Early the next morning, Penny scrambled to get ready for work, groaning about her nauseating hangover. She was out the door with a slice of toast between her teeth; pink hair bundled into an approximation of a bun; glasses balanced precariously on the tip of her nose; and her black bag rattling with calls from her landlord, from her ex, from Father too, probably. Everyone always wanted something from her. Including me.
“I can borrow your music player? And try on any of your clothes, right?” I called after her retreating back.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “Just stay out of trouble.”
I ate a box of cereal and washed it down with a half gallon of soy milk and a carton of blackberries. I flipped through zine after zine, learning different makeup tutorials. I smeared lime green shadow across my eyelids and coated my mouth in dark lipstick. My earlobes jangled with silver metal hoops, cheerfully discordant.
The crack from the tremor had already been filled in with new cement a shade darker than what surrounded it. An Institute worker sidestepped the long blemish, juggling large boxes with her ear pressed up against her phone. Her stricken expression reminded me of Penny, but she was even younger than her. An intern, probably.
“I’ll have your report soon. I didn’t have weekend plans, anyways. No worries,” she told whoever was on the other end of the line, while sounding very worried, in fact. Her face was nearly the same shade as the sky—a queasy, yellowish green.
I popped my head out the window and almost yelled out the same words those Downhill boys had graffitied on the building—but realized I should probably keep a low profile around Uphillers, in case they recognized me and it caused more problems. I slunk down low on Penny’s purple couch before the girl saw me. Even though I sort of wanted to give her a small smile of solidarity.
I tuned out the outside world with more of Penny’s music: rock, hardcore, post-punk. I shimmied around her cramped living quarters. I thrashed. I headbanged. I did everything Father would have hated, and I took up all the space in the room that I wanted.
Penny had so many songs, and I was eager to get as many of them into my Cog as possible. I was ready to become the most Helga version of myself and further distance myself from Marietta.
And yet.
And yet I found myself looking for it: the song I’d heard on the bus that night, looping around the bottom half of the island. The nostalgic pop song that Father had embedded into my Cog. The one with lyrics I couldn’t understand.
I looked through her physical and virtual musical libraries, but I couldn’t find the song anywhere. Morning slipped into afternoon. There were rain showers and the proficient clip of patent leather shoes against pavement. The smell of steamed buns and sandwiches from the canteen, and then coffee, which meant that it had to be around three p.m.
More rock music. More pop music. Some weird experimental stuff—wow, Penny. But after all these hours searching, I still couldn’t find the damn song.
For a minute, I considered learning the language on my own. I could read books and take classes somewhere. I was a fast learner, so it wouldn’t take very long. Or I could at least ask someone who might know what I was looking for.
Maybe if I understood the lyrics, I could understand Father.
“Screw this,” I muttered, although no one could hear me but Natasha.
Why should I understand Father when he’d never bothered to understand me? I shouldn’t think about the song anymore. That was probably the best course of action. I needed to focus on a future outside of Father altogether.
He’d left for a conference almost immediately after I was born. He’d chosen his work over me, and he wanted to replace my Cog and stuff me in the steel locker with all his other castoffs. I didn’t have much time before he came back, and even though Penny promised he’d change his mind about me, I couldn’t count on that. This was my life on the line.
Father sucked, big time. And even that was an understatement.
The lights in Penny’s apartment brightened automatically, adjusting to the growing darkness outside. It was almost evening. The rain against the window pounded insistently. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
“Shut up,” I screamed. “God.”
“Sorry,” came a muffled voice, surprising me.
It wasn’t rain, but Clyde. He was holding a handful of small pebbles, throwing one after another against the window. I guess this was his way of getting my attention.
“I was just passing by and saw you headbanging through the window. It must be fate,” he said from the other side. He grinned crookedly, that rascal. “Let me take you out. You know you want to.”
Clyde was a clown, and so was I, for agreeing to go on another date with him.
“I swear you look hotter every day,” he said, as soon as I met him outside. His eyes lingered over my outfit and my new makeup. “I’ve never met anyone like you before. Your face is like … super symmetrical. You’re more ripped than anyone I know, and you came out of nowhere. You’re intriguing, I guess.”
Well, yeah. He’d never met a girl who was born in a lab. I couldn’t say that to him though, so I smiled and said, “I know.”
Across the hill, the streetlamps were turning on automatically. Bulked-up opossums lurked near trash cans, biding their time before dark. Penny would be back from work soon and wondering where the hell I’d gone off to. I should’ve left her a note, but it was too late now.
