Leah hesitates, and Tiffany repeats the name. “Leeloo? Leah Louise, right?”
“Yes,” Leah says cautiously. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Well shit, why didn’t you say so? I knew we went to the college together! Okay sure, only a few months, but still…”
Leah nods hesitantly. “Wow, I guess…I, just, I really have a bad memory for faces. And names. And schools.”
“Nah, it’s fine, it was years ago.” Tiffany waves it off, though looking still a little confused at Leah’s hesitancy. “Anyway. You’re the one who needs help with connecting to the wifi?”
Leah feels a wave of relief that Tiffany is not pressing the subject. “Yeah, that’s me. Wifi help.”
Tiffany smiles again, and resumes her easy attitude. Leah is sweating a bit.
She takes Leah’s phone and walks her through the process of turning on the wifi – finding the network – entering the password – opening the app – then asks if Leah knows what she’s looking for from this point.
Leah has been watching attentively through all this, trying to make sense of the random steps and rules of the ‘wifi.’ “I, um. I need to, uh, pay a phone bill, and it said I could do it online…”
“Oh, then you’ll just need to click the link they sent you, and it’ll have all the information there.” Tiffany smiles, then turns to go.
“Wait! I – ” Leah is embarrassed to have called out like that. Tiffany turns back in some alarm and confusion. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you, I hope you aren’t offended that I forgot…”
Tiffany waves it away. “Not at all. Not like we were besties.”
Leah nods. “Right. Okay. Thank you.” She turns down to stare at her phone, poking at the screen until Tiffany goes away.
How in desiccation and death and decay did that not end more poorly than it did? And how by the Gods will I deal with it the next time it happens? For instance, this weekend.
She shakes her head and focuses on the here-and-now. And more than that…what right do I have to be in this body? It’s not empty; it has a past. A past that is now coming back to the surface.
She’d gotten so used to this new body, she’d almost forgotten the differences. The weak muscles were one thing – anyone can let a body go out of shape, given enough time – but the better eyesight and missing scars were something else entirely. This body wasn’t just not hers, it was someone else’s.
I’ve gotten too accustomed to this world. Reflecting on her time with the five, and how right that all felt, then comparing it with the place she’s built here…
She shakes her head again and focuses on the phone. She taps the spots the screen tells her to tap, and recognises certain numbers as pertaining to her bank account. She keeps tapping things until she gets to a dead end that says her payment is being processed, and that there might be a small delay before the money is deducted from her account.
That seems like a good sign.
“You doing okay?”
She flinches. Tiffany is back. Looking at her is like looking into the face of condemnation, a judge ready to reveal her evil deceit, exposing all her past sins, all the people she’d forgotten or ignored. Wasn’t that something Kimry said about Nent? The clerics would take people aside on certain holy days and show them a mirror with the faces of everyone they’d wronged, to guilt them into repentance and obedience?
“I’m done, I think. Do I need to…disconnect?”
“You do if you don’t want to kill the battery.” Tiffany walks her through the process, and Leah listens carefully, though still distracted.
When she’s about to leave again, Leah speaks up. “Again, I’m sorry I didn’t remember you. It’s not a mark against you, your face is very memorable, I just…”
Tiffany grins cheekily. “Look, if you’re trying to flirt, I’m sorry but I’m straight.”
Leah blushes almost to purple.
“No! It’s not a bad thing,” Tiffany says laughingly. “Just…I’m not interested. And again, it’s fine that you didn’t remember me. I only remembered you because of a stupid nickname, after all.”
Then she is gone, back to work, and Leah is alone in the library, sweating.
*
She reads a bit more about local history; if she’s going to have supper with her family here, she wants to at least be able to pass as a local, if not convince them she’s actually their child. She gets quite interested in the bit about colonisation, and wars between places called England and France being fought both in the main cores and in the far-off colonies.
She is getting to the part about the Plains of Abraham, when she suddenly realises she is at risk of being late for work. Putting the book back on one of the little trolleys and rushing home, she eats a quick snack, grabs her work clothes, and speed-walks to the club.
With one minute to spare, she punches in on time. She and Samuel prepare the bar for opening, taking down chairs and setting out piles of coasters and bowls of salty foods.
