'Zoe’s Tale PART III Chapter Twenty\r'

'â€Å"Admit it,” Enzo tell, by dint of with(predicate) the personal organiser. â€Å"You forgot.”\r\nâ€Å"I did non,” I verbalise, with what I hoped was besides the scarcely measurement of indignation to suggest that I had not forgotten, which I had.\r\nâ€Å"I poop taste the fake indignation,” he said.\r\nâ€Å"Rats,” I said. â€Å"Youre on to me. Fin both toldy.”\r\nâ€Å"Fin altogethery? T pre moves no fin all(prenominal)y,” Enzo said. â€Å"Ive been on to you since I met you.”\r\nâ€Å"Maybe you fetch,” I allowed.\r\nâ€Å"And both management, that doesnt solve this problem,” Enzo said. â€Å"Were adjacently to sit shine for dinner fatey. Youre supposed to be present. not to make you feel guilty or eitherthing.”\r\nThis was the difference of opinion between me and Enzo instantaneously and consequently. There used to be a era when Enzo would cause said those lyric poesy and th ey would micturate come knocked out(p) honorableing desire he was accusing me of virtuallything (besides, of course, being late). entirely right now they were gentle and funny. Yes, he was exasperated, entirely he was exasperated in a way that suggested I might be able to make it up to him. Which I probably would, if he didnt push it.\r\nâ€Å"I am in occurrence wracked with guilt,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Good,” Enzo said. â€Å"Because you die it on we trust a undivided limited tater in the stew for you.”\r\nâ€Å"Gracious,” I said. â€Å"A tout ensemble potato.”\r\nâ€Å"And I promised the twins they could throw their carrots at you,” he said, refer mob to his little sisters. â€Å"Because I get how rattling much you hunch forward carrots. Especially when theyre kid-hurled.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont know why both whizz would rust them any former(a) way,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"And after dinner I was deviation to have you a poem I wrote for you,” Enzo said.\r\nI paused. â€Å" straight thats not f manner,” I said. â€Å"Injecting something original into our witty banter.”\r\nâ€Å"Sorry,” Enzo said.\r\nâ€Å"Did you really?” I asked. â€Å"You havent pen me a poem in ages.”\r\nâ€Å"I know,” he said. â€Å"I thought I might adopt back into practice. I remember you figure of indirect request it.”\r\nâ€Å"You jerk,” I said. â€Å"Now I really do feel guilty for for get or so dinner.”\r\nâ€Å"Dont feel as well guilty,” Enzo said. â€Å"Its not a very good poem. It doesnt plane rhyme.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, thats a relief,” I said. I bland tangle giddy. Its slight to get poems.\r\nâ€Å"Ill send it to you,” Enzo said. â€Å"You can select it instead. And therefore, maybe if youre nice to me, Ill scan it to you. Dramati b environ polish upy.”\r\nâ€Å"What if Im consider to you?” I asked .\r\nâ€Å" because Ill read it melodramatically,” he said. â€Å"Ill wave my gird and incessantlyything.”\r\nâ€Å"Youre making a case for me being mean to you,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Hey, youre already laming dinner,” Enzo said. â€Å"Thats worth an encircle wave or twain.”\r\nâ€Å"Jerk,” I said. I could to the highest degree come upon him smile over the PDA.\r\nâ€Å"Gotta go,” Enzo said. â€Å" mommamas telling me to fit out the table.”\r\nâ€Å"Do you want me to try to make it?” I asked. All of a sudden I really did want to be there. â€Å"I can try.”\r\nâ€Å"Youre going to run across the entire resolution in five minutes?” Enzo said.\r\nâ€Å"I could do it,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Maybe Babar could,” Enzo said. â€Å" hardly he has two legs more(prenominal) than you.”\r\nâ€Å"Fine,” I said. â€Å"Ill send Babar to have dinner with you.”\r\nEnzo laughed. â€Å"D o that,” he said. â€Å"Ill tell you what, Zoe. Walk here at a reasonable pace, and youll probably make it in cartridge renderer for dessert. Mom make a pie.”\r\nâ€Å"Yay, pie,” I said. â€Å"What mannequin?”\r\nâ€Å"I believe its called ‘Zoe gets some(prenominal) kind of pie she gets and give cares it pie,” Enzo said.\r\nâ€Å"Mmmm,” I said. â€Å"I always deal that kind of pie.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, yeah,” Enzo said. â€Å"Its right there in the title.”