My Year Zero Read online

  As I read the words, my eyes burned. I liked it. Of course I liked it. But it also made me grind my teeth. Maybe it was the fact of a new person, someone I didn’t even know, talking about me.

  But this wasn’t me. Zeno was a character, not even one I created. She was made up, even if it felt real: the part about being memory-wiped, the part about not being from this family, not being what I thought I was.

  Lauren:

  Zeno seemed confused and troubled by Cypher’s words. “I always felt there was something different about me,” she said. “But where does this armor come from? And if I was given to the family that I’ve always believed was mine, who did that?”

  Cypher said, “Someone went through a lot of trouble to make you think you’re not what you are. We can expect that your true nature is deeply hidden.”

  Zeno flexed her arms, watching the neatly-assembled parts of her new armor slide over and around each other. It was part of her. She asked the armor on her right arm to recede, and it did. The metal plates and connectors rolled away from each other into nowhere. The Queen put the tips of her fingers on Zeno’s bare bicep.

  “Still flesh and blood under all that,” she said.

  “Am I?” Zeno asked.

  I posted that much and then I had to stop and think for a while. Did I want Zeno to be a person or a machine or a combination of the two?

  I got out my sketchpad and started drawing her arm with the metal pieces on it dissolving into nowhere. The first few tries came out looking like crap. Literally. On the first one the metal armor bits resembled poop floating in air. On the third attempt, I managed a bit of the effect I wanted.

  I put down the sketchpad and went to get more Pepsi. When I got back to the computer, I saw that someone else had posted in the Queen of Rogues’ Court story thread.

  Dustin:

  Lithos, the Lord of Stone, burst into the Queen of Rogues’ throne room. The Queen was on her throne, radiant as always, with Cypher at her feet and in the chair to her right a strangely familiar woman, half encased in armor, who reminded him of Zeno the thief.

  The Queen rose to greet him with a kiss. “My Lord, what brings you in such a hurry?”

  “I’ve made a great discovery,” he said. “Our war on the High God is not lost as we thought. If we can find the locus of the High God’s power, we can become the High God.”

  “That legend has circulated for centuries,” the Queen said. “But no one has ever been able to find this locus.”

  “Yes, because they’ve been searching for it in the wrong way. The locus isn’t hidden in a specific place, it’s hidden in time. The locus of power is in the future.”

  Everyone gasped.

  He continued, “Its power reaches back to our time and empowers the High God, but if we can redirect that power, it will be ours. We can finally end the tyranny over the galaxy. I’ll need Cypher to help me find the precise time in the future where the locus is located and then Zeno must prepare to go forward to that time and redirect its power.”

  “What’s mine is yours,” the Queen said. “If we’re to rule this galaxy, you may use Cypher and Zeno as you see fit.”

  Blake:

  “Employ,” Cypher said into the surprised silence of the room. “You may employ us. No one uses me. Zeno, up to you if you like being used or not.”

  Before Zeno could speak, the Queen drew herself up to her full height. “Of course my Knights are always under my protection.”

  Dustin:

  “I meant no offense,” Lord Stone said. “Quite the contrary. You have the most accomplished infomancer and thief in the entire galaxy. My own court is many times the size of yours and yet I cannot replicate what you have here. I merely seek to move us forward speedily to our goal. I protect your people as my own, as closer than my own, as my own heart.”

  Ugh, sappy. Dustin went on from there, detailing a bunch of stuff about time travel and how we were all supposed to get the locus from the future. I could scan that later.

  I had to give Blake respect for putting Dustin in his place. But I wanted the two of them to wander off in another story direction so I could write with Sierra alone.

  Chapter Seven

  I worked on my sketch: an image of Zeno standing near the throne, holding her arm out as the armor receded. The Queen was at the foot of the throne with her hand on Zeno’s arm.

