UnSouled

“So you’re back,” she says to Connor, putting down a lamp she had just repaired. “And with friends, no less.”

She makes no move to embrace him or even to shake his hand. Neither does Connor. He holds his distance—he too having learned the fine art of defensive dispassion. Still, he’s not as good at it as Sonia. She can tell how relieved he is to be here and how happy he is to see her. Even if he doesn’t wear it on his face, she can sense it in his general aura.

“Hello, Sonia,” he says, then smirks. “Or should I say Dr. Rheinschild?”

This is a surprise. She hasn’t heard the name spoken aloud in years. Her heart misses a beat, but she still doesn’t let the emotion show on her face, and she chooses not to respond to his accusation—for an accusation is exactly what it is—although she knows a nonresponse is as good as an admission.

“Are you going to introduce me to your little posse?” she asks. “Or have you still not learned any manners?”

He starts with the chunky, vague-looking woman who seems out of place in this trio—although to be honest, none of them really seem to fit together.

“This is Grace Skinner. She saved my life a few weeks ago.”

“Hiya,” Grace says. She’s the only one who steps forward to force a handshake on Sonia. “I hear you saved his life too, so I guess we’re in the same club.”

Then Connor reluctantly introduces the Rewind. Sonia, however, stops him before he speaks the name.

“I know who he is.” She steps closer to Cam, peering through glasses as antique as anything else in her shop—the wage of refusing new eyes. “Hmph,” she says. “No scars at all—just seams. My compliments to your construction crew.”

He appears uncomfortable at her scrutiny, although she imagines he’s used to it. “They were surgeons, not construction workers,” he says a bit bristly.

“And they say you speak nine languages.”

“Plus I’ve been studying a few more.”

“Hmph,” she says again, irritated by the arrogant lilt in his voice. “I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that your existence is disgusting to me.”

“Understood,” he says with a resigned sigh. “You’re not the first to tell me that.”

“I won’t be the last, I’m sure—but as long as we understand each other, we’ll be fine.”

Outside a young couple walks by, engaged in conversation. Sonia watches them until she’s sure they’re not coming into the shop. They pass by and she’s relieved. It makes her realize she’s spent too much time in clear view with her visitors.

“Come in the back room,” she tells them. “Unless you want to man the register.”

“I have a lot of questions,” Connor says as he leads the others through the curtain to the back room.

“Then you’ll be disappointed, because I have no answers.”

“You’re lying,” he says, point-blank. “Why are you lying?”

That makes Sonia grin. “A little wiser than when you left, I see. Or maybe just a little more jaded.”

“Both, I guess.”

“And a little taller too. Or is it just that I’ve shrunk?”

He gives her a wiseass smirk. “Both, I guess.”

Then she catches sight of the shark on his arm. It makes her shiver, and she tries to look away, but it commands her attention. “I definitely don’t want to know about that,” she says, although she knows all about it already, from a different source.

“How are things in your basement?” Connor asks. “Still up to your old tricks?”

“I’m a creature of habit,” she tells them. “And just because the ADR fell apart doesn’t mean I have to.” Then she glances to Cam, who seems to be taking mental snapshots of everything he sees, like a spy. “Can he be trusted?” she asks Connor.

Cam answers the question himself. “Similar objectives,” he says. “Under any other circumstance, I would say no, you couldn’t trust me—but I want to take down Proactive Citizenry as much as my AWOL friend does. So for all intents and purposes, Ich bin ein AWOL.”

“Hmph.” Sonia only half believes him, but she accepts Connor’s judgment for the other half. “Necessity makes strange bedfellows, as they say.”

“The Tempest,” Cam responds as if chiming in on a game show. “Shakespeare. It’s actually misery that makes strange bedfellows, but necessity works too.”

“Fine.” Sonia grabs her cane, which leans against her desk, and taps it on the old steamer trunk in the center of the cluttered back room. “Make yourself useful and push this aside.”

Cam does so. Sonia notices Connor focused a bit deerlike on the trunk. He’s the only one who knows its significance. What it contains and what it conceals.

Once the trunk is pushed aside, Connor takes it upon himself to roll away the dusty Persian rug beneath to reveal the trapdoor. Sonia, who is far less feeble than she lets on, reaches down, pulls on the iron ring, and lifts open the door. Somewhere downstairs whispers quickly give way to silence.

“I’ll be right back,” she says. “And don’t touch anything.” She wags a finger at Grace, who’s been touching just about everything.

As Sonia stomps heavily but slowly down the steep wooden steps, she conceals a devious smile. She knows this is going to be complicated. She dreads it, but she also looks forward to it. An old woman needs some excitement in her life.

“It’s only me,” she says as she reaches the bottom step, and all her AWOLs come out of hiding. Or at least the ones who care.

“Lunch?” one of them asks.

