eyes, and he smiled. “Oh, yes. I believe he’s mentioned you.”

“Really?”

“Well, not by name.” He chuckled. “But a father notices these things.”

“Things?” I asked. His eyes widened a little, and I resolved to rein in my intensity. “Um, I know he might be asleep, but if I could just see him for a minute…”

“Asleep?” The man said the word like it came from another language. “Actually, he’s not here at the moment.”

I frowned. But it was midnight…and then a beautiful realization took flight in me.

He was too upset! Unable to sleep!

“Tossing and turning,” I murmured.

“Pardon me?” his father asked.

“Where is he?” I demanded, my resolve against intensity failing.

“Perhaps you and I should have a little chat about Kieran. You’re both very young, and—”

“Where…is…he?”

He paused, fear starting to show on his face. “Um, I think maybe you should go home and check your bioframe, young lady.”

I growled and clenched my fists, and the old man took a step backward, setting the coats hanging along the hallway swaying.

Thick, white, puffy parkas, with fur-lined collars…

I smiled. “He’s at the South Pole, isn’t he?”

“Now, young lady…”

I grabbed one of the parkas and pulled it on. Then I stuffed my slippered feet into a pair of tall boots waiting by the teleporter.

“You can’t go down there!” he cried. “It isn’t safe!”

“Safe!” I laughed. “You’re talking to a girl who walks in hurricanes, Mr. Black.” Wobbly in my oversized boots, I stepped into the teleporter. “South Pole, please!”

“Amundsen-Scott Station?” the machine asked.

“Yes, that’s the place!”

“Wait!” Kieran’s father said, a trembling hand raised as if to stop me. But he came from the soft, hormone-balanced world I’d left behind, and could hardly be expected to believe that some crazy, half-drowned girl had pushed her way into his house and now was headed straight to the South Pole.

I hummed him a mad tune as I disappeared.

The feeble sun was low on the horizon. It was dark, and cold, and white.

I pulled the parka tighter, flipping the furry hood up over my face. On this end, the inside of the teleporter had been plastered with all kinds of warnings: climate extremes, exposure, frostbite, death. But the stickers were worn and peeling, and no calm, automated voice had asked what I was doing here. Nobody came to the end of the world unprepared, it seemed.

I climbed down the short flight of stairs; the buildings were on stilts, as if afraid to touch the snow. The wind rushed in under my dress, hit my bare knees like something burning.

A woman trudged by in a tempsuit and parka, pausing for a moment to stare at me with goggled eyes.

“Where’s Kieran Black?” I demanded, my tongue freeze-drying in my mouth as I spoke.

“The school kid?” She paused a moment, then pointed one giant-gloved hand at an igloo a hundred meters away. “But I don’t think you should be—”

I growled and turned away from her, starting a grim march past a row of flags stuck into the ice, tattered leftovers from countries that no longer existed. My dress solidified as I walked, shedding hailstones of frozen bathwater.

As the cold gripped my body, I finally believed those books where heroines died from wandering around outside. Maybe it had only taken a cold rain to kill them back then, but the Antarctic wind made the whole thing much more plausible. Every breath shredded my lungs, my wet hair making cracking noises inside the parka hood.

My bioframe was threatening to call for medical attention, but I ignored it—Kieran always bragged that emergency response took long minutes here. I kept trudging, slitted eyes focused on the distant igloo.

The hard-packed snow gave way to knee-high drifts, and snow rolled in over the tops of my boots, numbing my feet. I stumbled and was forced to pull my hands out of their warm pockets for balance. If I fell down, I’d shatter like a dropped icicle.

My brain was growing fuzzy, my heart pounding sluggishly, the world shrinking to the little tunnel of the parka hood.

Then a brilliant star flared before me…

A human shape was making its way around the igloo, waving a gout of flame across the curved surface of the ice. My freeze-dried brain remembered Kieran saying something about a blowtorch.

I tried to call to him, but my lungs could only suck the tiniest gulps of air, like breathing ice cubes. My body kept moving, driven forward by the promise of the glowing ember in Kieran’s hands.

Fire was hot—I recalled this fact from some pre-Antarctic existence.

I staggered on until I was close enough to feel the warmth. My bare hands reached out for the flame, my fingertips slightly blue.

Kieran finally heard my snow-crunching footsteps and turned to face me, letting out a yelp of surprise.

“Maria! What are you…?” The torch fell from his hands into the snow, where it sputtered and died.

I fell to my knees beside it, groaning with disappointment. I reached for the still-glowing metal…and then Kieran’s hands were around my shoulders, and I wanted to kill him for dragging me away from that sliver of leftover heat.

Through the tunnel of my parka hood, I watched my boots skidding across the snow until the pale sunlight darkened. Suddenly it was warm, gloriously hot, maybe even above freezing! My hood was pushed back, Kieran’s concerned and goggled face in front of me, the inside walls of the igloo shimmering with artificial light.

“What are you doing here?” He pulled off his goggles and parka, stripping off his tempsuit right in front of me. “Are you crazy?”

Half naked, he wrapped the silver tempsuit around me, its elements burning my skin like hot coals. I could only nod and stare. It felt like my eyes would shatter if I blinked.

“Came see you,” I managed.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I never dreamed about Barefoot, never once! It was you from that very first night!” He swallowed. “But it was so weird and incredible, and everyone always said that dreams weren’t real. But they are sometimes…. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yesh,” I assured him through cracked lips. There was more in heaven and earth and all that…so much more to say.

But just then, my frantic bioframe realized that I’d reached somewhere warm and safe, and so dutifully knocked me out, not wanting to risk me freezing myself again.

Stupid perfect world.