“When you’ve spent most of your life in a state home, solitude feels like a luxury.”
He kneels beside her. “We have our first interview together next week—they’re flying us to the mainland—has Roberta told you?”
Risa sighs. “I know all about it.”
“We’re supposed to be a couple. . . .”
“So I’ll smile and do my job for the camera. You don’t have to worry.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t see it as a job.”
Rather than looking at him, she looks up to see a sky full of stars—even fuller than the sky over the Graveyard, but there, she rarely had the time or the inclination to look heavenward.
“I know all their names,” Cam offers. “The stars, that is.”
“Don’t be ridiculous; there are billions of stars, you can’t know them all.”
“Hyperbole,” he says. “I guess I’m exaggerating—but I do know all the ones that matter.” Then he begins pointing them out, his voice taking on just the slightest Boston accent as he accesses the living star chart in his head. “That’s Alpha Centauri, which means ‘foot of the centaur.’ It’s one of the closest stars to us. That bright one to the right? That’s Sirius—the brightest star in the sky. . . .”
His voice begins to feel hypnotic to her, and it brings her a hint of the peace she’s been craving. Am I making this more difficult than it has to be? Risa wonders. Should I find a way to adapt?
“That dim one is Spica, which is actually a hundred times brighter than Sirius, but it’s much farther away. . . .”
Risa has to remind herself that her choice to get with Proactive Citizenry’s program was not out of selfishness—so shouldn’t her conscience be appeased? And if not—if her conscience is the only thing dragging her to dark depths, shouldn’t she be able to cut it loose in order to survive?
“That’s Andromeda, which is actually a whole galaxy. . . .”
There is a sense of arrogance to Cam’s bragging, but also an innocence to it, like a little kid wanting to show off what he learned in school that day. But he never learned any of this, did he? The accent with which he now speaks makes it clear that the information was someone else’s that got shoved into his head.
Stop it, Risa! she tells herself. Perhaps it’s time to let the mountain erode, and so to spite the part of herself that would resist, she gets out of her chair and lies on the grass beside him, looking up at the spray of stars.
“Polaris is always easy to find. It’s directly over the North Pole—so if you know where it is, you can always find true north.” Hearing him say that makes her gasp. He turns to look at her. “Aren’t you going to shut me up?”
Risa laughs at that. “I was hoping you’d put me back to sleep.”
“Oh, am I that boring?”
“Only slightly.”
Then he reaches over and gently brushes her arm.
Risa pulls away and sits up. “Don’t! You know I don’t like to be touched.”
“Is it that you don’t like to be touched . . . or that you don’t like to be touched by me?”
She doesn’t answer him. “What’s that one?” she asks, pointing. “The red one?”
“Betelgeuse,” he tells her. Then, after an awkward silence, he says, “What was he like?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
Risa sighs. “It’s not a place you want to go, Cam.”
“Maybe I do.”
She doesn’t have the strength to fight it, so she lies back down and fixes her eyes on the stars as she speaks. “Impulsive. Brooding. Occasionally self-loathing.”
“Sounds like a real gem.”
“You didn’t let me finish. He’s also clever, loyal, passionate, responsible, and a strong leader, but is too humble to admit all that to himself.”
“Is?”
“Was,” she says, covering. “Sometimes it feels like he’s still here.”
“I think I would have liked to have known him.”
Risa shakes her head. “He’d hate you.”
“Why?”
“Because he was also jealous.”
Silence falls between them again, but this time it’s not awkward at all.
“I’m glad you shared that with me,” Cam says. “There’s something I’d like to share with you, too.”
Risa has no idea what he’s going to say, but she finds she’s actually curious.
“Did you know a kid named Samson when you were back at the state home?” he asks.
She searches her thoughts. “Yes—he was on the harvest camp bus with me.”
“Well, he had a secret crush on you.”
At first it boggles Risa how he would know this, and when the truth dawns on her, a surge of reflexive adrenaline triggers her fight-or-flight response. She gets up, fully prepared to run back to the mansion, or jump off the cliff, or whatever it will take to get away from this revelation, but Cam eclipses her like a moon before one of his precious stars.
“Algebra!” he says. “He was a math whiz. I got the part of him that does algebra. It’s just a tiny part, but when I came across your picture, well, I guess it was enough to make me stop and take notice. Then, when Roberta heard that you’d been captured, she pulled strings to get you here. For me. So it’s my fault that you’re here.”
She doesn’t want to look at him, but she can’t stop. It’s like looking at a traffic accident. “How am I supposed to feel about this, Cam? I can’t pretend not to be horrified! I’m here because of some whim you had, but that whim wasn’t even yours! It was that poor kid’s!”
