The crowd repeated her words as one voice, again and again, echoing down the hallways spun of light. Yusuf’s face twitched as he tried to smile, wincing slightly with each chorus of his name. Oh, god. He was mortified. Mortified. I was such an asshole. I pushed him too far, just like I always did.

25

MUSHCUBES

Figueiredo’s shadow voice followed me as I led the way out of the Prince of Cups and onto the train with Yusuf. The voice whispered like my alternate self was leaning to my ear, just someone in the crowd pressed against me. Do you really think you can live here? You’re running because you know the only way to save your world is for him to die like he should have, and you’re not letting him make the decision for himself.

The train rolled to a stop, and we stumbled onto the glass-flecked sidewalk and then over the damp grass to Hassan’s neighborhood. Still, the voice followed me.

He had a purpose. He has none here but to love you. You think he’ll like trudging to the Prince of Cups every night and playing knights and wizards? He’ll get bored and hate you. You will drive each other crazy.

I brushed past Hassan in his kitchen, where he was sprinkling lemon-yellow powder over a big bowl of fresh, steaming mushcubes. His hand with the spice shaker froze mid-air when he saw me, a gap appearing between his lips. I was too in my head to think about how I was being an asshole to him, barging into his house wearing his dead husband’s clothes. In the bathroom, I filled the sink with cold water and dunked my face under.

And you—you’ll ruin it because you ruin everything. Because you’re not actually happy when everything’s fine. You’re never yourself unless you’re at the end of your rope and hanging on by your fingernails.

I opened my eyes, tugged the chain of the sink plug, and watched the water spin down the drain.

*   *   *

Hassan had baked. I didn’t have the heart to tell him to stick to science.

His smiling eyes watched me spoon a bite of the spongey thing that was supposed to be strawberry shortcake into my mouth. The metallic taste of chemical sweeteners lanced my tongue. And was it possible he’d added sawdust to the batter? A sliver of whipped-cream-coated strawberry flopped onto my plate.

“Sounds silly, but we’d used to splurge on real eggs and butter, sometimes,” he’d told me, slicing a strawberry the size of my fist he’d gotten that afternoon at a farmers’ market that was run by an agricultural theater troupe. “Then Rui would whip up a cake and we’d polish the whole thing off in one day.”