Megan squirmed in her seat, the plastic chair slippery and hard. The blond man at the microphone had been going on too long and she ached to run to the beach or to pet the cute dog the woman in the next row held in her lap.
She opened her mouth to ask Adams if they could get a dog, but he shushed her and nodded towards the stage.
She was tired of paying attention. She missed Storm and knew the ceremony was important to Maria and Adams but she didn’t see how rebuilding and promises to be more careful in the future had anything to do with Storm.
She poked Eli, hoping for a reaction but he was too busy being the good. His suit made him look boring and he had been refusing to do anything fun since he put it on. He said it made him look like a soldier, which it didn’t. But he was always doing stuff like that now, wanting to be just like Adams, so he could save the world too.
She sighed and swung her feet. The flat shoes made her feet look like a doll’s and they flopped around too much when she ran.
Eli nudged her.
“It’s your turn.”
“Do you remember what you need to do?” Adams asked. Lida looked on from behind him, her hand on her rounded belly. Megan wondered if the baby was kicking, and if Lida would let Megan put her hand on it like she had before. The little foot had pushed against her hand –
“Megan.”
Adams was looking at her. “They’re waiting for you.”
She dragged her thoughts back from that tiny foot, and the intensity of the energy it held. She jumped off her chair and tried to stand still while Adams fixed the bow in her hair. He gave her a quick kiss on her forehead, he was always doing that, and nudged her towards the stage.
“Good luck.”
The aisle was an open space of grass between the rows of chairs. The tiny grass stems that were pushing up from the earth were like little trees. She would have liked to have a closer look, to see if the force of the implosion had changed their structure. Or whether the earth felt different.
“Megan!”
Adams pushed her towards the stage.
Faces looked back at her from rows of chairs. Marty smiled at her encouragingly. She would have liked to curl in her lap and feel the steady flow of her that was so much better than Romero’s jittery nervousness beside her.
Megan gave her a small wave and walked up the middle of the aisle like they had practiced.
Maria stood at the end of it, kind of like she was getting married, and looking not like herself in her pressed uniform and tidy hair.
A couple people from the hospital nodded at her and she nodded back. It felt like a game that they were all acting so differently. They hadn’t needed to pretend when they had all thought they were dying. One of the kids she had played with no longer had white hair, his short bristles coming in a dark brown and she would have liked to get a closer look.
Ahead of her, Maria held out her hand. She wanted Megan to hurry. The tight compactness of Maria’s energy was so much different than the easy flow of Amanda’s beside her. Amanda looked awesome in her black blazer and pants, her hair straight and shiny. Megan wanted to be that cool when she was older, though Adams had forbidden her to smoke.
She took Maria’s hand. It was strong like Adams’ and made her feel safe.
The blonde man, or the Prime Minister, as she was supposed to call him, smiled down at them. He was impatient with her and his energy was a tangled, crazy ball in his chest.
“Only you can see that,” Adams had said when she asked him, and warned her not to share. Not even Eli could feel the multitudes of energy that surrounded them. She couldn’t remember now when she hadn’t been able to see the shimmer of energy that filled everything. Sometimes, she thought she always had.
She and Maria walked together up the three steps to the stage. It was set up on top of the tiny, new shoots of grass and she wanted them to move it.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” said the Prime Minister.
He reached out his hand to shake and she almost didn’t. His energy was too wrong, always reaching and grabbing.
“Don’t be shy.”
Megan checked with Maria, who tilted her head.
She touched his hand briefly and pulled it back as fast as she could.
“What you did was very brave.”
She shrugged and the audience laughed.
Staying at the hospital hadn’t been brave, but she understood why Storm had asked her to stay. They had both known she wouldn’t be coming back, and someone had to carry on.
“Not as brave as Storm.”
“We can only hope to be as brave as she was.”
Which would have made him okay except he said it out into the crowd. Not their moment, but a moment for everyone.
She slipped her hand back into Maria’s.
The crowd looked small from the stage. The rows of chairs barely making a mark in the acres of flattened land.
“Like a nuclear bomb,” is how the newspapers had described it. Except it wasn’t. It had been the network falling inward. She had felt it from the hospital. It worried her that they were trying to fit it into something they already knew because it showed how little they understood.
“I want to thank Ms. Kowalski and Megan for agreeing to be part of this memorial. They, along with so many others –“ He nodded to Amanda and Adams, and the rows of people from the hospital. “Were critical in helping Ms. Freeman put a stop to the destruction of the Gatherer.”
He paused, giving everyone a chance to look around at the flattened field and the open spaces where The Gatherer compound had once been.
“We will always be grateful for her sacrifice –“
Storm’s mom sat in the front row, she looked like Storm, kind of, in an older, sadder way. Megan had a memory of her own mom, before they’d taken her away, her energy already gone.
“ -For freeing us from an invention that while delivered with the best intentions, had gone so terribly wrong. It is a harsh reminder to all of us the caution we need to bring to those things we don’t fully understand.”
“Will you do the honours?”
The Prime Minister was holding out a pair of scissors and smiling at her.
They were cool to the touch, except on the blade where he had held them. She was careful not to hold them there.
He stood back, letting her and Maria walk behind the podium to where the yellow ribbon tied shut the canvas.
“A statue,” Eli had said.
“A memorial,” said Adams.
Maria had her head bowed and Megan did the same. She was aware of the ripple of the crowd, the potential of their combined energy surrounding the group. The air was different, carried only the faint hint of charge, and smelling of the ocean.
She lifted the scissors and Maria’s warm hand enclosed around hers.
“Ready?”
Megan could feel the drag of Maria’s sorrow. Not on the surface, but deeper down where she thought it was hidden.
“She knew what would happen,” said Megan.
Maria inhaled sharply, close enough that only Megan heard. She nodded, looking lost for an instant, as if Megan had hurt her.
“She doesn’t want you to be sad.”
Maria nodded before her eyes narrowed.
“Wouldn’t or doesn’t?”
The Prime Minister clapped Maria on the back.
“Do you need some help over here?”
“Not at all,” said Maria.
They lifted their hands together, the blades opening wide before slicing through the thin ribbon. The two ends fell to the side, the canvas falling with it so that in a well-designed reveal, the covering fell away.
Megan smiled. The statue was beautiful. White and glowing and showing Storm as Megan always thought of her. Her arms upraised, her head back and a smile on her lips, as she released the bird into the air.
The bird, its wings outstretched, was in the perfect shape of the Gatherer logo.
The audience clapped. Maria didn’t move, her face lifted. Storm looked happy, whoever had carved it catching the best part of her.
“We are finished here,” said Maria.
Megan just heard the words before they were carried on the wind.
Megan took Maria’s hand, considered showing her part of what she could see but they were being herded off the stage. The Prime Minister said some words she didn’t hear because Maria was leaning too hard on her. She tripped on the stairs.
Amanda was at the bottom, and she caught Maria, her hands steady where she held her.
“I’ve got it from here,” said Amanda. She winked at Megan as she tilted her head towards Eli, who stood with Adams and Lida.
She waved to him, turning as he started to follow, and raced ahead towards the ocean and the open sky.