“Like Soulmail.”
“Exactly like Soulmail,” he agreed.
“True. People’s big life moments are usually more personal, but this is like a big umbrella of a shared experience.” They came in the form of text messages in the middle of the night, of bringing a toothbrush over to a lover’s apartment, of signing a new lease. Everyone our age remembered the clear blue of September 11. I hadn’t worn that sky color for a full year after, and I hadn’t told anyone why. “Those moments petrify me, which I think is why I want to do what I do. Learn all I can. Tell the why behind things that happen.”
“I had no idea you had the goal to work in that field,” Caleb said. “I never pictured you on-screen. Maybe something else, like a producer, or a writer, or something.”
I dunked a wooden stirrer into the paint. “I certainly never pictured myself where I am now.”
“You always seemed to be the sort of person who liked tocontrol the narrative without taking it over.” He grinned. “Like the school newspaper incident?”
“Hey, that’s a core personality trait of mine.” I had orchestrated every production as a kid, insisting on a pseudonym byline so no one knew who the anonymous interviewer was in our high school, even though it was essentially an open secret. “I wrote my college essay on that.”
“I wrote about how controlling my parents were.”
“Wait, really?”
“Sort of. I classified every parent in Shakespeare’s greatest works in six hundred fifty words or less through the lens of my mother’s parenting.”
“Hope she wasn’t Queen Gertrude.”
“Brutal,” he agreed. “Mostly had to go with the father figures since there were so few moms in his plays.”
“God.” I shook my head. “Imagine if Shakespeare created a play about Soulmail?”
“New plot point inRomeo and Juliet.” Caleb rubbed at a spot of paint on his skin. “You think there will be another release of Soulmails next month?”
“Hard to say. The powers that be at the studio are guessing so.”
“I almost opened mine last night,” he said after a beat.
I dropped my paintbrush. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. Side effect of being human.” He smoothed another stroke over the wall. “Hearing about that whole slew of people getting theirs made me curious all over again. Aren’t you curious?”
“Of course I am.”
“But you aren’t tempted to open it? I am a little.”
“Not one bit. You can’t undo something that’s been done. What if I open it and I’m disappointed? What if it’s someone I didn’t want it to be? Once you know...”
His face changed. “You can’t un-ring the bell,” he said. “Right.”
“It’s so strange that this will be just part of life for kids,” I said. “If this continues, they’re going to grow up so differently than we did.”
He gave a vigorous nod. “God, yeah. Imagine?”
“In my psych class in college, my professor made us debate over what was better—being a child or an adult. A huge part of the argument was about how much you understood those huge world moments.” Back then, I had obsessed with that age debate, pushing my tray through the dining hall line toward food that was rumored to be laced with laxatives (“so if it’s rotten, at least it punches through you fast”), trudging through the city streets in my knockoff Uggs.
“I’m sure lots of kids mature too fast during them.”
I sighed, trailed a line of paint against the corner. “Being an adult sucks.”
He shook his head. “Nah. It’s perspective. Nothing better than deep conversations. And endorphins. And laughing until your face falls off at three in the morning. And having the sex we want, with ourselves or with others.”
“Right,” I said. “And deciding whether we should open our Soulmails. Not at all heavy.” A drop of paint plopped on my forehead, and I rubbed it with my wrist. “Who am I kidding? I’m still not going to open mine.”
“How about this,” he said. “I won’t if you don’t?”