“I could never eat from these,” Samuel says suddenly. Leah makes a questioning sound. “The bowls. Everyone’s hands reaching into the same bowl…it’s gross. You can’t trust these guys to wash their hands.”
Leah muses on this, and decides he’s probably right – not that she was ever tempted by the bowls, only that she now has an apparently normal reason for not trying them. Something more mature than ‘they smell sort of bitter and fatty, and are covered in a weird powder, no thanks.’
Bri arrives, early for once, and says a quick hello to Leah. “We’re considering doing another girls’ night this weekend. You in? It’d be the same gang as before.”
“I can’t, I’ve got to go meet my family.”
Bri does a double-take at the phrasing, and Leah realises that her word choice is a little odd. She’s about to correct herself when Bri suddenly coos and presses her hands to her heart. “Ohhhhh my god, you found them?”
“Huh?”
“You said before that you were here looking for your birth family? That you were adopted by a family in Morocco, and you’re in Canada to meet your biological parents?”
“Yes! Yes, that is it.”
“And you found them?”
“They found me, actually. I’m going to meet them all this weekend.”
“Ohhhhhhh!” She rushes over and gives Leah a hug. “Congrats! And good luck, it must be so scary and happy and – ohhhh!” She rushes off to get changed.
Samuel and Leah go back to working. The boss passes by behind them. “You were adopted?”
Samuel laughs. “Dude, even I knew that.”
“Hmm. Neat.” The boss walks away.
Leah feels a tiny bead of sweat at her hairline, and surreptitiously wipes it away.
Samuel turns back to her. “Are you afraid? Nervous?”
“Uh…both. I’m afraid I’m not going to be the daughter they expect.”
“Well that’s on them, if they’ve built up an idea of what you should be and you end up being someone different. You seem cool, and if they’re sensible they’ll be open to discovering what you’ve become. How old were you the last time they saw you?”
Leah thinks, and decides to deviate a bit from her real past. “Five.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“Oh wow. That’s old, isn’t it? Do you know why they gave you up?”
Leah shakes her head.
“Ah. And that’s where the nervousness comes in: finding out the messy parts of your history, rediscovering old wounds.”
“I guess so.”
“Hand me the spritz-spritz.” Leah passes him the spray bottle, not breaking the stride of her own tasks. “But yeah, I’d be nervous too. My family’s pretty normal, all things considered, but with a whole new mystery family – I guess you’re gonna have to make up your mind about them.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just one weekend to meet them all? They’re going to want to talk and talk and talk…you can’t know what to expect. Do you have any memories of them?”
“Not really…”
“So you’re going in blind. First impressions are the most important, and they might be so excited to meet you, they’re not going to think of the impression they’re making on you.”
“I don’t really care about any of that. It’s nice to know they’re out there, and alive, but they’re not really my family. My family’s back home. And my friends.”
Samuel is pensive for a moment. “Why’d you come here, then? Are you planning on staying here?”
Leah is quiet, meditatively stacking boxes of new arrivals of alcohol. “What I wanted most was a change. I was afraid, I see that now. I wanted to start somewhere fresh. Now that I’m here…let’s just say this isn’t what I expected.”
Samuel nods wisely. “So will you stay?”
Leah pauses in the stacking. “I guess that depends on if I can get back. Having made this choice…to give up now would be – ”
“I think it’d be pretty cool if you stayed,” Samuel cuts in, avoiding eye-contact. “You fit in really well here. You don’t put up with crap from people, but you’re not too sensitive or defensive either; you’re more just…I guess open-minded? Like you’re always supportive and optimistic. You’re pretty cool.”
“Oh. Oh. Thank you.” Leah blushes a bit. Samuel hands back the spray bottle, tucks his cleaning rag into his apron, and leaves with a tiny nod.
Leah continues setting up, and when the doors open she falls into the familiar routine of fetching, cleaning, ferrying, and more cleaning.
*
Saying goodbye to everyone that night, Amber comes up and talks for a bit about Leah’s upcoming weekend. “So Kira told me about your family. How you feeling? Are you scared? Excited?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Leah says, distracted by trying to decide how much eye-contact is the right amount to make. “I’m sorry I have to miss the girls’ night, though.”
“Me too.”
Leah gives up on trying to make eye-contact, and tries by sheer force of will to keep herself from blushing.
