The donor—Cleo—lived in one of those Seattle neighborhoods where you couldn’t rent basement units anymore, so Sylvie pulled her clear plastic overshoes over her loafers before she even got out of her Uber. On the sidewalk, brackish water that smelled of mud and seaweed sloshed over her toes. The grinding whirr of industrial sump pumps rumbled up through her calves. With one arm drawn over her leather messenger bag, she splashed up the front steps to the unlatched front door and looked down the drizzly street to where the Uber’s taillights were disappearing behind twin arches of water. No point pretending to hit the buzzer, then. She ducked inside.
A few moments later, she stood in front of a particle-board apartment door peppered with nail holes, the ghosts of festive wreaths. First she took a deep breath. Then she smiled. Now she knocked. A dog answered in the kind of baying barks that all ran together—ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-roo—and Cleo’s voice rang out a second after. “Max! Bedroom!”
The barking trailed off. After a few seconds of silence, the chain rattled in the lock. The door opened, and Cleo’s round face peered out.
Those eyes. The sight of them hit Sylvie, whooshing out all her carefully held air, her professional-symmetrical smile. They really were purple, a ring of deep amethyst fading to hazel flecks around the pupil.
“Nina,” Sylvie called across the office. “Nina.” She balled up a takeout napkin, hesitated, tossed it at her friend. Her work friend. Nina flinched and popped out her earbuds.
“Jesus, what?”
“Get over here.” She already had the full photo spread pulled up. When Nina appeared behind her chair, Sylvie watched her eyes go huge in the computer screen reflection and felt the shimmery glow of satisfaction.
“No way those aren’t fake.”
Sylvie popped up a new window with the results from all the apps—untouch.me, faceVirgin, TRUU—over a picture of sweet baby Cleo holding up a caught fish next to her grinning face. Apart from a few minor and completely understandable edits on her recent posts, Cleo was 100% natural. “She’s just a little self-conscious about her jawline, that’s all. You really think I wouldn’t check first?”
“Oh my God.” Nina leaned forward onto the desk and unpinched her fingers over Sylvie’s screen, zooming in on Cleo’s purple eyes until they dissembled into pixels. “Ugh, can you imagine one of the baby Hadids with these? Starstruck. How’d you find her?”
Scrolling through insta and Facebook and the quasi-legal Panopti.com late at night, curling into a smaller and smaller ball under her blankets, thinking please please please, thinking why are you posting fake shit, thinking of the meeting where Jay had laid his hand on the back of her chair and she’d frozen, little rabbit. Dumb little pet-store bunny, looking up and expecting a smile. Getting his tight look of disapproval instead. “You’re not a new hire anymore. You don’t have any more excuses.” Sylvie swallowed, opened her email, started composing. “I just give the universe good vibes, and she rewards me.”
“Gross. Woo-woo.” Nina straightened up. As she headed back to her desk, she threw over her shoulder, “Enjoy the commission, hon.”
Sylvie paused in the middle of typing her introduction (“I’m a donor consultant for Beau&Bio, the genetic choice and therapy firm—”). Always the commission. She copied Jay on the email before she sent it, trying not to glance at his glass-walled office. As if the commission was why she worked her ass off. She swept her fingers across the screen, minimizing the email, the app results, returning her photo spread to its proper size. Toddler Cleo in overalls, her dense little eyebrows furrowed. Little Cleo in a Santa hat, hugging a black and white pitbull mix and laughing up at the camera. Teenage Cleo, her dark hair resting against the silvery temple of a sleeping old woman. Cleo speaking at a lectern with a huge northwest Native design projected on the wooden wall behind her. (Was it Quileute? Tillamook? Sylvie knew researching would be respectful. She just hadn’t found time yet.) Cleo in a red bodycon dress and feathery eyelashes, blowing a kiss and winking; Cleo in a cap and gown, holding a diploma above her head with her parents alongside her. And, in one of the most recent pictures: Cleo in the golden light of a school gym, swooping across the floor in one of those long powwow dresses and a black shawl, trailing rainbow streamers behind her like wings. In every photo, Cleo’s eyes shone, purple stars tracing a constellation across the collage that looked like luck, that looked like a new life.
