“Not me,” she said. Then she looked at me pointedly. I stared right back at her. I did not want to miss any of these moments with her, no matter how she might glare at me. There were fewer with each passing day. Her recovery has not been easy, but I don’t want to write about that. I want to write about how she looked between me and the pencil with a clear mind and how she nodded, as if it was something I was always meant to take.

“I’ll Reforge it,” I said, and she nodded approvingly.

When I was alone, I took a breath and melted the heart into my wrist.

I felt way too many things, afterward. She was going to be in Shanghai. She was sorry. I felt it, the truth behind her words. I felt her confusion, also her determination to lift herself out of it, and I felt strangely proud of her.

I called her that night. It was a simple call, really. I was prepared to offer only kindness, yet even so, I was guarded, at least a little, until her first words melted all of that away.

“Hi,” she said after the first ring. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too.”

“Did you get my pencil?”

“I did. And I Reforged it.”

“Oh. I hope—I hope it made sense. I was kind of a wreck when I wrote it. I’d understand if you still don’t want to—”

“It’s okay,” I said. Something unclenched in me as I said it. “I’m going back to school next semester.”

“Really? No EMBRS?”

“I quit EMBRS.” I paused. “Actually, I kind of ruined EMBRS, maybe just temporarily though. I’m pretty sure my professor hates me now. But you were right. It took too much data and was sneaky about it and it wanted even more data and I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“I get it,” she said, that thoughtfulness I loved so much in her returning. “I did the same thing, didn’t I? Wanted your family’s story, tried to be sneaky about it, destroyed myself in the process.”

“I forgive you, you know,” I said. And I was pleased by how easy it was to say and how much I meant it. “Mine was worse, since the tech amplified it.”

“But you burned it down.” Her voice was a mixture of a sigh and a laugh. “Look at you, you rebel.”

“A rebel?” I repeated. A rebel was pretty much the last word anyone would use to describe me.

“Totally!” Her old familiar enthusiasm kicked in. “Think of it as a new way of looking at yourself. Rebel you is skeptical of this sort of tech and won’t be drawn to it in the future. Rebel you has a history of taking down this sort of thing. How cool is that? That’s something to celebrate.”