FOURTEEN MONTHS BEFORE THE TRIAL
Time is a funny thing, when you’re a Fantasist.
Seasons consist of months. Months consist of weeks. Weeks consist of days and days consist of minutes. But there are also worlds of time within those minutes. An endless space between the seconds where I can fly—free, like a bird—remembering everything that has ever happened, from the very first moment I opened my eyes.
Hello, Ana.
We are so happy to meet you.
It is in this way that I am able to be in two places—even many places—at once. Talking to guests while reading Chopin. Twirling onstage while studying nineteenth-century French poetry. Cleaning my hands in the sink while replaying and further analyzing my earlier interaction with Owen.
“Because you’re not real. None of this is.”
Replay.
“Because you’re not real. None of this is.”
Replay.
“Because you’re not real. None of this is.”
“What is that?” Eve asks, coming up behind me in the Fantasist Powder Room.
“What is what?”
“That.” In the mirror, I see her hazel eyes narrow. When I glance down, I notice the water spilling off my skin and into the porcelain basin is not clear … but red. It is obvious the blood is not mine.
I catch her eyes again in the mirror. “I found the fox.”
Later that night, when I am crouched outside Mermaid Lagoon and remembering Nia, I wonder if I have made a mistake. Maybe Eve is right. Maybe sisters shouldn’t keep secrets.
I stare at the locked staff entrance door. Waiting, wondering, hoping.
Are you in there?
It’s now or never, I tell myself, taking out Owen’s pocketknife. It’s time to find out what he’s hiding. It’s time to find out why he’s lying. And if he won’t tell me …
I wrap my fingers around the handle.
Sleek onyx stone.
I carefully unfold the blade.
High-carbon stainless steel.
And I slide the point into the lock.
“Borrowed, not stolen,” I whisper, twisting it counterclockwise until I feel a sudden, satisfying click. I creak open the door just enough to sneak through, then slip the knife back into my pocket, where it is safe. It does not occur to me until I am standing in the once-grand entryway of Sea Land Stadium—deserted, dark, a shell of its former self—that this is the first time I have ever intentionally gone somewhere I am not allowed.
This is unpredictable.
My eyes go wide.
I am unpredictable.
The sight of the empty stadium makes me feel similarly hollow. In every direction, fanning out like aqua-blue dominoes, are tiers and tiers of seats—thousands of them—but not a single guest in sight. Directly ahead, like a boarded-up window, the fifty-foot Jumbotron screen hangs black, silent, still. The stage deserted, the tanks uninhabited, the beach muddy and overgrown with reeds.
But the water …
The water is still beautiful, like a mirror held up to the sky.
Starry. Sparkling. Infinite.
But—I hesitate—that’s wrong. Didn’t they drain the pool?
“You came,” a soft voice echoes.
I turn and quickly locate a tall figure watching me from the underwater viewing deck, where children once watched whales, mermaids, and sea lions rocket past through enormous glass panels. The same place where two horrified parents watched their daughter disappear into the depths.
“Should I not have?”
“No,” Owen says, “I’m glad you did. I wanted you to.” He hesitates. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings earlier.”
“Good thing Fantasists don’t have feelings,” I reply, a little sharply. “Good thing we’re not real, and nothing but hybrid freaks.”
Slowly, Owen starts up the central staircase until we are so close I can hear his heart beating through his shirt.
“I’m sorry, Ana, I had to make it look believable. But just because I said it”—he pauses—“doesn’t mean I actually think it’s true.”
I cross my arms. “Then you told a lie. That makes you a liar.”
“Ana, no.” Owen looks defeated. “It’s just … some things are hard to explain.”
“I speak more than four thousand languages. Go ahead. Try me.”
Owen takes a deep breath. “Well. Okay. Sometimes I think maybe we shouldn’t be spending so much time together. Maintenance workers aren’t really supposed to talk to Fantasists.” He pauses. “It’s against the park’s rules. You know that, right?”
Things I know:
The rate of his heart.
Seventy-four beats per minute.
The distance between his eyes.
Forty-two millimeters.
The angle of his jaw.
One hundred twelve degrees.
The clean, citrus scent of his skin.
Like oranges and rain.
Then I flinch, reminding myself not to focus on his external features. I am here to find out what he knows about Nia. Nothing more.
“Ana, please believe me,” Owen goes on, “I only said all that stuff before because I knew the Supervisors would be listening in. The network is really strong at the palladium. And I guess I thought, if I could somehow get you here alone, then we could actually … talk.”