  There were two illustrations of the Queen already online, drawn by Bear, and a few photographs of Sierra dressed up as her from last Halloween. She’d put on high boots that laced up to her knees with huge soles so she was almost tall. She had gray jeans tucked into the boots and a tight, oily-looking black shirt. On top of that was a dusky overcoat covered in buckles and lines of safety pins. She’d spiked her hair and frosted it white-purple, done her eyes in heavy kohl and gold eye shadow.

  She was leaning on the arm of a stringy guy with coral-red hair, dressed in tan and brown robes that reminded me of Obi-Wan Kenobi from Star Wars. I resized the photo in the preview window so I could see her without him.

  I waited impatiently to catch her online without the others. Would there be more touching of Zeno’s armor or more…developments in that direction? Days later when I finally saw her online, I had an attack of shyness. She added to the story but only more detail about the plot with the High God.

  Later in the week when my sketch was good enough to show, I messaged her: I did a sketch of the Queen and Zeno. Do you want to see it?

  YES!

  Don’t post it or share it, okay? It’s not done, I told her.

  I promise!

  I sent her the sketch and seconds later she was typing into chat: This is AMAZING! I love the look on my face. You’re really good at this. I’m jealous, is that silly? You can draw and write. I can only write. I wish I could do that. This armor effect is so cool.

  Thanks, I said.

  You should post it. And write more in the story. You left your scene hanging, you know.

  I did? I asked. It didn’t feel like I’d left it hanging. It felt like Dustin hijacked it.

  Sierra wrote: You never answered Cypher’s question.

  What question?

  If Zeno likes to be used, she said.

  I could feel myself blushing. The kind of blush that goes nuclear across your face and tingles up your scalp. Thank God I was sitting in front of a computer and not a live human being. I took a sip of my pop but it wasn’t cool enough to help with how hot my face was.

  I guess it depends, I wrote.

  On what?

  On who’s asking and what they mean, I said. I mean, there’s the gross kind of used and there’s the other kind.

  The sexy kind? she asked.

  Was it possible to die of blushing? I wrote, Um, yeah. But I haven’t…I mean, I wouldn’t know. I guess Zeno might…

  Hahaha, relax. I’m just teasing you.

  Oh, sure, I typed.

  Her words flashed up on my screen and the heat in my body turned into nausea. I hated being teased. I hated that I let her get me all flustered and we were only bullshitting.

  * * *

  I stayed away from the story for a few days, then got too curious and went to catch up on the action. There was a bunch of scheming between Dustin/Lithos and Sierra as the Queen. It included wondering about if Zeno might really be from Lithos’s court. I had to shut down that idea.

  Hey, Sierra messaged me. There you are. Where have you been?

  School and stuff, I told her.

  I missed having you in the story. It’s more fun when you’re there. I’m dying to know what you’re going to do with Zeno.

  My backstabbing heart forgot all about feeling led on and stupid in the power discussion days ago. She’d missed me! (Settle down, stupid heart.)

  Not make Zeno from Lithos’s court, I said.

  Hahaha, of course not! She can be whatever you want. And we should totally get her a girlfriend.

  That would be cool.

  At least one of me would have on
e.

  I’ve always wondered if someday the Queen and Zeno would hook up, Sierra wrote.

  Heart beating all fast, my fingers feeling like hot sausages on the keyboard, I typed: Isn’t the Queen with Lithos?

  She doesn’t have to be exclusive with him.

  Can I ask you a question? I asked.

  Of course!

  When did you come out to yourself? You said you were kind of dating a girl, when did you know?

  Sierra paused for a bit and wrote: I guess when I got together with her. Last year of high school, which was last year, we were in this band together and we started hanging out and then we were more than friends. But we didn’t officially say we were girlfriends. I don’t feel like I have to define myself. Love is love, you know.

  Not really, I said. I’m not into guys and I figure people should know that, especially guy people. I guess definitions work for me. But that’s great about you, I mean, you have a lot of options.

  She replied, Not as many as you’d think. I’m not interested unless someone’s smart and compelling.

