36
Summer was rapidly falling away. Katherine wasn't quite waking up in complete darkness yet, but it was getting there. The sky was a deep teal colour as she combed out her hair and dressed, and she was comfortable leaving the curtains open as she set up what they might need for tonight. It was nice to have this breathing space before Jenny came round. The short summer nights had meant that Katherine had barely had time to get herself together.
Sunlight wouldn't kill her right away. Her skin seemed to react to the ultraviolet radiation much in the same way human skin did, only at a far accelerated rate. Within an hour, she would be blistered, and would find it difficult to move without pain. In two hours, the outer layer of her body, her skin, fat and the surface tissue of her muscle would cook through, but even then, she may survive if she found shelter and rested for four or five nights in safety. In three hours, she would succumb, her body slow roasted and fragile. This time out in the daylight could be elongated through the use of a heavy cloak or constant coverage in the shadow of a building, but even so, the light from the sun blinded her, and the resulting headaches and discomfort would render her vulnerable. Best to avoid it entirely.
Katherine didn't know why this happened, or how to prevent it. People like her were not exactly represented in the medical or scientific community, so it was unlikely that she would get an explanation any time soon. Like most of her kind, she had taken to the study of medicine and biology herself in search for answers, but as an individual, or even a small team of four or five of them, it was slow progress. All of that was brought to a halt, however, when two world wars had wiped out all but herself and Nneka, leaving them to flee to America and pick up whatever pieces were left of their lives. She had never seen more than seven people with her condition in the same room together, though she had reason to believe that there may as many as one or two hundred globally, living their secret lives, perhaps believing that they were unique and alone. There could have been more at one point or another in history but, for all of Katherine's life, immortal companionship was few and far between.
As for being immortal, she didn't know if she actually was. Alexus had been alive for one and a half thousand years before she had met him, and Nneka had two hundred years more than Katherine under her belt. Neither of them had reported any symptoms that come with natural human aging after they had been infected. They certainly weren't invincible. They were hardier than humans, but disease, starvation, drowning, beheading, suffocation, poison, exposure to sunlight, freezing and being crushed to death were all viable ways to end her life. Enough bullets could take them down if the gunman was dedicated or skilled enough. If they didn't consume human blood, they would age rapidly and wither away within months. If she were injured, she would also heal swiftly and be better equipped to fight infection. Everything seemed to happen either in a very condensed period of time, or continued on indefinitely for her kind.
Edward served her coffee and she thanked him, smiling. "Has there been any letters?" she asked, in what she hoped was a casual way. Edward would never comment on it, but she was asking him more and more recently, each time sounding less and less unconcerned. In fact, worry had settled in the pit of her stomach, and it flared up once more when he gave her a sad look - tilting his visors down at an angle and dropping just a few centimetres in mid air.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am. I'm afraid that there hasn't been any mail this morning."
She nodded, pursing her lips, reading the newspaper as if it were really nothing, while her insides tied themselves in knots.
There was a knock at the front door.
Katherine stood, putting her anxiety aside and tying her hair up as she padded down the hallway in her socks. They were going to have a relaxed evening tonight, she had decided. She opened the door and found Jenny standing here, shivering, her backpack sagging with heavy books and school supplies on her shoulders, cradling yet more books in her arms. Katherine could see Mrs. Bates drive away after waiting to make sure that Jenny had been greeted at the door, and, fighting not to roll her eyes, reached out to take the books off her hands.
"You won't need these tonight," she chuckled.
"You could have told me!" Jenny groaned, letting her backpack fall to the floor with a thud. "And anyway, what do you mean, I won't need them?"
"Well, I thought," Katherine explained, leading her into the living room to reveal bowls of Mr. Mushy ice cream and frosty bottles of Nuka-cola on her coffee table; "that we'd take it easy tonight. You've been working very hard, and honestly, I think you should be happy with both your essays. You're more than ready to resit your exam next week. Studying is important, but it's just as important to take a break every so often."
Jenny's eyes lit up. "Are you serious?" she exclaimed. "What are we going to be doing then if we're not working?"
Katherine flourished a holotape. "I have a recording that I bought from the comic book store - " In fact, it had been Edward who had picked up the holotape, as he did most of the errands that needed to be done during the daytime " - The Silver Shroud: Episode 6. I thought that we could listen to it."
"The Mechanist Unmasked!" Jenny gasped. "That's the one where - "
"Don't spoil it," Katherine interrupted, grinning and waggling her finger. "I haven't heard this one yet."
