42
The cream-colored rose had faded. Teresa held the limp flower in her palm. She plucked one petal and tossed it into the fountain water, then another, then another, watching the white bits of blossom drift away.
Teresa felt shaken and alone. She had spent her childhood and now her adult life with a hunger to understand, mixed with a dread that she would never quite succeed. She spent hours just listening to the fountain spray, as if she could hear Arthur’s whispering voice buried in its trickles and gurgles and spurts, telling her more secrets about life . . . and about death.
By the time she had exposed the flower’s inner parts, her grief was overwhelming, and she tossed the rest of the rose into the fountain. She walked away, through oblivious crowds past Club Masquerade, through a financial district with skyscrapers and mass-transit tubes humming overhead. She kept her gaze in front of her, sometimes focused on the far distance, other times just on the sidewalk ahead.
She still held the passes to Garth’s FRUSTRATION exhibit. She had meant to take Arthur there, to show him the facets of humanity as seen through the eyes of an artist. Now the old man would never see it. Walking numbly, Teresa made her way to the exhibition hall anyway. If nothing else, she would wander through the images and be reminded of other times, other friends.
Exhausted, she stopped in front of the hall and watched an active-matrix billboard shift to display a new ad proclaiming that the sensational artist Garth was nearly finished with his new masterpiece, JOY, and the debut would be scheduled soon.
Teresa’s face broke into a grin, proud of her friend’s success. She envied Garth his passionate drive. He’d always known exactly what he needed to do. With all the items left on his List, he was searching, too, just like Teresa—though at least Garth’s search had a clear goal.
She handed over her pass and entered the exhibit again, experiencing FRUSTRATION anew. It meant something different to her this time. Teresa would rather have seen the artist’s interpretation of JOY.
She also envied Eduard his ability to live for the day, satisfied with whatever life brought his way, wherever he was. He reveled in every success, always so generous to his friends. If he failed, he just flashed his cocky smile and tried harder next time.
Even Daragon had a successful career with the BTL. He was justly proud of his Inspector’s uniform and his duties. He was no longer searching. He was right where he wanted to be.
Only Teresa remained lost. She wanted an anchor for her life, but so far every anchor had been tethered by flimsy rope. She had flitted for years from place to place, body to body, hoping for some brilliant revelation. She tasted different philosophies, searching for one that was right for her. She hadn’t found it yet.
As she wandered through the FRUSTRATION holograms, the photographs, the paintings, the sounds, Teresa thought again of all the times Arthur had patiently taught her about the intricate wonderland of her body. Within her original cells, her DNA coded every subtle aspect of her being. Arthur had believed the soul to be part of that complexity, connected with the workings of the marvelous human machine.
Teresa needed a goal, some kind of target to inspire her and give her drive. She wanted to race toward a finish line, a point at which she could claim success.
On the first spectacular night, with all the crowds and paparazzi, she had not noticed a side gallery, where Garth displayed some of his other art that didn’t fit in with the overall gestalt of FRUSTRATION. Now, though, she smiled to see the detailed Artful Dodger sketch Pashnak had bought during her friend’s first unpopular exhibition, other sketches of life in the artists’ market—and then, covering one entire board, she saw his cherished “portrait spectrum” of the many faces of Teresa.
She looked at the sequence of faces, barely recognizing some of them, recalling how easily she had once danced from one form to another to another. What had she been thinking? At the far left of the board, her eyes caught on the lovingly detailed drawing of her original home-body, the face she had grown up with, the features inextricably associated with Teresa Swan. Gone forever now.
Arthur had called her a “lost soul,” just looking at these paintings. She wondered if losing touch with her original body had made any difference, if by bouncing from body to body she had somehow lost something in the translation, unwittingly set herself even more adrift.
Maybe that was the problem! She had felt cast loose ever since she’d left the Falling Leaves, particularly after she’d joined the Sharetakers and gotten lost in a merry-go-round of body-swapping. Perhaps her soul had lived too long apart from its original home. Perhaps that was why she felt so lost.
Teresa was a wandering spirit in a body that was not hers, one in which she did not belong. After learning how to hopscotch, a person could move from body to body, but if Teresa never returned home, she might be diluting her own soul. Maybe it would all change again and she could feel grounded, if she could only go . . . home.
Leaving the FRUSTRATION exhibit, galvanized, Teresa decided on her new quest—a search that would mean more to her than anything she had ever done before. She needed to find her home-body, the place where she truly belonged. Perhaps then she could reestablish a connection and erase this feeling of loss.
Teresa hadn’t seen her body since those terrible days with Rhys. She had misplaced herself among the Sharetakers. A member of the enclave, a woman named Jennika, had fled in Teresa’s body. Now, she needed to “find herself”—literally. She wanted to feel whole again.
But she had no idea where to start looking.