"Is it who you are or something someone else tells you to be?"
Drugs in her hand, painful memories, and the endless wish to step away from reality left her dreary in the eyes. "I need this," Jessica said hoarsely.
Closer steps, the white pants neared. "If you can look me in the eye with complete belief in that, then you go right ahead and take it."
Once again, Jessica eyed the Mesnomer. As it dropped from her hand, she felt stomach knots and the prelude to a headache. Wrapped in her own arms, she tried to hide the pain. "What the hell can I believe in?" she sobbed.
"Start with yourself," the lady pressed. "If you start there, life will be your looking glass!"
"Jessica snickered. "You can fuck off."
The lady stared disquietly at Jessica's rising glare. On the verge of a breakdown, the teenager's sanguine attention leered before she coughed words like vomit.
"What do you know of what I live with? You're like the automaton teachers who tell me to worry about my shit grades," she laughed. "But you're not as bad as my 'friends,' though, who shit all over my sense of style for—who the fuck cares! Their job is to worry about my rep, which makes adults look at me like I'm a fucking alien. Oh, wait..."
There was no hiding the hysterics. In attempting to lash back, Jessica's outcry slowly minced into delirious whimpering.
"I'm-done-giving-a-damn! Everyone, the moment I show a fraction of what I can do, they brush me off. Ah-and teachers get offended because of w-what? Because I calculate out of my head? My classmates, they're confused no matter what I do. Scared even! Everyone else is awkward around me, intimidated for something so stupid as my verbosity. Correction: 'Big words!' I can't use symbolic logic around other students... or even logic. Maybe one day, when I incorrectly apply the word literally, I can get them to like me.
"I am the black sheep whenever they see me and not what they want to see! The outcast because I-I-I can recite a lecture from memory. One mention of quantum algorithms, the world shouts 'hack!' What does a freshman need that for, rrright? When I'm not toted as a reject, I'm a circus act. If not a circus act, just a plain old fffreak! What's the point of me being me? What the hell is me? I never asked for me!"
The old woman's eyes never left, never winced, and never faltered. The young teenager was quivering, oblivious. And after choking on her last word, she fell to her knees, nails dug into her scalp.
"With everything you can do and teach this old hag," the woman said, "I have to imagine someone, somewhere, would be rooting for you. The world is not a frozen vacuum, sweetheart."
Jessica's tears drowned the color in her eyes. Fingers to her own head, they gunned for what lay inside. "Why couldn't I lose this instead of my parents?"
Clarity.
"What is your name?" the lady said.
"Jessica."
"Tell me your whole name."
She stared. "Jessica Teresa Leibniz."
"Jessica Teresa Leibniz. When I say that, what does it mean to you?"
"A lot of things."
"And what do you want it to mean?"
"A lot of things..."
"Are they the same?"
Upright and confused, Jessica looked at her watch. Creativity, uncertainty, that's all she thought up; they defined her. "My mom and dad," she started hesitantly. "I saw a glimpse of their hopes before I was blindsided. I might end up nothing. Right now, I don't really know. Don't know if I care."
"And yet," the woman smiled, "I think it you could mean the world one day."
Jessica rubbed her eyes and sighed cathartically. She stepped on the Mesnomer, glass cracking underfoot. "I'm sorry for being a bitch."
"You were exercising. Here," the elder started, turning with her Tacquizza bag, "how about you help me finish this while we talk more about Jessica Leibniz."
She dithered. "But I still have classes."
"I think you've had enough schooling for one day." The lady beckoned her forward, starting down the street.
Unable to argue, Jessica shrugged and accepted the old woman's offer by stomping next to her. She felt awkward, at first, but let curiosity speak on her behalf. "Are you a daughter of Abraham, miss?"
"Yes. And you may call me Beth. Bethany Sanders is my name."
Jessica pointed to the Tacquizza box. "What's special about this food that has you on the street?"
"Believe it or not, their tacos are kosher."
"Get out of here."
"I will stay here, Jessica."
"You can call me Jess. My friends—well, my Homegirl, she calls me Jess."
"And what is a home girl?"