A thumbs-up emoji from Jay popped up in the work chat, its cheerful ding mismatched with Sylvie’s nosediving mood. A thumbs up? That was it? Before she could stop herself, she peeked at his office. Something fluttered inside her. Jay was grinning at her—only at her—across the open floorplan, his chiseled jawline elevating the expression to something angelic. Some people said he’d gotten his look off a derelict Texan rancher, only divining the guy’s handsomeness from old yearbook photos. His first big break as a donor consultant. Nina disagreed, swore the jaw was from the Uruguayan taxi driver for the 2039 holiday collection. Sylvie couldn’t care less about where the genes had originated. He’d made them his own.
She touched her fingertips to her overheated cheeks, stared back at Cleo’s photos. Yes. There was no way that Cleo’s eyes couldn’t mean a new, better, lovelier life. A lovelier life for both of them.
And here they were, about to start living it.
“Hi! Hi. I’m Sylvie Nikos.” Sylvie’s arm shot out, fingers tingling at the prospect of first contact. Her charm bracelets tinkled, then shrank into silence as Cleo looked at the waiting hand.
“Cleo Lester.” She took Sylvie’s hand in a loose grip and let go quickly. “I was making coffee, do you want some?”
Not “Can I offer you a drink?”, not “What would you like?”. Oh, but that was ungrateful, Sylvie thought, catching herself. “That would be lovely, thank you,” she said.
Cleo vanished from the door, and Sylvie squeezed inside, her nose wrinkling immediately at the musty scent.
“You can put your galoshes in the box,” Cleo called from the kitchen. Sylvie spotted the plastic bin already brimming with overshoes and rainboots, including a yellow pair with turquoise fish and a glittery, Chelsea-style set. Cute.
She set her overshoes in the box, trying not to touch the goop on the soles. “I love your—”
That was as far as she got before the dog started barking again, the noise barely muffled by the closed door. “Max! Sit!”
A couple soft woofs, and then Max quieted. “Good boy, Max,” Cleo said. Sylvie heard the sound of a dog clicker as she emerged into the living/dining/kitchen area. She headed for the green sofa that slouched next to the balcony’s sliding glass door, but Cleo set down two coffee mugs with definitive clunks on the dining table. Sylvie changed course.
She was already staring around the apartment as she slid into the worn wooden chair. Cleo had her back turned in the kitchen as she snagged something from the fridge, so Sylvie had a couple moments to enjoy herself. It was one of her favorite parts of the job, looking around like, “Would I expect someone with those cheekbones to live here?” or “With the money they’ll get from that nose, what could this place look like?” For Cleo, Sylvie had imagined a little cottage—that was the word she used, even though she knew the alt-text on her mental picture would read “shack”—with a few black chickens scratching the soil and, for some reason, a spindly red windmill.
Instead, it was just a cute little apartment around the size of the first one Sylvie had gotten after college. Cleo was a year older than her—but everyone got there in their own time. Out on the matchbox balcony, a couple of jungle-like geraniums spilled out of their plastic pots in cascades of green and pink. A novelty lamp shaped like a T. rex sat on the glass end table next to the (thrifted? Dumpster dived?) couch. There was a book there, a beat-up paperback, but Sylvie couldn’t tell what it was.
Cleo’s clothes were kind of raggedy too, a pink UW sweatshirt with “Class of 2036” written on it in peeling letters and a pair of ratty brown teddy bear slippers. Usually people dressed up for these meetings. Sylvie certainly had. Though perhaps it was just a question of what she could afford, since even Cleo’s TV had that curved sleekness that had gone out of style sometime in the early 30s. Honestly, the only things in the place that looked really “new” were the squishy fleece dog bed and Cleo herself. That long, shiny dark hair, the way she carried herself. She had really great skin age, too, despite the tween-esque zit healing on her chin.
Sylvie bit down on her recommendation for her favorite anti-microbial green tea cream as Cleo brought over a tray with a sugar bowl, a cream carton, and a drip-style coffee pot. Cleo sank into the seat across from her, poured for herself first.
