Penny ran after me as I raced Downhill. That’s when I noticed the bus. Instead of getting hit, this time I flagged it to stop. Now that was progress.
I dropped the last of my coins into the fare meter. As soon as I’d put in the required amount, a neutral, disembodied voice spoke from hidden speakers.
“Hello, Name,” it intoned. “Thank you for taking Amaris Shuttle Service.”
There was no bus driver sitting in the front seat; it was an autonomous vehicle.
Other passengers didn’t stare at me like I was afraid they would. The passenger who’d gotten on right before me had been greeted as Sarah—which meant the bus was tracking everyone who’d gotten on. Except for me, because I wasn’t in the system yet. Outside of the Institute and Clyde, no one knew I even existed.
The bus peeled off and I watched Penny from the window, out of breath and panting. She was still shouting my name—my real one.
Helga, not Marietta.
Noticing the bus’s security measures made me antsy. Even though there was no driver, passengers were still being tracked and monitored. Hello, Name.
Autonomous was a misnomer, I realized, since the programming had been done by engineers. This bus couldn’t truly make decisions on its own since the bus itself was a piecemeal extension of their cumulative minds and biases.
It couldn’t learn new things. Unlike me, this bus didn’t know shit about heartbreak.
Walking through the aisles, I passed camera-laden tourists and Downhillers drinking out of brown paper bags. I saw Uphillers who looked like they were thinking about converting to Downhill life, beige trench coats rumpled beside them. I kept my head down and wound toward the back row. I didn’t sit in the seat so much as meld into it.
I was dead broke and honestly a bit stinky. Even worse, during my run, I’d lost my raven plushie. The only things I owned were the tattered clothes on my back.
Everything was so hard.
And after all my running away, I was both physically and mentally tired too. Even someone with my stamina had trouble with stuff like that. It seemed so long ago that I was Uphill with Father, celebrating my birthday. Or rather, celebrating Marietta’s birthday. It was still a lot to take in, sift through, and deal with.
And as for Clyde, he’d left me feeling so confused and weird in the cemetery. I had no idea how I was supposed to act around him the next time we met. What did he even mean by “hanging out with other people”?
The bus zipped along, passing the Night Market. The even hum of air conditioning and murmuring passengers blended into one another, comforting me slightly. A cool blanket of even-toned sounds; a lullaby.
I pressed my face against the pane of the window, exhaling a tiny cloud. I traced a heart into my own condensed fog, dreaming of other lives I might have if I ever figured things out.
The bus’s overhead bins were filled with suitcases and backpacks and duffels. Which meant every other passenger on it had somewhere else to be—Uphill, Downhill, or beyond the island.
There were snippets of conversation around me. Two Downhillers in black jackets were mumbling about the Institute. I inched forward to eavesdrop better.
“Did you hear they’ve been dumping chemical waste into the ocean?”
“Who’d do rancid shit like that?”
A short, sarcastic laugh followed. “Dude. Who do you think?”
The bus pulled to a stop in the Entertainment District, where the two of them got off. There were strains of off-key singing and distant commotion from bars and restaurants. I tuned my ear more closely—farther back, there was a live concert going on in one of the converted warehouses. The crowd was going wild, thumping their feet. Amaris sprawled before me. I drank in her gleaming buildings and strange rain.
New passengers got on.
Everyone but me had luggage, a home to return to with their possessions. But I was just going around in the same circles. My heart twinged with longing. I wanted to belong somewhere. I wanted a direction, a north star, to point me home.
I looped around Downhill over and over and over. I watched airplanes taking off at the tip of the island, runway lights blinking. I saw commercial fishing ships and heard distant foghorns. And there were strange shapes in the water …
Long-limbed shadows were coming out of the Pacific. Fish with gleaming green scales and too many bulbous eyes. I saw enormous ravens swooping to catch hold of them. There were even fish with webbed feet, clamoring onto the sandy beach.
Chemicals in the ocean, the Downhillers had muttered.
Snatches of a familiar song broke through my existential moping. Someone on the bus a few seats up was listening to music. I recognized the melody but not the words. I knew it wasn’t from Penny’s bag; it wasn’t the brash Downhill style of her rock CDs. It wasn’t classical music either.
I drew a sharp inward breath when I realized where it was from.
It was a nostalgic pop song from Father’s youth. For some reason, it’d been engrained in my Cog—a small sliver of himself from beyond the hill. It was a rare glimpse into his life from before he’d moved to Amaris.
The listener was half asleep. One of her white plastic earbuds had fallen out, dangling into the aisle. I leaned closer, straining to hear the music. I still couldn’t make out the words. I didn’t even recognize the language.
Why had Father put these words into my Cog, and why did it hurt so much to hear this song?
The bus stopped and the listener jerked awake, suddenly alert. She put her dangling earbud back in while the man next to her helped pull her luggage down. We were at the tip of the island again, and they were both leaving Amaris. Maybe they were flying to the same place Father was now.
It was a place on a map I didn’t know. A place I had never been that nevertheless felt significant to me. It was a place that ached.
I went round and round the island, feeling maudlin and increasingly unwashed. When the trolley rolled down the aisle, I scraped together loose change I’d found in the seat.
“What will it be?” it bleeped at me.
“Blackberry soda,” I said quietly, trying my best not to cry. “And some fizzy pops.”
But I knew that this, even delicious as it was, wouldn’t be enough. What also didn’t help was the trolley’s final words to me, delivered in the same clinical tone as the speakers: Bon appétit, Name.
Hours passed. There were fewer and fewer passengers aboard the bus, until I was the only one left. It was nearly morning. Streaks of burnt orange rimmed the edges of the city.
While other passengers were either sleeping or distracted, I’d taken the opportunity to lift some of their cash. I needed to eat, after all. Additionally, I’d made some other hard decisions during the night.
My new plan was to sleep on the bus, steal from tourists (because they seemed more gullible than anyone else), hang out with Clyde, and figure things out between us. It seemed a bit grim, but at least it was something. I needed forward movement of some kind—I couldn’t just keep going around in circles forever.
Plus, I would much rather sleep on the bus than have my Cog extracted in Father’s lab. I knew that if Father had things his way, I’d probably be rotting in a steel locker along with the other discarded Mariettas.
As his Uphill daughter, I was a total failure. It was clear from my ruined slacks to my crumpled button-down. I didn’t belong Uphill, and I didn’t belong with Father either.
And I found myself still troubled by what the Downhillers on the bus had said. What was the impact of chemical waste—if it was even true? Weren’t things fine the way they were? I fidgeted with the black choker around my neck. Murky thoughts churned uncomfortably. Be careful, rotten girl, my Cog whispered.
Something was changing about this particular route too. The bus was starting to slow down near the entrance of the Night Market. This was likely the last stop. I’d have no choice but to get off here and make my way either Uphill or Downhill.
“All passengers must exit the vehicle,” the voice over the loudspeaker said, confirming my suspicions. “Cleaning will begin shortly.”
I desperately needed to take a shower, but it was probably too embarrassing to be hosed down by an automatic bus. I imagined running into Clyde and Anna afterwards, drenched in my raggedy clothes. I had to leave the bus—now. I needed one single shred of dignity to hold onto.
Slowly, I trudged toward the exit. The sun was out in full force now, a hazy yellow that burned even though it was barely visible through the orange sky. I could feel city sludge in my pores, mixing with my own sweat. I covered my eyes and walked down the steps, straight into Penny, who looked like she’d been awake the entire night.
“Finally. I’ve been checking buses all night,” she rasped. Her eyes were bloodshot. A half-smoked cigarette jittered between her teeth. “Are you coming with me or not, Helga?”