"It's like a friend that's actually a friend: a girl you would let into your home. Maybe; I don't know."
"Does that make us home girls?" Beth enunciated.
Jessica snickered. "If it would fit."
"That's cool, Jess."
"So, is there a Mister Sanders?"
"There was a mister. Sanders is my maiden name."
"I see... I'm sorry?"
"As long as you're goal-oriented, Jess, the loss or lack of a mister will never be the end of you. Difficult, sure, but not the end. You will learn."
"Hindsight is 2020, I bet."
"It is just enough."
***
Better memories seemed impossible to live. Jessica had fallen hard into the most common misconception, that the past was the home of bliss. Anything else, everything else, was like falling. But she discovered that life's pitfalls were pauses—not stops—on the road to paradise. Carpe Diem.
Falling, falling, falling from the sky, the trick was in the landing.
Electricity pulsed across her body and opened her eyes. She was spiraling into New Sumer. The weightless rider with relentless imagination, embraced by the wind, grabbed hold of the board. She watched the city suburbs grow along with her blood pressure.
"Get ready!"
"Freefall nearing 340 feet!" cried Babel. "Ready to die now, Jess?"
The afternoon train now slid through New Sumer's eastern district. She shifted her weight appropriately, meticulously, to align with the rail. It had been a matter of calculating the interception to a tee. At approximately 100 meters from the ground, Jessica powered through the stress of the descent, and the gravity board fell underneath her feet.
"McFly!"
The deck magnetized, rail line directly underneath when the locomotive arrived. Her legs shook, hips swayed, and her arms flailed outward, but she quickly compensated for the slam of gravity. In the end, the deck aligned.
The landing was successful.
After powering past the whiplash, Jessica sped forward and hovered across the cars. As intended, the monorail expedited the trip and provided an unpaid fare to Pine Rim. The HUD's countdown constantly harassed her focus. Nothing, however, absorbed the heat of adrenaline. With four minutes left, she believed she could make it. She had to. Her heart still pounded in her chest, the race against time tolling every bell of doubt. As the train swerved north, she launched off the rail and onto the streets, moving east.
Emergency vehicle sirens very quickly intercepted Jessica's glide around the street corners. This meant Goliath made use of her data.
Red highways, azure villages, then black and green hover cars. Of the entire fleet of vehicles, she was the literal first responder. She would rescue Beth. At the very least, they had to be evacuating Pine Rime Hovels by now. To be sure, she tried calling. Her watch established a line but received no response.
"Come on, Babel!"
Three minutes left.
Jessica broke around the corner, where the park came into view, then landed on the north-west building beside her destination. Down below lay the entrance to Pine Rim Hovels. An emergency vehicle had already arrived. White and nylon outfits raced out of a hovering truck, letters BDU on their uniforms. New Sumer's Bomb Disposal Unit. They raced into the building as if their protective gear weighed nothing, while several civilians ran past them. And from the truck, one official cried through the speaker. "Residents, please exit in a calm and orderly fashion!" Other law enforcement barely hit the brakes, with none to harbor curious spectators at a safe distance.
In a panic, Jessica quickly scanned the mob of people gathered at the edge of the park. Beth was nowhere to be found.
Two minutes left.
Either she was inside or out. The burden of the former punched Jessica's heart into hyperventilation.
"Jess!" The voice. The cool and elderly voice.
Jessica turned until the white smile suddenly did away with her despair. Beth stood on the roof of Pine Rim, waiting with a cane in hand. Of Course. She was predictive that way. "Beth! Stay on the roof, homegirl, I'm coming!"
The roof made sense. It made her easy to find in the event of an emergency. A spot where a vehicle could easily land—or a friend with a gravity board—and the old lady knew it.
With all the confidence in her eyes, Beth had to be the calmest person on the scene. The wrinkly bend of her warm smile carried on, like faith. Jessica hover toward the ledge when she was interrupted by fire.
A blaze followed rubble in all directions. Blindness and discord riled Jessica's fall, an explosion and muffled cries rattling her senses into blackness. The last thing she remembered, unholy destruction as a hellfire maw devoured Pine Rim Hovels and Beth along with it.