Cal also wanted to think of her story as a given. She wanted to think of her young self as an inevitable start to who she became, so she didn’t have to focus on all of the people who let her down. So she didn’t have to acknowledge that all of the pain she had experienced both above and below the ground was the fault of those meant to care for her. The consequences of a child being too little loved. Once she knew, without a doubt, that all of her father’s teachings were a lie, the only way she could reckon with all that time in the Downstairs, all that time on the belt refusing water, was this concept. That she was bad, and she would always be bad. That her father’s blood made her not only his, but him.

But as I watched her smile at me, thrilled to see a sign of home after so many strangers, I recognized something different, from this side of time. I could tell that even with a life of nothing but death and the knife wedged in her boot, at this point, at least, she wasn’t afraid of being good. She believed, in fact, that she already was, and would always be.

“Are you hungry? Hop in and we’ll grab a bite.”

She pulled open the door before I finished talking and she slid in beside me, the cloud of dust following her as if tucking her in. I glanced over my shoulder at the road, which was open and flat and endless, and pulled off the shoulder.

With one finger, she flicked a small plush dog that hung from my rearview mirror.

“Interesting choice of decor,” she said, and I was glad to hear sass was a core trait.

“It’s my daughter’s,” I said. “She’s just about your age, actually.”

I rolled down my window, even though the Texas heat was hard enough to smack, like something physical, just to feel the movement of the air. I noticed when I rolled down my window that she rolled hers down too. Even though she had yet to know just how badly she could miss the air.

But now she wouldn’t have to.

—

EVER SINCE I MADE the deal with Silas and was sent crashing back to Earth, I have been a sucker for air. I thought it couldn’t get any better than the air on those trips with my tablet and malintent, especially when compared to the air below. But breathing it in with actual human lungs is a whole new kind of delicious. I can feel every molecule rushing in, shooting from my chest out to the ends of my fingers and toes, feeding me.

To breathe is miraculous. You should think about that more.