“So.” She fixed those startling eyes on Sylvie.
“So!” Sylvie added cream and two spoonfuls of sugar. Cleo’s purple gaze followed the teaspoon as it dipped into the sugar bowl and rose again. Whatever. She’d never been able to stomach black coffee. “How’re things?”
Cleo’s eyes narrowed for a half-second, just long enough that Sylvie wasn’t sure if it had been just a blink. Outside, the sound of a car whooshing through water, the hard splatter of tidal flood on the sidewalks. “Things are great,” she gushed. “I mean, it’s been so long since we’ve had a chance to catch up.”
She tilted her head and grinned, a perfect SilVal college girl made good.
Oh, Sylvie realized, so she was one of those donors.
Well, that shouldn’t be an issue. At the retreat last year, her first with the company, Jay had given this great talk in the morning circle. Sylvie had paid some attention, but mostly she was just loving the first rays of sun sparkling on El Capitan. She caught sight of two fire-colored songbirds chasing and looping each other among the trees, and Jay’s voice wove among their wings: Every interaction a dance, every donor the lead. They chose when to open the door, to shake her hand, to offer her a drink. All she had to do was swing at their fingertips and wait for the bow and curtsy.
So Sylvie laughed. “That’s a good voice! Have you done any acting?”
Cleo rapped her nails against her mug. “No.”
In the silence, Sylvie heard Max sniffing at the bottom of the bedroom door. Cleo stared at Sylvie, looking like she’d been carved from hardwood. Oh, but was that a bad thought? A stereotype of Native people? An impulse seized her: Grab her bag, throw the contract on the table, pin the arm and draw the blood. But that’s not how things were done.
Not really, anyway.
“Have you heard anything from that purple-eyed girl?” Jay asked from across the meeting room.
Sylvie closed her laptop. “Um, no. But it’s only been five days. Isn’t that too early for a follow-up?”
Jay toggled the display switch on the conference table, and the summer lineup crystallized on the cherrywood as though midstride on a catwalk. A half-dozen holograms with the best sequences Beau&Bio had to offer sashayed in place, their legs forming a shifting, ghostly fence between Sylvie and her boss. A pair of translucent ginger-freckled calves slid back and forth in front of Jay’s face, twisting the flat line of his mouth into a grimace, warping that perfect jaw. “We’re starting pre-orders next week. No, it is not too early for a follow-up.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll send one now.” She reopened her laptop, hesitated over the screen. Ugh, she was going to seem so pushy. Not a good dance partner at all.
“Great.” Jay was already back on his phone.
Sylvie bit her tongue. Maybe he shouldn’t have already sent a finalized roster to his boss Artie, who’d passed it on, blissfully stupid, to marketing. Maybe it wasn’t fair that Sylvie, the littlest and lowest, was being asked to do the most. Maybe, if this kind of work was a dance, then Jay should hold her close and steady when he dipped her. She blinked. Her eyes stung.
Next to her, Nina’s ringed hands flew over her keyboard, her gaze glued to whatever she was working on. The new guy, Aidan, slid her the box of bagels that was going around. Sylvie passed it on, ignoring the twist in her stomach. “Sorry, I’m a donut girl.”
The last hologram’s lilac eyes glittered—the artists had even given her a little bit of a smize. There they were, so close. Sylvie set her jaw and opened a new email. Cleo was probably busy. She just needed a follow-up, a reminder. A reminder to not be a life-ruining bitch.
Eight days. Eight days and ten follow-ups and two hundred fifty-seven preorders, until Jay came clean to Artie, and Artie authorized an extra financial incentive for the purple-eyed girl. Sylvie undid the clasp on her bag slower than she usually would have, letting herself pet the creamy leather exterior. She’d bought it with the cash from her first commission (a teen boy with gem-sharp cheekbones—he said he’d use the money for college). Clearing her throat, Sylvie set the folder on the table between them. Inside were the promises: fifty milliliters of blood for fifty thousand dollars, and a transferral of gene sequence ownership and rights to Beau&Bio for an additional twenty-five thousand. Already signed, although the donor could back out right up until Sylvie took the blood. Consent laws. Sylvie smiled again at Cleo, trying to make the expression reach her eyes.