  That’s your type? Smart? I asked, hoping that didn’t make it too obvious that I thought she was ridiculously cute and was trying to figure out what she liked.

  She wrote back: Lol, no, I also like tall and a little skinny and artsy, and they have to like the same kinds of music I do. Why?

  Tall and artsy I had in the bag. I wanted to say something clever and brilliant, but I had nothing so I backed up a little.

  Just curious, I wrote. It’s not like I’m planning on seducing you. I’m not the type of person who goes around seducing other people because, you might have noticed, I’m quite introverted.

  Have you tried? she asked.

  Seducing people? Uh, no. My primo seduction time is all occupied by me sitting around pitying myself.

  Sierra wrote: Maybe you’re afraid of getting hurt.

  I said: You wouldn’t say that if you saw what my options were here in Duluth.

  Hey!!! You should come down to the Cities. Do you think your parents would let you?

  I can ask my father. He’ll probably say yes. He mostly doesn’t care what I do.

  We’d love to have you come down. You can stay here, there are lots of couches to crash on. You can meet everyone in the story.

  Are you sure? I asked. I felt like if she asked me to, I’d get up from my desk, go to my car and drive down to the Cities right then.

  Let me check with my roommate, she said.

  I didn’t take it too seriously. But over the next few weeks she kept bringing it up. She also returned to the idea of Zeno and the Queen hooking up. To be on the safe side, I had to assume she wasn’t really flirting. But I kept getting fluttery when I’d see her log in. I had to go find out.

  Chapter Eight

  Spring break in two weeks would be the perfect time. It was less than a three-hour drive from Duluth to the Twin Cities. I impatiently waited for my father to be home on a Sunday afternoon and seem relaxed, and then asked him if I could spend spring break with friends in the Cities. Of course he said no.

  I persisted. The debate went on over a few evenings, in measured tones, points and counterpoints. I wanted to raise objections and ask to approach the bench, but those jokes weren’t funny to my father who would accuse me (accurately) of mocking the legal profession.

  In his mind law is the noblest of all professions and possibly the oldest. I agree about that second point. Someone must have hired another person to argue for them way before people figured they could sell sex for money. I like to think that bazillions of years ago people had sex for fun, but argument was already serious business.

  I might not have won Lauren vs. Father 916 Great Room 2015, except that he seemed to be on the outs with whatever woman he was dating and had to keep coming back to the house. He insisted on talking to Sierra’s parents on the phone. He might have gotten a cop friend to run background checks on them; I wouldn’t be surprised. But he finally agreed!

  I could spend spring break in the Cities at Sierra’s house as long as I texted at least once a day and let him know I was okay. And no drinking or drugs. He didn’t mention sex. Either it didn’t occur to him that I was old enough to be having sex or, because I was a lesbian, he couldn’t figure out what he should worry about in that department.

  Or maybe, like me, he thought I wouldn’t be lucky enough to get laid this week anyhow.

  I left at dinner time on Friday before the official week of spring break (and before my father could get home and change his mind). That gave me nine days in the Cities if Sierra didn’t get sick of me. After school I packed, ate a frozen dinner (the turkey one with the little cup of cranberry sauce because I felt celebratory), and got on the road.

  I got lost in the Cities. Twice.

  I’d been to the Cities with my family when I was a kid. (After Mom left there weren’t any family trips.) I vaguely remembered the zoo and the mall. But the duplex Sierra rented was near the University of Minnesota. I overshot my exit and ended up in South Minneapolis, turned around, got on the wrong freeway and found myself north, but on the wrong side of the river from her house. I didn’t want to double back again (and risk ending up in downtown), so I meandered north until I could cross the Mississippi and worked my way back down to her address.

  I found Sierra’s house after ten p.m. I parked in the back and texted her from the car because it was late and I was having an attack of shyness. She opened the back door and stood silhouetted in golden light, curvy and unfamiliar. I wanted to draw her like this, with the shadows stretching out in front, detailing the uneven edges of her hair in long, sharp points like knives.