“No, it wasn’t like that,” says Cam quickly. “Samson was like . . . like a friend who taps you on the shoulder to get your attention . . . but what I feel for you—it’s all me. Not just algebra, but, well, the whole equation.”
She turns her back to him, grabbing the blanket and wrapping it around herself. “I want you to go now.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, “but I didn’t want there to be any secrets between us.”
“Please leave.”
He keeps his distance, but he doesn’t go. “ ‘I’d rather be partly great than entirely useless.’ Wasn’t that the last thing he said to you? I feel it’s my responsibility to make that wish come true.”
And finally he goes inside, leaving her alone with way too many people’s thoughts.
- - -
Ten minutes later Risa still stands with the blanket wrapped around her, not wanting to go inside, but the circular pattern of her own thoughts begins to nauseate her.
I can’t give in to this—I must give in to this—I can’t give in to this, over and over until she just wants to shut herself down.
When she finally steps into the house, she hears music, which is not unusual, but this music isn’t being pumped through the sound system. Someone is playing classical guitar. The piece sounds Spanish, and although many things sound Spanish when played on a classical twelve-string, this has a definite flamenco feel.
Risa follows the tune to the main living room, where Cam sits, curled over the instrument, lost in the music he’s playing. She didn’t even know he played—but she shouldn’t be surprised; he came loaded with a veritable full house of skills. Still, playing guitar like this requires the melding of many things: muscle memory, combined with cortical and auditory memory, everything linked through a brain stem capable of coordinating it all.
The music lulls her, disarms her, enchants her, and she begins to realize that these are not just other people’s parts. Someone is pulling those parts together. For the first time Risa truly begins to see Cam as an individual, struggling to pull together the many gifts he’s been given. He didn’t ask for these things, and he couldn’t refuse them if he wanted to. As horrified as she was by him five minutes ago, this new revelation soothes her. It compels her to sit at the piano across the room and begin a simple accompaniment.
When he hears her, he brings his instrument closer, and sits beside her. No words are spoken; instead they communicate through the rhythms and harmonies. He lets her take control of the piece, lets it evolve at her hand, then she seamlessly gives it over to him again. They could go on for hours, and soon realize that they actually have, but neither one wants to be the first to stop.
Maybe, Risa thinks, there is a way to make this life work, and maybe there’s not—but right now, in the moment, there’s nothing more wonderful than losing herself to the music. Until now, she had forgotten how good that feels.
47 - Audience
Back from commercial, the studio audience applauds on cue, as if the viewers at home missed something.
“For those of you just tuning in,” says one of the show’s hosts, “our guests today are Camus Comprix and Risa Ward.”
The young man with multiple skin tones that are exotic yet pleasing to the eye waves to the audience with one hand. With the other he clasps the hand of the pretty girl next to him. The couple looks perfect—as if they were meant to be. Camus, the audience quickly learns, prefers to be called Cam. He’s even more interesting to behold in person than in the many teaser ads they’ve seen—ads that prepared them for something mysterious and wonderful. But this boy isn’t mysterious at all—just wonderful, and they are certainly not shocked by his appearance, because the ads have fermented shock into intoxicating curiosity.
The studio audience, as well as the audience at home, is more than primed, because they know this is something special—this is Cam’s first major public appearance. And what better way to welcome him into the spotlight than on Brunch with Jarvis and Holly, a friendly, nonthreatening morning talk show? Everyone loves Jarvis and Holly, who are so funny together and are in such comfortable command of their fashionably decorated faux living room set.
“Cam, there’s quite a controversy as to how you . . . ‘came to be.’ I wonder how you feel about that?” asks Holly.
“Not my problem,” Cam says. “It used to bother me when people would say terrible things about me, but I came to realize it only matters what one person thinks.”
“Yourself,” Holly prompts.
“No, her,” he says, and glances at Risa. The audience laughs. Risa offers a humble smile. Then Holly and Jarvis go into some cute little banter about who wears the pants in various relationships. Jarvis poses the next question.
“Risa, you’ve been through a lot yourself. A ward of the state, a rehabilitated AWOL . . . I’m sure our audience would love to know how you and Cam met.”
“I got to know Cam after my spinal surgery,” Risa tells the world. “It was the same clinic where he got put together. He came to see me every day to talk to me. Eventually I came to realize that . . .” She hesitates for a moment, perhaps choked up by her emotions. “I came to realize that his whole was greater than the sum of his parts.”