We were on low plastic stools at dusk, wolfing down pork buns under brightening streetlamps. Penny was still visibly shaken from the ground tremor earlier in the day. She seemed to be getting through the ordeal with beers.
Two empty green bottles became three empty green bottles became four empty green bottles. “So, who is this Clyde, anyway?” She hiccupped.
The electricity fueling the main shopping area was back, but rubble in the road had yet to be swept away. A couple of small houses on the border stood completely dark—literally powerless. People were slowly filtering into the Night Market, where most of the stalls were still getting set up. We’d grabbed seats at this one immediately because the food smelled amazing, and Penny really wanted a drink. Or five.
A raven pecked around my shoes with a hopeful expression. Begrudgingly, I gave it my last bite of fried dough. The birds had made their way Downhill after the tremor—they weren’t gone from the island entirely. A few of them clustered along a power line, watching the crowds below. I could barely make them out, given the smog. But I felt relieved that they were even there at all.
The bird cooed happily, and I turned to Penny. “He’s amazing,” I told her. “Clyde’s a Downhill musician.”
“No,” Penny said. She shook her head vigorously. “Absolutely not. No musicians. Especially not Downhill ones.”
“Why not?”
Penny snorted into her beer. “They’re not dateable. Trust me.”
“Clyde’s different,” I said. My face felt warm. What did Penny know, anyway? “And you promised you would help.”
“I did.” Penny put her hand over her heart. “You have my word that I will help you with your soul mate. I’m just not convinced that it’s him.”
My hands curled into fists under the table, crumpling my chili oil–drenched napkin into a tight ball. Heat crept up the back of my neck. Maybe Penny was being cynical because she and her ex were broken up. She was jealous that I’d found my true love and she hadn’t yet.
“Might as well look around.” Penny winked. “You could be missing out on other people, you know.”
Penny was definitely drunk. I’d never seen her this chatty before. “Hell, I’d even make you a soul mate,” she said, chewing her bottom lip thoughtfully, “if it meant not dating a musician.”
“He’s also a DJ,” I said, defending him. “He’s much more than you think!”
Penny frowned. “That’s even worse, Helga.”
My Cog whirred. I turned over a new possibility, thinking over what she’d just told me. Penny could make me a soul mate. She had made me, after all. Sort of. She’d assisted Father in his lab, which was close enough.
I wanted to ask her more about the lab and how things worked, but Penny was clearly still interested in probing me for more information about Clyde. She gestured toward the vendor for another beer.
“What does this guy look like?” she asked, scrambling for change in her wallet.
The vendor stood next to us with a tight-lipped smile, tapping a hairy, sandaled foot against the pavement. There was a line rapidly forming at his stall, with people complaining about the bus delays, the quality of air after the tremor, and—most of all—their hunger, but Penny was still busy searching for payment.
“Shoot.” She grimaced. Her wallet was stuffed with receipts, glittery stickers, and concert stubs, but no cash. “Somehow, I’m all out. Dammit, this is embarrassing.”
“Do you know how hard it’s been with all these machines around here? And you’re telling me you’ve got no money for all those drinks you had?” The vendor’s patience was clearly wearing thin. His face was quickly purpling. We were probably five minutes away from getting kicked out and banned from the establishment for life.
I remembered the money I’d stolen off tourists on the bus. I counted out a few bills and handed it to the vendor. He nodded stiffly at me and made a pfft sound when he walked past Penny and back to his stall. At least that was one eruption we’d narrowly evaded.
“Thanks.” Penny sighed, slouching down in her seat to avoid being seen by the other waiting customers. “Although this is super embarrassing, having to ask a teenager to cover the beer bill.”
Then she narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait. Where did you get this money from, anyway?”
“Clyde,” I said hastily. “You were asking about him.”
“Oh yeah!” Her eyes brightened at the subject. I was suddenly grateful she was drunk; otherwise she’d probably try to get me to confess that I’d stolen money from tourists. “What does this guy look like?”
“Really dreamy. He’s tall with platinum blond hair. He wears a lot of black. He has cowboy boots and—”
“And a lip piercing,” Penny finished. “Right?”
