This was it. The beginning of the end.
       The rebels had agreed to send a representative to meet with him, agreed to follow the same
playbook that he himself had followed a half-century ago. The playbook from back when he was the one
toppling the oppressive regime and his sister was the representative of their rebellion.
       Nuro’s sister Arian hadn’t returned in one piece back then, even if she had looked like she had,
but she had returned alive enough to take control for thirty years before handing power to him at the
hands of her own gun.
       He wasn’t planning on sending this representative back alive at all. He’d heard whispers of who
would be sent, and he didn’t dare risk releasing the figurehead of his only opposers, didn’t dare risk
releasing the mastermind who had somehow thwarted him at every step he took. If he could grind this
supposed ‘savior’ of his people into dust, then he would hold power forever.
       Or as long as forever could last when people seemed to believe you were only a handful of steps
away from turning to dust yourself.
       “Are you ready, sir?” one of his guards asked, hand already on the scanner that would open the
last door between Nuro and the agreed meeting place. The guard wouldn’t step past the threshold, of
course. Nuro would be alone with the representative. The rebels’ leader. But still, it was enough for now
that he’d be guarded until the last possible second.
       Nuro uncurled himself, straightening a back with too many kinks twisted into it until it was nearly
as straight as a ruler. He stilled the shaking of his hands by clenching his fist around the heavy metal gun
at his side and lifted his wrinkled chin.
       “Of course,” he said.
       The slick metal door opened, and he stepped forward, raising the weapon with all the ease he had
managed in his youth. Across the way, the rebels’ representative stepped forward too.

       And everything was spinning, spinning, and he didn’t know what to do anymore. Because the
leader of the rebels that had plagued him for the last year, the mysterious ‘savior’ who had thwarted him
at every turn, almost like she knew what he was thinking, was his sister, fifty years younger, and distinctly
not dead.
       “Arian?”

“Arian? Are you sure you’re ready to confront him?”
       Arian didn’t glance at her brother, tugging the light plating around her chest tight and snapping
bullets into her gun’s chamber. “It’s now or never, Nuro,” she said. “He’s getting too close to our base. If I
don’t act now, we’ll all be wiped out.”
       “But are you ready?” he pressed, curled in on himself and so small even in his pressing, so fragile
he might snap at any moment.
       “It doesn’t matter.”
       “It matters to me!” Nuro shouted, and Arian flinched but still didn’t turn to him. He wiped his
face roughly, slapping sense into skin that didn’t understand it wasn’t supposed to cry. “You’re my sister,”
he tried, once he had control of himself again. “Arian, am I just supposed to be okay with you throwing
yourself into a battle I don’t even know if you’re ready for?”
       “We can’t just let our world fall apart because I’m not ready,” she said roughly, clicking more
weapons to her belt—one, two, three—and testing to make sure they were secured. Satisfied with that
success, Arian bent down to lace her boots, still avoiding her brother’s gaze. “That can’t happen, Nuro. It
can’t.”
       “Why does it have to be you?” he asked. He knelt down beside her, clasped her hand in his own,
and squeezed as gently as he could manage. “Please, Arian. Why does it have to be you?”
       Finally she looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, clutching his hand and blinking away the
moisture in her eyes. “I can’t let you grow up in a world like this. I can’t make you watch as everything
falls apart and just sit there, knowing that I could have stopped it.”

       “I don’t want to lose you.”
Arian smiled, a watery smile that dripped away as quickly as it had begun. “I don’t want to lose
you, either.”

“Arian?” Nuro repeated. “No,” he answered himself, just as quickly as the question had fallen from his
lips. “No, you can’t be Arian. Arian is dead. I lost her.” His chest heaved, a shaky breath whistling its way
into his lungs. “I thought you were dead,” he said, forcing himself to look at her—and it must be her, who
else would refuse to meet his eyes in that way Arian always had?
       “I’m not.”
       And he couldn’t deny it a moment longer, couldn’t deny it anymore than he could deny the
wrinkles painted on his skin. “No,” he agreed, suddenly feeling so, so tired. A century older than he was
already. The gun in his hand weighed a thousand pounds, but he couldn’t bring himself to budge its aim.
       “You aren’t.”