Jenny took her seat on the sofa, smiling shyly, clearly embarrassed at how excited she must appear. "Mother doesn't like me listening to it," she said, in way of an explanation. "She says that it's just pulpy rubbish. She would prefer I listen to classical music or the radio sermons of Reverend Justin." She couldn't keep the derision from her voice and Katherine failed to stop herself rolling her eyes this time. This made Jenny's smile return and she covered a giggle with her hand.
"Help yourself to the ice cream, it's for you," Katherine said, waving Edward over. She had struggled to find a way to play the holotape in the living room. She could hardly drag her terminal all the way through from upstairs, so she had found a creative way to improvise a kind of speaker system, using Edward, who was kind enough to consent. She had unscrewed the back of the terminal and opened it up, finding the sound output and connecting it to the electronic "voicebox" of the Mr. Handy with a extra long cable that Edward and collected from the hardware store. Despite the fact that at one point she had only narrowly avoided electrocution, she was rather proud of her handy work, even finding a way to have the robot interface with the computer. That part had taken quite a few attempts and blundering through the terminals programming to make a timid alteration here and there. She was therefore able to excuse herself while Jenny decided which bowl of ice cream she would like to load up the holotape on the open terminal in her bedroom, and return to the living room where Edward was hovering.
"Edward, dear, could you start the playback?"
"Yes Ma'am," he confirmed, and the next sounds they heard weren't the polite British tone of the robot, but the voice of the Silver Shroud, deep and masculine over a recording of crackling flames; "Dangling over a pit of fire. Reminds me of our adventure against Chelsea Mangler, eh Mistress?"
Jenny applauded, grinning from ear to ear. Katherine shushed her, smiling herself and reaching for her own bowl of ice cream. She noticed that Jenny hadn't touched her Nuka-cola and she inclined her head towards it, raising her eyebrows. Jenny blushed and whispered; "Aren't those full of sugar?" during a pause in the action.
"Of course they are," Katherine replied, setting her ice cream on the arm of the sofa so she could reach over and take both bottles, holding them out to Edward who opened them with a click and a sigh as the gas escaped. She then handed out to Jenny and they toasted, Jenny giggling again with the pleasure of breaking another one of her mother's little rules. They listened to the recording and Katherine could sense Jenny was grinning, her legs tucked beneath her on the sofa after Katherine had told her to take her shoes off, and she found herself wondering how often the girl got to kick back and relax.
The episode ended with a dramatic one liner and a gunshot that caused both of them to jump and then snort at each other, Jenny choking as she accidentally snorted nuka-cola up her nose. Katherine patted her on the back. "Good ending," she remarked. "But I think we could all tell that the mayor was the Mechanist."
"How?" Jenny scoffed, sniffing and rubbing her nose where the fizz had got to. "It came out of nowhere!"
"He's the only other character that it could have been," she passed Jenny a tissue. "But then, I've listened to a lot more radio serials than you have. You get a feel for where the stories going after a while."
"How old even are you?"
The question took Katherine aback and she paused, the smile fixed in place though she regarded Jenny with a searching look. "Twenty-three," she said, and assumed a playful expression; "but you shouldn't go around asking people's ages. It's rude." She gave Jenny a sly wink to show that she wasn't really offended.
"Well, it's just you act all well read and travelled, but I knew you couldn't be much older than me. And aren't you supposed to be an experienced tutor? How long have you been teaching?"
"Since I was still in highschool," she lied. "I was helping the other kids with their homework. I became rather well known for it, actually, and it's a good way to make money." She wasn't comfortable with the direction the conversation was heading. Lying outright wasn't something that sat well with her, even when it was more than justified given the situation. She had grown rather fond of Jenny over the past weeks. Allowing herself to invest emotionally in her education had let Katherine to forget about Nneka's late reply and about the growing tension in her stomach every time she thought about Azazel. She looked away, sipping her Nuka-cola.
"Didn't you go to university?"
"No," she said - another dishonest answer. If she didn't turn the conversation around shortly, she would find herself weaving an entire narrative around herself, complicated and completely false, something she would have to remember and maintain. The ice cream had chilled her and she shivered, knowing that a one word answer would not be enough to sate Jenny's curiosity. Anyway, she didn't want to punish the girl's questioning, not when she had spent so much time encouraging her to speak her mind and ask questions, even when they made other people uncomfortable. "But I did attend college for two years, learning how to be a formal tutor. Is it something that you'd be interested in after you are finished with high school?" She asked, moving the focus off herself and back onto Jenny.
"No, not really. I'm just asking. I actually don't really know what I want to do after I finish." Her voice had dropped a little, and it was her turn to avoid eye contact.