Was she a psychic or something? I touched the back of my neck, feeling self-conscious. How had Penny known what he looked like? Did she have a remote computer set up to spy inside my mind?
She gestured toward the stall across the road. “I think your guy is on a date right now.”
My heart dropped to the pit of my stomach. For the first time in my life, I had no appetite. The world tilted sideways. The road blurred, and the crowd disappeared.
I couldn’t stop staring at the two of them. Clyde, in his quintessential all-black outfit, next to Anna, who’d traded her Uphill work uniform for a thin black dress and fishnets. She was almost as cute as me. Almost.
His hand was on her back, and she was looking up at him, laughing at something he’d just said. I remembered the first night we’d met, the way it had been my back that he’d been gently guiding. I remembered when he said “after you” in that cool, assured tone and I thought—I really did—that this was it. That this was my soul mate.
I was suddenly aware of an itchy feeling in the back of my eyes.
“Helga? Are you okay?”
I was dimly aware that Penny was calling my name.
Clyde and Anna looked great together. They matched each other perfectly, and their body language indicated that not only were they comfortable around each other, but that they’d done this before. They’d been on other dates together. It was in the easy way her arm was wrapped around his waist, the way her head was tucked against his shoulder.
When Clyde said he wanted to hang out with other people, this is what he really meant. I didn’t know shit about love, I guess. I didn’t know shit about boys either.
Clyde wanted to be with Anna, not me.
It was funny, the way that something like this could hurt me. I’d never been hurt like this before. I sort of knew it was coming because I’d seen how he’d acted at the cemetery. But it still took me by surprise, big complex Cog and all.
“Fuck that guy,” Penny muttered. “I’m sorry, Helga.”
Somehow, it’d started to rain. Why was it always raining on this stupid island? Why was it always raining whenever something horrible happened to me?
Penny popped open her black umbrella so that it would cover us both. “You never know,” she muttered darkly. “It’s probably okay to get wet, but those rumors about acidic rain … I’d rather not risk it.”
Tourists were scattering for shelter, but the Downhillers were busy scouring the Night Market stalls. Rain didn’t faze them at all. Nothing did because they were heartless blond charmers who didn’t know a good thing when they met her and didn’t care that they were hurting an amazing girl—a ten out of ten, honestly.
I watched Clyde get two fizzy sodas from a market vendor just a few feet away from us. Anna giggled cutely when he offered one to her. He hadn’t noticed me yet. Maybe I was that invisible to him.
“Let’s find a place indoors,” Penny suggested. “We can get out of here and do something fun.”
I wasn’t a gullible tourist, and I wasn’t a prim Uphiller. Rain didn’t faze me either. I wouldn’t run away from Clyde and Anna. Why should I? We’d gotten here first.
I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m good with staying where we are.”
“I might say something to him then,” Penny said. She rolled up her sleeves and there it was—the rotten girl tattoo in all its full glory. “What a smug little bastard.”
But she didn’t need to say anything at all, because Clyde was the one who spoke first.
“Hey,” he said, stopping dead in his tracks in front of our table. “Helga?”
“Glad you got my name right this time,” I muttered.
Clyde laughed uneasily, running his fingers through his hair. Anna looked like she just ate a sour plum candy. Her mouth was pursed, but she didn’t say a word.
“You look amazing,” he told me. “Wow.”
I’d almost forgotten that the last time he’d seen me, I’d been wearing my disheveled Uphill uniform. Thanks to Penny, I was now in something way more suitable. I brushed invisible lint off my teddy sweater and subtly adjusted my suede miniskirt. Before leaving her apartment, Penny had even taught me how to braid my hair.
“I know,” I said, feeling smug about it.
He was angling closer to me, leaning over the table. Horrible as he was, he did smell amazing. Cloves and rain. His silver piercings glinted. We locked eyes.
“We should hang out again soon,” he suggested.
Anna was just standing there, silent.
Penny was not silent, though.
“Excuse me? Are you asking her out while you’re on a date with someone else?”
“Anna and I are just hanging out,” Clyde said, shrugging it off. “Also, aren’t you too old to be involved in this conversation, ma’am?”
