== Trigger Warning: ==

This story contains (or will contain) mentions of suicide, violence and rape. There will be no detailed descriptions of any of these, but reader caution is advised.

This chapter contains: mentions of suicide.

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In the end, I couldn’t spend the night. Helena had gone into the bathroom to shower, and while I waited for her, I got a call from my mother. She was worried because she had come home and I wasn’t there. I reassured her that everything was fine, and that I simply went out to meet a friend. She insisted that I should come home, and that made me desperately wish that there was some way I could convince her to let me stay over. The one thing I wanted the least in this world was to say goodbye to Helena just then.

I walked to the living room, only to find Helena standing against the wall just next to the kitchen door.

“Sorry,” she told me, looking embarrassed. “I guess I overheard.”

“I gotta go,” I told her. “My mom will panic if I’m not home tonight. She still acts as if I was twelve years old.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she told me. After all, she had been living on her own since age fifteen. “Say, can I walk you to the door? You should call a car, it could start raining again at any moment now.”

I nodded. “Thanks, I’ll do that.”

We took the elevator down to the building entryway in silence. Helena opened the door to me. Outside on the street, the car I called was already waiting. I walked down the stone steps, then stopped on the sidewalk to look back at that redhead girl one last time.

“Will you call me, sometime?” she asked, sounding almost as a plea.

“I will,” I told her, before turning away and walking into the car.

Minutes later, I was standing in front of my apartment, mentally preparing myself for all the questions my mother would ask me as soon as I swung open the living room door.

“My goodness, child! Where have you been?” I was so worried about you!”

As usual, she didn’t even wait for me to be actually inside the apartment to start interrogating me.

“I told you before, mom,” I said, “I was at a friend’s.”

“What clothes are these? Did you buy them?”

“These are… borrowed. I got caught in the rain, so my friend lent me a change of clothes.”

“And does this friend of yours have a name?”

“Helena,” I told her, flatly.

“Helena?” mom asked, surprised. “I don’t know her. Is she from your class?”

“Not exactly, no,” I told my mother. “She… was an acquaintance of dad’s.”

Silence fell in the living room. These days, it was unusual for me to mention my father at home. Mom always looked so sad when I did, that I’ve begun to avoid it almost naturally. Mentioning dad was an almost certain way of ending any discussion between mom and I. This time was no exception.

“I’ll go change,” I told her, and began walking up the stairs.

“I made dinner,” she called from the kitchen.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied. “I… already ate.”

I locked the bedroom door behind me, then immediately sat down on the floor and buried my face in my hands. I was miserable. But why was I feeling that way? I knew it had something to do with Helena.

I thought about calling her. Was it too soon? It was, I’m sure. But maybe I could send her a message.

Sitting on the floor, I must have written at least twenty message drafts, and each time, I scraped it and started over. I didn’t want to sound desperate, but I really needed her to reply. And because my emotions were in such disarray, nothing I wrote ever seemed to come out right.

In the end, I settled with this:

I’m home. Thanks for the clothes.

After sending, I realized I didn’t really make myself clear. It sounded as if I was intending to keep her clothes for myself. Drat. Why is writing a single message as hard as this? Quickly, I added a second text after that one:

I’ll wash them and return them to you soon.

I had to stop myself from writing “when can I see you again?” after that.

I got up from the floor and curled up on my bed, counting the seconds until her reply.

Fortunately, though, I didn’t wait long.

You can keep them. They look good on you.

I read Helena’s text in silence, and felt my chest warm up. It was so good to hear from her again. I texted her “thanks”, and as I was once again agonizing over what to text her next, I was actually surprised to receive a photograph from her.

It was of a pack of salt.

Then she sent me another message:

I promise I won’t forget the salt next time.

I laughed.

Please don’t overdo it.

Moments later, I got her reply:

Hey, it’s not like I’ve never cooked before. I know at least this much.

(Probably)

I chuckled. There was a warm feeling flooding inside my chest every time I got a text from Helena. And whenever there was silence between us, either because I didn’t know what to say, or because she didn’t reply immediately to my texts, I felt anxious. I was like a drowning girl scared of sea turtles and she was my lifeline.

We exchanged messages for another thirty minutes or so. At some point, I asked her some trivial question, and she didn’t reply. Ten minutes later, I got this text:

Hey, can I call you?

If it’s not a bother, of course.

