Episode 60: Emily (Brendan)

He’d talked himself into a corner and now he had to do it. Even though she was older and made out of some kind of girl material that made her seem like she was always put-together and competent.

He knocked on her door. It was white and made out of some kind of white wood.

She opened it. Her eyes widened a little; she hadn’t expected him. “Come in,” she said.

He didn’t know how to do this. Touch seemed important. Men were also supposed to be confident, so he brushed past her into her room. It was white in here too. At least his barracks had some grey in it. He wondered how she could stand all that white, and then decided he’d be able to stand it too if he had a window like that, with a view of the city and the sea beyond.

He turned to face her. “Hey,” he said.

Guys said hey, right?

“Do you need something?” she asked him.

His eyes flicked inadvertently to the bed. It was easier to look at that than Emily’s placid blue eyes. She was way too smart. Brendan was going to fail at this. “I figured you’re probably lonely,” he told her.

He took a step toward her, because that seemed reasonable.

Instincts were supposed to kick in. Sex. He should be thinking about sex.

All he could think about was how her lips looked, pink and puffy and a little dry. He couldn’t imagine kissing her lips.

He couldn’t imagine kissing lips at all, but when he closed his eyes and thought about kissable lips, it wasn’t her lips he imagined.

She got a box out of her desk and opened it. It was something dark brown, little small brown things each in their own place in the box. “Would you like some?” she offered.

He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. It smelled sweet, even if it looked like something that belonged in a toilet. He took one that wasn’t lumpy. “Thank you,” he said. He bit into it, and pulled half of it away from his mouth, surprised at the flavors he’d encountered. “It’s caramel,” he said. 

He didn’t know how he knew that. He’d never had caramel, that he could remember. Maybe from before he came here, and the word was stored in his memories, locked until he needed it.

He needed to do this, somehow. It wasn’t just his reputation, it was his life. He couldn’t afford to look weak to the others.

He held up the uneaten half of the caramel thing. Couples shared food, so if he could get her to eat some that would be a good step. “Do you want some?” he offered.

She took one out of the box.

He sighed. 

She bit into her chocolate. “Were you hoping to get help with the plate question?”

Why not, it couldn’t hurt. “Partly, yes.”

She got out a plate from the little cabinet on against the wall by the door. She handed it to him.

He turned it over in his hands, surprised at the weight. His plates were always plastic trays, rectangular and thin. This was cool and heavy and seemed to be made out of stone, although he didn’t know what it would take to turn a stone into the shape of a plate.

A ton of work, he decided, and a ton of wasted stone.

“Are there any marks that might be a hint?” she asked him. She’d moved so that she was looking over his shoulder, so he breathed in to try to get her scent. Instincts should kick in soon, if he could find a way to trigger them.

He decided to force it. “The writing,” he guessed. He shifted next to her and put his hand on her lower back.

He felt her body tense under his touch.

He was going to fail at this, so bad.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“I’m Brendan.”

“Brendan.” She put her hand on his, on her back. For a second, he was optimistic, but then she removed his hand and dropped it at his side. “You are way too young. Despite what Cecil thinks.”

Pity. She seemed like someone that would go for pity about his desperation, and his desperation was real. “We’re supposed to,” he said, “We’ll get in trouble if we don’t.”

“Why?” she asked him. She still faced away. He thought it might be a good idea to run his fingers lightly down her neck, but he thought it was a better idea not to push her right now. Aggressive moves weren’t pitiable.

“Because…” he struggled. He didn’t know why. Sometimes he could guess with Cecil’s games and other times they just felt like whims. Like the water bowls in the desert, what was the point of that? This one was easy to guess, even though he couldn’t shake the feeling that Emily mattered to Cecil. And if Emily mattered, on a personal level, why would he encourage this?

Brendan settled on, “We need to learn how. They elected me to try.” That made him sound older, respected, and also like all the pressure was on him. She had to go for that one.

“I’ll teach you, if you’d like,” she offered.

If he’d like.

That was the weird thing; he didn’t like. She was a girl. He should have felt something by now, especially at her offer to show him.

Nothing. There was nothing there. He wasn’t even a little attracted to her.

“Thank you,” he said anyway, because he still had to try. “Will you tell Cecil I did?”

“Did what, exactly?” she asked. 

“Slept with you.” The idea actually terrified him.

She pressed her lips together. “Maybe. Let’s see how this goes.”

“If you do,” he scrambled for something he could give her, something that would matter. “I’ll tell you valuable information.”

He watched, he knew things.