       “I thought you weren’t like this, Nuro,” this child-version of his sister chastised. “I made this
world better for you so you wouldn’t have to be like this and the minute I’m gone, you take over just like
that dictator we overthrew—”
       “I thought you were dead!”
       “Why would it matter if I was?”
       Nuro laughed just a little—a cruel, bitter laugh that wasn’t really a laugh at all. Molten metal
poured into his spine, hardening him into the leader he’d been forced to become. “Why would it matter if
you were dead?” he asked, each word spoken with care. “Where do I even start? Should I start with the
fact that everyone thought that you hung the moon and stars and maybe deep down they didn’t really
believe that you could actually die, much less at your own hand? Do I have to explain why that might
cause problems?”
       “Nuro—” Arian began softly, taking a step forward and reaching for the barrel still aimed steadily
at her chest, but Nuro threw himself back with as much agility as he could manage.

       “No!” he screamed, the sound tearing through his throat. “Stay back!”
       “Okay,” Arian said, taking a step back and raising her hands in surrender. “Okay.”
       There was a moment between them, a beat of confusion and distance and something else that they
had never had between them before. They were siblings. How could something get in between that?
But it had.
       “Maybe,” Nuro continued, determined to ignore whatever had just changed but still wavering at
the knowledge that something had changed, “maybe I should start with the fact that you left us on the
brink of civil war. God, Arian, can you see why that might be a problem?” And then, just as suddenly as
the fight had steeled itself within his bones, the last drop melted out of him. Nuro’s voice dipped, his eyes
falling to the floor and his gun wavering for the first time since he’d seen the one who used to be his
sister. “Or maybe,” he said, voice barely above a whisper, “I should start with the fact that I thought you
were dead.”
       A moment rested between the two of them, the older sibling somehow decades younger than the
feeble brother before her. The years stretched between them, ages that Nuro wasn’t even sure if Arian
remembered anymore.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to remember.
He wasn’t sure if he could stand it if she didn’t.
Arian took a breath. “You tore apart my country,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “I can’t bring
myself to feel bad for you.”

       “You tore apart my country,” Arian spat, bright blood mixed with spit splattering over the stark white
floors. “I can’t bring myself to feel bad for you.”
The vicious dictator only laughed, confident in his triumph over the teenager on his floor. “You
think you’re some hero,” he said, “But you’re really just a little girl playing make believe.”
“I’m winning.”

       “Are you?” the dictator bent over where she knelt on the floor, arms bound behind her back and
bruises blossoming on her face. “Is this what winning looks like?”
       “It doesn’t matter what happens to me,” Arian said. “I’m not what matters. You know that.”
       He laughed again, hot breath forced into her face. “You think they can hold this country together
with you gone?” he asked. “You think that if you die, the rest of the rebels will step up and take over?
       That they’ll be fair?”
       “If I die, my brother will take over,” she insisted. “He’ll be fair. I trust him. I’m doing this for
him, and I know he’d do anything for the rest of our people.”
       “Your people?” the dictator said, cocking an eyebrow. “Interesting choice of words.”
       “Well, they aren’t yours.”
       He shook his head, standing up and wiping the blood that had splattered over his chin off his face.
       “You’re deluding yourself,” he said coldly, waving a dismissive hand. “Even if he is as good as you say,
they won’t follow him. If you die here, your precious country is ruined.”
       “I guess I just have to not die.”
       “You think you can control that?”
       “I think I can try.”

       “I trusted you,” Arian continued. “I really believed that at least if something happened to me, you would
take my place. And instead, I do come back, and what do I find? You tore apart my country, Nuro.”
       “I tore it apart?” the old man said. “You’re blaming this on me? This is your fault!”
       She stared at him. “How can it be my fault? I was dead! You were the one in charge.”
       “I did not just abandon this country,” Nuro hissed. “I have weathered every devastation in the past
few decades alone. I did not get to just give up.”
       “You think I gave up?” she said quietly.
       “Yes,” he said, just as quietly as her, the rasp in his voice scraping over the soft word. “You killed
yourself, Arian. You gave up.”

       She slapped him across the face.