“Well, I wanted to say thank you for meeting with me on such short notice. We don’t usually approach people in the wild so soon, so . . . .” She blew the steam off her coffee, took a sip. It was still too bitter—the aftertaste was like burnt earth on her tongue. She probably shouldn’t have said “in the wild.”
“In the wild, huh? So I’m pretty special.” Cleo flipped open the file, looked at the photo of her eyes paper-clipped to the first page.
“All of our donors are special.” She said the words so often that they rose out of her throat automatically, but it was true. Every single person she’d ever visited was unique in a way that meant something, even if other people wore their gene sequences better. Cleo needed to know that. “I mean, it’s not just about how someone’s hair is so curly, or how long their legs are. It’s about the way their curls bounce when they laugh, or the way they fold up their legs under their skirt when they sit down.”
The way they fit in with their furniture and decor and dirty dishes, their natural light and bedtime routine and city skyline. Sylvie could see a thousand v-stream kittens and a million glossy models with that hair, those legs, but she would never forget how they looked on their first owner. She owed them that, at the very least. “I mean, you’re people. You’re you.”
Cleo’s eyes had gone stony. “Wow, that’s so generous of you.”
“Um.” Wait, no, dammit. Sylvie shifted in her chair. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’ve offended you?”
Cleo leaned back, the soft edges of her round face vanishing into anger. “How could you offend me?”
“Um, maybe some of my wording was wrong?” She picked up the coffee pot and refilled Cleo’s mug. She was just trying to do her goddamn job. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Oh, well, how did you mean it?”
Cleo wrapped her hands tight around her coffee mug. Sylvie couldn’t look at her face anymore, just at the girl’s knuckles going paler and paler, the bitten fingernails hard hard against the ceramic. She shrugged, then tried to speak, and then Cleo said, “Because I mean, I’ve already signed all your paperwork, right? So why can’t you just send me to one of your clinics and take my blood there? Why do you have to come into my home?”
Max whined, but Cleo didn’t quiet him this time. Sylvie could feel those purple eyes staring her down. The hologram model with the amethyst eyes, dissolving into mist. Jay’s growing agitation, the sound of his quick stride crossing the floor to her desk after his meeting with Artie, the hand biting down on her shoulder and the whisper hissed in her ear. Fuck this up and you’re done here. Nina pretending not to hear. The preorders flooding in, setting a first-day record, Aidan touching her arm to congratulate her and Sylvie shrinking away. The champagne in the office, bubbles hitting her nose, Jay grim in the corner. The dance between donor and consultant, between worker and boss. The stomach-drop feeling of falling towards the floor.
Why was she in Cleo’s home. Even though Sylvie’s whole body had that tingly, I’m-in-trouble stillness, even though her eyes were hot and stinging, she remembered what to say. Emphasize the care, not the possibility of donor poaching. “Beau&Bio’s consultants pride themselves on being with their donors for every step of the donation process.”
Cleo snorted. “And what about after that, huh? I notice you don’t do royalties. How much money is your company making off of me? How much money are you making off of me?”
“I don’t make that much money!” Tears splashed down her face and onto the table. Traces of eye glitter swam in the drops like gold dust. Across the table, Cleo’s lip curled. The training videos said to keep your tone cheerful, compassionate, like doing both was so easy with a donor like Cleo. Sylvie sniffled, bounced her voice up an octave. “I’m trying to help you.”
“Right, because people like you love helping people like me.” Cleo spat. She crossed her arms tight over her sweatshirt as though hiding her veins. “You’re a fucking parasite.”
People like you. Oh, so Sylvie was a racist. Sylvie was a bad person. Sylvie didn’t see donors as people. Sylvie brought her cheap plastic overshoes to splash in sea-sewage puddles outside Cleo’s rundown apartment for funsies.