\r\nâ€Å"Its a date,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Good,” Enzo said. â€Å"Dont forget. I know thats a problem for you.”\r\nâ€Å"Jerk,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Check your mail queue,” Enzo said. â€Å"There might be a poem there.”\r\nâ€Å"Im going to wait for the choke waving,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Thats probably for the best,” Enzo said. â€Å"Itll be better that way. And now my mom is glaring at me with laser eyeballs. I ha ve to go.”\r\nâ€Å"Go,” I said. â€Å"See you soon.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay,” Enzo said. â€Å"Love you.” We had started reflexion that to distributively some other recently. It seemed to fit.\r\nâ€Å"Love you too,” I said, and disconnected.\r\nâ€Å"You two make me want to vomit so hard,” Gretchen said. Shed been comprehend my side of the conversation and had been rolling her look the whole period. We were sitting in her bed style.\r\nI set d have the PDA and whacked her with a pillow. â€Å"Youre ripe overjealous Magdy neer reckons that to you.”\r\nâ€Å"Oh, dear Lord,” Gretchen said. â€Å"Leaving aside the fact that I so do not want to hear that from him, if he ever did try to say that to me, his head would actually explode originally the talking to could veritable(a) get out of his mouth. Which now that I think approximately it might be an resplendent reason to try to get him to say it.”\r\nâ€Å"You two are so cute,” I said. â€Å"I can see you two standing at the altar and acquiring into it right before saying ‘I do.”\r\nâ€Å"Zoe, if I ever get anywhere near an altar with Magdy, I authorize you to make a flying tackle and drag me away,” Gretchen said.\r\nâ€Å"Oh, fine,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"Now lets never speak of this again,” Gretchen said.\r\nâ€Å"Youre so in denial,” I said.\r\nâ€Å"At least Im not the integrity who forgot her dinner date,” Gretchen said.\r\nâ€Å"It gets worse,” I said. â€Å"He wrote me poetry. He was going to read it to me.”\r\nâ€Å"You missed dinner and a show,” Gretchen said. â€Å"You are the shoot girlfriend ever.”\r\nâ€Å"I know,” I said. I r separatelyed for my PDA. â€Å"Ill salve him an apology personal credit line saying that.”\r\nâ€Å"Make it extra grovelly,” Gretchen said. â€Å"Because thats sexy.”\r\nâ€Å"That comment expla ins a lot about you, Gretchen,” I said, and then my PDA took on a feeling of its own, blasting an alarm sound from its speaker and scrolling an air attack notice on its screen. Over on Gretchens desk, her PDA made the same alarm sound and scrolled the same message. all PDA in the colony did the same. In the distance, we perceive the sirens, posted near the Mennonite homesteads, on the qui vive them because they didnt use personal technology.\r\nFor the front eon since the belabor of the Conclave fleet, Roanoke was infra attack. Missiles were on their way.\r\nI speed to the doorsill of Gretchens room. â€Å"Where are you going?” she asked. I neglected her and went outside, where multitude were bursting out of their homes and runnel for cover, and looked into the sky.\r\nâ€Å"What are you doing?” Gretchen said, contracting up with me. â€Å"We need to get to a shelter.”\r\nâ€Å"Look,” I said, and pointed.\r\nIn the distance, a bright n eedle of cleverness was tracing across the sky, aiming at something we couldnt quite see. Then there was a flash, blinding white. There was a defense satellite above Roanoke; it had fired on and hit one of the missiles coming for us. But others were passive on their way.\r\nThe sharp pop of the missile burst r apieceed us, with not n primal enough succession lag.\r\nâ€Å" pursue on, Zoe,” Gretchen said, and started tugging at me. â€Å"Weve got to go.”\r\nI stop looking at the sky and ran with Gretchen to one of the community shelters we had recently excavated and build; it was filling up quickly with colonists. As I ran I byword Hickory and Dickory, who had spotted me; they shut in and took either side of me as we got into the shelter. rase in the panic, people quench made room for them. Gretchen, Hickory, Dickory, about four dozen other colonists, and I all hunched rase in the shelter, straining to hear what was going on above us through nearly a dozen fee t of horseshit and concrete.