“You just had breakfast. Don’t be a pig.”

She makes her way to a little alcove in the far corner of the cluttered maze of a basement, where a girl with stunning green eyes and gentle brown curls with amber highlights organizes a cache of first-aid supplies.

“You have visitors,” Sonia tells her.

The look on the girl’s face is too guarded to be hopeful. “What sort of visitors?”

Sonia smiles wickedly. “The angel and the devil on your shoulders, Risa. I hope you’re wise enough to know which is which.”

60 • Risa

It wasn’t coincidence that brought Risa and Connor’s lives converging once more on Akron. It was an absolute absence of other options.

In all of Risa’s desperate wanderings since being loaded on the bus to be unwound, Sonia’s basement was the only place that had any hope of being safe. The Graveyard had been purged, Audrey’s shop was a nice respite, but had her on edge every day, and as for the safe houses she’d been shuttled to in the dark, Sonia’s was the only one of which she knew the actual location.

She could backtrack and stay under the odd protection of CyFi’s commune—but she knew she wasn’t really welcomed by most of the Tyler-folk. For obvious reasons she could never feel part of that community. That left only a life on the streets, or a life in hiding alone. She’d had enough of looking over her shoulder, sleeping in Dumpsters like a fresh AWOL, just waiting to be recognized in spite of her makeover. It would only be a matter of time until someone reported her to the authorities, collected the reward, and handed her over to Proactive Citizenry, who would no doubt have many plans for her.

That left only one viable option. Sonia.

When Risa arrived a few weeks ago, there were customers in the antique shop, haggling with Sonia over an unremarkable end table. Risa strategically meandered down another aisle, marveling at how so many items could be precariously perched on one another and yet not fall—empirical evidence that Ohio is not prone to earthquakes.

Finally the couple had left, struggling with their table, for which Sonia offered no help beyond, “Mind the step; it’s crooked.” Once the rusty hinges on the door squeaked closed, Risa stepped forward, presenting herself to be noticed.

Sonia pursed her lips when she saw here there, perhaps affronted that she had snuck in unobserved. “Something I can help you find?” Sonia asked.

Risa had been a bit tickled that Sonia didn’t recognize her right away. And when she finally did, the old woman let out a howl of uncharacteristic joy and dropped her cane so she could wrap her arms around Risa.

And in that moment Risa realized it was the closest she might ever come to knowing what it felt like to be home.

Now, two weeks later, Risa finds herself playing Wendy to the Lost Boys, for lately, it seems the only AWOLs who are getting as far as Sonia’s are boys, attesting to the sad fact that more female AWOLs are falling prey to parts pirates and other bottom-feeders.

When Sonia tells Risa she has “visitors,” Risa starts up the stairs apprehensively, but she picks up her pace as that apprehension turns to excitement. There are very few people Sonia would send Risa upstairs for.

She doesn’t dare hope which of those few people it might be, because she doesn’t want disappointment to show on her face if it were someone like Hayden or Emby, both of whom she’d be happy to see, were she not hoping for something more.

She flies through the open trapdoor, almost banging her head on the edge of the floor panel, and she sees him right away. She says nothing because for an instant she’s sure it’s her imagination. That her mind has pasted Connor’s face on top of someone else’s, because she so much wants it to be him. But it’s not her imagination. It is him, and his eyes reflect her own surprise.

“Risa?”

The voice isn’t coming from Connor, and her eyes dart slightly to the right. It’s Cam. His own astonishment has already turned into a broad grin.

Risa finds her head beginning to quiver. “Cuh . . . cuh . . .” She doesn’t know which of their names to say first. The sight of the two of them in the same visual image hits her like a concussive shock and she takes a step backward, hitting the edge of the trapdoor. It slams shut an instant after Sonia cleared it. Had the woman not been faster up the stairs than she had been down, it would have crushed her skull.

Risa can’t reconcile what she’s seeing: These two separate parts of her life juxtaposed upon each other. It feels as if the universe itself has betrayed her. Exposed her, leaving her raw and vulnerable to all attacks. She didn’t leave either Connor or Cam on the best of terms. Suddenly defensive, her surprise at seeing them decays into suspicion.

“Wh-what’s going on here?”

Cam, still dazed by the sight of her, takes a step forward, only to be fully eclipsed by Connor stepping in front of him, not even aware that he had done it. “Aren’t you even gonna say hello?” Connor asks cautiously.

“Hi,” she says, with such weak impotence she’s angry at herself. She clears her throat, and only now notices there’s someone else here as well. A girl she doesn’t know, who, for the moment, is content to observe.

With the prospects of this grand reunion fizzling like wet fireworks, Sonia raps her cane on the ground in frustration to get their attention. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she says. “Give us a love scene worthy of the ages, or at least a viral meme.”