“I probably know a lot more than you, Brendan.” She stood up after that statement, like it didn’t sting a little. She was new here. This place, and the information he’d collected about it, were his life. They were all he had, and she didn’t care.

“If that’s what you want to believe…” he said, and then realized how pointlessly stupid that sounded. Saying something for the sake of looking better than he was, was just a good way to get himself killed for lying about what he was capable of.

For all he knew she wasn’t new at all, she’d just been transferred to this department.

“The first thing you need to change is learning about me first,” she instructed. “Connecting emotionally. I like blue.”

People liked colors? Why?

“I need to know about you first?” he asked instead. He’d seen the way Adele looked at her; she wouldn’t be alive much longer. Getting to know her meant exposing himself to future pain. “You’re not useful,” he argued. “They’ve probably already decided about you.”

She stilled for a minute, her hand on her desk and her face a little more pale than it already looked. “That’s how to lose a girl’s interest,” she laughed. “Let’s see…interesting…”

Across the room, at a white cabinet, she pulled out a few materials and mixed them together on her desk. She set some in her left hand and pinched something else between her thumb and index finger on her right hand. She met Brendan’s eyes, then dropped the stuff in her right hand onto the stuff in her left hand.

Miniature, colorful bombs exploded in the air over her hand, cascading down onto the floor.

“Real magic,” he breathed. 

Cecil sometimes alluded to magic. So had their previous instructor, Thomothy, but Brendan hadn’t really known what he meant.

Now he knew. Magic.

He wanted her to do it again.

“How else can I captivate you…” she mumbled, thinking. She mixed some more stuff and then pinched it into two little balls. She passed one to Brendan. “Chew that.”

He hesitated. He didn’t know her. He didn’t even know Cecil that well.

“You’re not trying to kill me?” he asked.

“No,” she said, serious.

It was exactly what she would say. But he thought about her sitting on the desk in their classroom, the way her eyes got wide when Cecil threatened them.

She was one of the victims, not someone in control.

He chewed it. It tasted like nothing. Not even like water, which had flavors depending where it came from.

She chewed another caramel, along with the second white ball, and suddenly he could taste the caramel too.

Magic. She was amazing.

“I see the difference,” he said. Now he knew something about her, he felt like he owed her something too. “You should know I’m the most observant one in class. That’s not the information.”

Emily offered him another caramel. “What is?” she asked. She sat really close to him, her fingertips near, but not touching, his thigh.

“Thomothy, our old teacher, was controlled by Cecil somehow. Like, Cecil was using his body.” He waited for her to refute him, to say that wasn’t possible.

It wasn’t, right? But he’d seen the mannerisms, the way they got tense about the same things, the way both of them had the same favorites and the same idiosyncratic behaviors, and he couldn’t think of another explanation.

“My magic is capable of that,” she told him. “Interesting.”

He watched her process for a minute, her long lashes curving upward from her eyes. She was pretty. She just wasn’t his type.

“I know you have a boyfriend,” he guessed out loud. “How long have you been apart?”

“A few days,” she said. It didn’t seem to be something she wanted to talk about.

He sighed, struggling. “You know,” he offered, “I don’t have to sleep with you but that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends. Our life is so sterile.” Especially this room, so white and boring. “All our friends are people we’re competing with. And you’re probably very lonely.”

“I think he brought me here to start introducing you to things outside of your sterile environment,” she told him. She stood and crossed the room to her television, which she put a disc into and then did something with a little black stick in her hand. A movie came on, proclaiming itself to be the fourth episode of something.

“Want to watch a movie?” she asked. She sat down next to him with a tin of something he’d never seen before.

He nodded his head, because he didn’t know what to say. He watched the movie instead…lots of flashing lights and robots and a weird-looking princess.

He didn’t know how this worked, so he cleared his throat and looked at her. “Will you tell him I slept with you?”

“You will,” she said.

So it was on him.

“Will you deny it?”

She lay on her stomach and turned to look at him. “You will sleep with me.”

Huh.

He wasn’t ready to sleep with her. He didn’t know how. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t interested. “Oh.”

“Have I managed to seduce you at all?” she asked, with a smile. She had big smiles. He bet she never did little sly ones, just always the open and warm ones. “Have you learned anything?” She ate a bite of the food she’d brought over.

He laughed, because she hadn’t, but also because now he at least knew what she was getting at. Time spent together, like how close Brendan and Thayer were, only with a girl instead of a boy. “A little,” he admitted. “Was that your plan? It was good.”

She grinned, maybe a little smug. “I know it was.” She shifted back onto her belly, watching the movie. “Get comfy. Unless someone comes to drag you out, you’re staying.”