\r\nâ€Å"What do you think is happ †” somebody said and then there was unspeakable wrenching noise, the akin someone had taken one of the cargo containers that made up the colony wall and peeled it a trigger off, right on top of our eardrums and then I was acrobatics to the account because there was an earthquake and I screamed and bet that everyone else in the shelter did too yet I couldnt hear it because then came the single loudest noise I had ever heard, so loud that my brain surrendered and the noise became the absence of noise, and the merely way I knew that I, at least, was still screaming was that I could feel my throat acquiring raw. Either Hickory or Dickory grabbed me and held me steady; I could see Gretchen being held the same way by the other Obin.\r\nThe lights in the shelter flickered but puzzleed on.\r\n eventually I stopped screaming and the ground stopped shaking and something similar to my hearing came back to me a nd I could hear others in the shelter crying and praying and campaign to calm children. I looked over at Gretchen, who looked stricken. I disentangled from Dickory (it turned out) and went over to her.\r\nâ€Å"You okay?” I asked. My voice sounded like it was pushed through cotton from a distance. Gretchen nodded but didnt look at me. It occurred to me it was the first time shed been in an attack.\r\nI looked around. Most of the people in the shelter looked like Gretchen. It was the first time any of these people had been in an attack. Of all these people, I was the one who was the veteran of a hostile attack. I approximate that typeset me in charge.\r\nI saw a PDA on the floor; someone had dropped it. I picked it up and activated it and read what was there. Then I stood up and waved my go acrosss back and forth and said â€Å"Excuse me!” until people started looking at me. I think enough people recognized me as the daughter of the colony leaders that they decided I might know something after all.\r\nâ€Å"The emergency breeding on the PDA says that the attack seems to be over,” I said when enough people were looking my way. â€Å"But until we get an ‘all go across signal we need to wedge here in the shelter. We need to stay here and stay calm. Is anyone here injured or drab?”\r\nâ€Å"I cant hear very well,” someone said.\r\nâ€Å"I dont think any of us can hear well right now,” I said. â€Å"Thats why Im yelling.” It was an attempt at a joke. I dont think people were going for it. â€Å"Are there any injuries here besides hearing loss?” No one said anything or raised their hand. â€Å"Then lets just sit tight here and wait for the ‘all clear.” I held up the PDA I was using. â€Å"Whose is this?” individual raised their hand; I asked if I could adopt it.\r\nâ€Å"Someone took ‘in charge lessons when I wasnt looking,” Gretchen said when I sat back down bor dering to her. The lyric poem were classic Gretchen, but the voice was very, very shaky.\r\nâ€Å"We were just under attack,” I said. â€Å"If someone doesnt pretend like she knows what shes doing, people are going to start freaking out. That would be bad.”\r\nâ€Å"Not arguing,” Gretchen said. â€Å"Just impressed.” She pointed to the PDA. â€Å"Can you send any messages? Can we find out whats happening?”\r\nâ€Å"I dont think so,” I said. â€Å"The emergency system overrides common messaging, I think.” I signed out the owner on the PDA and signed in under my account. â€Å"See. Enzo said he sent that poem to me but its not there yet. Its probably queued and will get sent in one case we have the all clear.”\r\nâ€Å"So we dont know if everyone else is okay,” Gretchen said.\r\nâ€Å"Im sure well get an all clear signal soon,” I said. â€Å"You disquieted about your soda?”\r\nâ€Å"Yes. Arent you worrie d about your parents?” Gretchen asked.\r\nâ€Å"They were selliers,” I said. â€Å"Theyve done this before. Im worried about them, but Im betting theyre fine. And Jane is the one running the emergency messages. As long as theyre updating, shes fine.” The PDA switched over from my mail queue to a scrolling note; we were being given the â€Å"all clear.” â€Å"See,” I said.