Lily Takes Root

• How to Save a Life
• Feet of Lead

SplitShire

It wasn't going to be easy to come back to life. It was best not to do it all at once.

It had been four years since Adam repressed me so that he could play superhero without interference. Four years didn't make me legally dead, though most presumed it should. I couldn't blame them. The odds that someone that long disappeared was more than bones in a gully or a body in a 55-gallon drum were minuscule. It would be easy money that I had been murdered if you could find the kind of bookie who took that sort of bet.

I didn't tell anyone that eating an apple could turn me into a hulking, flying, bullet-resistant man, in part because it was not turning me into anything. I took a backseat as though I were unconscious, and Adam took over. I don't know where I went or where Adam was while in charge. It was not relaxing, being elsewhere, more like a fitful sleep. I would wake exhausted whenever Adam had a night out. My friends took it for depression that I would seem to sleep for days. It was the toll letting someone else play superhero took on me.

In the plus column, the mirror suggested that four years in stasis hadn't counted against me. I had not visibly aged, not that I was yet to the age where I would notice much. Still, better that Adam stole years from me and not my life directly.

My parents might have cleaned out my apartment once it no longer made sense to keep paying rent, put my stuff into storage or their basement. That was something, a step toward a return to normality.

I did not have any possessions over which I was too attached. I once had a pendant that my grandmother had given me before a welcomed death from cancer. Adam "accidentally" crushed it one of the last times I kept him where he belonged. I should have known from that what he planned to do, but I somehow sustained the hope that even he was not that much of a gaping asshole.

Maybe my loved ones did believe that one of Adam's victims, punched into in a coma that killed him, had kidnapped me. Maybe they didn't. Though I grew up under their branches, I was never the easiest nut to crack. I had liked it that way. My family was open and straightforward, more in demeanor than intellect. They were honest people who did not understand my practical need to be otherwise.

I can give no satisfying excuse for how I came to be entangled with Adam. I was in gifted classes, but so were a million other kids throughout the years. I graduated high school and college early, but those accomplishments did not matter. Cleverness on standardized tests, a quickness with puzzles, gave me only the slightest edge. An interviewer rarely wanted to give me a job based on my keenness for lateral thinking games.

I do not have any supernormal abilities. I've read up on those who do -- the internet is never less than fanatical in chronicling these -- but I've demonstrated none. All I know is that I ate an apple one day and ceased to exist. When I woke again, I discovered Adam had been there. I needed only one other experiment to know how he could be summoned, even if I would never know why.

I had eaten hundreds of apples before that one, though few since. Perhaps it was a build-up in my system, like cyanide poisoning. Perhaps, as I suggested to Dr. Anger, it was a matter of a curse if such things can be said to exist.

It was a regular apple, one of five I bought at the grocery store on that trip. When I returned to myself, the core was missing and, with it, any answers I might have taken from it.

After Adam began, I had left paper and cameras so that he could better introduce himself. He did not feel a need for this. He was not grateful to or interested in me. From a utilitarian perspective, I understood that it was better that I let him out as the situation required. He was a lunk, but he wasn't a total halfwit.

He behaved like a proper Scout, rescuing kittens and saving children from burning orphanages. I maintain that our moral codes are not the same. He does not reflect any repressed part of myself, some animus with which I was not dealing. Adam is not my masculine aspect, the yin to my yang. He merely is and, in being so, is inexplicable, more so because he doesn't have the inclination to explain.

I needed no introduction to know that Adam was a secret I would keep. It was not safe for others to know about this. Why would it be when only I could give passage to a superpowered goon? People would want him dead for interfering with their nefarious plans. No matter what he had said to me, Dr. Anger had been among this number. It was far easier and more effective to shoot me in the face than to lob a missile at Adam.

I had never tested if being conjoined with Adam made me other than mortal, but I could still nick my finger cutting vegetables. That was evidence enough.