  Grabbing my bag and suitcase, I hopped out of the car and crossed the short backyard. She held the door open for me.

  “Glad you could make it,” she said.

  The kitchen would have horrified my father. Everything in here was older than me. The floor was so worn that the pattern stamped into the linoleum had rubbed away in a darkened path from the outer door to the interior of the house. The cabinets bore at least five coats of paint: a hard-chipped corner showed sunshine, avocado, citron and taupe under dirty-napkin white.

  The kitchen led to the dining room with Sierra’s room to the left and a bathroom to the right. Next came Cyd’s room. Cyd was the very straight girl who rented the place with her. Sierra introduced her like that online, very straight, like there was another orientation on the far side of hetero from us.

  On the far side of the dining room was a substantial living room with mangy berber carpet and two sagging couches, all shades of gray in the dim light. The molding on the door to Sierra’s room had chunks taken out of it from decades of being banged into (all the molding in the duplex looked like the setting of multiple kung fu sword battles).

  Sierra’s bedroom was almost twice the size of mine, with a bed, a desk, a couch and a dresser. I only half noticed because she’d grabbed my hand when she pulled me into the room. She pointed to the end of the couch and said I could put my stuff there. I didn’t move. She was holding my hand. We both stood there until she dropped my hand and walked back out into the kitchen.

  “There’s pizza, you want some?” she asked.

  I was still trying to figure out why a person would put a couch in a bedroom and where I was expected to sleep. I dropped my stuff where she said.

  “Sure, what kind?” I asked, walking back into the kitchen.

  She was standing in front of the open fridge. “I’ve got part of a Hawaiian and part of a pepperoni.”

  “Oh, I’m okay.”

  “You don’t like either of those?”

  “I don’t eat pork,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  I saw curiosity in her wide eyes, but that was it. She wasn’t staring at me like a total weirdo. I decided she could get the long answer.

  “It’s not like I keep kosher, but I think that not eating pork is a good idea. It keeps me mindful, you know, and also pigs are pretty smart.”r />
  “Oh that’s cool. When we first met, I wondered what you were. I mean, you know,” she laughed. “That sounded dumb. I thought maybe you were something exotic, like Arabic.”

  My brain stalled out, unsure how to explain that Jews and Arabs have a common genetic heritage but, you know, a few thousand years of cultural baggage. Did she know that Jewish was as much an ethnicity as a religion? Probably not. Did I want to have to explain that tonight? Clearly not.

  I recovered enough to say, “That’s me. Totally exotic. Sometimes clueless people try to talk to me in Spanish. I mean, not that there aren’t Spanish Jews, but we’re not. My family isn’t. Um, and it’s not that I’m calling you clueless.”

  “You’d better not be,” she said. “Do you want anything else? I’ve got…toast.”

  “I’m fine. I snacked on the way down.”

  “Hot chocolate?”

  “Sure.”

  She got two mismatched mugs from the cupboard and dumped water and cocoa packets into them, then put them in the microwave for a few minutes. When they were steaming, she set mine on the counter and carried hers into the dining room. Mine was a tall, white mug, scuffed all over, that said “Random Mutation,” on the front. I lifted it in both hands and followed her into the dining room, watching the floor so I wouldn’t trip.

  A huge, ruddy wooden table dominated the dining room, thoroughly pitted (knife throwing target practice?), surrounded by six chairs. Three of the chairs matched, warm oak with a darker grain; two were lighter ash with orange cushions; and the last, at the foot of the table, was dark brown folding metal. Sierra sat in the oak chair at the head of the table and I took the chair nearest her.

  “We have to keep it down,” she said and pointed at the closed door across the room. “Cyd’s sleeping. She’s not a light sleeper, but no yelling.”

  “I was utterly about to yell,” I said.

  Sierra smirked and sipped her cocoa. “What do you think of the story?”

  “It’s fun. And awesome.”

  “If you don’t want the Queen and Zeno to hook up, let me know,” she said.