\r\nI had Hickory and Dickory check the entrance of the shelter for any falling debris; it was clear. I signed out from the PDA and gave it back to its owner, and then folks started walk out. Gretchen and I were the last to head up.\r\nâ€Å"Watch your step,” Gretchen said as we came up, and pointed to the ground. Glass was everywhere. I looked around. All the houses and buildings were standing, but almost all the windows were blown out. Wed be weft glass out of everything for days.\r\nâ€Å"At least its been nice weather,” I said. No one seemed to hear me. likely j ust as well.\r\nI said cheerio to Gretchen and headed to my house with Hickory and Dickory. I found more glass in surprising places and Babar cowering in the shower down stall. I managed to coax him out and gave him a well-favored hug. He licked my face with increasing franticness. afterward I petted him and calmed him down, I reached for my PDA to call Mom or Dad, and then realized I had left hand it over at Gretchens. I had Hickory and Dickory stay with Babar †he needed their company more than I did at the moment †and walked over to Gretchens. As I walked to her house, her front door swung open and Gretchen burst through it, saw me and ran to me, her PDA in one hand and mine in the other.\r\nâ€Å"Zoe,” she said, and then her face tightened up, and whatever she had to say was lost for a minute.\r\nâ€Å"Oh, no,” I said. â€Å"Gretchen. Gretchen. What is it? Is it your pascal? Is your dad okay?”\r\nGretchen shook her head, and looked up at me. à ¢â‚¬Å"Its not my dad,” she said. â€Å"My dad is fine. Its not Dad. Zoe, Magdy just called me. He says something hit. Hit Enzos homestead. He said the house is still there but theres something big in the yard. He thinks its percentage of a missile. Says he tried to call Enzo but hes not there. No ones there. No ones respond there. He said they just built a bomb shelter, away from the house. In the yard, Zoe. Magdy says he keeps commerce and no one answers. I just called Enzo, too. I dont get anything, Zoe. It doesnt even connect. I keep trying. Oh God, Zoe. Oh God, Zoe. Oh, God.”\r\nEnzo Paulo Gugino was born(p) on Zhong Guo, the first child of Bruno and Natalie Gugino. Bruno and Natalie had known each other since they were children and everyone who knew them knew that from the first moment they laid eyes on each other that they would be in concert for every single moment of their harps. Bruno and Natalie didnt argue with this idea. Bruno and Natalie, as far as any one ever knew, never argued about anything, and certainly didnt argue with each other. They married young, even for the deeply religious culture they lived in on Zhong Guo, in which people often married early. But no one could imagine the two of them not being unitedly; their parents gave their consent and the two of them were married in one of the best-attended weddings anyone could remember in their hometown of Pomona Falls. lodge months later, almost to the day, there was Enzo.\r\nEnzo was sweet from the moment he was born; he was always happy and only occasionally fussy, although (as was frequently explained, much to his later mortification) he had a marked tendency to take attain his own diapers and smear the contents of them against the nearest easy wall. This caused a real problem one time in a bank. Fortunately he was train early.\r\nEnzo met his best friend Magdy Metwalli in kindergarten. On the first day of school, a third-grader had tried to pick on Enzo, and pushe d him hard down to the ground; Magdy, whom Enzo had never seen before in his life, launched himself at the third-grader and started punching him in the face. Magdy, who at the time was small for his age, did no real damage other than scaring the pee out of the third-grader (literally); it was Enzo who eventually pulled Magdy off the third-grader and calmed him down before they were all sent to the principals office and then home for the day.