Seneca Rebel

MY RIDE IN for my Monday morning session was the same as it had always been– quick and smooth. Not nearly long enough to rehash the longest weekend of my life, but I didn’t need to. I was determined to act as though everything was completely normal. It kept getting further away from normal each day I was here. When I stepped off, there was Reba, who was in chipper spirits considering what we had just seen. “Campbella, there you are. Long time, no see.”

I was thrown. We had just FigureFlexed less than two days ago and attended the infamous flighter crash party together Friday night. I hoped he wasn’t getting so clingy that he needed to keep tabs on me every day. “We just saw each other, dude.”

“If you consider last Wednesday as ‘just saw,’ then okay.” He winked and started down the hall. I was completely stumped and frozen in place. Last Wednesday? I didn’t get it. He turned back to see why I wasn’t walking with him. “Coming?”

I caught up to him. Why would he say that we hadn’t seen each other since last Wednesday? Maybe he was trying to purge the party from his memory. This wasn’t the aura of a guy who had just witnessed a massive flighter crash on the Key Bridge, but I decided not to pursue the conversation. Maybe I was being overly cautious about saying the wrong things, but I knew I was being watched one way or another. We were being watched.

We reached the entrance point to my first session. He kept walking but turned to face me and smiled, “Lunch?”

“Lunch.”

He spun back around and skittered off.

I sat through my sessions in a daze. Not a single person mentioned the flighter crash, which was evidently taboo. By the time lunch rolled around, I felt like a caged lioness that hadn’t been fed in days. The only thing I’d had to eat all weekend was half a cucumber. The half I hadn’t used to relieve my puffy eyes.

I hustled to the meal hall but Reba wasn’t at our normal spot yet. I was too starving to wait for him to order. It felt like eons passed before my quesadilla popped up through the meal delivery portal, but when it did, I ravaged it.

“Somebody likes quesadillas, wowza!”

That deep voice was familiar. I stopped mid-chew and looked over my shoulder. It was G.W. Wallingsford, and Brittany Gilroy. I could feel the color in my face disappear and a surge of unease spread through my limbs. I was speechless.

“What’s up, girl, don’t remember me? G.W. Wallingsford, Jennifer’s brother?

“No, no, of course I know who you are.” I stared at him like he

was a ghost. He was flawless. This was not a guy who had just been involved in an explosive crash.

“Okay, good. I was gonna say...” He palmed my shoulder like we were old pals. “This is my girl, Brittany. Brittany, Doro from LA.”

Brittany bent down and kissed both of my cheeks. “Hey. I love LA.”

“Me, too,” burst from my mouth, exactly as it had when we’d had the same exchange the week before. I barely knew what to say to these two. How was G.W. alive? How did he look like this? His flawless presence defied reality. How could they be acting like the party never happened? Brittany and I had bonded. I knew she liked to watch movies and ride horses. Now she smiled blankly, as if we were two strangers meeting for the first time. This was deja vu of the most distorted variety.

“Cool, well, you look like you’re crazy busy with that quesadilla. We’ll leave you to it. Just saying what up.”

I went with the ‘play it cool’ approach. Question nothing out loud. No way was I going to stir this pot after what I had been through this weekend. I appreciated having a range of physical motion and the ability to speak. “Good to see you, G.W.”

Brittany had a fleeting look, like for a split second she remembered me. “It’s really weird, you are so familiar, but you just moved here, right?”

“Yep. I know. It’s weird. Happens a lot though. I guess I just have a familiar face.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Doro from LA.”

“You, too, Brittany from Georgetown.”

She gave me another funny look. And then I realized she was probably confused as to how I knew she was from Georgetown; if, according to this new reality we were in, that party at her house never had happened.

“See you around,” she said with a flicker of curiosity in her eye.

“See you around.” I gave a flicker right back.

“Later, girl.”

