—It’s a fucking poem, Mom. It doesn’t change anything.

  —Watch your tongue, Lola.

  —You said “fuck” not five seconds ago.

  —I said “for f”— Never mind. I thought you’d be—I don’t know—interested, excited, something.

  —Why? So she was a single-digit Kibsu. Good for her. But I’m not. I’m me. And I still don’t know shit. I’ll still get up tomorrow, go to that stupid school, and pretend I’m like them. And it won’t work because I’m not. They might all suck at math, but they’re smart enough to know I’m different, Mom. They all are.

  —I’m sorry. I’m really sorry you see it this way. We all have to do things we’d rather not do.

  —Do we? I mean, I could just … not go.

  —No, Lola. You couldn’t.

  —Fine. I’m leaving now. We’re watching a movie at Brent’s. I told Heather I’d pick her up.

  —After you finish your homework.

  —I’ll do it tomorrow.

  —No, Lola. Now.

  —Why? What difference does it make? Why do you get to decide?

  —Because we’re the One Hundred. When you’re the Hundred and One, you can do whatever you want.

  —Then maybe I should just get pregnant. There can never be three for too long.

  25

  (Don’t Fear) the Reaper

  I probably have a few years before she says it and means it, but that time will come, sooner or later. Mother was three years older than I am when she died. I’m fifty-two. Fifty-two. That’s like a hundred in Kibsu years. It sounds surreal when I hear myself say it. I don’t know how old I see myself as, but I know it’s not that. I’m a mother, but I’m still the child in more ways than one. The Ninety-Nine never truly went away. I’m still thirty-five, watching my mother die. I’m twenty-four, mourning my unborn daughter, saying goodbye to Billie for the last time. I’m twenty years old, sitting in that truck with Wernher von Braun. I’m ten, sneaking into Mother’s bed because I’m having nightmares, seven, holding my grandma’s hand when we got on that boat. I guess that will never change. Soon I’ll be the grandmother, the mother, the daughter. We are many. I suppose that’s true of everyone, not just us.

  I should be upset, angry. I’m not. That’s for Lola to feel. It’s her anger. I won’t take it from her. I get to feel something else, something like self-doubt, only not quite. It’s not helplessness either. I don’t know if there’s a name for it. It’s the absolute certainty that you are doing everything you can, but that it may not be enough. I do know what it’s called now that I think about it. It’s motherhood. I watch my daughter hurting—a slow, nagging hurt that makes the world look dull, pointless—and I can’t do a thing about it. I felt something like that once, but that was my feeling. I can’t experience hers, nor can I really understand it. I’ll never know how someone else experiences cauliflower, a headache, hot sand under their feet. You think it would be different with us, but it’s not. I haven’t the faintest clue. I haven’t lived Lola’s life. I was there, that’s all. I trust that if I had lived her life, I’d be just as angry with the world as she is. And right now, I’d be feeling like an ass for what I said ….

  I hope she’s feeling it, thoroughly.

  I might be angry a little. I’d be a lot more angry if my mind weren’t busy with something else. Lola was obsessed with the carvings on that bow. I told her it was a bad idea to put this much hope into anything, but she didn’t listen, and she got hurt. Now she couldn’t care less. It’s me who can’t stop thinking about it. I’m setting myself up for disappointment just like she was, obviously, but I can’t help it. I want to know. I want to know the Eight. I want to know how she felt, how it felt being her. I want to know how different that was from being me. Someone left a puzzle box on my doorstep. I can’t just leave it alone.

  We carved that bow; that’s what is driving me mad. It should make sense to me. It’s my bow, except it’s not. I can hear the words in my head. She says them with my voice. “I am eight. I am …” I is her talking. But who is she? From the underworld, she emerges in wetness. She, not I. That’s someone else but who? Someone dead, or sleeping, or in a coma. A wet coma … Dead in the water. Ba dum tsss. Come on, Mia, you can figure this out.

  A fallen Kibsu, a lost lover. She could be talking about virtually anyone, even her own daughter. Whoever “she” is mattered to the Eight, that much is clear, but I know absolutely nothing of her life. I don’t know what mattered to anyone then, let alone to her. There might be more clues at the burial site. More writings, drawings, bodies. Maybe “she” is lying next to the Eight for eternity.