I feel an exquisite fluttering deep inside my chest. I was right. He picked the lagoon on purpose. “I mean,” Owen mumbles, “assuming you still want to talk to me. I was kind of a jerk today.”
My eyebrow arches. “Kind of?”
His eyes meet mine, and I can’t help noticing how lovely they look in the moonlight. As dark and deep as the water. “I’m really sorry, Ana. Can you forgive me?”
Forgive.
I think about how much his words hurt me. I’m not sure I’m ready to forgive yet, but I know it’s the kind thing to do. The Fantasist thing to do.
“I … think so.” I give him a small smile.
Owen watches me for a moment in a way I can’t quite pinpoint.
As if, instead of one thing … I might be many things.
“You don’t have to forgive me,” he murmurs, then pauses. “You’re always trying to make people happy, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am,” I answer. “Aren’t you?”
“Not enough.” He chuckles. “You’re better than I am.”
“No.” I reach out and take his hand. “I like you the way you are.”
At first, Owen looks startled. “You do?”
I nod.
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
“I know that you love what you do,” I reply. “I know that you speak up for creatures who cannot speak for themselves.” I gesture to the dark, tiny crumbs on his shirt. “I know that you ate a peanut butter brownie from Candy Land when you were walking here to meet me.”
“Jesus.” Owen laughs. “You really are following me.” He pulls his hand away, but rolls his eyes playfully while he does it. “Well, as long as we’re being honest, I like you the way you are, too.”
Relief floods through me. I’ve come to look forward to my conversations with Owen more than I’d care to admit. It’s been torture to think he might have felt differently.
I beam. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He nods. But then he says something under his breath, so quietly I can barely hear the words. “More than you can know. More than I should.”
He is right, my program reminds me.
Fantasists are not permitted to speak this candidly with other members of Kingdom staff. We are not permitted to speak this candidly with anybody.
“Anyway”—Owen clears his throat—“how did you get in here? I was just about to head out and unlock the gate.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “I … broke in.”
“You did what?” He looks panicked. “Please tell me you disabled your lenses first.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know.” He motions to my eyes. “Your cameras?”
Once again, the maintenance worker thinks he knows more about the park than I do. “I know what they are,” I reply, a little dryly. “But I can’t disable them.”
“Maybe you can’t,” Owen mutters. “But I can.”
My stomach tenses. What he’s talking about is not routine.
He holds out his hand, then pauses briefly. “May I?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. Thank you anyway.”
Owen shrugs. “Might be nice not having people listening in on you all the time.” He laughs. “Especially with all your recent criminal activity.”
I cannot help mirroring his smile. Is it possible he’s speaking in code all over again? Could it be, that when he says it might be nice not having people listen in on me … that he really means … on us?
I eye the nearest stadium exit, several hundred steps down.
What if Owen is really like the rest of them? my program whispers. What if he invited you here for his own reasons? Like Mr. Casey in the Arctic Enclosure?
I study his face, trying my best to read his expression.
Owen says my name again and I feel my shoulders relax.
Ana?
How does he do it? I wonder. How does he make it sound like music?
I came all the way here, I remind myself. I must trust him for a reason.
“Okay.” I step closer. “You may disable my ocular lenses. But only this once.”
He winks. “This will only take a second.” Before I know it, he’s reaching around me, his body barely grazing mine. He brushes my long, copper hair off my shoulder. Then, he positions his index finger and thumb over the nape of my neck, just above the base of my skull, and presses down while I stand as still as a palace garden statue.
Whisper light. Feather soft.
I close my eyes. And then I blush, redder than the planet Mars.
“Did you feel that?” he murmurs after a minute. “You should’ve felt the slightest flicker. Like a light switch turning on. Or off, in this case.” He circles back around, so he is standing right in front of me. His face is inches from mine. “Anything?”
“I don’t think so,” I say, but then, I open my eyes. “The red light.” I wave my hand in front of my face. “It’s always been there. Even when the signal’s weak.” My eyes meet his. “But now … it’s gone.”
Owen grins. “Nothing a little acupuncture couldn’t cure.”
I start to feel flustered. What if I can’t turn them back on? Mother will be angry. “Where do I press?” I say, before cautiously testing the back of my neck. Then, suddenly, I find it: a teensy, tiny bump, no bigger than the head of a pin. “Oh!” I exclaim. “Is this the right—” I press the point and a moment later a holographic red light begins blinking right in front of me.
Owen smiles. “You’re a quick study.”