Adam saw only black and white, the greater good. I came to hate the idea of there being a greater good. You couldn't make a solid rule true in all circumstances. Yes, you shouldn't murder, but anyone with half a brain could rattle off cases where they might do it anyway, threats to their daughters, or existential risks.

Adam couldn't understand my arguments. I set up my computer to play a video of me for him to have something like communication. I do not think he watched it and certainly did not record a response.

I saw him, though, for the first time. I watched him distend from my nude body--I learned after only one ruined outfit that nudity was a necessity if I were to eat an apple. As though reading the last few minutes of my consciousness, he looked befuddled (to me, he rarely looked otherwise) and then at the camera. That look he gave was not a kind one, but he knew enough that damaging the camera or computer would do nothing to stop the recording. He dressed in a hoodie and jeans that I had bought from the thrift store, this being a time before he had that ridiculous costume, and took off.

I do not think he hated me then, but he had no use for me. I don't know that I would have felt much differently in his calf-high boots.

I was something that stood in the way. I was the default setting. He despised me near the end, before he decided to eat apples constantly and never sleep so that I could not resume my life. To him, I must have been the greatest villain in the world because only I could defeat him.

I could not explain four years of no memories. I found a computer terminal at a library and checked my accounts that still functioned. A few email addresses had not been frozen. A bank account that I made under a distortion of my name ("Lila Garden") had a few thousand dollars--not enough to procrastinate resuming my life, but not nothing. It was not worth draining it today.

I skimmed the news of the last four years, trying to avoid the parts that dealt with Adam. I would deal with that soon enough.

I would need to reveal myself to someone soon. Not my family. Given the emails, I could see which of my friends believed I might still be out there. Until two years ago, my college roommate Malia emailed me on my birthday and Christmas. She was aware I was missing but was hopeful and sentimental. She would not ask too many of the right questions.

Calling ahead would be a mistake. If I did this, it gave Malia time to alert other people. I could not take the chance that she would make my life any more complicated than it had to be. Better to appear as though a ghost.

Life was easier when there were phone books to look up addresses, but I remembered Malia's Christmas cards, ones I never returned. Reciprocity was never necessary with Malia.

It was 5:43. It was a safe assumption she still worked as an executive assistant in the city. Factoring in the commute, she should be home.

I hopped the subway turnstile and was to her stop early.

I knocked on her door. No sounds of children. Not even dogs. Smaller movements, landing and running. Cats, three of them. Way to buy into the stereotype, Mali.

She shuffled to the door. The peephole went dark, then light, then dark again. On the other side of the door, Malia stopped breathing.

"Could you please open the door? I've had a hard day."

I rapped on the door. Locked, no deadbolt, though a chain.

"Are you okay?" Malia asked. "Were you..."

"I was. I'm not anymore. Can we talk?"

"Are you undead?"

Either I had misjudged her, or the world had changed far more than I had given it credit. A world that incorporated a flying man must have other secrets. "Malia Brown, are you out of your mind?" People got out of the way when one was confident enough to seize the conversation.

"Then what happened to you?"

I leaned close to the peephole, making my face distorted in the fisheye of the lens. "Let me in, and I will tell you everything."

She did. I didn't.

Her apartment was cozy, but I would not be staying here. This would not be a safe place. Aside from the door, the only actual exit was a fire escape that I would trust slightly less than a fire.

"I thought you were missing."

"I was," I said. "I am no longer. We covered this."

My confidence was starting to wear on her. No surprise there. "What happened? Where were you?"

Mali might believe me if I told her I was a spy in darkest Africa, kidnapped by insurgents. Apparently, to her, it was within the realm of possibility that I was a zombie. She still would not accept the truth, not that I was inclined to give it. "I'm still sorting that through."

"Wow." She batted her teacup between her fingertips. These four years had made Malia meeker, smaller. I did not have the energy to give her my curious pity. "What did your family say when you saw them?"

