Sister Cities

Part 61: Ekko

"You are a damn hypocrite. You know that?"

I grin. "Yeah."

"When are you gonna pick a new president?"

"I wasn't planning to," I say, suddenly a lot less amused. "Do you think I should?"

She reads my mind. "Not because you're doing bad. Because you're doing way too much, and it's gonna kill you."

There will be time for you to learn to take things sometimes, instead of just giving them.

"Have you had a day off once in seven years?" she asks.

"Does anyone in the Undercity gets days off?"

"You're dodging."

"No, I haven't had a day off. But I'd take one if I needed one. And I don't."

"Tough," she says. "Because you're not leaving till I get some info out of you."

"What info?"

"Something about Snake."

"What, just anything?"

"Something about your relationship with her."

I get the idea that I'm getting backed into a corner, but what kind of corner is beyond me. I take a couple seconds to think and realize I can't come up with anything in particular. My blood chills.

"You said you loved her," Vi says.

"Yeah, I did."

"For real?"

"What? Of course."

"Well, there was something off," she says. "There's something off with how you deal with all your friends here."

"What are you talking about?" It comes out defensive. "What's your problem?"

She leans against the tree trunk, irritatingly calm. "Tons of different shit, but we're talking about your problem."

"I don't have one."

"Nope. You've got tons of different shit too."

"Shut up, Vi."

"Spill it, Ekko."

"I don't get attached to people I love anymore. I love them like they're already gone."

She points a lazy finger gun at me. "There it is."

"And it works fine too," I add hotly. "And it's not like you don't have your own attachment issues, and I bet they're even worse—"

"Tell me about your life after the explosion," she says. "Right after. Before the Firelights."

"Huh? Why?"

"I want to know."

"Why?"

"Because I missed your entire adolescence," she says. "I hardly know a thing about what you faced in the last seven years. Tell me what it was like so I can carry it with you."

She's leaning toward me now and she looks earnest, with a hint of that type of remorseful desperation she wears around Jinx whenever things get heated. I peer down through the leaves at the miniature forms of my people.

"I don't really talk about it," I say. "Especially not in detail."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It opens up all this stuff in my mind, and I don't have the time to go down rabbit holes and get stuck in the past when I have a commune to take care of."