“It’s going to be okay,” Ivy says, again and again, like a mantra. “It’s going to be okay.” The thing about mantras is, after a while they lose all meaning. After a while they’re only sounds.
“It was an accident,” Ash says. “It wasn’t intentional. We didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“But you did,” I say. “You did hurt someone. Your intention doesn’t change that.”
“It’s not our fault,” Ivy says.
“But it’s still your responsibility,” I say.
She acts like she doesn’t hear me, but I know she does. Ivy can always hear me. She’s the only one who can.
“Where are we going?” Ivy says.
“We have to get rid of the car,” Ash says.
“Tell him he can turn himself in,” I say.
“You can turn yourself in,” Ivy says. “It was an accident. You’ll get the best lawyers. You’ll be fine.”
“People like him are always fine,” I say.
“We’ll hide the car,” he says. “We’ll say it was stolen.”
“But they’ll question us,” Ivy says. “When they find the car. They’ll question me.”
“Ivy, turn the autopilot on,” Ash says calmly. Too calmly. She does what he says.
He turns and grabs Ivy’s arm. “I can’t get in trouble.” He puts his hand on her cheek, trying to be gentle, but I feel it burn on my own skin. “Help me,” he says. “If you love me, you’ll help me.” He kisses her and I want to spit in his mouth.
“No, Ivy,” I say. “Tell him no.”
“Yes,” she says with her eyes closed. “I’ll drop you off at the ferry terminal. Go home and pack your stuff. Get ready to go. I’ll get rid of the car. I’ll buy our plane tickets.”
Ash doesn’t say anything, just looks ahead into the night, his hands back on the steering wheel even though he doesn’t need to drive. He has gone somewhere else and I don’t know if he’s coming back.
Ivy tells the car to take us to the ferry terminal. She gently uncurls Ash’s fingers from the steering wheel and holds his hand in her lap. Their faces are serene. Neither of them is scared. The Freedom they swallowed is doing its work. But I wonder if it’d be any different without the pills.
The billboards shine their advertisements. The bots do their cleaning. The drones do their watching, but no one is looking for us yet.
The car pulls up to the ferry terminal and Ivy kisses Ash goodbye. Their lips are just paper against paper. Everything is dried up.
He does not look either of us in the eye, just turns around and goes.
“Make sure people see you,” Ivy calls after him. “It’ll give you an alibi.”
Something’s over now. Ivy doesn’t know it yet, but I do. Something else is beginning. That’s how things work.
As we drive away, I see Ash pull out his phone. Somehow I know he’s calling Tami. He has the look of someone who has no intention of doing the right thing.
Ivy tells the car to take us to the warehouse area south of downtown.
“You need to turn him in,” I tell her. “You need to save yourself.”
“Why should I save myself?” she says dispassionately. “What’s the point?”
“So you don’t have to go to prison. It’s not like debt prison, Ivy. When you kill someone, it’s different.”
“There are worse things.”
“Like what? Death?”
“Maybe I’m already dead.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
Ivy laughs a hollow laugh. “That’s all I know how to do.”
“He’s not worth it,” I say.
“Yeah? Well, neither am I. Don’t you get it? I’ve lost everything. He’s the only thing I can’t lose.”
“What about me?”
“I’ll never lose you.”
Maybe she is right. But maybe she is wrong. Or maybe all of these things are true. Maybe there are other truths we haven’t even considered.
Maybe it is not about losing at all. Not about the clinging and chasing and holding on for dear life, not about something getting taken away.
Ivy, what would happen if you just let go?
And that’s when I get out. Or part of me gets out. Maybe I split once more.
I am unbound, released.
How many pieces am I now?
It is a dark street south of downtown, outside the toll gates. It is a world where people like us don’t go. But what does that even mean, people like us? We are all made out of the same things.
I walk among the shadows. I am a shadow. I fit right in.
The only open businesses are dive bars, liquor stores, and a few twenty-four-hour recruitment centers for cults. Police drones fly overhead. Streetlights flicker. Rats scurry. Blanketed figures huddle in doorways behind shopping carts that contain entire lives. Somewhere, glass breaks. Somewhere, there is yelling. The world smells like smoke and piss and garbage. Somewhere above, stars are shining, bright and constant, but they are blocked from view, and none of the light filters down here.
I don’t know where my shoes went. My foot is raw, bare flesh. The wound has opened. I have no protection from the sidewalk. There is no layer between me and the grime of this part of the city that no one wants to see.
I walk through blocks and blocks of identical shadows and mask-covered faces. They go on forever. The streets and the faces are infinite. The pain in my foot travels up my leg and into my entire body.
Eventually I reach the boardwalk, the ferry terminal. The Ferris wheel and vendors are all shut down because of the smoke. The postcard view of Commodore Island has been wiped out, the view Ivy’s mother supposedly looked at as a child, the view that made her dream of a different kind of life, that made her use her daughter as a tool to get that dream. And she got her mansion on the island, she got her money and fine things, she got to live inside the view, and now she’s trapped inside that glass house while the world burns down around her.
I am the only person on the boat’s outside deck. There are no tourists taking pictures of the Seattle skyline. There is no Seattle skyline. The ferry horn blows its sad announcement into the night: I am here. I am coming.
The fires are getting close. The dusty ash falls from the sky and makes a shape around my body, and I am a brittle shell with nothing inside.