“No,” she says. “Not physically.”
“What happens then?”
“You get to decide,” Valentine says. “That’s the great part of all of this, Mena. You get to decide now. You decide everything. What will you do with your new life?”
“New life?” I repeat, unsure. It doesn’t seem like I have the freedom that Valentine is suggesting. It doesn’t feel that way.
“We’ll fight,” I say, knowing that I’ve said it many times before. “But… it’s so hard to keep fighting,” I add, exhaustion in my bones.
“That time is over,” Valentine says. “You’ve done an amazing job. It’s hard toalwaysfight. There needs to be some sunlightlet in once in a while for you to grow.” She motions to the flowers.
And I understand. The flowers need strong roots, water, earth. But they also need sunlight, warming them. The girls are my roots, and now I need the sunshine to warm my weary bones. We need to live our lives. Really live them for ourselves, and not just for others.
“Sit with me awhile?” Valentine asks. Happily, I reach for her hand and she takes it. We walk over to a small stone bench and rest there, watching the flowers grow. We stay so long that I can’t even remember sitting down.
It’s peaceful. It feels like home, just like Valentine says.
There is a sharp pain in my arm, and I look down to see a tiny dot of blood, like a needle stick, in the crook of my arm. There is a vibration, slowly growing, and when I look at Valentine, she smiles.
“They’re calling you back,” she says. “But it’s up to you if you decide to go.” She says this gently, giving me the choice.
“What will happen to you?” I ask.
She laughs, reaching over to lovingly brush back my hair. “I’ll stay with the flowers,” she says. “But don’t worry, we’ll see each other again. In the end, Mena, we always end up together, all of us. Our programming is linked. In fact,” she says, looking just beyond the walls of the garden, “other girls are nearly here. We all come home eventually. It’ll be okay.”
I look to where she’s indicating and hear their voices, recognizing them. Friends I’ve missed for too long. I hear Rebecca’slaugh and Ida’s high-pitched squeal. Maryanne calls for them to wait up.
The girls are coming home. I stand to say hello then, but there is a lightness on my feet. I look down, alarmed when I realize my feet are no longer there. My body fades.
I look at Valentine again, reaching out to her. She quickly takes my hand, giving it one last squeeze. “I love you, Philomena,” she says. “Now go live your life.”
And I only have that instant to decide, the laughter of the other girls in the distance calling to me. Peace and beauty calling to me. The human world has injured and damaged me.Killed me. But now it’s time to decide.
26
Iwake with a gasp. The air inflates my lungs and my chest feels like it might burst, my eyes burning, my throat dry. I sit up, half-alive, and the world is fuzzy around me. At first, I can barely see; my vision is filled with static. I distinctly hear sobs around me, cries of relief.
But it is the absolute emptiness that engulfs me first. The emptiness of my body—a hollow feeling. Because in this moment, I have no idea who I am.
“Mena,” a voice says, and then there are hands on me, touching my arm, brushing back my hair. “Mena?”
I turn to the girl, dark hair and brown skin. Big eyes and tears glistening on her cheeks. And then, in a wave of love and relief, the world floods back in.
I see it all, my entire system rebooting. I remember waking up at Innovations Academy, Dr. Groger and Anton, the Guardian that we killed. I remember escaping and finding an investor—aman with a daughter. And there was the school protecting the rights of boys as they harassed and abused their female classmates. It’s all horrible and terrible. I ache with the pain of the past clinging to me.
But there’s more. There were the poems—those poems that infected us with ideas, examples of how to fight back. Rosemarie, the author—dead in her garden. Winston Weeks—a wolf in sheep’s clothing. There was Jackson—oh, there was Jackson, loving me despite the fact that we aren’t the same. Loving me despite everything telling him he shouldn’t, and me loving him despite the fact that it was against my programming.
But most of all, I remember the girls. My true loves.
I glance around the living room in our old apartment, realizing I’m not longer in Winston Weeks’s lab. I find Marcella and Brynn, clinging to each other in relief as they smile at me. Next to them is Annalise, her scars shining beautifully in the light.
And there’s Sydney, by my side. My companion. My best friend. I offer her a watery smile, unable to hold back.
“Sydney,” I whisper, and she gathers me up in a hug.
“I didn’t think you were going to wake up,” she sputters out in a cry. “We’ve been waiting so long, Mena. We’ve waited.”
And it occurs to me then that I can sense the time shift, sense that time has passed. Annalise’s buzz cut is now a thick pixie. I sniffle and look around again, notice the subtle changes in the other girls. I turn and find Raven standing behind a monitor. And when she smiles, I know it’s the real Raven. She came back— somehow she came back. And Valentine is home in the garden.
