Chapter 3 | After

"Who's there, Kelrina?" my mother's voice comes from the living room.

No one. That is what I want to say. I can imagine the look my mother would give me. Narrowed eyes. Hands held in akimbo. She would get suspicious. I fumble for a plausible answer but I am too late.

The door swings open behind me, forcing me to let go. My mother leans against the doorway, one hand clutching a handkerchief.

"A friend of yours?" she asks.

Alex watches me without saying a word. I give a slight nod. "Yes, Alex is one of my classmates."

I don't bother with the introductions. We'll never see Alex again. He'll be gone from my life from tomorrow, like fog at the onset of sunrise.

"Ah, Alex. Well, come in." She takes off her glasses and puts them in the pocket of her jeans. "Please make yourself comfortable."

Alex looks around. There are no couches or tables left. The living room is empty save for the large boxes piling up in a mountain. This house already looks like a stranger to me. Sooner or later, it will be pushed back into the recess of my memories, a four-cornered structure with no sense or meaning. This isn't the first house I've left behind and it won't be the last.

"I'll stand," Alex says. "We were about to go for a walk."

My mother turns to me, her eyebrow arched. I nod at her. A walk would be better than getting stuck in here, making awkward conversations while staring at the carton boxes and the droids moving them around.

I head for the stairs. "I'll just get my things."

Up in my room, RIN greets me with a series of blips. She pauses to look at me then slips into my closet. I put my wallet and a bottle of water into my bag. My mother's journal is next. I never go anywhere without it.  

The journal is older than I am. My mother started writing on it from way back  in her university days. All of her ideas and sketches, brilliant or radical, are stored in its yellowed pages. I am not foolish for carrying it with me outside. The journal has the toughest locking mechanism and the most recent nanotracker to boot.

My fingers brush over the leather cover. Memories flood my mind. My mother teaching me how to make my first robot, my mother humming All My Love by Led Zeppelin while dismantling an android in the basement, my mother giving me the journal on my fifteenth birthday, my mother hooting and clapping as I receive my high school certificate... She's all I've ever had. She is my home.

RIN bumps into my leg. A compartment shoots open from her belly. In it are the coin, the scrunchie and the paper clip. Something else catches my eye. A beaded bracelet with a nazar, an eye-shaped amulet with a black dot inside a blue circle and white circle surrounding the blue circle. I grab the bracelet and crumple it in my palm.

Alex gave it to me on our six month anniversary. He'd said the old shopkeeper in Istanbul had told him the nazar would ward off the evil eye, that it would protect the wearer from harm and misfortune. Alex had wanted to keep me safe when he couldn't be there to protect me.

I throw the bracelet with all the force I can muster. It hits the wall and tumbles down the floor. RIN's sensor spins, locking on the bracelet. She begins moving away from me and towards her target. She picks up the bracelet, drops it into the compartment and returns to me.

I turn away, blinking back the tears that blur my vision. I am not going to cry. I will not cry. Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I walk out of the room.

My mother's laughter floats to my ears as I descend the stairs. Alex must have made her laugh. What would she think if she found out he was the boy who left me stranded in a foreign city, alone and heartbroken? Would she still welcome him into her house and laugh at his jokes?

"There you are," my mother says. She is sitting on an upturned crate of soda, hands resting against her lap.  "I was about to come get you."

"Sorry, I got carried away," I say. I turn to Alex. "Let's go."

Alex says goodbye to my mother and wishes her a safe journey to Vayne. I open the door to let him pass. A waft of wind greets me at the porch, tossing locks of blonde hair into my face. Tucking the errant strands behind my ear, I step into the streets of New Nairobi with Alex right beside me.