It was almost midnight already, but I didn’t feel sleepy in the least bit. I wrote her a message: “Please”. Then I erased it, and wrote: “Of course”. Then I facepalmed, and wished I could kick myself for acting weird. Once I had calmed down, I tried the message a third time:

You can.

Seconds later, I got a call from Helena, and I was so nervous that I almost rejected the call by mistake.

“Hey,” she said, once I picked it up. I could tell from her voice that she was smiling.

“Hi,” I said, smiling as well.

“Is this a good time? We can talk tomorrow if you prefer.”

“It’s okay,” I told her, “you can call me anytime.”

Oh boy. I shouldn’t have said that. Now she’ll definitely think I’m weird. That’s the problem with audio calls, you can’t erase something once you’ve said it.

Helena didn’t seem to notice it.

“Did you… get in trouble because I brought you to my place?” she asked.

“Oh, not really. I got back home fast. Although I really wish I could have stayed with you instead.”

I closed my eyes and hoped she wouldn’t find this weird. We had only just met each other that morning, after all.

“I’m really glad I met you,” was what she said to me. “I used to hear all those stories about you from your dad, but I never thought I’d meet you for real. You’re a lot different from what I imagined.”

“Oh, yeah?” I asked her, surprised. “How so?”

“Well, for instance, you’re a lot more daring… and more gay.”

I laughed. I did kiss her all of a sudden in the middle of the street, it’s true.

“I wish I had heard about you before,” I told her. “It feels unfair that I haven’t.”

“You can read about me on articles,” she argued.

“Not the same,” I said. “Maybe I should meet your brother someday, and ask him to tell me embarrassing stories of when you were a kid.”

“Hey!” Helena protested. “That’s not fair.”

I laughed. My eyes once again fell on the photograph that rested on my nightstand.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Helena promptly agreed.

“What was my father like at work?” I asked her.

“Your father?” Helena repeated. “Let me think… I remember Giuseppe as someone who worked really hard. I used to see him twice as much as any of the other engineers. He… didn’t smile much in front of others, except us replicas. Sometimes I thought he was only truly himself when he was with us. In a sense, he was the opposite of the others. People used to avoid us in the lab, and they were always silent around us. I think they were afraid we’d hear something we shouldn’t, or something like that. They never spoke to us. Maybe they only saw us as products, like a car, that they need to fix and send back to the customer. I think Giuseppe was the only one to really treat us as people.”

“That… does sound like him,” I said. “When you say ‘us’, you mean…”

“Besides me, there were Isaac and Lira. We were the only replicas under Giuseppe’s care. Isaac and Lira are both living with their families. They weren’t rejected, like me, so I only saw them on occasion. Most of the time, it was just me and your father in his division. Occasionally it was just me.”

“So you… lived there?” I asked, mildly surprised.

“For a while, yes,” Helena told me.

“Did you see him, on the day he died?”

“I did,” Helena declared, sounding serious.

For a moment, I couldn’t say anything. I had to stop, take a few deep breaths, and try to calm down my feelings. I wasn’t going to cry again, not on the phone with Helena, four years after the fact. Still, she had seen him, whereas I hadn’t. She could tell me what he looked like, on that day, or what he spoke of. She could help me find the answer I never could by myself.

“It… doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “I’m told that when people do it, there are always signs beforehand. But with dad, he… he was always so honest, and yet he never once said something was wrong. I remember talking to him the day before, on the phone, and he said he’d be home on the weekend for my birthday. So why would he do it? It… it doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re right,” said Helena. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“Um… what?”

“I said I’m sorry for your loss.”

No, she didn’t.

She said it doesn’t make sense.

“Why did you say it doesn’t make sense?” I inquired.

“I’m sorry, Lucia, I can’t say I know any more than you do,” said Helena. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna have to hang up now, I forgot something in the oven.”

Helena disconnected before I could think to reply.

Was it just me, or was she acting… weird? And what’s this about having something in the oven? She wouldn’t be cooking for herself.

Minutes later, I got a series of texts from her.

If you’re free this weekend, wanna go to the park with me?

By the way, I really like this story, so I thought I’d send it to you.

It’s one of my favorites.

Next to the last message, there was a file. It was titled “The Beauty And The Beast”, a story which thirteen-year-old me must have read a dozen times, at least. I chuckled. Helena really was a wonder.

I tried opening the file.

It wasn’t a book.

It was a diagram.