Clyde went on about his upcoming DJ gig while I grabbed a few snacks from the closest café. The Doldrums were pretty good, from the snippets I’d listened to on Penny’s CD player. I wasn’t sure about Bored Nothings yet. But Ice Bear rocked, from their look—fuzzy ice-blue boots and white eyeshadow—to their sound, which was chilly, crystalline, and oozing with well-deserved confidence.
I was honestly surprised Clyde had gotten onto this lineup. And I couldn’t help but bristle, hearing him go on about it. He’d invited Anna first, and now he was asking me. I didn’t want to be her replacement or vice versa.
Why the hell was I even here? I wondered while Clyde droned on about the band he was hoping to form. Oh yeah—because he’d complimented my muscle definition and I wanted to hear more. Duh.
We sat on a park bench near the Amaris Cemetery. I sipped my blackberry bubble tea, trying to tune him out and see if there were any cuter, nicer guys around. Clyde would not stop fantasizing about band stuff. He was all talk.
“I want it to be classical, but experimental. I want audiences to get blasted by a wall of sound but also think about the deeper meaning. Maybe it could also be a commentary on society. Society is important to think about. It’s important to care about the state of things … but not too much either. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about the purity of the music,” he mused.
“Okay,” I said, even though he was ranting.
There was really no reason for me to be here with him. It was a mistake to go out with Clyde, but I was a little susceptible to flattery. It was nice hearing compliments about myself, especially after all the criticism from Father.
Plus, the more disinterested I was in Clyde, the more he seemed to want to get to know me.
“You know I’m from Ohio, but I don’t know where you’re from. East Asia, right? Are you here on vacation?” he pressed.
“No,” I snapped, suddenly irate. “I’m from here. Amaris.”
“You’re not an Uphiller, though. And I’ve never seen you Downhill before a few days ago.” Clyde frowned. He clearly thought something was off about me. But then he shook his head and smiled. “I’m only asking because I would have talked to you immediately. And I know basically everyone who lives beyond the Night Market, so …”
He waited expectantly for my answer.
Shit. My Cog scrambled for an explanation.
“I guess I’m … sort of an Uphiller,” I hedged.
This was a mistake. Clyde’s eyes lit up. “Does that mean you’re rich, then? Like Anna?”
“Not every Uphiller is rich,” I started to say, but he cut me off.
“Rent, even near the bottom of the hill—where I’ve seen you and what’s-her-face hang out—is more than I could afford. The prices keep skyrocketing—even Downhill, since Uphiller developers have started changing the Night Market with those kiosks. It’s getting more expensive to live on the island, and if you’re an Uphiller, it means you’ve got something I don’t.”
He had a point. Uphill was pristine; the worker drones kept everything gleaming. Downhill was changing because of Uphill’s influence, and not for the better. I frowned, trying to remember the conversation I’d overheard on the bus. What was it that those two Downhillers had muttered?
“Well, I’m not rich,” I said, pushing down uneasy feelings.
Clyde’s eyes practically gleamed. “So that means you have rich parents, right?”
Parents, plural. Clyde had totally forgotten that I’d told him I didn’t have a mom.
He would not give it a rest when it came to trying to figure out how much money I had. I knew nothing would stop him from probing further. He wouldn’t stop until I managed to change the subject.
I threw my empty bubble tea container in the trash. Predictably, the rats dove for it. Clyde was still looking at me in that hungry way.
“I swear, I’m broke. I’ve been stealing from tourists every day.”
“But you don’t have to be doing that, right? You could always ask your parents for more money. Unless they’ve limited your spending, like mine have.”
The last thing I wanted to do was tell Clyde about Father. The second to last thing I wanted to do was give Clyde my stolen tourist money to fund his nonexistent band.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured, putting a suggestive hand over mine. “I like Uphill girls. Especially the bad ones.”
“I’m not really an Uphiller, though. And I’m not just bad either. I’m rotten. Like seriously rotten.”
“That’s so cute,” Clyde said. He leaned in close, which would’ve made my heart flutter yesterday. But today I only found it extremely grating.
“I’m ready to rob anyone,” I protested. A couple of Uphillers paused along the paved path to look at me. I lowered my voice accordingly. “I mean it, Clyde.”
“Anyone?” Clyde asked, with a wolfish grin.
And that’s how I found myself breaking into the morgue.
My Cog was too big for the mess I’d gotten myself into. This was a new low, even for me. I should’ve listened to Penny when she told me to stay out of trouble, but I could’ve never predicted that this would have been the outcome.
Breaking into the morgue had been easy. Clyde stood back and watched me do it with my bare hands. While no one was watching, and under the cover of moonlight, we slipped inside.
