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His head shifted the slightest amount to the left as he stared at me. When he watched me like this, it was as if he were seeing so much more than I could fathom. His expression was so unyielding that I knew he wasn’t going to try to help me. In truth, I’d known from the second I’d met him.
“You implied you only wanted to know your status and we’d move on from the subject?” he asked, as if he’d believed that for a second.
I gripped the back of the chair, forcing myself to calm down. I wasn’t used to being the lunatic in the room. It never helped the situation. What was needed was information.
I took a long, deep breath as he watched me with slightly removed interest, like I was a science fair project.
I calmly said, “I’m going to need an explanation as to your logic. Why do you believe that I’m past the point of no return?”
He looked as if he were suppressing a smile. Why he found any of this amusing simply showed what a crazy person he was.
He shifted slightly, making himself even more comfortable. “The fact that you’re tinkering means you’ve already transitioned too much to possibly reverse this, if it could’ve happened in the first place. The fact that you’re proving to be so adept this early on means that whateverGramdid, whoever she is, she did it well. There was no way to unwind the reservation she put in place.” He rubbed his jaw as he watched it all sink in. “You do realize reservations are extremely coveted? The opportunity you’re being afforded is one that’s sought by many.”
I wasn’t used to people looking at me as if I were an ingrate. I’d spent the majority of my life being grateful for whatever I got. But I wanted nothing to do with whatever they had going on.
“Look, I’m sure you’ve got a great gig here, but it’s not where I belong.” I didn’t understand what this place was, what exactly they did, and I didn’t want to.
“What exactly is your objection to being here? Does the lure of being an accountant hold that strong a pull on you? Hard to break away from the draw of tax season, long, wild nights punching numbers into a calculator?” His arm was bent, his fingers waving as he spoke.
“Mock me all you want. I’m not accepting this situation. How can I work here? Live here? What do I tell my family and friends? I have alife. You can say whatever you want, show me all my accounts disappearing, hand me a pile of cash, I don’t care.” I spun away from him but didn’t stop talking. “I can’t stay here.”
“You don’t have a choice any longer. You’re changing, and it’s not something that’s going to stop. You’ve already stopped aging, even at this point.”
Stopped aging?
“You mean…”
“I mean you won’t age,” he said.
Immortal? That nearly made it worse. Immortal and living in a broom closet. I’d be spending the rest of eternity smelling bleach and sleeping next to dirty mops. Why would anyone think that this, day after day, was something good? The only thing he’d accomplished was making me a hair short of hysteria.
“I don’t believe that. There’s always a choice.” I shook my head, pacing in front of his desk. “I can’t be here. I can’t live here. People will eventually want to come see where I moved. I have people who care about me.”
“That won’t be a problem for long.”
I stopped walking, dread filling me. I walked up to his desk, staring him down. “Why? Are you going to tell them I died? Don’t you dare.”
My mother. She wasn’t going to win any awards, but to lose her own mother and then her daughter in such a short gap… I groaned, imagining how badly she’d spiral after that.
“I won’t have to. They’re going to forget about you,” he said, and finally a flicker of remorse was in his cool eyes, only a flash that happened so fast I might’ve been imagining it.
“My mother is going to forget about me? I know the woman has her flaws, but I don’t think she’ll forget that she birthed a human.” There was a limit to even their tricks. This couldn’t be true.
He stood, turning and resting his shoulder on the window frame while staring out at that strange landscape. “Except she will. At first she’ll start forgetting to call you. Then it’ll progress to not knowing you at all, even when you’re in front of her, but that takes longer.” He spoke so coldly, as if none of this mattered. Why would it? Someone else’s life falling apart probably meant nothing to him.
“What about my boyfriend? We were talking about…” I shook my head. I couldn’t say it, or didn’t want to. But the words were blaring through my head. Marriage. Kids. We’d talked about children. What if I’d already had them? Would they have forgotten me?
“Yes,” he said, looking back at me. “Yes to every one of them.” His thoughts were firmly shuttered away now behind cool, dispassionate eyes. They fit him perfectly.
His voice was calm as he explained to me the rest of the dreary details that would unfold. If I knew what he was going to say, I might’ve asked him to stop right then, but I didn’t.
“They will all get more distant. Eventually they’ll stop calling you as much, forgetting you exist,” he said.
The last phone call I’d had with Johnny played out in my mind. How my mother had been startled last time I walked into the house, looking as if she didn’t recognize me at first. No. Those were just flukes. What he was saying couldn’t be true. It was too absurd.
“They aren’t going to forget me,” I said, my voice growing weaker in the face of the truth. That day in the park, Johnny had walked right past me. Had he really been distracted by work?
“But they will. That is how this thing of ours works. Once you no longer belong in that world, your ties to the people in it lessen. It’ll happen gradually with some and faster with others. They’ll lose the urge to call you, stop wondering what you’re up to or checking in. You’ll become that distant relative that shows up at an occasional holiday, until you aren’t even that anymore and they forget you existed at all. At that point, your birth certificate will have been long gone, along with any other evidence you existed.” He was facing me now, his arms folded as he watched to see if I’d crumble.