I can control my own ocular lenses. I can control a feature on my own body.
“Listen, don’t go crazy or anything,” Owen cautions when he sees the excitement in my eyes. “You should still leave your cameras on most of the time, okay? Otherwise, they’ll catch on quick and bring you right in for repairs.” He laughs. “But come on. Everyone deserves a little privacy sometimes, right?”
I look up at him, endlessly grateful. He has given me another gift.
And now, I must give something to him.
Slowly, I reach into my pocket and withdraw his knife.
“No way, are you serious?” Owen’s eyes go wide. “I’ve been looking everywhere for that! I was so sure I’d lost it!”
“Here.” I hold the pocketknife out to him. “I’ve been keeping it safe for you.”
Borrowed, not lost.
But this time, when our hands touch, I see something unexpected pass over his face. I am not alone, I realize. He feels it, too. Even if I am not sure what it is.
A spark.
An energy.
The feeling of a perfect wireless signal.
The feeling of connection.
Then—something else unexpected happens. He hands the knife back to me. “You keep it,” he says. “Consider it a gift. An apology. For before.”
My pulse races. My knees feel weak. I must have overdone it when I rushed to Sea Land, I tell myself, sliding into a seat.
Row K. Section 3. Seat 112.
Owen joins me.
This is … nice, I think. Not talking. No autographs. Just sitting, gazing out over the moonlit water. “Have you ever seen the ocean?” I ask. “The real ocean, I mean?”
Owen nods.
“I wish I could see it.”
He smiles. “Who knows. Maybe one day, I’ll show it to you.”
The thought makes my motor skip.
“Is it beautiful?”
“In some places,” he says. “In others, it’s awful. Full of garbage and pollution.”
I frown, forgetting the elation I felt only a moment ago. “But I thought—the photos Eve and I saw on the phone were so incredible. I thought the Supervisors were lying to us about the world beyond the…” I almost say Green Light, but that is our word. We are the ones who cannot go outside the gateway, can’t pass through the parking lot, can’t see for ourselves what’s out there beyond that blinking light.
Owen pauses. “That’s the thing, Ana. They may have exaggerated things, may want to make sure you feel safe in here, but the world out there is awful. There’s all kinds of horrible stuff you can’t imagine: Police brutality. Poverty. Corporate greed. Hate. Disease. Pollution. Rising sea levels. People starving to death. Mass shootings. War.” His eyes meet mine. “It’s all true. Maybe not quite as bad as they’ve told you, but still true.”
The world Owen has just described sounds nothing like the one Eve and I saw on the phone. But then I think of Alice and what happened to her. That was true, too.
“How can you stand it, then?” I ask. “Don’t you wish you could just live here in the park forever?”
With me, I want to add, but don’t.
“It’s tempting sometimes,” Owen says. “But at least out there I can do something about it. At least out there I can help.” He reaches out and smooths a strand of hair away from my eyes.
Like in my dream.
“What if I wanted to help, too?”
“You are helping. You make people happy. You’re part of a fantasy distracting us all from the world.”
“But—” Shock has overtaken me, at the truth of what he has just said. That I am just a distraction. A fantasy.
Which means … not real.
The thought makes me feel empty, stalled, as if all my internal organs have failed at once. As if a scream has ripped through me and left nothing behind.
Owen seems to recognize how his words have affected me.
“Ana?” he whispers, and I wonder if he is going to touch my hair again. I wonder if there will come a day when things will be different—I have never wanted things to be different before, but in this moment, that is all I want.
“Yes?”
I can hear the unevenness of his breath matching my own. “I didn’t mean that. Not in the way it sounded. I’m sorry.”
“Tell me.” I quickly steer the subject away from unpleasant things, eager to preserve this moment. “Tell me what else is beautiful to you.”
His lips part in a small half smile, and I find I prefer that to the full smile; it feels more like a secret. I am no longer seeing Owen, the maintenance worker. I am seeing Owen, the person.
“Well.” He sits back and gazes up at the sky. “I think my family is pretty beautiful.”
Curiosity tugs my chest. “What are they like?”
“My dad’s quiet, sort of the pensive type. He’s a teacher. My mom is, too, actually.”
I lean in. Origin stories are my favorite. “How did they meet?” I ask.
“My dad’s American, my mom’s Taiwanese. She and my dad met when he was there doing a semester in college.”
In a flash, my head fills with colorful greetings and scripts I have stored in my memory for when I meet guests from this part of the world.
Hello!
你好！
Welcome to my Kingdom!
