“I don’t even have to think about it. Yes, yes, yes.” I handed over my phone. She keyed in a new password for each account, then entered it on her Notes app. “New rule. In case I die, and you need to recover them,” she said, “my phone password is your birthday.”
“Moi?” I adopted a falsetto, but I squeezed her toward me. “And don’t say that.”
“You know what I was thinking?”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“There’s a bit of a thing with these,” she said, tapping her phone, “that kinda guarantees a longer life for some people. I was wondering if I should talk to Caleb about that.”
“What do you mean?”
A light sadness broke over her face, then cleared. “You know how Danny’s Soulmail is someone who hasn’t been born yet?”
I nodded. Probably his kid.
“That means that he’s going to live long enough for them to be born, at least. I know that some strangers are soulmates, but especially since this kid has his last name... I read that for every traced soulmate match so far, the pair is two people who are alive and breathing on earth at the same time. So in Danny’s case, that guarantees his existence on earth until that date in the future at the very least.”
I exhaled. That made sense. Like how in Samantha and Jayla Grace’s case, the baby had breathed a few times. They’d been here, together. There were innumerable facets to this, somesharp and shiny, others brittle and sad. “Wow. Yes. And thank you for being you.”
She scooted low in her seat, resting her head on my shoulder. “What are friends for?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “This.”
Forty-Five
Over the next few weeks, Caleb’s project became the largest Soulmail exhibit on the planet.
Within hours of his Per Diem appearance, it hit a million subscribers. By that evening, ten million. Since then, he’d landed over a hundred million subscribers, and scientists could hardly keep up with the amount of raw data they were getting. Businesses across the city started encouraging midday buddy walks, the sidewalks crowded with pairs of friends all looking to live longer, happier lives. The museum had to have its tunnel lights re-calibrated.
Given its success, the museum board organized a charity gala to dually benefit the museum and the scientific community. Iwore the same taupe gown from my awards banquet for two reasons: One, I liked the irony, and two, I had no income. But this time, I wore my hair down and did my makeup the way I liked it. I sent a selfie to Dola. She returned one back of her and Trent Foster on a Caribbean beach somewhere.
The morning after the gala, we were wrapped in bathrobes, our social batteries drained. While we ate scrambled eggs with feta and spinach, we listened to an NPR data analysis by a team of Madrid scientists, who’d learned that depending on where you live in the world as of the day before Soulmails first released, you were more or less likely to have been matched with someone with whom who you were already paired. I retrieved my notebook and scrawled notes below the newly rewrittencontact information for the agent who specialized in debut documentarians while we ate, watching Caleb’s facial expressions as he inhaled breakfast.
The most likely place for you to be soulmates with a stranger was São Filipe, Cape Verde, and the place with the highest number of already-wedded Soulmail bliss was Fiji. They did not have official data from most of China, except Guangdong. American scientists being American turned around and completed the same study for every municipality in the country, a fact I noted in my bulging notebook that Caleb punctuated with an eye roll.
I wasn’t entirely sure what, if anything, I’d do with the collection of them. Maybe I’d turn it into something someday; maybe they’d be what they were for a lot of people: information that was relevant for some, useless for others. Maybe I’d click into some kind of stat that made sense in comparison to zip codes with higher and lower rates of addiction. I clicked a pen closed, pushed it away.
“Miss work?” Caleb asked, pausing the audio.
I shook my head. “I missworking, but not that work. After all that time trying to make my parents happy, I dove into a career built on background work. There’s nothing as undercover as uncredited story writing, is there? I don’t think I realized until I was in the spotlight how far I’d swerved from it.”
“Well, when you were a kid, you were trying to alleviate all this grief and tension around you.” Caleb’s jaw worked. “I was definitely accomplice to more than one performance, but I couldn’t see back then that it was a heartbreaking choice made by a lost little kid.”
I sniffed. “I mean, god. My Aunt Josie used to call me Baby June, that little Broadway entertainer.”
His hand skated down my arm, his grasp warm. Comforting. I could melt directly into him, my molecules sifting into his palms like they were an hourglass and I was the sand. It wasn’tlost on me that both when I was a child and now, he played the shelter role. The umbrella that kept me dry.
“Isn’t she the one whose mother used to whisper to her that her dog had died to try and get her to cry while she filmed those silent movies?”
I turned to face him.“What?”
His mouth twisted. “I know. Cruel.”
“That poor kid.”
“Yes. Failed by everyone in her life,” he said, moving to the sink.
“She’s not the only one.” I meant generally—way too many people out there were. But then I caught it. The stumbling block. No matter what I did, there was one thing quitting my job and breaking up with Wells had not yet healed. “I think I need to confront Wells,” I said, handing Caleb our plates.