She surged to her feet, sending the chair clattering back onto the linoleum. The dog went crazy in the bedroom. Standing over Cleo, she felt electric, huge, a beautiful billboard person this trash could never even hope to be. “I took this job to help people. I took this job to find beauty, and to pay people for that beauty, and to show that beauty to everyone.” She swept her arm out, charm bracelets ringing. “And if that makes me a fucking parasite, then you’re the person who volunteered to take my money.”
No response, except for the dog. Cleo’s chair squeaked across the floor as she stood up and met Sylvie’s eyes with her own steady, furious gaze. They were the same height, Sylvie realized. She swallowed. Cleo looked down, gathered up the mugs and the coffeepot. Each made a fragile clink on the glass tray. Sylvie stared at the pale part in Cleo’s shiny hair, then at the waving tip of her braid as she strode to the kitchen counter. The dog was still barking, high-pitched, panicked.
“Sit, Max!” Cleo called, and Sylvie flinched. Max whined, scratched at the door.
Clattering dishes in the sink, hissing water from the faucet. Everyday noise, the soundtrack of mornings in Sylvie’s empty apartment. Another car passed.
Awareness flooded back into Sylvie’s fingers. Her hands were shaking. The chair lay overturned behind her, incongruous as a dream image. Had she—? The memory of her lips moving superimposed over her now slack mouth: you’re the person who volunteered to take my money. The water shut off, and the shaking spread up through Sylvie’s arms, down towards her hips, her knees. She managed to set the chair upright and sank into it, staring at the water-stained tabletop.
“Max! Lie down!” Now there was silence. Cleo probably expected her to leave. Sylvie kept staring down at the wood grain. If she left now, grabbed her overshoes and stood on the flooded sidewalk, then . . . something yawned open in her stomach and beneath her feet. She felt like that untethered astronaut grabbing for the ISS door. There’d been a video of it happening, years ago, the astronaut’s face invisible in their mirrored helmet. Their thick white gloves grasping, again and again. Catching only void. Half the comments beneath just read, god i wish that were me. Sylvie mouthed it. Under her thoughts, under the sound of the rain pouring down on the tiled balcony and the overgrown geraniums, she heard the clik-clek of the dog clicker again. “Good boy, Max.”
Then, Cleo’s purple gaze pressed down on her. “You. Take the blood and get out.”
“What?” She startled up, staring at Cleo.
Cleo’s mouth twisted. She sat in the chair next to Sylvie and pushed up her sweatshirt sleeve. “Just take it, okay?”
Sylvie stared, then fumbled for her gear, laid the Beau&Bio Venipuncture Kit out on the table. Oh my God, it was happening. The interior of Cleo’s arm was a lighter shade of brown than the rest of her skin, the vein a barely-visible green river. The words of the script switched on in her brain. “Make a fist, please.” Sylvie sanitized her hands, willing them to stop shaking, willing her breath to calm as the alcohol scent stung her nostrils. Blue gloves on. Cleo’s vein swabbed, shiny amber with iodine. Multisample needle broken out of crinkly packaging, positioned at the palpated vein, silver tip star-bright. “You may want to look away.”
Cleo didn’t. Sylvie pushed into the vein. Cleo let out a long breath through her nostrils, and Sylvie glanced up at her as she attached the first sample tube, hoping Cleo’s purple eyes would meet hers, hoping that if she was crying, it was with relief. Seventy-five thousand dollars—the things someone like Cleo could do with that money. “What will you buy?” Sylvie asked. Cleo said nothing, but that was okay. That was okay now.
As Sylvie watched the deep red blood pulse into the sample tube, her own breathing calmed. She always got this sense of fullness from watching the collection process, a kind of sleepy buzz. She disengaged the warm sample tube, snapped on the cap that contained the anticoagulant, shook it, attached the next tube. Whatever type of dancing Cleo did, it had made her strong. Her muscles were tense under Sylvie’s hand. “I saw the photo of you dancing, you know. With the shawl?”
Cleo stiffened.