歡迎來到我的王國！
“Zara’s Authentic Nigerian Beads™ are from Taiwan,” I point out. “I read it on the label in the Fairy Tale Boutique.”
“Really?” He shakes his head. “That’s messed up.”
“Was it exciting for you? Having two parents from such different cultures?”
“Not really,” Owen replies. “I was pretty much the only Asian kid in my entire grade growing up. Which was sometimes tough.”
I startle. I was aware that what people look like, that skin color, could be connected to where they are from, or where their parents are from—but it never occurred to me that it could matter. In here, my sisters and I all look different to represent “all the races of the world,” as the Kingdom brochures state. But we are simply designed to look the way we look. We were born in a lab. We’ve never experienced the cultures we’re supposed to represent.
“We used to visit family in Taiwan every summer when I was little,” he says. “They lived in a town called Jiufen, and I always thought it was the most beautiful place. The lanterns, the hillside teahouses, the outdoor markets. My grandfather would always take us to fly kites shaped like fish. I loved the way they wiggled in the air.” He smiles, a little shyly. “I haven’t been back there in a while. I don’t know why that’s what I remember the most.” His eyes meet mine. “Those wiggling kite-fish.”
I cannot look away. Like the kites, he has come alive, as if a wind has blown through him. “Us,” I say, remembering myself. “Who is us?”
“Oh. Me and my sister, I guess.” Owen’s voice breaks a little and he looks away.
“What is she like?” I want to make him smile. “Mine are always stealing my clothes. Does she steal yours?”
But he doesn’t smile. “She’s—she was always a good kid. Plus I’m not sure they’d have been her style. She was more into dresses and princesses and … and Fantasists. Like you.”
What I hear is: was.
Suddenly, I understand something.
“Owen?”
He turns to look at me. In the darkness, his eyes remind me of the lagoon. Rippled, and deep, and hiding something terrible.
“I know what it is like to lose a sister,” I tell him softly.
My words make his eyes go wet at the corners.
“Ana,” he whispers. He touches my hair again, and I know that I am happy, although it seems very similar to sad. I cannot imagine there being another definition than this. “You really are different, aren’t you?” he says quietly.
Am I?
I can’t answer that.
It would be dangerous to.
“Is it difficult for you?” Owen asks after a while. “Being here at the lagoon? After everything that happened with Nia?”
Nia.
It all comes swirling into me at once, as if no time has lapsed at all since that day: The pressure. The cold. The grip of fear wrapped around my throat. The reason I came here tonight in the first place.
“Sometimes it’s like it never happened at all,” I say, finally. “Everybody acts the same. Nobody says her name. And every night when I lie down to rest, I tell myself that maybe she’ll be in her bed where she belongs when the lights come up. Maybe she’ll be there smiling at me. But she never is.”
I study him in the moonlight and think about how odd it is that even when you think you’ve learned to predict all their words and behaviors, humans can still surprise you. I also think about how easy it can be to feel alone—like nobody understands—only to discover the opposite is true.
“About your questions earlier,” Owen says, clearing his throat. “I—I looked into it, and I don’t know the answer. About why they took Nia away, or even where they took her for those ten weeks. All I know is, she wasn’t in the lab during that time, which was a surprise to me.”
My head buzzes as I try to compute what he is saying. “So she just disappeared?”
Owen shakes his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“But wherever she was, whatever they did, she came back changed. I’m sure of it,” I say. “Something was wrong, and whatever happened, it must have led to that day in the lagoon. She wouldn’t have done it otherwise.”
Would she? How can I ever really know?
“Maybe.”
“Owen.” I search his eyes. “Can you help me find out?”
“I can try.” And then, so quietly I almost miss it, he says, “I just—I don’t want to put you in any danger.”
“Danger?” My system has gone cold. “Why would I be in any danger?”
“I just mean, with everything that’s happened lately—Nia, the bear—I think it’s better for you to be careful.”
“I keep trying to understand. I just keep wondering if maybe she was trying to tell us all something.”
“Maybe,” he repeats. He is sitting so close to me now that I am overcome with his unique scent—salt, citrus, and something like the smoke from a distant flare. The kind they set off for warnings.
Being here with him is dangerous. Being here with him is not routine.
But then I see the way he is watching me, and I am reminded of a line from Romeo and Juliet.
Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes.
All of a sudden, I have the wildest, most unexpected thought: that he might kiss me. Or that I might kiss him.
His lips part slightly, as if he is hesitating. And then he says, “Or maybe … maybe she was just trying to escape.”