I got the idea watching Chev. He was dancing and making a real fool of himself, but that was nothing new. Through a careful process of trial and error, double blind studies, random extemporaneous scientific bullshit (we knew all the words by that point, if not necessarily how to use them) I’d determined Chev was basically the dumbest boy alive. Take a box of rocks, smash ‘em all together, remove the three or four biggest chunks, then toss the rest into the gutter. That was Chev. Dumb as shit, but he was onto something.

“Naw,” he’d said, “that ain’t it. Keeneetaa’s not some big science thing. It’s a dance.”

Then he’d just up and started. Gyrating. His hips did this thing that made them look halfway broken, but it got two of the girls watching, Analise and Jen, and because they were watching now the boys had to and so on. Just to make fun of him, you understand. Bunch of urchins gathered on the corner, dirty as sin between the rains, and there’s Chev thrusting air. Waving his hands all woo-woo. Jumping like we’d tossed him in hot coals. Which we’d done before, so that’s probably where he got it. Probably.

And there I was with my idea.

It was a good idea. For months now all anyone’d been able to talk about was ‘keeneetaa.’ Just what happens when a couple dickhead Godlings up and fall out of the sky, spouting stuff about sentience and the like. Little bastards too, wouldn’t make it half a minute on the streets without their drones and power armor. Those laser things they wear over their fingers like so much spun gold, got all the girls drooling after them, these pretty little ringlets that’ll kill you. Saw a program once, real-like, spliced into a matrix terminal by a gas station off the 5, where they talked about all the things keeneetaa might and might not be. Not the drones or armor or the magic, kill-you-from-a-dozen rings. Not skin color, ours or theirs. Not religion, but maybe philosophy, not science but maybe art.

Not money, but it worked just like it. We needed keeneetaa to make our way, and didn’t have it, couldn’t grok it, so really this great big off-blue shithole of a planet was really one big urchin. Like the President and me were squatting over the same pot, talking about the winds and rains.

Shit. So it was on our minds, and when Chev just thought to lie about it, easy as you please, and start dancing like a loon, I thought, ‘Ike Green, you can do that too.’

“Naw,” I said, “that ain’t keeneetaa either. Kids like you wouldn’t get it.”

And of course, that got them looking. It was the way I said it, smooth-like, like those men behind the men glass drinking whiskey, closing their eyes for a second like they just get it—the it being immaterial because fuck it, I got whiskey. I said it like that, and when all of them looked over, I was looking somewhere in particular. At Cristabel, who was my age, really, they all were, but who had this shy way about her that made her seem a little younger, a little fragile, maybe not quite made for this world—though she made it seem like a good thing, the only thing, the best thing.

“What is it, then?” she asked. And I harrumphed like I knew what I was doing. Took a long, meaningful look around at everyone that wasn’t her. Turned.

My heart was in my fucking throat.

Fuck you though, I didn’t look back.

Ok, I did, but still. Fuck you.

When I looked back Chev was still there, dancing. I could just make out in the firelight, flames guttering in old beat up oil drums, painting tall shadows on the wall and in the hollows of our eyes. And of course there were more hollows, half of starving including me and Cristabel, with rib cages like Death’s own bony fingers reaching to clasp our waists. In the firelight I saw Cristabel look left, look right. Her friends, Analise and Jen were still watching Chev do his thing. The others had mostly turned back to him, but that was fine, that’s what I wanted. I laid the seeds carefully, with just my eyes. Something Chev would never learn, that sometimes, less is more. Why dance, burning calories, when your eyes will do?

When I looked away, Cristabel was already coming.

And then for a little bit it was bare footsteps slapping on cold concrete. Trains running on the bridge above my head, rattling the world.

It was an idea, just that. Everything, every little bit of what I had.

I fetched up against a rotten bridge pier, and waited.

“Hey!” Cristabel said a minute later. “You don’t actually know what keeneetaa is, do you?”

Don’t smile.

“’Course I do,” I said. “It’s simple.”

“No it isn’t,” she said. “If it was simple the scientists would have figured it out already.”

“Bells,” I said, “they ain’t figured it out precisely because it’s simple. Like when new-folk hit the streets in the last recession, and they was freezing to death because they didn’t know how to insulate and the like. They was scientists and bankers, that kinda shit, but it still took folk like us to tell ‘em.”

Cristabel looked away. In the half-dark of the bridge piers I saw her bite her lip again and nod. She’d been one of them that hit the streets in the last recession. High-born parents and the like. Analise and Jen, with some help from Chev and me, had gotten her all situated.

And I still remembered the color of her hair under all that mud.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, ok. Then what is it? Tell me, Ike.”

“Why you want to know?”

She laughed then. It spiraled off and I lost it in the rattling bridge as another train passed over. “Doesn’t everyone?” she asked. “It would be nice to feel like a sentient again. Or at least a human being.”

My pulse quickened up. My skin heated, burning calories.

“Step closer,” I said.

She hesitated, then did.

“Closer,” I said again.

And now she was within arms reach. Scarecrow limbs. Hair and eyes like the fires that we’d left behind.

“Close your eyes,” I told her.

“Ike…”

“It’s fine, you can trust me. Just close ‘em.”

She closed her eyes. Breathing. I guess that’s what she did then. It’s a fascinating thing to watch a girl breathe.

“Ike?” she said.

“It’s a thing they do with their lips. The aliens. Like this…”

And then I kissed her. Just like that. Soft and gentle, though it took everything I had not to grab at her. She’d gone stiff on me, stiff and scared, and didn’t soften till I stepped away, my hands pinned against my sides.

“Oh,” she said.

“What?” I said. “You thought that this was something else?”

“Maybe,” she said. Biting at her lip again.

“But was it nice? Did you feel like…”

“Like what?”

“Like a human?”

A moment passed. Back there Chev was probably still dancing. Idiot, but he'd been on to something. I’d thought about this since last winter, and hadn’t been brave enough to do it.

She whispered: “Yes.”

I whispered: “I’ve got a little food. Not much, just a bite. I’ll bring it to you, you don’t have to do anything.”

“Keeneetaa me again first,” she said.

I did.

And when we got back Chev was still there, dancing. The firelight brushed up against him, painted ecstasies across brick walls. He was smiling, I hadn’t noticed that before. Cristabel was too.

And me.

“Thanks, Chev,” I told him.

The night passed, and Chev danced on. In the morning, blessedly, it rained.

r/TurningtoWords