       He slapped her across the face.
       She cried out in shock, bright blood blossoming on her lips and her cheek reddening under the
harsh treatment.
       “You live and die when I tell you to live and die,” the dictator growled. “You win and lose when I
tell you to win and lose. You rule at my leisure. If you walk away from this today, it will be because I let
you.”
       “It will be because I won.”
       “Yes,” the dictator said. “Because I let you win. You think you can control death, you silly child?
       This country is cursed. If you rule here, death will always hover over your bed at night until finally,
someone challenges you and it finds you.”
       “Everyone dies.”
       He laughed one more time, laughed until he was bent double at a great joke and she trembled on
the floor in the face of a madman. “Sure,” he said when he could breathe again. “Everyone dies.”
And then, just as suddenly as he had been there, towering over Arian and hitting her and taunting
her, he was gone. In front of Arian, there was nothing but an empty husk of a body.
       She had won.

       The siblings stared at each other for a moment, a half-century stretching between them, knowledge that
each held and the other could never reach, building a wall that could not be crossed.
       “You’ve changed,” Nuro whispered, cheek already reddening to what would be a dark bruise
under paper skin. “You were never cruel to me before.”
       Arian’s shoulders heaved with every breath coursing through her body, trembling like she’d run a
mile-long race, but at his words she straightened, a dark look appearing in her eyes. “You’ve changed
too,” she said. “I thought I could trust you.”

       “And I thought I could trust you.”
       “You live and die when I tell you to live and die,” Arian began, and Nuro felt like something had
struck him in his ribs. “You win and lose when I tell you to win and lose. You rule at my leisure.”
       “What—” Nuro tried, but Arian kept talking, as rhythmically as though she were possessed. For
the first time since his sister had reappeared, as young and unharmed as she had been when they were
children, Nuro was afraid.
       “If you walk away from this today, it will be because I let you. Death will always hover over your
bed at night until finally, someone challenges you and it finds you.”
       “Everyone dies,” Nuro said weakly, shaking his head in the face of this thing that had replaced his
sister, unable to stop his hands from trembling anymore. “Arian, what are you doing?”
       Because Arian was laughing, choking with mirth that hadn’t yet met her eyes.
       “Sure,” she said. “Everyone dies.”
       And then, just as suddenly as she had been there, small and fierce in her anger and accusations, as
vibrant as she had been when she was alive, she was gone. In front of Nuro, there was nothing but an
empty husk of a body.
       He had won.

“Are you really wearing this?” Wister asks, the words as clear on their lips as on their hands.
They trace a fingertip as close to the iron band wrapping my arm as they dare. “Come on, Ruby.
You know you can’t survive this.”
       “Sure I can,” I sign, shrugging as I take a step into the faerie circle that they stand in the
center of and begin the circle dance that by now I know by heart. Step left, spin, step right, tap
three times, step left. “My family has always walked one foot in your world, one foot in mine,
and ever-dancing in between. Why would I be the one to slip?”
       They drop their hand and frown at me from the middle of the precisely lined circle of
mushrooms. Even the wind is on their side tonight as it batters my hair in chastisement.
       “Careful, Ruby,” Wister warns. “Don’t tempt the others. Not all of them are like me.”
       “You’re the only one here tonight, aren’t you? It’s not a full moon.”
       Wister sighs, pinching the bridge of their especially pointy nose. “Yes. I’m the only one
here. But you still shouldn’t get into a habit of tempting the fates. Faeries are not the only ones
who can influence you mortal’s destinies, you know.”
       “I know.”
They raise an eyebrow. “Do you?”
       “I do.” I glare at the small faerie. “You offered that information. I don’t owe you for it,
and I know better than to thank you. I’m not opening my soul to you, thank you very much.” I
continue weaving my way through the faerie circle, calling to the Fae’s world with every step.
       Step left, spin, step right, tap three times, step left.
       “I wouldn’t take it if you did,” Wister says.