Amber continues, quieter. “We never really talked about it, you know, but if you don’t want to then we don’t need to. I just wanted to clear the air, if you were shy about it – ”
“It’s fine,” Leah cuts her off, then feels bad. “I need to be honest with you, Gloria.”
Amber makes a face. “Please, it feels weird to hear my real name when we’re so close to the club. I’ve got to be a least three blocks away before it feels normal. Wanna walk with me?”
“I thought you usually take the bus?”
Amber shrugs. “You walk all the time, it does you no harm. Besides, I live in a good neighbourhood.”
Leah joins her for the walk, mentally calculating how late she’ll arrive back at her place if she has to double back. Would it be worth it to get a taxi? How does one get a taxi?
“So what did you need to be honest with me about?” Amber asks, once they’ve gone a block down the street in silence.
Leah drags her mind back to the conversation. “It’s about that girl I mentioned. The one I left behind back home.”
“Oh yeah?”
Leah tilts her head and hesitates over her words. “She looks a lot like you.”
Amber grins. “Are you saying that you made her up, and that you were actually just trying to flirt with me?”
“No, I’m saying that I think I might be projecting my feelings for her onto you.”
“Oh.”
They walk on.
“If you don’t want me to walk with you all the way, if you want some time to think – ” Leah says quickly, anxious.
“No no, it’s okay. You’re not the first person that’s happened to, and I’m not so totally smitten that I’m gonna be heartbroken if you decide not to pursue me.”
“Good.”
Amber scoffs. “Wow, okay?”
“No, just that…I don’t want you to be hurt. That’s what all this is about.”
They walk in silence. The full walk takes half an hour, passing tree-filled parks and residential streets, and it’s almost sunrise when they get to Amber’s little apartment building – much smaller than the one Leah is in, and more charming somehow, with its angled walls, tall windows, and broad stonework.
Leah hesitates at the steps leading up to the door, feeling the exhaustion in her bones. “I’m gonna be so tired when I get to my place…”
“What?” Amber looks back down the steps, apparently surprised to find Leah still at the bottom. “Oh don’t be ridiculous, we’ve got a futon in the living room, you can crash here. My roomie won’t mind.”
Leah doesn’t ask for definitions, figuring that, as usual, she’ll find out what the words mean as she goes along.
Amber unlocks the door and leads Leah into a cramped, plant-filled apartment. A cat meows from another room. One closed door is decorated with icons of different buildings in styles Leah has never seen before, and she dawdles, looking. Amber makes an off-hand comment about her roomie being an ex-backpacker-turned-universal-translator.
“Lots of languages. Not Arabic, though. Although, I guess I shouldn’t assume, just because you’re from Africa.”
Leah nods and moves to the other side of the entrance hall, where a small and well-lit room has been taken over by a single multi-coloured mattress flopped at a right angle to make a sort of couch, surrounded by three plant racks and a Devadiss-style low table supporting a glass box filled with water and more plants. On closer look, there is a large green frog clinging to the sheer glass.
“Kermit’s mine, the cat is Tonya’s. The cat’s called Henry, and he bites to show affection.”
Leah stares at the frog in wonder. Behind her, Amber pulls a blanket down from a shelf and spreads it over the bent mattress. “Gloria?” Leah says.
Amber looks up.
“I’m still settling in to my new life, deciding what to make of it. I don’t want complications. And I don’t want reminders of people I’ve failed.”
Amber seems a little shaken but not angry. “Okay.”
Leah goes to lie in the quickly assembled bed.
“You haven’t failed me,” Amber says, before leaving to her room.
*
Around midday, Leah wakes up to footsteps pacing through the apartment. She opens bleary eyes to bright sunlight, and sees a stranger pacing the hall, brushing their teeth.
“’Sup,” the stranger says.
Leah waits for her eyes to focus, but they don’t seem to be making the picture any clearer. She spends about seven seconds trying to decide whether the stranger is a man or a woman, before finally landing on “roomie” as their gender.
“You’re Tonya?”
The roomie waggles their fingers in a wave. “You’re Gloria’s friend from the club?”
“Yeah.” Leah leans up into a slouching sit, then looks up at the sun to try and guess the hour; her next wrestling class is today, and she can’t tell how much time she has to get there.