G.W. and Brittany strolled off in perfect harmony, looking like a billion bucks. I looked back down at my half-eaten quesadilla but had managed to lose my appetite. I was in a daze. Is this what it felt like to be a conspiracy theorist? I so did not want to become like that. I pictured a pale, skinny guy with terrible hygiene in a small, messy room, posting wild speculations online. Never sleeping or eating right, never interacting with people, except for maybe a cat whose litterbox is never cleaned. His only stimulation in life looking out the window at passers-by or watching fetish porn. Oh god, I didn’t want my mind to be consumed with conspiracy theory. Just as I was moving into a good anxiety jag, Reba’s backpack hit the table and then his butt hit the seat.

“Was that G.W. Wallingsford and Brittany Gilroy just talking to you?” He was reacting like a kid who had just seen Mickey at Disneyland.

Did none of these people remember the party?! Then it hit me. The memories of that night must have been blocked wholesale from their minds. Their brain synapses had been reprogrammed directly from the mainframe to which the nanobots in our blood were entangled. My memory had stayed untouched because I had broken the entanglement in my bloodstream. But of course I couldn’t let on. “Yeah, crazy, right?”

Reba wasn’t buying my B.S. “Doro, what’s going on?

Something doesn’t feel right here.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“What you’re saying, it doesn’t feel genuine.”

Reba was about to screw things up royally, maybe beyond the point of repair.

“Of course it is. Everything I ever say is genuine.”

“It’s not, Doro, come on.”

I couldn’t let this happen. I knew there was something up with him, that he could sense things, and if I didn’t do something to break free of him immediately, S.O.I.L. would figure out exactly what I had done. I was left with no other choice.

“You know what, Reba, it’s no wonder the kids where you’re from called you “freak”– because you are. So stop freaking me out, stop following me around, just stop, okay? Just leave me alone!” It killed me. His permagrin disappeared. All the muscles in his face dropped. I couldn’t bear the sight of him feeling so sad. I stood up and turned away. I had to. There was no other way.

“It’s better that we don’t talk anymore.”

“Doro? Where is this coming from all of the sudden?” He was so confused.

“It’s not all of a sudden. You’re making me really uncomfortable.”

“What your saying isn’t consistent with what you’re feeling. I can tell.”

“Stop! Just stop with all this psychobabble. If I say it, I mean it. So let’s just get this out there in the open now, because it’s long overdue. I don’t want to be your girlfriend.”

I didn’t have to see his face to know that I had just stabbed him in the heart.

“I don’t want you to be my girlfriend either, Doro. Because I have one.”

Well now I really felt my foot stuffed into my mouth.

“Yeah, you’re surprised I can tell... but you know what, Doro, you never asked. I know you just assumed because I was nice to you that I wanted to be your boyfriend. But that’s not what I wanted. I just appreciated that you were real... and I thought we could be real friends.”

I wanted to know who his girlfriend was, but I needed to move away from this situation as soon as possible. Somehow he must have read my mind.

“Lindsay.”

The way he said her name was just so genuine and filled with pain that it made my heart sink. He might love her, but there was some kind of problem there. I felt his heartache inside my own. I wanted to give him a hug, but I didn’t.

“My first and only love. We were both recruited but she chose not to stay. She got sent back to the Aboves. We never broke up. We never even said goodbye, which was fine with me because I know we are meant to be together. She’s still my girlfriend, Doro. She’s still in my heart and I know I’m still in hers. So I’m sorry if you mistook my friendship for something more, but that’s exactly what it is. I felt like we had become real, true friends.”

I beat down my emotions. Smothered them. Gave him my best apathetic facade.

“If you want to throw it all away, well then that’s your prerogative. It was nice while it lasted.”

I could see in his eyes that he wanted me to apologize so things could go back to how they were. But they couldn’t now. I didn’t respond, because I had to let him think I was a jerk. Clearly I didn’t have a hard time playing the part. And before the silence moved past awkward to deadly, he turned his back to me and walked away without looking back.

My heart was broken.