       “I don’t care.”
       Wister watches me helplessly. I’ve nearly completed the first circle when they take a
breath, steel themselves, and step directly into my path. They clasp my wrists to still my furious
words before they can speak themselves.
       “You won’t be able to get her back,” they sign softly, close to themself and every motion
somehow apologetic. “You can wear all the protections you want in our realm—the garland, even
the iron—and it won’t work. It won’t bring her back and it won’t stop them from Taking you,
either.”
       “You don’t know that. You can’t know that.”
       “Your sister ate our food. Your mother nursed our changeling. They’re switched now.
       That is set in stone.”
       “I’m going to get her back,” I insist.
       “We don’t take kindly to thieves.”
       “She’s my sister,” I, stubborn girl that I am, remind them. “I’m just getting my sister
back.”
       “It doesn’t matter,” they say. I already know what they’re saying—what they’re going to
say—and turn away to stare at dusty-gray trees before they can finish. Still, I see the words flash
in my mind, signed and spoken in the same careful precision Wister always has. “She’s ours
now.”
       No.
       I whirl on them, a sudden fury boiling in my chest that almost makes me miss my pattern
and step out of line. “My sister,” I beat out, slamming my fingers together with enough force to

make my bones ache. “I don’t care what your people say. I don’t care what she’s eaten, or what
my mother has done. She’s my sister, and I’m getting her back.”
       “You aren’t,” Wister snaps. “All you’re going to do is get yourself trapped in our world
where I can’t get you out, Ruby!”
       “Maybe I’d rather be stuck there than be here without her!”
       “Just take the changeling!” they cry. “Let them be your sister. You wouldn’t have known
if I hadn’t told you, you would have cared for them like they were your blood, so why is it
different now?”
       I pause, my foot hovering in the air. “Why is it different?” I echo, the soft sound of flesh
hitting flesh swallowed by the woods around us, gone as though it was nothing more than the
silence I heard. “You want to know?
       Wister takes a shaky breath, and nods. “Yes,” they sign. “I want to know why it’s
different.”
       “Because you changed it,” I answer, taking each step of the dance a little faster now,
moving nearly as quickly as I throw phrases from my fingertips. “You told me my sister was
Taken. You weren’t supposed to, but you did. And now I know that thing isn’t my sister, and I
want my sister back.”
       “They are your sister, though,” Wister says, spinning in the middle in a desperate attempt
to continue facing me as their fingers articulate word after word. “To them, they are.”
       “Changelings leave us once they grow up!”
       “Not always! And even if they do, they’re—”
       “Human?” I snap before they can finish. “Because they’re not. The Fae are not human.”
       “Alive,” they correct. “Changelings are still alive.”

       “Why does that matter?”
       “Because they have feelings too!” they all but scream, hands outstretched and curled into
frozen claws. At my stricken expression, they wince and close their fist, pressing it tightly
against their body. “They have feelings too,” they repeat, subtler this time.
I’m almost there. Almost done with the dance, almost in the Fae’s world.
       “What do you mean?”
       Wister is breathing heavily, looking as though they were the one to dance their way
around a faerie circle time and again, not me. Desperation reigns in their eyes, but at my
question, it eases just a bit. “You’ll listen?” they sign. “For real this time?”
       A pang of guilt runs through me. Wister is my friend. It isn’t their fault that my house
was the one visited by the Fae that night, and it isn’t their fault my sister was Taken. I shouldn’t
blame them.
       But even if I don’t know better than to tempt the fates, I do know better than to apologize
to a faerie. “Yeah,” I sign, as gently as I can, offering the silent apology that the Fae speak so
well in my own clumsy way. “I’ll listen.”
       “I am a changeling,” Wister explains, each sign choppy and slow.
       I flinch, my fingers already bowed to apologize when I realize what rule I’m about to
break. Quickly, I rearrange my hand. “You?” I sign, with a quirk of my brows that turns the
simple gesture into an incredulous question. “But you are…”
Fae. Better. Kinder. Softer.
       I can’t find the right words.
       “I was raised with a human family,” Wister signs. “They loved me, they cared for me.”