This, I could give her. This would play to her ego. "I have not seen them yet."

She dropped back on her tan, microfiber couch, the arms frayed from years of cat claws. "Your other friends, then?"

"Just you."

Even her smallness could not stop her skepticism. "Why me?"

The lies flooded me, so many options.

"I know I can trust you and" -- I opened my eyes wider, urging the afternoon sunlight into my pupils to dilate them in imitation of fear -- "They don't know about you."

"They?" She nearly shivered from the sudden onset of panic. Too much, Lily.

"I don't know that there is a 'they.' I just know that I woke and was standing outside, four years gone." This was close enough to the truth that it made me feel sick, a reaction that underscored to her my sincerity.

"You look good," she said, seeing me with the wrong eyes. She was always clever, though not my match in board games and puzzles. "Healthy."

I understood the implication. My story was wearing thin because I was not. "I noticed that too, that I am healthy. I don't know why yet, but I can't say I'm too sorry that I am not some starved husk." I forced a laugh. "Then you'd really think I was some kind of ghoul, right?"

She took her tea back in her hands, satisfied with me for the moment. That was the way of people. Things in front of them could only be strange for a little while. Then they came to accept them as something that was always there. "So, what do you need? Money?"

"Information." This word was too abstract for her. "Gossip."

There, she gave herself over. Through tea and an unsatisfying dinner whose ingredients I triple-checked, she brought me up to date on all the social changes the news sites could not. My brother had a child, making me an aunt in absentia. My family had a party on my birthday last year that they exhorted Malia to attend, which was in practice a memorial service. My seeming resurrection would be harder still. One of the guys I had been seeing was now married, though Malia did not think it was a happy marriage. The other was off building housing for the poor, which annoyed me more than the marriage.

Life, in short, had proceeded with no significant casualties, further complicating my return. No mourning would be necessary from a dead woman.

I cleared the plates and began automatically to wash dishes. Malia started to tell me that I didn't have to, but that only made me want to more. I had always liked the act of making things cleaner. Also, I felt that I owed her something for imposing upon her so far, knowing that I would impose upon her more soon.

We were not friends, which I think she had always known. I had no issue with her, but I did not care about her. She was a means to an end, a decent enough person, and a fine college roommate, but that didn't make her anything more than someone to whom I needed to show kindness.

My friends, not surprisingly, did not number many.

I did not look up from the cup that I dried. "I need you to promise you won't tell anyone about this yet."

Her brow furrowed. I had asked for gossip. Now I was forbidding her to share some of the best she had ever encountered. "What about your family?"

"I will deal with them," I said. "Don't worry."

My mother and I never had the sort of relationship that prospers. It was closer to that of friends, but not close ones. There was a reason I hit upon Malia first. For my mother, mourning was more uncomplicated. It made her the center of attention and pity, allowed her to slough off some responsibility. No one could expect as much out of the aggrieved mother of a likely murdered daughter. She might even slap me for the audacity of being alive.

Malia's lips went tight, an expression I had learned meant that she was trying to negotiate around me to get something she wanted. The only time this gambit succeeded in college was when I let it so that I could get something greater out of her in trade.

"Maybe someone can figure out what happened to you," she finally offered.

May that never happen.

I promised to tell them soon, but not tonight. I assured her that I would not call her or email -- too risky -- but would be in contact shortly.

"Just think," I said, "how exciting all this is? A former roommate coming back from the dead." She gasped. "Metaphorically speaking. Imagine the book you could write about that." Her gaze fell from me. So, she had stopped writing while I was gone. Maybe she had stopped before, and I had never cared to ask about it. I did not now care to ask.

To cover for her embarrassment that she abandoned something that gave her life substance, she reaffirmed that she would tell no one. It was the best I was going to get.

Though I told her I didn't want her money, it was easy to get her to loan me a few hundred dollars. "Resurrection doesn't leave one financially liquid."