  I touch her elbow, then her mouth. She speaks after a cold silence. Is that the same “she”? You would think so. A cold silence, the underworld. She’s talking about someone dead, someone who’s been dead for a long time, but now speaks. A zombie. This is about zombies, and desire. Let’s not forget desire. Sex and necromancy. You do you, I guess. It was three thousand years ago; maybe that’s how they rolled.

  This is pointless. I need a bath; my head’s about to explode.

  Ewww. That bath needs a good scrub. Not today. I’ll just add bubbles and pretend I can’t see that big line of soap scum. That’s probably what I hate most about growing up. All the small things you realize don’t happen magically. Clean clothes, a spotless bath. It’s a wonder Mother found time for research after all this. I wish she were still with us. That bow was just her kind of thing. She was great at riddles, and baths. Mother loved to take baths. She’d take three a day when she could. I think she was hiding from me. Thirty minutes of solitude. She always said she liked running her bath more than taking it, that the water was talking to her. It sounded really profound to five-year-old me. I think she liked that it was loud enough to mute everything else, including my nagging high-pitched voice. She had a point, though. There’s something soothing about running water.

  Maybe she used that time to think about that project with Xuesen. Boundaries in Iraq and their Berlin friends, whatever that means. I don’t know why it still bothers me, but—

  AAAAH! This water’s freezing! This isn’t one of Lola’s thirty-minute showers. Her feet looked like she worked in a coal mine when she left. No bath for me, I guess, unless they can install a new water heater the same day. I’m not getting that thing fixed again. It’s way past its expiration date. Kind of like me, soon. Ha! I’m telling dead jokes to myself now. Bad ones at that.

  Am I afraid of dying? Is that it? I used to be. I haven’t given it much thought since Lola was born. I save my fears for her. I never thought I would live forever, I know that. I could just lie in that bathtub if that’s what I wanted. I can see the headline: “Body Found in Freezing Water, Preserved for 3 Million Years.”

  Freezing …

  A cold silence. Her elbow, her mouth.

  Fuck me. I need to find Lola. She said something about a movie.

  26

  Marquee Moon

  I didn’t tell Uriel I killed a man today. I don’t know his name. I’d seen him before, in bars, in restaurants all over town. I’d seen him at our hotel. He seemed to know everyone no matter where he went. A respected man. They call him Baba, Father. When I asked what he did I was told he did favors for people. A gun here, a passport there, but mostly Baba procured young boys for rich old men. He was a monster. He deserved it. I have been repeating those words to myself all day. I killed him because he was a bad man.

  Uriel and I were having tea on the terrace this morning. Baba arrived a few minutes after we did. As soon as he sat down, a little boy—he could not have been more than five—walked up to him. Baba dug into his satchel and handed the boy … something. Candy, a few piastres. I couldn’t see. I only saw the boy running away smiling. Uriel had already gone. He likes his tea scalding hot. Baba left before mine was cool enough to drink. I saw him again an hour later in the passageway behind the apothecary. It was once an alley, but every building encroached on it over time. What remains is barely wide enough for one man to zigzag his way through. I leaned sideways against the wall to let Baba pass. I felt the wetness of my shirt when his chest brushed against mine. His breath reeked of shisha, though I could still smell the mint from his morning tea. He was about to apologize when I saw my hands wrapped around his throat. There was no room for him to struggle or even lift his arms. He lost consciousness after a few seconds and I kept pressure for a minute or two before I stepped to the side and let his body fall. I remember thinking I would have to change shirts because mine was now soaking wet from rubbing against him.

  I might have let someone else pass through—he was not the most sympathetic figure—but I know it was not a sense of justice that made me do it. It was the heat. I leave our hotel room early, hoping for a morning breeze, but there isn’t one. There never is. It’s too hot at eight o’clock in the morning, too hot at ten, at noon, at three. Even the pool is warm; it feels like stepping into soup. I wash my hands fifty times a day, but they are always moist. I can’t even stand my own hands; they disgust me. Everything does. Chairs too hot to sit on, drinks that taste like melted ice. The heat won. I capitulated. It wasn’t rage. I did not hear the voice. I did not see myself dismembering him or feeding him his privates. Call it a heartfelt annoyance at the world. I didn’t feel remorse. That’s not entirely true. I felt guilty for letting Mother down. She would be ashamed if she knew.