“Ma’am!” Penny sputtered. “How old are you, like twenty? I’m twenty-three, you little brat.”
“There’s a show this weekend I’m DJing at,” Clyde continued smoothly, ignoring her. “I’d love to see you there, Helga. I’ll put you on the guest list.”
Whenever I was about to form a decision about Clyde, he’d say or do something super confusing. Like pulling away at the cemetery, or like this, right now—leaning in close, his thumb grazing my hand. And even though I felt disgusted, my pulse still quickened.
“We were supposed to go to the show together,” Anna reminded him.
Clyde didn’t even seem to notice her. His mouth was crooked into a half smile, and he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from me.
Okay, yeah—Clyde was gorgeous. He was tall and lanky and had impossibly sharp cheekbones But he also sucked big time. He’d not only made me feel like crap, but he was doing it to Anna right now too. Neither of us deserved that.
“I’m busy,” I told him. “Anna is too.”
“No, I’m not,” she said.
Oh. Well, at least I tried.
“I’m ready to go,” I told Penny. In more ways than one, I thought to myself. It was time to move on from Clyde. I wasn’t interested in two-timers, even if they did have cool piercings.
Penny lurched up from the low stool, nearly knocking over one of the empty green bottles on the table. The market vendor audibly sighed in relief. In a few seconds, he’d cleared the bottles off, sweeping them into the black trash bag that a band of rangy rats hovered around eagerly.
“Saturday?” Clyde called after me, in a hopeful voice.
“No thank you. I wasn’t born yesterday,” I shot back, which was true. I was born, like, three whole days ago.
Penny and I headed back Uphill. I didn’t turn back, because there was no point in it, and because I knew he was staring after us, slack-jawed in disbelief while Anna glowered next to him.
He had seriously underestimated me. And I wasn’t going to make that kind of mistake ever again. I deserved someone who didn’t just want to “hang out” sometimes. Someone who really got me. Someone who really loved me.
Somewhere, my soul mate was still out there. Waiting for me.
I checked out different guys while we meandered back to Penny’s apartment.
I’d been too focused on Clyde to even notice them before—an unfortunate oversight that I was quick to rectify. There were so many guys in the world. It was eye-opening to finally realize this.
There were guys on park benches. Guys waiting at bus stops despite the long delays that the tremor caused. Guys hanging outside vendor stalls. Guys everywhere.
Sensitive guys in billowy lace blouses and dangly earrings, heads bent low over copies of books titled Sonnets to Orpheus and Being and Nothingness, leaned against buildings, insulated from the rain. There were chain-smoking guys in striped black-and-white T-shirts, talking in carrying voices about whatever the hell French New Wave was.
There were Uphill guys in beige trench coats, and Downhill guys in black leather jackets. There were tourist guys with fanny packs—and some of them were even cute.
“Helga, if you stare any harder, you’re going to burn holes through their clothes,” Penny warned me.
I didn’t have the luxury of time—I had to stare at them all. Father was coming back from his business trip in two weeks, and I needed to find my soul mate before then. If the worst-case scenario did unfold—Father wanting to yank out my Cog, despite my immense progress—then I could simply run away with my true love.
Short guys. Tall guys. Big guys. Small guys. Everywhere I turned, there were more and more guys.
Unfortunately for me, Clyde was cuter than almost all of them.
I had to keep looking to figure out what I really wanted. “Not just looks,” I muttered to myself. “The inside matters too.”
That was Clyde’s problem. He was gorgeous, but there was something clearly wrong with his brain for him to act the way he did toward me.
After trudging back Uphill, I laid down on Penny’s couch, staring at the ceiling. Penny fell asleep quickly in her room. Her snores carried through the well-postered wall.
But I was wide awake. Thinking about my soul mate made me way too giddy to sleep.
My true love … where was he now? What was he like? What did I want?
I didn’t want an Uphiller. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a Downhiller either. I wanted someone who understood me. Someone who felt the same ache I did when I heard certain songs, when I saw planes taking off at the edge of the island. Someone who occupied in-between spaces.
“Someone like me,” I whispered. “That’s what I really need.”
No one heard me but Natasha, the lone living plant on Penny’s windowsill.
In response, she ate another bug.