This phrase baffled her, but she gave me the money, all the same, making me swear that I would return it within a few weeks.

I should have been contented that the world had kept spinning without me, but it was hard not to feel disappointed that it could. Adam would have told me that it was better that I was gone, though he could never have said this to my face. If I had his abilities... but, no, I would not do what he did with them. I would keep it quiet. I could not stand the ego of wanting to be a superhero.

I figured that I had maybe a month before the world knew that Adam was out of commission. He had dipped out of sight for months at a time when I couldn't cope with vanishing so that a meathead could save a kitten from a tree. I couldn't hope that the public would accept that he had returned to where he had come from, though he had. The world would assume something had happened to him.

From a bodega, I bought a burner phone with Malia's cash. Once activated, I dialed his number.

"Hello?" he asked, sounding baffled.

"Hey, Anger. Were there zombies while I was gone?"

He was quiet a moment. "How do you even have this number?"

"When I was in your nerve center, I checked," I said. "I have a good head for numbers. Do you want to know what other things I found out while I was there?"

He breathed slowly. "I thought we were going to be strangers. Unless--"

"Adam is not coming back," I said. "I also said that we were both still trapped. We are."

"What did you want?" His voice was tenser now, more like when he first encountered me instead of Adam in his cage.

A woman walked by, sloe-eyed and distracted. Not a threat. "I need a place. Someone safe."

"No," he said hollowly. "I am not safe."

He wasn't wrong. He had kidnapped Adam, though, which made him usefully dangerous. He knew I existed, one of two people aware for certain that I was back.

"Doctor, I'm not the safest person in the world either."

"You worked hard to escape the cage."

I sniffed. "And I find myself in a larger one now. Am I going to escape it? We can hope. Am I going to do it without your help? Possibly, but I don't have the energy for it tonight."

I don't think he needed even this level of convincing. We had a common enemy. He was closer then to a friend than Malia could ever be.

When I arrived back, he had changed his clothes, now wearing a loose button-down shirt. Was what he wore then the outfit in which he meant to gloat over his trapped enemy? No, it was a cream turtleneck sweater and blue jeans. He looked like the principal of a progressive high school, considering a disobedient student over the rims of his glasses.

"Come in before anyone sees you." Beneath his act of frustrated resignation, I spied the smallest smile. He was not happy to see me, of this, there could be no question, but he liked me despite this.

Who would see me? He was divorced--or separated, at least. If he could have created a subterranean lair, it was a good guess that there was no homeowner's association to look askance. Still, I hurried inside as though I were some dirty little secret of his, some starry-eyed side piece seduced from the nearest junior college. He should be so lucky.

His living room had seemed too bright when I was eager to leave. Now, it looked downright homey. His drag of being an ordinary middle-aged man was the perfect camouflage for a supervillain. Or was this the real identity, and what I had seen beneath was something he would shed in time? Being a supervillain of his stripe couldn't have the best retirement plan.

It was not that Dr. Anger felt he owed me anything, though he did for the inconvenience. His incidentally having rescued me from my trap did not forgive that. His file on Adam would be an excellent beginning to the reparations.

Over drinks, he let me interrogate him more about what I had missed.

There were other heroes out there, most of whom Adam's existence had inspired. A handful seemed to be preternaturally powerful, the rest people with above-average human skills. Their mortality rate was as generous as one could expect. Only a few seemed local, which was a few too many. If they took Adam as a role model, they would take his disappearance personally.

Over an hour, Anger and I tried to put together a story that would provoke the fewest questions from my family. Not no questions. Even if that were possible--and how could it be?--it would not give me a barometer of how much they believed me.

My return would change the trajectory of their lives once more, warping whatever progress they had made with my disappearance as a gravity well around which they had to navigate.

He could not craft a lie that would allay concerns, certainly not something that would satisfy my family enough to keep quiet. My only real hope was that I stayed hidden long enough to fuzzy up any chance of association with Adam's disappearance.