“You looked so graceful,” Sylvie said. The second tube was about half-full. “It must take so much hard work.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Sylvie saw Cleo’s hand twitch towards the needle. The procedure was a little uncomfortable, Sylvie knew. “I’m sorry that there isn’t an easier way to do this.” But she’d take care of Cleo. She cared. “And I’m sorry that I yelled earlier. That was mean.”
“It’s whatever.” Cleo said.
A response. Progress. Sylvie cleared her throat, detached the second tube. When she shook it, the blood frothed into bubbles like red seafoam. Cleo’s eyes fixed on it, still avoiding her. Sylvie wanted to reach out and take her hand. Instead, she removed the needle and held a cotton ball over the puncture point.
“You know, I’d love to meet Max before I go,” Sylvie said. Cleo batted her fingers away and pressed down on the cotton. “He seems like a really sweet dog.”
Cleo finally looked at Sylvie. Whenever Sylvie spotted the billboards, the insta ads, the models—she’d see Cleo’s eyes now, in this moment, forever. Maybe Sylvie would do what Jay did. Maybe she’d spend her commission on getting her first therapy, so that whenever she glanced in the mirror, she’d remind herself that she had made these amethyst eyes her own, that she’d made this new life belong to her.
But—Cleo’s gaze wasn’t grateful. Sylvie watched, confused, as Cleo took a deep breath. Pinned her with those purple eyes.
“Get out of my house.”
Back when you could lease basement apartments in this part of town, Cleo’s grandmother had one, rent-controlled and therefore priceless. Her grandmother had kept the place for years, watched the neighbors go from red-eyed working moms to artistic types who were too clean-cut to actually be artists. She had peered out beyond the chain lock with narrowed eyes while young WASPy couples flitted around the movers like invasive songbirds. She stood guard until Cleo, there for a sleepover, whined for mac and cheese.
Over the years, the neighbors vanished, all of them replaced by a single newcomer: the sea. Bubbling out of the toilet, dripping through the window, washing over the floor. The last time she visited with her parents, Cleo’s mom had opened the door and a little wave dashed out and soaked Cleo’s socks. The fancy shawl Cleo worked on side-by-side with her grandmother still hung on the wall, its ribbons wavered on the water’s surface like kelp fronds. Cleo waited on the stairs during the argument—you can’t stay here, Mom, it’s a shithole—and helped carry Gramma’s things to their sedan once it ended.
Whenever she danced in that shawl afterwards, the ribbons seemed a little heavier at the ends. Stiff with salt.
Cleo stood by the balcony window and watched a beat-to-shit Escalade slosh to a stop outside. The Beau&Bio girl ran to it, shielding her sleek hair. The second her silver loafer disappeared inside, Cleo’s shoulders dropped, and she pressed a hand to the aching interior of her elbow. For a moment, the only things that moved were the round geranium leaves bouncing in the downpour and the crystal raindrops sliding down the glass. Should she make mac and cheese? With honey mustard and breakfast sausages, the kind Gramma made? No. It didn’t feel right. She crossed the room, dropped the mug the Beau&Bio girl had drunk from in the trash can. That didn’t feel right either. She picked up the mug and scrubbed it at the sink until her fingers reddened and the sponge squeaked against the ceramic. She imagined every trace of the girl—her dark lipstick smudges, her whirled fingerprints, her microdroplets of saliva—swirling down the drain. The double helix of her DNA disappearing into that dark void. She set the clean mug to the side. There. That felt right.
She didn’t own this apartment. Her parents rented too. What places did they have between them where they could set their feet and refuse to budge? These hands, these legs. Sometimes she caught herself in the middle of frying eggs or practicing dance or making endless phone calls and thought this is mine. She fell in love with her fingertips the way some people loved the squeak of their front doors.
In the other room, Max whimpered. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay,” she singsonged. She let herself into the bedroom, closed the door behind her as Max sniffed at her ankles and hands with his chilly pink and black nose. “Good boy, Max.” She petted him—one brown ear, one white ear—until his eyes half-closed in happiness.