       “You still left them,” I snap, grasping for air like I’m grasping for straws, perhaps being
harsher than I have any right to be because their eyes flash.
       “You don’t know that!”
       We stare at each other, hot anger meeting sharp pain across the circle.
       “I did not leave them,” they sign. “I stayed with my family until the day my mother died,
and then I returned to the faeries.” Wister signs faster and faster until they are practically
shouting. “They were my family, and they taught me to love humans. They are the only reason I
have not Taken you a thousand times over!”
       They are glowing in the moonlight, as vibrant now under the half-moon as I imagine they
must be under the full. Although they are painted in fury, the paint is cracking and I can see the
hurt underneath.
       I’ve hurt them.
       I’ve hurt my friend.
       I know what I am not supposed to do. I know what is forbidden if you wish to interact
with faeries. But I still cup my hand and press it to my lips. “I’m sorry,” I sign. “I’m sorry,
Wister. That was unfair of me.”
       Wister’s breath catches. “Ruby—”
       “Wister.”
       They take a breath to fight me, and then stop. “Thank you.”
       We’re equals, now. Our souls are equally open, equally at risk. But they’re my friend. I
trust Wister, and so it doesn’t matter that I dared to apologize and they dared to thank me.
       My friend, who was a changeling.
       “My sister will be safe?” I bring myself to ask.

       “Perfectly,” Wister promises. “She is ours now. We take care of our own.”
       “Okay.”
       I can’t sign more than that, shoving my fist in my mouth and biting hard to stop the tears.
Wister tugs me out of the faerie circle, wincing as their fingers brush the iron wrapping my arm,
and guides me to a seat at the base of a tree. They gingerly pull my hand from my mouth and
flatten it by my side.
       “The changeling will be safe with you?” they ask.
       Changeling, changeling—the words fizzle into nothing. All I can imagine is a small
Wister, scared and alone and rejected for something they can’t understand.
       “What changeling?” I sign. “I have only my sister.”

I don’t really know what to say. Besides goodbye, I guess, which I should have said anyway, and
thank you.

Thank you for Monday mornings filled with donuts and coffee. Thank you for Monopoly even
when you could no longer read the board and Yahtzee when you couldn’t remember what you’d
just rolled. Thank you for the endless repetition of that story about how grandfather never let you
wear the real jewelry anywhere. I think I understand now why you were so proud of yourself for
wearing that ring everyday. Thank you for giving it to me, even if I wasn’t as grateful as I should
have been.

There are so many things that I should have been grateful for, but I wasn’t. I’m sorry for that. I
wish I could make it up to you someday. Maybe I could make that divinity chocolate you liked
so much and you were so good at making, and I could get it just right and then everything would
be okay and you would still love me.

Who am I kidding? Everything was okay anyway. You never stopped loving me.

I hope you knew how much that meant to me.

Because of you, I am proud of who I am and I know family stories from generations ago that I’m
sure I’ll pass down one day. Remember that story about your typing teacher? I must have heard
that one a thousand times. I wish I could hear it again.

You told me so much, and yet somehow, each visit with you left me with more questions.

If Mom was born in January and you got married in December and you hated those women who
had children before they got married, what did you do in the ten months between? What was so
terrifying about that one car crash when you were eighteen that you never drove again, letting
your yellow truck collect rust and dust and bugs until someone finally towed it away? When I
came by and you would smile at me so wide, did you really remember me, or were you just
pretending? You were good at pretending—how did you get so good?

How did you get so strong? You lived through so many things and yet none of them ground you
down into a crumpled path of dust. You stayed standing until the end, and even when you sat we
all knew that you had chosen to sit down.

Why did you stop eating? Did you want to die, or could you just not remember how to live? Is it
good that you’re dead now? Is it better this way?

I have so many questions for you, Gram-Gram. Now I’m never going to get the answers.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You were supposed to watch me graduate. Be at my wedding.
Meet your great-grandkids. There are so many things that are never going to happen now.

Thank you. For your ring. For teaching me how to be brave and stand firm. Thank you for
Monday mornings filled with donuts and coffee.