I returned to his stepdaughter's bedroom. Her wardrobe was not my style, but I would be taking as much of this as I could when we parted ways again. To my satisfaction, she even had underwear fresh from the store, the tags still on them. His daughter had a more generous cup size, but it wasn't the first time in my life I had to work around that deficit.

It should have felt apprehension, fingering the shirts that had belonged to some teenager. They had been unworn for so long that they had lost any aura bequeathed upon them by their original owner. Yet there were pictures of times she spent with her family and friends. Happy times with Dr. Anger, pumpkin picking, and at a birthday party. From these, she gained unwanted depth.

Anger offered her name, but I willed myself not to remember it. If I were to occupy her shell like a hermit crab, I couldn't need her story in full.

Anger didn't fight my claim to these clothes, himself acknowledging that his stepdaughter would not be coming back. That is what convinced me that I was being selfish. His stepdaughter lived somewhere, and he could not contact her. I lived despite the knowledge of most of the people in my life. I couldn't deny them their choice of whether to accept me or not.

"You look good," he said when I was dressed again.

"That's an unsettling thing to hear from her step-father."

He rolled his bottom lip in his teeth, a laugh like a single breath issuing from his nose. "You look good in that you look comfortable. It is not a commentary on your attractiveness, particularly in my stepdaughter's jeans."

"I'm glad to hear it." He seemed uncertain about how to handle this conversation. I made him uneasy, which was understandable. Our relationship to date had not been traditional.

"You can sleep here tonight," Dr. Anger offered, likely knowing that I intended to anyway, "but I don't want to make this a habit."

I sat on the bed. It had been so long that I had any reason to sleep in a girl's room. For a heartbeat, I missed being her age. But, in a sense, I was never allowed to be his stepdaughter's age. "I don't think I am in a place where staying in any one place is wise," I said, then realized I was meant to add something. "Thank you for the offer."

The former statement provoked more curiosity than worry. "Why? Who do you think is after you?"

"No one," I said. "Not yet. But I would put together these disparate facts. I don't see why other people wouldn't eventually. There seems to be an abundance of Adam groupies out there."

"You are not most people."

"Neither are you. Would you put it together?"

He looked down, considering the facts as he had them. "Yes, I would. Not immediately, but entering them into the computer would make me curious about you. I wouldn't conclude that you were Adam." He motioned for me not to make the argument that I was not Adam. "But I would theorize that your return and his removal might be related."

"How long would that take you?"

He shrugged. "How much are you going to be in the news?"

I smiled despite myself. "Exactly my point. How can I come back from the dead without anyone reporting it?"

He tapped his forefinger against his leg, a gesture of concentration. "Your other option is to be nothing and no one."

"Haven't I been that for four years? At least this would be a conscious choice."

He appraised me over the rims of his glasses again. "You would never make this decision."

"Not tonight, at least." I lifted a romper out of the stepdaughter's box, then tossed it away with the instant awareness of the clue I had been missing, what had been adding another layer of unease since my return.

"His costume," I whispered.

Anger looked me over. "The one you made? What about it?"

"The one that I absolutely did not make," I said, expression fierce, "though I'm flattered that you think otherwise."

Dr. Anger's eyes got wider, understanding what this meant. "There were no sensors in it," he said. This was partially a question because he knew that I would have checked it out before using it against him. I would have known that it would not blow up in my face before making it a weapon. But he would have checked it out, too, once I was out of his life. Once I left it behind in my haste to escape. He might treat it as a trophy of sorts or a memento of the strange woman who was, for a few hours, his unwilling guest.

"Right, that's a boon, but that means that Adam has some tech-savvy accomplice that is going to get nosy sooner than either of us want. Know of any super who would fit that bill?"

Dr. Anger put his hand over his eyes. Not in thought, but the overwhelming burden of having this answer.

"The Orchid Mantis."