“It’s so easy for you, huh?” he asked slowly. “You can open locks just like that?”
In retrospect, I should have pretended to struggle more. Even when we were inside, he’d continually look over, staring at me like he couldn’t decide whether I was girl or monster.
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Must have been a fluke,” I said. “An old lock or something.”
“This—” Clyde gestured around the room at all the dead cold things, “is all Institute property. They’re strict about protecting their possessions, Helga. I really doubt they’d use a rusty lock.”
He rolled out a corpse from a steel tray and unpeeled the top sheet. The body was covered in debris. There was a large dent in his forehead, sticky with congealed blood.
“Probably from the ground tremor,” he said coolly, sliding the gold watch off the corpse’s blue wrist. “I heard that something happened in the Entertainment District yesterday. An air-conditioning unit fell out of a window and onto my poor man here, I’m guessing.”
Then he turned to me. “Do you think you would have survived something like that?”
“How could I?” I squeaked. “I’m just a girl.”
Clyde shook his head and smiled. “I’m not sure what it is,” he said softly. “But something tells me you might survive anything.”
I was doing these wild crimes just so Clyde wouldn’t find out who my dad was. So he wouldn’t know what I was. This was really not what I wanted my evening to be like. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me either. Like he was sizing me up. Or worse, figuring something out.
“Don’t be tense, Helga,” he admonished me, sliding a luminous pearl necklace off an Uphill grandmother’s gray throat. “I thought you were bad, right? Rotten even. So why are you so nervous?”
The window howled and rattled against the small stone building. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead. A sudden noise made me jump, but it was only a rat. Clyde smiled and squeezed my shoulder.
“Strong,” he commented. “You must be some kind of superhuman, with muscle tone like that.”
I’d wanted to hear these very words earlier, but here in the morgue, I wasn’t so sure that Clyde was complimenting me at all. His face had taken on an almost quizzical expression.
While I stood around trying to act normal, Clyde pilfered silver cuff links, diamond earrings, and more pearl necklaces—even trying on one of them on himself. He pulled out drawer after drawer, humming to himself while I wondered if the authorities would stalk in and throw us both in jail.
But Clyde was efficient. I was no stranger to finesse either—especially not after all those performance checks Father had me do. His pockets soon jangled heavily with stolen goods.
“I’m really glad to have met you,” he told me. “Imagine all the stuff I could get with you by my side. You might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Helga.”
I laughed uneasily. “Isn’t doing this more than enough?”
I did not want him asking me more pointed questions about the limits of my body. I didn’t like the way he touched my shoulder either. It was like I wasn’t a person to him, but an object.
Penny had been right. Clyde was most definitely not my soul mate.
I needed to be with someone who looked like him but had a mind closer to mine. I didn’t want to be saddled with someone who just took and took and took.
“I’m going to leave,” I said suddenly. If I spent one more second in here with Clyde, I might implode.
“Helga—” he said, but I didn’t stick around to hear the rest.
This whole situation was extremely annoying and inconvenient. I would have to avoid Clyde for the rest of my life, otherwise I knew he would continue to pester me to do stuff like this. None of it benefited me. It only made me feel weird and used and not cute.
I guess I would not be going to the show with him on Saturday after all. I didn’t know how Anna could put up with this either. We both deserved better.
I stormed through Uphill grave plots while Clyde followed, calling after me. Ravens circled overhead, cawing. I prayed fervently that they would eat him whole.
As I headed back to Penny’s apartment, someone raced toward me, hopping inelegantly over the curb. Someone with a shock of bright pink hair, wearing a white lab coat. And even from my distance, I could see how agitated she was.
“Thank god you’re okay,” she wheezed. “I couldn’t find you anywhere and got worried. Your father called and wanted to check up on you. If the doctor found out that …” She trailed off when she realized we weren’t alone.
Penny got very quiet.
“Father?” Clyde echoed. “Doctor?”
I knew the wheels in his head were turning. I was afraid of what connections they were forming. “I thought you said weren’t an Uphiller,” he finally said. His face, hidden in the dark, was utterly unreadable. “But I guess you’re the most Uphill you can get if your father’s a doctor.”
Penny and I watched him go. And as soon as he was out of view, she asked in a low voice, “He doesn’t know, does he? Tell me he doesn’t know, Helga.”
“No,” I managed. “He doesn’t know anything.”
“He’s bad news, anyways. I think you should stay away from him.”
“I plan to,” I told her.
But I knew that even if I did stay away from him, Clyde wouldn’t stay away from me. He had far too many questions now.