\r\nEnzo showed a flair for linguistic communication early and wrote his first story when he was seven, en entitle â€Å"The painful sock that smelled bad and ate Pomona Falls except for my house,” in which a large sock, mutated by its own horrible unwashed smell, started eating its way through the contents of an entire town and was thwarted only when the heroes Enzo and Magdy first punched it into submission and then threw it into a melted pool filled with laundry soap. The first part of the story (about the origin of the sock) took th ree sentences; the climactic battle scene took three pages. Rumor is Magdy (the one denotation the story, not the one in it) kept communicate for more of the fight scene.\r\nWhen Enzo was ten his contract became pregnant for a second time, with twins Maria and Katherina. The motherhood was difficult, and complicated because Natalies body had a hard time keeping two babies in it at once; the delivery was a near thing and Natalie came cultivation to bleeding out more than once. It took Natalie more than a year to fully recover, and during that time the ten- and eleven-year-old Enzo helped his father and mother to care for his sisters, learning to change diapers and feed the girls when his mom needed a rest. This was the occasion of the only real fight between Magdy and Enzo: Magdy jokingly called Enzo a epicene for helping his mom, and Enzo smacked him in the mouth.\r\nWhen Enzo was fifteen the Guginos and the Metwallis and two other families they knew entered a group applicat ion to be part of the very first colony knowledge base made up of citizens of the Colonial Union rather than citizens of Earth. For the next few months every part of Enzos life, and the life of his family, was undefendable up to scrutiny, and he bore it with as much grace as anyone who was fifteen and who mostly just wanted to be left alone could have. Every member of every family was required to submit a statement explaining why they wanted to be part of the colony. Bruno Gugino explained how he had been a fan of the American colonisation era, and the early history of the Colonial Union; he wanted to be part of this new chapter of history. Natalie Gugino wrote about wanting to raise her family on a world where everyone was working unneurotic. Maria and Katherina drew pictures of them floating in space with smiley moons.\r\nEnzo, who dear words more and more, wrote a poem, imagining himself standing on a new world, and titled it â€Å"The Stars My Destination.” He later a dmitted hed taken the title from an dreary fantasy adventure book that hed never read but whose title stayed with him. The poem, meant only for his application, was leaked to the local media and became something of a sensation. It eventually became ramify of an official unofficial anthem for the Zhong Guo colonization effort. And after all that, Enzo and his family and co-applicants really couldnt not be chosen to go.\r\nWhen Enzo had just turned sixteen, he met a girl, named Zoe, and for some reason that passes understanding, he cut back for her. Zoe was a girl who seemed like she knew what she was doing most of the time and was happy to tell you that this was in fact the case, all the time, but in their private moments, Enzo learned that Zoe was as noisome and suspicious and terrified that she would say or do something dim to scare away this male child she thought she might love, as he was nervous and uncertain and terrified that he would do something stupid, too. They tal ked and moved(p) and held and kissed and learned how not to be nervous and uncertain and terrified of each other. They did say and do stupid things, and they did eventually scare each other away, because they didnt know any better. But then they got over it, and when they were together again, that second time, they didnt wonder whether they might love each other. Because they knew they did. And they told each other so.\r\nOn the day Enzo died he talked to Zoe, joked with her about her missing the dinner she was supposed to have with his family, and promised to send her a poem he had pen for her. Then he told her he loved her and heard her tell him she loved him. Then he sent her the poem and sat down with his family to dinner. When the emergency dismay came, the Gugino family, father Bruno, mother Natalie, daughters Maria and Katherina, and son Enzo, went together into the attack shelter Bruno and Enzo had made just a week before, and sat together close, holding each other and wa iting for the â€Å"all clear.”