Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(61)

“Hell of a story, Riotgrrl,” she breathed when Eve stopped speaking.

“… Yeah.”

“How you chewing on it all?”

Eve dragged her hand through her fauxhawk. Shaking her head.

“I don’t know. It’s like … there’s two people. Two sets of fingers in my skull. Trying to pull me apart. I can remember being Ana. That little princess in her tower. I can remember the taste of clean water and the smell of my mother’s hair and the feel of my father’s stubble on my cheek when he kissed me goodnight. My sisters. My baby brother, god … He would’ve liked you, Lem.” Eve hung her head, tears pattering onto Cricket’s dome. “I was so young and so goddamn na?ve about everything. And a part of me wonders if some part of it wasn’t my fault. If I’d’ve warned them about Gabriel and Grace, if I’d’ve spoken up about Raphael …”

“You can’t think like that, Riotgrrl,” Lemon murmured. “It was two years ago. You were just a kid. You didn’t know what was coming. You didn’t know what they’d do.”

“And then there’s the girl I became,” Eve sniffed. “A skinny scavverkid who fought for everything she ever got. Eight straight in the Dome. That girl feels so real to me. But everything she was built on is a lie. The person I thought I’d been, the memories I made myself on, they were all just crap. So who the hell am I, Lem? Am I Ana? Or am I Eve?”

“You’re my bestest,” the girl insisted, squeezing Eve tight. “Your past doesn’t make calls on your future. It doesn’t matter who you were. Only who you are.”

Eve sighed, shook her head. “It’s messed up, Lem.”

“No arguments here.”

Lemon entwined her fingers with Eve’s, playing with the five-leafed clover at her throat. She didn’t have vid as a kid, had no clue how the powerful of this dying world had really lived. Though she was never one for history, she knew the Monrova family was virtual royalty. That Eve must’ve grown up in a world Lemon could never understand. It made sense, she supposed. Evie had always had a soft spot. Way too sweet for someone born and raised in Dregs. Maybe even with the headshot, some part of her had always remembered losing her family. Maybe that’s why she’d always treated Lemon like kin? Trying to somehow replace the kin she’d lost?

Any way you cut it, Eve was her sister. Maybe not in blood, but in the real. And it made Lemon angry to see her hurting. She stood and looked over the railing, searching for Ezekiel. She had no clue where he’d gone—off with Hope, she supposed—but she was of half a mind to track him down and slap that dimple right off his head.

“He should never have brought you here,” she growled.

“We were in deep.” Eve shrugged. “That preacher …”

“Riotgrrl, this redhead shot your sister. She was right there in the room when your parents were ghosted. Like, all of ’em are bad news, but she was one of the four who actually pulled the trigger on your fam. What the hells was Dimples thinking?”

“I don’t trust him,” Cricket muttered. “Never have.”

“He saved my life, Crick,” Eve sighed. “Four times now, since we’re keeping score.”

“It wouldn’t have needed saving if not for him and his merry band of murderbots.”

Lemon turned from the railing, folded her arms.

“So whatcha wanna do?”

“I don’t know.” Eve shook her head, buried it in her hands. “I don’t know.”

Lem’s heart ached to see her bestest so upset. She felt like she was watching the girl disintegrate right in front of her. Clomping over, she sat down on the mattress next to Eve and threw her arm around her shoulder, squeezing tight. The pair leaned their heads together, sat in silence for what seemed an age. Too big and scary to let it go on for long.

“Ana Monrova,” Lemon sighed. “Last scion of the Monrova clan.”

“Yeah.”

“… I guess that means you’re rich, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Will you buy me a pony?”

Eve scoffed softly. “What’re you gonna do with a pony?”

“I dunno,” she shrugged. “Start a Neo-Meat? stand?”

Eve chuckled, cheeks still damp with tears. “You’re awful, Lemon.”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘wonderful.’”

Eve simply smiled. Staring at her hands, eye gleaming, saying nothing.

“Listen,” Lemon said. “Eve. Ana. Whatever you want to call yourself. You’re still Riotgrrl to me, yeah? And I don’t care who’s after you. Where you’re from or where you’re going. It’s you, me, Crick and Kaiser. No matter what. Rule Number One in the Scrap, remember? Stronger together, together forever. Right?”

“Right,” declared Cricket.

Eve was staring into space, her optic whirring.

“Right?” Lemon insisted.

Eve nodded. Her voice a whisper. “Right.”

They sat for a time in silence, Lemon’s arm around Eve. She didn’t know what she could say to make it better. Didn’t know how to make the hurt go away.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Eve finally said.