Comfy wasn’t a concept Brendan was familiar with, but he tried. First he tried lying on his stomach, but then he couldn’t figure out how close or far he needed to be, with respect to Emily, so then he sat up and tried some of the food she’d brought.

It was too…it was gross.

He put the rest back.

“But I’m sleeping with you, not sleeping with you, right?” he asked.

She nodded her head this time, talking with her mouth full of the gross food. “The cameras will show the story Cecil needs.” She glanced at him and said in a softer voice, once she’d swallowed, “But yes, I have a boyfriend.”

He sighed against her tone. “What I want, before I die,” he confessed, “is for someone to love me like that.”

It wouldn’t be her.

“It’s a good feeling,” she agreed. She took a deep breath and had another mouthful of gross food before she made her own confession: “I’m not sure he’s waiting for me. We have a lot of people go missing and never return, so he may give up before I show up.”

Brendan thought she deserved honesty, since she was being honest with him. “You may not show up.”

“I know,” she sighed.

Both of them were stuck here together in this place. It gave them something in common that the best seducer in the world couldn’t have had.

And he still felt nothing. She was just…a nice person, with a big smile and a lot of fear she pretended wasn’t there.

“There used to be a hundred boys in our class,” he told her.

She looked down at her dish of food. “Cecil alluded that there will be one at the end.”

“It will be Asa,” Brendan confirmed. “Cecil likes his eyes for some reason. He watches Asa more.”

“Maybe we can keep you alive a little bit longer,” she offered. A little bit. He felt tears sting his eyes, and he looked away. There was no place where he had a shot at a real life, and even Emily knew it. “I have access to more magic and I have friends.”

“Maybe,” he said, with a shrug. He shook off the terror. “I don’t understand this movie,” he said. “Why don’t the soldiers just kill everyone and take the robots?”

“I don’t think they’re very smart.” She pointed to the blonde guy on screen. “The younger guy – they don’t actually want to kill him. It would ruin the rest of the movie and every movie after it too. Also, even if he doesn’t seem skilled he theoretically is. He’s also lucky. Movies are more about enjoyment. They want him to live because the audience wants him to live. It’s his story.”

The Brendan part of the audience didn’t really care about him that much. He’d liked the green guy in the dark place, but the other guy had killed him.

“How do you know all of this?” he asked.

“I’ve watched these movies a lot. Where I’m from, we can go places to see new movies and we can watch them every night.” She laughed, a little wistful. “I used to stay up until three or four in the morning watching movies, then sleep until lunch. And my mom would come home from work on her lunch break and yell at me for missing school.”

Her mom. That was a word you didn’t hear around here.

“What’s your mom like?” he asked.

He closed his eyes when she answered, and imagined what it would be like to have a mom.

“She’s a little overweight but she has this huge personality that somehow impacts her ability to navigate. She’s pretty tough. We grew up poor and my dad was gone. I work in a daycare with her.”

“That,” Brendan joked, “is because her personality has more momentum than her body, so when she tries to change direction she can’t.”

Emily laughed, and Brendan smiled, proud of himself for making her really belly laugh.

If he had a mom, he wouldn’t want one like Emily’s mom, he’d want one like Emily. Maybe that was why he couldn’t be attracted to her, because she felt more like mom material to him.

“She likes to be a scary monster at night,” Emily joked, “with green face goo and these big blue foam rollers that give her hair body.”

He laughed. He didn’t know what the green face goo could be, but he could imagine a fat version of Emily with enormous hair.

“Do you want to know some secrets?” Emily asked him.

“Yeah,” he said, even though he wasn’t sure he did. Knowing secrets sounded like a good way to die.

“One of the kids I watch can see the future.”

She watched other kids. He felt a pang of envy, and pushed it aside. It replaced itself with curiosity, about how old they were, how close they were to Emily.

It took him a minute to realize she’d said she had a kid that could see the future.

No one in Brendan’s group could do that.

“What have they told you?” he asked.

“The kid, or them?”

“The kid.” Who cared what the people in control said? It was mostly lies anyway, but maybe this kid told the truth.

“He had me meet my boyfriend. I knew him growing up, but I hadn’t seen him in years.” She sighed. “We connected only a week before I was stuck here again. And I’m pregnant. I’ll live long enough for my babies to be free of here.”

The only way that was possible was if she got out before they were born.

He sighed, too. Maybe she couldn’t save him, but if she could save herself that was three lives. That was something.

He advised, turning his attention back to the movie, “Don’t let them be born here.”

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