  What’s done is done, I told myself. I went back to the hotel and changed. It was eleven thirty. I wasn’t hungry, so I took a cab to the museum. I still had five hours to dig through the archives and saw no sense in letting the incident ruin the entire day.

  Uriel and I had found nothing in the three months we’d been here. That afternoon in the archives was no different. Ironically, our first clue had been staring me in the face the whole time. I walked by it twice every day, on my way in and on my way out. Second stairwell to the basement, alone on an otherwise barren wall.

  The Priestess. Wax painting on limewood. Unknown artist, circa 500 BC. There she was. The great Mer-Neith-it-es standing in front of a captivated crowd, hands hovering above a metal orb the size of a hubcap. We were right to come here. For all we knew, we had been chasing a dream for three thousand years. We caught up to our prey before, but this is the first time we have ever seen the sphere. It exists, and if my feeling is right, she will tell us where to find it.

  Whoever painted this was awed by her. He made her three feet taller than everyone else. A gross exaggeration, but I have no trouble believing she stood tall, proud. She didn’t cower and run. She didn’t hide what we were hunting them for. She put it on a pedestal, right in the middle of the temple for all to see.

  She wasn’t afraid of us.

  I would not be surprised if her entire life had been meticulously crafted with us in mind. She ascended to a position of power, advising pharaohs. She spent her days in a public place, guarded by soldiers she could no doubt command. Like a spider casting her net, she was daring us to come after her.

  The more I learn about the traitor, the more I want to know them. I see now they have more depth than the shallow creatures we’ve always painted them as. My uncle talked to one of them, but he had her tied up. That’s not entirely conducive to an honest discussion. I would like to sit with them over tea. Even if we manage to find the sphere on our own, there is so much we can learn from them, so much they can teach us before we kill them all.

  The sun is about to set, but I am sweating just the same. The buildings, the streets, every piece of rock or concrete soaks up the heat, so it never lets down. I don’t know how people stand it. Look at them. Happy couples dressed sharply for an evening in town. This one is wearing a suit. Buttoned-up shirt and tie. How is he not drenched? And what has he got to be so happy about? I need to hide in the air conditioning. I am getting irritable again.

  I turned twenty today. Why does it feel like a hundred?

  27

  White Rabbit

  It must be getting late. There’s a clock in the kitchen. Shit, it’s past midnight already. How can that be? We were just talking. Talkin’. Chillin’. Drinkin’. Rhymin’. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that last drink. Time to be responsible, Lola. Or … I can have one more. No, I need to go. Mom’ll be worried sick. She’ll be— She’ll be fucking pissed, and worried. I shouldn’t have said it. I was just angry. She knows that. Right? Right? She has to. Maybe she still needs some time. I can hang a little longer. Chicken. No shit, I don’t think I can face her right now.

  I don’t know why I got mad. It’s that stupid bow. “I am eight.” So what? Go back to where you came from, with your elbow fetish and your cold silence. You’re dead; leave me alone. As if she could help me. Writing weird sex stuff on her hunting weapon, I’m gonna take a wild guess and say her life wasn’t all that peachy. I bet she chewed the fuck out of her nails.

  Of course, Mom’s all psyched about the whole thing. Figures. She makes me so— AAAAAGH! “What are the rules? Tell me what the rules are, Lola!” It’s … too much, or too little. Whatever it is, it’s not for me. Don’t draw attention to yourself. I wish. My whole life I don’t think anyone’s really noticed me. I might as well not exist at that school. Preserve the knowledge. What knowledge? I don’t know shit! I have no clue. Those rules, they’re for her, not me. I’m not her. I have absolutely no idea who I am, but I’m not her. I’m something else.

  —Hey, Lola! Did it kick in yet?