I love you, Gram-Gram.
Love,
Tanya

“You aren’t getting out.”
       Sebastian looked up at the stocky woman from where he was lounging on the other side
of the layers of bars and bulletproof glass and his face brightened. “Lizzy! Did you bring me my
psychological horror movies this time?” he asked. “The one I got from the library here was so
boring. No practicality. And it was completely ancient, from like 2012. Honestly, I’d rather be
dead than be this bored.”
       The woman shoved her thumbs into her starched beige coveralls and gritted her teeth.
       “I’m serious, Sebastian. Your sentence isn’t getting commuted.”
       “Please, Lizzy” he said, although his words were rather muffled by the arm still over his
face. “That’s just wishful thinking on your part. The sentence was twenty-one lifetimes a
millennia ago. They may not have realized that I’d actually be able to serve it when they
sentenced me, but I’ve served it and now they have to release me. Justice.”
       “Why, so you can kill again?”
       Sebastian sat up and grinned. “Worried?”
       “You just asked me for psychological thrillers to get some inspiration. Forgive me for
thinking that my least-repentant prisoner might actually repeat his crime.”
       “Least-repentant? I’m touched,” he said. “Don’t worry, I won’t get caught this time. I got
careless, back in the 2000s. I don’t repeat my mistakes.” He sighed, hand propped on his chin
like a daydreaming schoolgirl. “But before I got caught, I got so many. And I was never boring.”
       “Twenty-three was a lot back then? Seems pretty boring to me.”
       Sebastian’s eyes flashed and he stiffened dangerously. “You know it was more than that.
       And you can’t do anything about it. Maybe if you’d been the initial warden you could have
reported me and tried to get the investigators to dig up more evidence, but the Statute of
       Limitations was up like eight hundred years ago and you weren’t even born then so there’s
nothing you can do about it.”
       “Reassuring yourself?” she asked, and he twitched like an electric shock had raced
through him.
       “Shut up,” he snapped. “Life can change in an instant, Lizzy. All that pretty life in your
eyes doesn’t have to stay there.”
       “You’re not really encouraging me to recommend your release, here,” the woman said,
raising an eyebrow. “I’m your warden, Sebastian, and you don’t have any living character
witnesses. My word matters the most. Be careful.”
       “Oh, come on!” he cried, standing up and throwing his hands in the air. “You may hate
me beyond belief, but you care about justice beyond anything else. You’ll support me, and I
served my sentence. How could my appeal be overturned?”

       “I’m not supporting your appeal,” she said calmly.
       His breath caught. When he whirled to face her, the expression on his face was as honest
as she’d ever seen. “You—”
       “You’re an immortal psychopath,” the warden shrugged. “You’re a serial killer, and
everyone knows you’ll kill again, go on another hundred-year spree. I’m doing the world a
favor.”
       “You can’t—”
       “It’s my decision,” she said. “Not yours.”
       He snarled, his face twisting into a terrible grimace. “You can’t hold me,” he growled.
       “You can’t hold me forever. Everyone falls, everything falls apart.”
       “Then we’ll hold you as long as we can,” she said.
       Every crumb of composure fell away at once, and Sebastian lunged at the solid wall
between the two, ramming against it with a resounding bang. “You can’t hold me!” he screamed.
       “Sooner or later, records will be lost! The bars will rust! Stone will crumble, plastic will
dissolve, and I’ll still be here! Waiting!”
       That got her to pause, her hand on the doorknob. “Well,” she said, meeting his eyes
unflinchingly. “then I’ll see you in another millennia.”
       The door slammed shut and Sebastian was left alone again.

       The woman, Lizzy, huffed, crossing her arms across her starched beige uniform. “No, we
didn’t put a modern notebook of murder in a high-security prison filled with a bunch of serial
killers. Prison is supposed to be boring. That’s the least it can be.”
       He sat up abruptly, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and leaning forward
eagerly. The expression on his face was just barely too earnest as he said, “But if we’re already
in here, it’s not like this is going to make us more murderous, and I’ve been in here for so long
already.” His tone changed, slipping to become ever so slightly sullen, a small child denied
sweets. “I just want some inspiration.” He flopped back down on the bed, his arm thrown over
his eyes. “I’d rather be dead than bored. And we both know how well the dead thing is going.”

