Synths never needed food or water to begin with, Ify wants to say to the table, outing Peter. But the impulse dies inside her. His disease was real, no matter how it afflicted him. “Did you dream?” she asks instead.
He shakes his head.
She has heard other children describe it as being deep underwater, at the bottom of the ocean, but not needing to breathe. Yet, if they realized that they needed to breathe and opened their mouths, they would drown. So long as they refused to believe they needed to breathe at the bottom of the ocean, they would be safe. It was a paradoxical understanding, but Ify saw the logic in it, the necessity of needing to believe a lie to survive. That was what allowed Nigeria to still function as a country, she realizes wryly. The lie agreed upon.
Peter again looks to Paige, then to Amy, perhaps wondering if there’s something wrong with Ify or if there’s some arcane rule or bit of manners that he’s forgotten.
Ify listens to him, the way he talks, the way he moves. Listens to the way he sometimes taps the tine of a fork against his plate, just so softly. Listens to his massive inhales that push back his shoulders, then the way he exhales through his nose. Listens to the way it seems like electricity is running through him, making him move and talk and walk as though he were being fast-forwarded. She finds she’s listening to all of him, hearing not the synth she’s spent all this time mistrusting, but a boy. Who just wants to be safe.
That’s what it is.
Everything he had done before that Ify saw as malicious and evil, as manipulative—that wasn’t him being a synth. That was him being a boy.
Everything he had done that had made Amy smile or that had delighted Paige or that had caused either or both of them to look at him with wonder and gratitude—that wasn’t him being a synth. That was him being a boy.
“So, when are exams?” Ify asks him, twirling together her own spaghetti.
Peter registers a moment of shock before smirking, then throwing his head back in annoyance. “Ugh, I’m gonna be fine for exams. Don’t worry. I know how to study for these things.”
Around a meatball, Ify says, “Every child that has come through this family has made high marks, so . . .”
“It’ll be easy!”
And like this, Ify listens to him. Truly listens. And sees his past in front of her—the damage, the trauma—but also his future. The promise, the potential, the triumph. All of it coming together to infuse the present moment with a glow. So bright Ify almost doesn’t register the loving smiles that both Paige and Amy have sent her way.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
A breeze catches Ify and Peter on their faces as they sit next to each other on the front porch. Even though Peter is younger than her, his gangly limbs have him colonizing multiple steps while Ify’s comfortable enough on two.
“Will you ever go back?” Peter asks.
With a start, she realizes that he must not know that she has done just that. Maybe he knows nothing of what happened, how he was cured, that it was another synth that had rescued him. Ify contemplates opening up to him, thinks about telling him the truth. Maybe this is what she needs to do to really reach a person. Make herself vulnerable. She thinks of Xifeng. She thinks of Céline. She’d told both of them her truth, and she’d lost them for it. “No,” she says.
Peter looks at her for several long minutes. Maybe he’s waiting for a reply, thinking that she, a lowly red-blood, isn’t nearly as accustomed to long silences as he, a synth. But he gives up and turns his gaze to the cul-de-sac.
Ify gets up. “I’m going home,” she says, dusting off her bottom. And that’s exactly what she does, telling herself that she did the right thing and that Peter is just a boy.
A contented smile glides onto her face.
CHAPTER
54
There is chaos when they are letting everyone be free from the hospital. Some people they are taking information from, so they are updating their records, but some people are getting out or are being taken out before there is chance to update the system. And it is never because of bad thing. Every time I am seeing this thing, it is because people are too happy to be waiting. That is how I am sneaking out. No one is looking for me, and I am thinking that no one is even knowing I am here.
I am thinking this thing even while I am watching celebration in the streets and parade that is coming out of nowhere but that is just being enough people in one place being happy. I am feeling happy that I am saving life but not because I am saving life but because it is being easy to tell myself now that I am good person and not just child of war.
Part of me is being glad that no one is seeing me, but part of me is sadding, because I am wanting for someone to be so happy to see me that they are pulling me tight to their chest and saying I am never letting you go and I am wanting for someone to be throwing me into the air and catching me and throwing me and catching me or putting me onto their shoulders and skipping down sidewalk or crying when they are seeing me blinking my eyes or moving my fingers. I know it is not normal for synth to be wanting this thing but I am not synth anymore. I am something else, and this something else is wanting all of these thing.
But part of me is being happy that no one is seeing me because then I am not having to hide in shadow all the time and I am not having to move from hiding place to hiding place and nothing is chasing me here—not drone, not juggernaut, not police. Not Enyemaka.
So very easily I am finding where Peter is living and I am waiting for the lights in this place with homes to grow dark so that it is looking like nighttime even though we are being inside Space Colony. And I am waiting for the light that is hanging above all of the porches to be going out one by one by one until only one is left. And under that one porch light is sitting Ify and Peter.
And because no one is seeing me, I am waiting and waiting for Ify to be finished talking to him and to be standing and to be wiping dirt from her bottom and to be walking away.
Then because no one is seeing me, I am holding knife in my hand, and I am seeing Peter.
And then he is seeing me.
* * *
■ ■ ■ ■ ■
I am telling this story to you, but I am telling it to myself too. I am telling it to myself because it is important to be remembering.
You are being kind to me and you are listening. You are seeing me arrive in Centrafrique, and even though there is no peeling on my skin and you are not seeing metal inside me and I am not dizzying or sadding, you are seeing someone who is needing healing. And when I am telling you what I am, you are not turning your face at me and you are not crying. You are not looking at me like disgusting thing. You are accepting me. Sometime, I am worrying when I am telling my story that you will be thinking I am demon or that I am evil thing. That I am bad person. And you will stop listening to me.