  —What? Did what kick in?

  What did they give me? I didn’t ask. I just took it. Be there or be square. Everyone thinks I’m this huge dork. Even my friends. I’m the weird girl who’s good at math. They’re all smiles, but I think they’re making fun of me. They’re all laughing. Why are they laughing?

  —Here. Have a drink.

  I’m not supposed to drink. Another rule. Rules. Rules. Rules. Well, fuck the rules. I can have some fun. Oooh, this one’s fizzy. It tastes just like cherry cola. I feel the tiny bubbles bursting on my tongue. Thousands of them distinctly screaming while they die. Pfff. Aaaaah! Pfff. Aaaaah! I can almost count them. Maybe I can. One two three— I—

  I’m in the kitchen. Again. It feels smaller, somehow. Maybe there are more people. Brent sure has a lot of friends. By “friends,” I mean people willing to raid his parents’ bar. I shouldn’t judge. I don’t have that many friends. We don’t have a bar. Maybe it’s the room. It feels … small—

  A mirror.

  The room looks bigger on the other side. Whoa. It’s like the real world’s shrinking, but the mirror world is the same. I’m the same. I’m not shrinking. I’m … reversed, though. My right hand is mirror me’s left hand. Her right hand is my left. She’s staring at me. I’m staring back. There are two versions of me observing each other. We’re the same, but we’re different. It’s like Mom and me. Mom’s like the mirror, except her hands aren’t reversed. At least I don’t think they are.

  —Are you okay, Lola? You’re maintaining or what?

  — …

  My right hand is mirror me’s left hand. What if I turn around? I can’t see myself in the mirror anymore. My hand is … I can’t tell without looking, but if I look … It’s like Schrödinger’s cat. Maybe if I look in the mirror with another mirror, then my right hand …

  —Lola!

  — …

  Shit, it’s not the mirror. My right thumb points left and my left thumb points right. My hands are mirror images of each other in the real world. I love this. This is awesome. Commutativity. I’m—

  —LOLA!

  —What? Come here, give me a hug.

  —Wait! STOP! Stop! You’re too strong! I’m not the world’s most physical guy, but damn!

  —Can I see your hands?

  —Oh, Lola. You’re tripping.

  —Tripping, why? What did you give me?

  —Lucy.

  —Who?

  —In the sky, with diamonds.

  —I don’t … Just give me your hands, okay? Something I gotta see.

  Mirror hands. If I put mine out, it’s like two mirrors at a right angle now. Four hands, all reflections of each other. Left is right. Right is left.

  —Can I go now, Lola?

  Go where? Why am I in the kitchen again? I was just here. Why do I keep coming back? Oh, I found my drink! I’m not sure how long it’s been sitting here, but it’s still fizzy. How’s that possible? All the little bubbles are bursting on the surface. It should run out. It should be flat by now. Unless there’s something at the bottom making more. More bubbles, always more.

  —Brent, what’d you put in my drink?

  —What? Too much rum?

  Rum doesn’t make bubbles. Why would he say that? I— I was going to say something. I forgot. I wonder what time it is …. Oh shit. Mom’s going to throw a fit. I don’t want to go home, though. I can’t face her right now. Well, I definitely can’t face her now, but even if I were sober, how do you apologize for saying something like that? She wouldn’t have said it. She’s heavy sometimes, but she’s never mean. I’m the jerk. We’re not the same. There’s something wrong with me. Something ugly inside. If people saw— If my friends saw … Maybe they do. Maybe that’s why they’re all laughing.

  I should book; I’m not feeling so well. It’s probably past midnight anyway. Why am I still in the kitchen? I keep trying to leave, but I end up back here every time. Why can’t I leave the fucking kitchen?! This is all wrong. Everyone’s walking past like they can’t see me. I can’t leave. I can’t— Shit. I think the walls are … breathing.

  28

  Lola

  I see my reflection in the kitchen mirror. There’s a katana on the wall behind me. Mirror katana. What’s katana backwards? An … atak. Whoa …. But from whom? From where? I know everyone here, but it’s still not safe. I’m in danger, even among my friends.