"But I bet your mom has some ideas about that…" Katherine pressed, her own curiosity rising up. "I noticed that there is a little bit of tension between the two of you." Her voice was soft, concerned. If Jenny were to shut down now, then there would be nothing more to say, but Katherine could sense that there was something fighting to get out of Jenny. Now that the recording had finished, silence had fallen, heavy and stifling, except for the sound of cars outside the window and Edward's thrusters humming.
"Yeah," Jenny sighed, with the air of someone admitting defeat. "She… she wants me to be a lawyer, like Dad." She licked her lips and took another swig of soda before lowering the bottle to her lap and looking at it with glassy eyes.
There was a pause. Katherine looked at the young woman sitting in front of her and hated the words that she said next, both because they were true, but also because she knew that they would mean nothing to Jenny. "It get's better. Someday you'll move out and then you'll get to be your own person without your parents telling you what to do all the time."
"Why should I wait?" Jenny grumbled, as Katherine knew she would. "Why should I just pretend not to exist, or fake being a person that I'm not. It could be years before I can move out. It's like I don't really get to start living until I get out."
"Life isn't a race, and don't look at it like not existing, look at it like... " Katherine tried to smile, hoping her voice sounded confident. "...Lying in wait."
Jenny tilted her head at Katherine, an incredulous look on her face. It was Katherine's turn to look away. Finally, she continued; "Ok, I know it doesn't feel like it now. I know right now it sucks. I know you feel like you're being held back, that you're going to explode if you're not given a little bit of slack - but you just have to hold on a little longer. Your situation right now is not going to get better, but sooner or later you'll make your own situation that fits you, and that's going to be amazing." Her smile this time was genuine. "Turn your frustration into something long lasting, something that endures, so that when you actually do get out, you can use all that passion to take on the world."
Jenny let out a sigh, reflecting Katherine's smile with a small weak one. "I know… I mean, it's not really that bad. I don't get hit, and they don't really say or do anything mean…"
Katherine frowned. "Jenny," she said; "It's not normal to be relieved that you don't have to go home."
Jenny's head snapped up and she looked wounded, the muscles in her arms tensing as she gripped the nuka-cola bottle just a little tighter. They looked at each other for a long time, and Katherine felt her mouth go dry, aware that she had crossed some sort of line, a line that Jenny was not brave enough yet to admit existed.
"Ma'am?" Edward said, his sudden interruption reminding both of them that he was still there and breaking the tension between them. "Should I give you and Miss Bates some privacy?"
"Yes Edward," Katherine said, patting his stainless steel body.
Without him there, the air in the room lost its electric charge, to be replaced with an receptive atmosphere - the kind that comes late at night and normally with alcohol where the world is ready to nurture the words that would whither and die in sunlight. Katherine waited.
"There's a part of me that they don't accept. They know it's there, I think, deep down, or perhaps they only know part of, or just some sense that something is wrong - but it's buried so far down, and I think they think that if they just wrap a string around that part of me, it'll just die and fall off, like a skin tag or something. Or that it's a phase that'll pass, like a storm they need to weather. I try to play along, let them keep believing it… I'm such a coward." Her voice broke and she shut her eyes tight as if against a bright light.
Katherine took Jenny's hand in hers and forced the girl to look up at her, holding her gaze fast. "It's not cowardice to seek safety. Hiding that part of you until you're free to express it without punishment is a valid decision and no one can judge you for that. No wonder you feel suffocated. It's not just your parents that are trying to suppress whatever natural growth you're going through right now." She squeezed Jenny's hand. "I think you know that you can be yourself here. If you need me to, I can organise further tutelage into your college years - so that you can continue to rely on me for a friend."
Jenny was fighting tears with every fibre in her body. Katherine's chest and throat ached. She wanted to fold Jenny into a hug, but knew that the girl had reached a level of honesty, that any further show of unsolicited intimacy would seem gratuitous and maudlin in the face of her very real vulnerability. Instead she said; "It's ok to take care of yourself. Give yourself a break. Simply being is enough." She heard herself echo the words of her old friend and rather hoped that Jenny would be a better student than she herself had been.
Jenny swallowed and inhaled deeply, trying to settle her trembling breath. "Thank you," she croaked eventually, apparently having wrestled herself back into a position of some dignity, tears at bay.
"There will be a time to grieve for lost time later," Katherine soothed.
"But for now I've got to be strong."
"I know you can be," she let go of Jenny's hand. "I'm going to have to drive you home soon, ok? Are you ready?"
Jenny nodded, her resolve steady now.