\r\nOn the day Enzo died he knew he was loved. He knew he was loved by his mother and father who, like everyone knew, never stopped loving each other until the very moment they died. Their love for each other became their love for him, and for their daughters. He knew he was loved by his sisters, who he cared for when they were small, and when he was small. He knew he was loved by his best friend, who he never stopped getting out of trouble, and who he never stopped getting into trouble with. And he knew he was loved by Zoe †by me †who he called his love and who said the words back to him.\r\nEnzo lived a life of love, from the moment he was born until the moment he died. So some(prenominal) people go through life without love. scatty love. Hoping for love. Hungering for more of it than they have. Missing love when it was gone. Enzo never had to go through that. Would never have to.\r\nAll he knew all his life was love.\r\nI have to think it was enough.\r\nIt would have to be, now.\r\nI spent the day with Gretchen and Magdy and all of Enzos friends, of whom there were so many, crying and laughing and computer storage him, and then at some point I couldnt take any more because everyone had begun to treat me like Enzos widow and though in a way I felt like I was, I didnt want to have to share that with anyone. It was mine and I wanted to be greedy for it for just a little while. Gretchen saw I had reached some sort of breaking point, and walked me back to her room and told me to get some rest, and that shed check on me later. Then she gave me a uncultivated hug, kissed me on the temple and told me she loved me and closed the door behind me. I lay there in Gretchens bed and tried not to think and did a pretty good job of it until I remembered Enzos poem, waiting for me in my mail queue.\r\nGretchen had put my PDA on her desk and I walked over, took the PDA and sat back down on the bed, and pulled up my mail queu e and saw the mail from Enzo. I reached to press the screen to notice it and then called up the directory instead. I found the folder titled â€Å"Enzo Dodgeball” and opened it and started playing the files, watching as Enzo flailed his way around the dodgeball court, taking hits to the face and tumbling to the ground with unbelievable comic timing. I watched until I laughed so hard that I could barely see, and had to put the PDA down for a minute to pore on the simple act of breathing in and out.\r\nWhen I had mastered that again, I picked up the PDA, called up the mail queue, and opened the mail from Enzo.\r\nZoe:\r\nHere you are. Youll have to imagine the arm waving for now. But the live show is coming! That is, after we have pie. Mmmm…pie.\r\n endure\r\nYou said I get going to you\r\nAnd I halt\r\nBut the quality of that cash in ones chipsing\r\nIs a psyche of some importance.\r\nI do not blend to you\r\nLike a purchase\r\nSomething ordered and sold\r\nAnd d elivered in a box\r\nTo be put up and shown off\r\nTo friends and admirers.\r\nI would not belong to you that way\r\nAnd I know you would not have me so.\r\nI will tell you how I belong to you.\r\nI belong to you like a ring on a finger\r\nA sign of something eternal.\r\nI belong to you like a boob in a chest\r\nBeating in time to another heart.\r\nI belong to you like a word on the air\r\n direct love to your ear.\r\nI belong to you like a kiss on your lips\r\nPut there by me, in the hope of more to come.\r\nAnd most of all I belong to you\r\nBecause in where I hold my hopes\r\nI hold the hope that you belong to me.\r\nIt is a hope I unfold for you now like a gift.\r\nBelong to me like a ring\r\nAnd a heart\r\nAnd a word\r\nAnd a kiss\r\nAnd like a hope held close.\r\nI will belong to you like all these things\r\nAnd overly something more\r\nSomething we will discover between us\r\nAnd will belong to us alone.\r\nYou said I belong to you\r\nAnd I agree.\r\nTell me you belong to me, too.\r\nI wait for your word\r\nAnd hope for your kiss.\r\nLove you.\r\nEnzo.\r\nI love you, too, Enzo. I love you.\r\nI miss you.\r\n'