“In the beginning of the world,” Yuki says into the mic, “humans looked very different. We had two heads, four arms, and four legs. We had heads with two faces, to see all the things around us.”

“We were powerful,” she says. “The earth trembled beneath us, and we grew so arrogant in our feats that we dared to test the gods. We dared to wage war against them.”

Her voice spins the tale like it’s a spider’s silky web, and Grace finds herself intertwined. She is not in her bed in Portland. Yuki transports her to ancient Greece, surrounded by wine and ripe grapes and gods that walked the earth.

“The gods,” she continues, “beat us down, of course. We were not as powerful as we thought, and we faced a terrible fate.” Her voice trembles. “The gods, in their wrath, decided to split us, right down the middle. They decided to halve us as punishment. We became just one. One human with two arms and two legs and two feet. Weak.”

She laughs, a brittle sound. “It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? It would explain the longing you get, out of nowhere sometimes, for a person you cannot see. It would explain the ache we get in the hollow space between our ribs, and the uneasy thoughts at night in our beds, hoping that maybe someone, somewhere, is thinking of us, too.

“So, we were halved. Broken into pieces. According to Plato, and echoed through Aristophanes, it does explain that feeling. It explains why humans sometimes spend their whole lives looking for their other halves, and why we try so hard to fuse ourselves into one. Perhaps it is because we once were exactly that. One.”

Grace grips her phone. The feeling that Yuki stirs, the hollow feeling like the pit of a peach, weighs heavy in her belly. It is what she feels, sitting in a sterile room, sitting in front of her mentor, reading through recruiter emails, begging for someone to see her. To not water her down or pity her. It is perhaps what pushed her toward Yuki, that hot night in Las Vegas. It is perhaps what’s pushing her toward Yuki now, toward a girl that hears Grace’s “I’m okay” and sees, really sees, the ugly truth of it.

Grace blinks until her eyes stay closed. Darkness, the good kind, the deep sleep kind, begins to cloak her. And like that, with a voice in her ear, she falls asleep.

Grace doesn’t know that Yuki continues to talk, a siren song leading her thoughts and dreams into the blue-green saltwater deep. Yuki says, “Maybe there is not a specific half destined for us. Maybe we have to keep trying to fit ourselves together, until we find the pieces that fit.”

Asleep, Grace does not hear Yuki’s careful voice as she weaves her tale into the night. She does not hear, “Maybe pieces come when we least expect it. Maybe you find yours in the dry desert, and they are like bee honey, sweet enough to keep your throat from needing water. Maybe you pledge yourself to them, your promise held in a metal lock, and you do not know it yet, but you will dream of the flowers in their hair for weeks afterward. You will dream in golds and yellows and browns, and you will be scared, the good kind.

“Maybe Plato knew something we didn’t. Or maybe the gods did, when they split us in half and left us to reclaim our missing fragments.”

Eight

The base where Colonel works always smells medicinal and clean. Everyone walks around in their uniforms, moving with purpose. So determined to get from one destination to the next.

Grace embraced that for a long time, still does, though now it feels heavy and difficult and tiring.

It’s no different today. Grace leans against the front desk and waits for Miss Debbie to check her ID and sign her in, as if she didn’t practically grow up on this base.

“Do you think today you’ll finally prove I’m an impostor?” Grace asks, when for the third time Miss Debbie holds up her license and squints at it. “Has this all been a sixteen-year-long con?”

Miss Debbie narrows her eyes and slaps Grace’s ID down on the desk. She has pointy, sharp-angled glasses with a chain attached. Even sitting down, Miss Debbie will find a way to make you feel small.

“It’s you, all right,” she says. “Nobody else comes in here with a mouth like that.”

Grace smiles with all her teeth, a terrible habit picked up from Agnes. “Can you buzz me in, please, Miss Debbie?”

She mutters something under her breath that Grace can’t hear. Grace’s mouth has gotten her in trouble here more times than she can remember; she’s given up counting.

“I’ll walk you to Colonel’s office,” Miss Debbie says, locking up her desk and computer before heading toward the big vault-like door that separates them from the people working inside. “I’d hate for you to get lost.”

“I know where I’m going,” Grace says, annoyed. She sighs, following behind Miss Debbie’s office-regulated black heels and her tightly-wound bun.

There was a time Miss Debbie tried to embrace Grace as her willing and malleable pupil. Grace remembers coming here when they first moved. Her clothes still smelled like citrus. Her palms still had scratches from climbing grove trees too high. She remembers Colonel standing here at Miss Debbie’s same desk, a firm hand on her shoulder.

“This is my daughter, Porter,” he said, mouth curving up into what Sharone calls his people smile. “This is Miss Debbie. She runs this place with an iron fist.” Then he winked, like the three of them were in on some joke.