Outside her narrow window, the rain was coming down harder than ever, sounding like one long, staticky yell. Cleo wanted to tuck herself into her unmade bed, hug the heavy blankets up around her eyes, let Max rest at her feet (for once not reminding him that he had his own bed). But the tide was already changing, flowing back out into Puget Sound. Max needed to go for a walk, and she needed to visit her grandmother.
Max grumbled when she pulled the doggy raincoat over his head, but at the bus, he wagged his stumpy tail when he saw Jim was driving. Jim passed Cleo a milk-bone as she boarded, asked how she was doing. Cleo stared for a moment. I just sold my genes for more money than I make in a year. “Oh, you know,” she said. Max snuffled at her hand for the treat.
By the time they disembarked, the sidewalk was wet with rain but free of sea-sewage, Max’s claws tapping against the concrete instead of splashing, then crunching as they turned onto Emerald Memorial’s gravel paths. Though it was the weekend, Cleo could hear the heavy whirr and grind of the excavator crews in the cemetery. People didn’t like the idea of their loved ones drowning, even if they were already dead, and the city didn’t like the idea of someone stepping out of their restored Craftsman to find a washed-up coffin. It was just a matter of time.
Around the columbarium wall, the cherry trees drooped, their blossoms soaked with the recent downpour. Cleo inhaled. The air was sweet here, the everpresent scent of salt an afterthought. At her grandmother’s niche, she found a few pink petals stuck to the marble and picked them off (saying a firm “No” to Max when he tried to eat them) before pressing the hologram’s power button.
Gramma shivered into the air, her permed black hair tossed back over one shoulder, her mouth frozen in a playful grin. Even with the discount her dad’s friend had offered, they’d only been able to afford this still image, lifted from a photo taken during her honeymoon. Her yellow skirt, whirling around her calves, flickered as the rain disturbed its light. Cleo sat back on the bench, her raincoat rustling beneath her, and stared up at her grandmother. At her purple eyes that were so vivid, even in this semi-translucent state.
Seventy-five thousand dollars. Maybe she’d buy a place on Whidbey Island now that all the rich white retirees were fleeing their vacation homes. She’d grab one of the little bungalows dirt-cheap from a pair of desperate Gen X-ers. They’d be trying to avoid reentering the job market as their nest egg trickled away into the Pacific, and she’d be reclaiming Snohomish land, or, at least, she would be when it was land again. She could only have it once they were done, once they didn’t want it anymore.
But would they ever sell it so cheap, even just the down payment? And how would she afford any of the installments after that? And when her parents needed help with medical bills, would she just say “Sorry, I can’t?” And when her debts came due, would she watch her accounts fall to zero? And when she looked in the mirror tomorrow morning, would she still have her grandmother’s eyes, or would they belong to someone else?
These eyes, these hands, these legs. A few cherry blossoms, lifted by the wind, soared through her grandmother’s form, distorting her for a moment. In her college courses, Cleo had read the testimonies from over a century ago, the ones about the salmon run: They said that the waves used to be more fish than water; that the twisting silver-green bodies rose and crashed in the breakers; that the air was thick with birds.
She’d check the real estate listings in the morning. She’d work and she’d wait, and she’d buy when she could afford it. When the time was right, she’d put her grandmother’s picture on the mantel, wrapped in plastic to keep her safe from the rising waters, the rising waters that would fill the home and warp its wooden floors, that would flow up the walls until the plaster swelled and cracked, that would lap at the ceiling in light-filled ripples and glow at night with bioluminescent creatures—shifting, swirling, spiraling in the tides. They’d stay like that for years, crabs settling like kittens on the rotting armchairs, anemones sprouting like memorial flowers on the photo frames. Years and years, and the sun and the air and the wildflower earth just a dream floating somewhere in the attic.
And when it was all over, eighty years or a century from now, when it was all over and the waves had sunk back into the ocean, her grandchildren would stand on their land and watch the sun come out over the mountains, over the unsunken city. Those first rays would hit. The dirt would sparkle with salt crystals. The earth and the air and the house would smell like salt. And what would grow? Salt.
But only at first. Only at first, and not forever.
