Truth

My phone rang.

“Another spam call?” I said, grabbing it and looking at the screen.

“I keep getting calls from people pretending to be my bank lately,” my friend said.

The screen read Unknown Number. I hung up. “Well, I don’t want a bank scam.”

My friend Priya and I had gone downtown and decided to grab lunch at a restaurant. It’d been surprisingly crowded, and we’d been relegated to sitting on an upholstered bench waiting for our table to open, which might never happen.

“At this point, do you want to go get something from the food carts down the street?” Priya asked. “We don’t have to eat lunch here.”

My phone buzzed with a text, but I ignored it. “That’d be awkward, though. Feels like dining and dashing.”

“It is literally not dining and dashing. We didn’t get anything.”

“We took their service and time, and you used their customers-only bathroom,” I said. “Though I don’t really think bathrooms should be customer-only. I mean—”

“Are you gonna start talking about homeless people?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’re like the champion of the downtrodden or some shit, I swear.”

“Not exactly, it’s not like I really do much.”

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

“Oh my god, who is texting you.”

It was the unknown number again.

Unknown Number: Naomi it’s oliver

Unknown Number: Please pick up

Unknown Number: I’m scared and I don’t know what to do

My ex. He was block avoiding again, that son of a bitch! I swore, I didn’t want anything to do with him. He’d always tried to guilt trip me, and here he was, doing it again. He used to say he’d kill himself if I broke up with him, which was, uh, a big reason why I broke up with him.

Despite knowing his game, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of anxiety, or maybe pity. It sounded like he was having a panic attack. The suicide threats had felt real back then because he really had been mentally ill, and lonely, and all of that. He’d been charming, too, and I’d wished more people saw it…I wished more people cared about him.

So while I could think, why’d he have to go out of his way to text me? A blocked number? I knew the reason; he didn’t have anyone else who would look out for him.

No, he didn’t have anyone. I wouldn’t do that. I wasn’t his fucking mom.

“Are you okay?” Priya asked.

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine.”

My phone rang again.

“I am turning this bitch on silent,” I said. “I swear to god.”

“I mean, it’s probably bugging everyone in the restaurant too so that’s a good idea.”

“Thanks, Priya, you always know what to say.”

“Seriously, you alright?”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about me.” It was dark and stifling in the restaurant. “Let’s go for the food carts after all.”

“Excuse me, your table is ready,” the hostess said.

“No, sorry,” I said. “I have to—I want to go.”

Priya helped me out. I had my head down, staring at the ground, until we got outside and the sunshine helped me get it together. I took gulps of cold air, refilling my lungs.

“Sit down,” Priya said.

“No, I’m okay now. I’m going to block that number.”

When I turned my phone screen on—

Unknown Number: I want to die

Unknown Number: I’m going to jump off a bridge

Unknown Number: You know the alex fraser bridge is near my house

Unknown Number: Naomi I really am scared

Fuck! What was wrong with him? Fingers moving a mile a minute I tapped out Do it then!!!!!!, sent it, and blocked the number.

My phone felt like a radioactive object now, making me sick just from having it near. I handed it to Priya. “Can you hang onto this for me?”

“...Sure.”

“Hey, look, they have churros over there.”

Priya went along with it. “Want one?”

Eight hours later, I got a call from Vancouver General. Oliver had jumped off the bridge. Their EMTs had got a hold of him, dragged his sopping wet and broken body out of the river. But it was too late; he’d died on the way there. I’d been his only emergency contact, but I hadn’t picked up at first because my phone was on silent.

For three weeks and two days, I didn’t go outside. For the first few days, I was just curled up. It was like when Jayla jumped out the window. That might have been why everything in Ky'cina’s manor had been so awful. Her body had been crumpled and broken too.

At the end of the third week, my pantry was empty; I starved for two days before dragging myself to the supermarket.

I cut off contact from everyone and focused on my work. The more I wrote, the more okay I felt. Aside from liking writing (and getting paid for it), it was like an exorcism. I could get everything out and fictionalize it so it couldn’t get to me so bad.

I guess it still got to me, though.

I was a chronically guilty mess.

“I see,” Ky'cina said. I’d blabbered bits and pieces of the story, leaving out any clarity or explanation. Tears streaked down my face like I was a toddler who’d scraped my knee. “So, are you a magician?”

“Don’t—dunno.”

“She must have either god-like abilities, or be a prophet who can see into other worlds,” Ky'cina said to Lil. “Her story implies the former, but the laws of probability imply the latter. We need a better place to keep her, and a good way to use her.”

Lil looked at the ground and mumbled, “You shouldn’t…don’t ‘use her’. There’s nothing good about that.”

“This is the most logical option,” Ky'cina said. “We need to secure our own power.”

“If you do something like that—what makes you so different from the other side!” Lil cried. “I won’t put up with it!”

“Think rationally here, Lil. To win—”

“And what’s victory? Just putting you in charge?”

“Putting a better order in charge—”

“And that just means you!”

Ky'cina stood, drawing a revolver from the folds of her clothing. Lil flinched back.

“So what if it’s me? I would run this empire better than anyone else. I deserve the throne.”

“Naomi!” Lil said. “Run!”