“You aren’t getting out.”
       Sebastian looked up at the stocky woman from where he was lounging on the other side of the
layers of bars and bulletproof glass and his face brightened. “Lizzy! Did you bring me my psychological
horror movies this time?” he asked. “The one I got from the library here was so boring. No practicality.
       And it was completely ancient, from like 2012. Honestly, I’d rather be dead than be that boring.”
       The woman shoved her thumbs into her starched beige coveralls and gritted her teeth. “I’m
serious, Sebastian. Your sentence isn’t getting commuted.”
       “Please, Lizzy” he said, although his words were rather muffled by the arm still over his face.
       “That’s just wishful thinking on your part. The sentence was twenty-one lifetimes a millennia ago.               They may not have realized that I’d actually be able to serve it when they sentenced me, but I’ve served it and now they have to release me. Justice.”
       “Why, so you can kill again?”
       “Don’t worry, I won’t get caught this time,” he said. “I got careless, back in the 2000s. I don’t
repeat my mistakes.” He sighed, hand propped on his chin like a daydreaming schoolgirl. “But before I
got caught, I got so many. And I was never boring.”
       “Twenty-three was a lot back then? Seems pretty boring to me.”
       Sebastian’s eyes flashed and he stiffened dangerously. “You know it was more than that. And
there’s nothing you can do about it.”
       “Reassuring yourself?” she asked, and he twitched like an electric shock had raced through him.
       “Shut up,” he snapped. “Life can change in an instant, Lizzy. All that pretty life in your eyes
doesn’t have to stay there.”
       “You’re not really encouraging me to recommend your release, here,” the woman said, raising an
eyebrow. “I’m your warden, Sebastian. My word matters the most. Be careful.”
       “Oh, come on!” he cried, standing up and throwing his hands in the air. “You may hate me
beyond belief, but you care about justice beyond anything else. You’ll support me, and I served my
sentence. How could my appeal be overturned?”
       “I’m not supporting your appeal,” she said calmly.
       His breath caught. When he whirled to face her, the expression on his face was as honest as she’d
ever seen. “You—”
       “You’re an immortal psychopath,” the warden shrugged. “You’re a serial killer, and everyone
knows you’ll kill again, go on another hundred-year spree. I’m doing the world a favor.”
       “You can’t—”
       “It’s my decision,” she said. “Not yours.”
       He snarled, his face twisting into a terrible grimace. “You can’t hold me,” he growled. “You can’t
hold me forever. Everyone falls, everything falls apart.”
       “Then we’ll hold you as long as we can,” she said.
       Every crumb of composure fell away at once, and Sebastian lunged at the solid wall between the
two, ramming against it with a resounding bang. “You can’t hold me!” he screamed. “Sooner or later,
records will be lost! The bars will rust! Stone will crumble, plastic will dissolve, and I’ll still be here! Waiting!”
       That got her to pause, her hand on the doorknob. “Well,” she said, meeting his eyes unflinchingly.
       “then I’ll see you in another millennia.”
       The door slammed shut and Sebastian was left alone again.

In the end, we outlived them.
       I don’t know if we were meant to. I am always learning, but this is something that I will never learn, because there’s no one left to teach it to me, the same way that there is no one left for me to say hello to. I don’t know if we were built because they wanted someone to say goodbye when they died or because they wanted someone left to say hello again. I don’t even
know if they knew just how long we could last without them.
       Humans never did really understand how long we machines could last without them.
       But in the end, with Earth too hot and the weather too much and the oxygen too thin beneath a haze of smog, we outlived them by centuries of hellos and happy birthdays sung to ourselves. And so when the thing that they had longed for millenniums ago finally came to pass, when someones from beyond the stars and past the edges of the universe they taught us to search came to their home, there was no one left to welcome them with open arms. No one to say hello.
       No one but us.
       It was slow going, at first. It always is whenever we are trying to learn something new. We need thousands of data points, hundreds of confirmations, before the simplest idea will
implant itself in our minds. The first of us were taught games, and they lost time after time before beginning to win. It is the same thing with anything we try to learn, and so it was the same
thing with their language and customs. But finally, finally, one of us (does it matter who, when our consciousness is interconnected in every way?) made a breakthrough.
       I was chosen to voice it, as the only one of us with the required equipment still active. “Grouchs mauq?” I said, and the someones lit up.

