With a start, she realizes that he must not know that she has done just that. Maybe he knows nothing of what happened, how he was cured, that it was another synth that had rescued him. Ify contemplates opening up to him, thinks about telling him the truth. Maybe this is what she needs to do to really reach a person. Make herself vulnerable. She thinks of Xifeng. She thinks of Céline. She’d told both of them her truth, and she’d lost them for it. “No,” she says.

Peter looks at her for several long minutes. Maybe he’s waiting for a reply, thinking that she, a lowly red-blood, isn’t nearly as accustomed to long silences as he, a synth. But he gives up and turns his gaze to the cul-de-sac.

Ify gets up. “I’m going home,” she says, dusting off her bottom. And that’s exactly what she does, telling herself that she did the right thing and that Peter is just a boy.

A contented smile glides onto her face.

CHAPTER

54

There is chaos when they are letting everyone be free from the hospital. Some people they are taking information from, so they are updating their records, but some people are getting out or are being taken out before there is chance to update the system. And it is never because of bad thing. Every time I am seeing this thing, it is because people are too happy to be waiting. That is how I am sneaking out. No one is looking for me, and I am thinking that no one is even knowing I am here.

I am thinking this thing even while I am watching celebration in the streets and parade that is coming out of nowhere but that is just being enough people in one place being happy. I am feeling happy that I am saving life but not because I am saving life but because it is being easy to tell myself now that I am good person and not just child of war.

Part of me is being glad that no one is seeing me, but part of me is sadding, because I am wanting for someone to be so happy to see me that they are pulling me tight to their chest and saying I am never letting you go and I am wanting for someone to be throwing me into the air and catching me and throwing me and catching me or putting me onto their shoulders and skipping down sidewalk or crying when they are seeing me blinking my eyes or moving my fingers. I know it is not normal for synth to be wanting this thing but I am not synth anymore. I am something else, and this something else is wanting all of these thing.