“She’s in the shower, she’ll be out soon.”
Leah nods, and starts combing out her hair with her fingers.
Tonya finishes brushing their teeth in the kitchen sink, rinsing it out thoroughly afterwards. They leave and settle in their room, with a large and complicated computer set-up. Clacking sounds of typing start up, as well as occasional muttered phrases in various languages.
Leah walks around the apartment, comparing it with the two others she’s seen. The kitchen and dining room are one, and there is a tiny balcony off the back with barely enough room for a chair. Amber – Gloria – Leah still isn’t sure which to use – her bedroom is small, with a narrow bed and a dresser and a bookshelf. Leah snoops a bit, reading the titles. There seem to be many multi-book series, with similar spines and the same author name. Most she pulls out seem to be folkloric or magical in subject, but not academic; entertainment reading.
“I could lend you that one,” Amber says from the doorway. Leah jumps a bit, pushing the book back into place on the shelf.
“No, I was just curious.”
Amber smiles and tilts her head to the kitchen. “Want to stay for brunch? I’m a decent cook, when I want to be.”
Brunch? Leah pushes past this. “I need to get to the gym for a wrestling class, and I’m not sure I’ll have the time to get home and grab my workout clothes.”
“Take a bus, then. What routes pass near your apartment?”
“Umm…”
Amber takes out her phone. “Give me your address, we can look it up.”
“I’ve never taken a bus before, I don’t know what it…”
“What do you mean, ‘never taken a bus?’ They have buses in Africa, surely.”
Leah shrugs. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve just walked wherever I need to go.”
“God, you really are so innocent – and no, not in a sexual way, just in general. Never had pizza, never taken a bus, never gone to the movies. Is it just cultural differences? Am I innocent by your standards?”
Leah’s mind flashes briefly to her time with the five. Fighting for one’s life in the wilds. Haggling with a petty bandit to retrieve some of their stolen possessions all while hiding from the crime-lord who stole them. Sneaking back into the Valerids’ keep with Kimry in tow, timing their steps to avoid notice by the guards. The cold feeling of creeping unconsciousness as she collapsed after trying to read the inscription around a locked door instead of just calling Kain over as was team policy.
“I guess it is all relative.”
Amber nods to this. “There’s probably lot of pop cultural stuff from your childhood that I don’t know. I guess I don’t think of it because you always seem so natural here, I forget sometimes you didn’t grow up in the west. Man, I could watch so much stuff with you for the first time! Oh my god, have you seen Star Wars?”
Leah grins. “Nope, I have not.”
A noise from the next room. Tonya steps out. “This bitch hasn’t seen Star Wars?”
Leah shakes her head.
“Do you know anything about it?”
“I assume it’s visual, because you’re asking me if I’ve seen it.”
Tonya’s jaw drops. They wave a hand at Amber frantically. “I’ll set up the projector, you two get snacks. I’m taking the day off work for this. Club-girl, call your whatever-it-was, wrestling class? Call them and cancel, this is more important.”
Amber rolls her eyes. “You’re overreacting.”
“Gloria, this is the only opportunity anyone born after the eighties will ever have to watch these movies with someone who is totally unaware of the twists. I am not overreacting.” Tonya darts off.
Leah whispers to Amber that she doesn’t know how to cancel, and Amber says she should just call the gym’s number or go on their website. Leah’s blank expression makes Amber roll her eyes again. “My god you really are comically innocent, you know that? Help me find the gym’s site, we’ll figure it out.”
Leah settles in. Amber finds the gym, and Leah calls the number to cancel her spot in the class. Through all this, Tonya is clearing one wall free of plants and setting up a portable computer and some sort of small box with a glass lens. Amber puts a paper bag in a noisy box, and when she opens it a minute later it’s filled with fluffy white crunchy things that are supposedly made of corn. She instructs Leah to grab some bowls, and pours each of them a bowl of the stuff, sprinkled with salt.
The three of them curl into a nest of blankets on the futon, with Amber in the middle, while Leah’s second ever movie begins to play, images projected onto the wall in front of them. A white-and-brown cat jumps up and curls into Tonya’s lap. The curtains are drawn, the music is starting, and with no context, Leah settles in.