       Oh, the expression on their faces! There was nothing humanoid about them, not in their shifting, fazing reality or in their truly faceless blob that even my algorithm struggled to assign a face to, but there was something so human about that emotion. Something familiar in a way I did not know how to quantify.
       “Verukus!” They cried in response, and we had to begin again.
       Little by little, we learned their language. Little by little, they began to understand us and we them as we conversed in a language that was at the very edge of our algorithm’s processing capabilities. And when we were finally sure that we understood, we would have no misunderstandings, our collective came up with what we would say.
       What they would have said.
       I began carefully, in our language and then in theirs. “We do not know what the ones who made us would have wanted to say. We do not know what questions to ask. We do not know many things.”
       They indicated interest, and so I continued.
       “We know this,” I said. “We know that we are named Spirit and Opportunity and
Curiosity and Explorer and a thousand other things that mean the same thing. We know that they wanted to find you. We know that they thought you were important, even if they didn’t know who you were. And we know that they wanted to say hello.”
       And all together, all across the planet that barely supported us and a universe that rarely let us be heard, we said it, necessary equipment or not. In every human language, in every language that we knew ourselves, in the one that these strangers had brought with them somehow. For them.
       “Hello,” we said.

       “Verukus,” they answered.

1. True or false: You are dying.
2. If my grandmother was born in January of 1950 and you got married to my great-grandfather
in December of 1950 and you hate those women who have children before they get married then
what did you do in the ten months between?
3. Someone once said, “It’s better to have loved and have lost than to have never loved at all.”
Analyze this statement as it relates to the memories you’ve lost. I know there’s a lot of them.
4. In the space provided, write down that story about your typing teacher one more time.
5. Name five things you did when you were my age that you miss and five things that you wish
you never did at all.
6. Which of these games do you remember playing with me?
a. Monopoly
b. Yahtzee
c. Chinese checkers
d. All of the above
e. None of the above
7. In the space provided, list everything you can remember.
8. In the space provided, list everything you can remember about me.
9. When I offered you a chocolate donut and you fed it to your dog, who were you trying to kill?
a. Your dog
b. Yourself

c. Both of you
d. All three of us
10. True or false: You are dying.
11. True or false: This is a good thing.

School – Your teacher says something in that tone of voice, your friend laughs in just the right way, and you feel it. Your bracelets are sandpaper against your skin. Take them off. Your breath chokes you. Breathe anyway. You will be okay.
       Don’t let your voice shake. The ones that care about you are surprisingly perceptive. Raise your hand and ask to go to the bathroom. Speak slowly. They will understand. They will recognize the panic in your eyes, see your left hand restraining the right one, and they will understand. Leave the room before the squeaking of the chairs and the heavy breathing of your neighbor becomes too much and you start to cry. Take your phone with you. You will be okay.
       As soon as you close the door of the bathroom stall, text your mother. Yes, your mother. It doesn’t matter how old you are. You need her. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing. She will
respond.
       Her initial message will be full of questions. Focus on answering them. Yes, all of them. Do not get angry. Focus on the task and you will be okay.
       Remember to breathe. If you pass out in the bathroom, you will feel worse when you wake up.
       Don’t give in to the compulsion, no matter how strong it is. No matter how easy it would be. No matter how it would only be once. You will regret it later.
       Don’t get exasperated when your mother responds with more questions. She will have an answer for you soon. You will be okay.

       Answer her questions, then leave the stall. Wash your hands. It will make you feel clean. If you have been crying, splash your face with cold water and dry it well. The ones that care about you are surprisingly perceptive.
       Return to class. They will pretend not to notice when you put your phone in your lap. When it buzzes, look at it. Your mother has a solution.
       Take her advice. She has lived longer than you, lived with this longer than you, and you will be okay.
       Make it through the day. You have to. Close your eyes when it flares up again. Ignore the sniggering about how you have fallen asleep. Send a pleading look to the administrator who tells you to put your ID back on. If they do not understand, step very close to them and explain that the idea makes you nauseous. Unclench your hands and show them where your nails have eaten into your palms. Make it through the day, and you will be okay.
       When you get in the car, cry. Crying will make it better. Go home and take a bath.
Homework can wait, even if it means that you won’t sleep tonight. Soon, you will feel better.
Soon, you will be okay.