The Different Girl

take it from the satchel, much less turn it on and look inside. For Eleanor and Isobel, using the notebook for ourselves meant May was right, and Robbert and Irene were gone. But I remembered that finding the notebook had come from Caroline’s dream—which made me think of how Caroline was different, and how I was different, too. I made my own decisions about time. I made decisions about May. Where the other girls, given an assignment, pursued a result, I had learned to see possibility.
    So I pulled the notebook from the satchel and set it on my lap, where everyone could see. The keys were made for more—and thinner—fingers, but I could still make it work, one touch at a time. While the notebook powered up, Eleanor took everything else from the satchel and spread them out, like we’d spread the things from May’s bag: Robbert’s crumpled shirt, two pencils, a plastic sharpener, an empty case for his glasses, a scrap of cotton he used as a handkerchief, the notebook’s charging rod, and a little flat wallet. Eleanor unzipped the wallet and folded it open. Each side held a row of metal rods, with different tools at either end.
    “Look,” said Isobel, pointing to one of the tools.
    She extended her arm to show the tiny crescent-shaped spot in the crook of her elbow—in all our elbows. The tool’s tip was perfectly shaped to fit.
    “What else is inside there?” asked May.
    “The three of us,” I said. “And all we’re made of.”
    But once the notebook came alight, nothing was different from how it always looked—certainly there was no new note that told us what to do. The little windows that tracked weather and sea currents had frozen, because they depended on satellites and needed the aerial, but nothing else had changed. I saw the same large archives, one for each of us, and partitions for the many different subjects, like cognition or syntax or energy, that went beyond any one girl. But none of that was new, none of it now .
    “Is there a message?” asked Isobel. “Does it say when they’ll find us?”
    I shook my head but still began to open the archives, though I didn’t know what I hoped to find. The others stared closely at the screen, and even May scooted nearer to look over my shoulder, but all I found was what we knew was there: diagrams, numbers, diaries, pictures, charts. After a few minutes May leaned back on the blanket. The rest of us searched on without saying a word, for hours, until the sun began to set. At last I darkened the screen and returned the notebook to Eleanor, who slid it gently into the satchel.
    One of the three of us always kept awake in the cave for our hearing. But it turned out there was nothing to hear—no voices, no whispering, no more crashing or loud bangs. Only the waves below and the squawking birds. We came to recognize their different calls pretty quickly, until we could tell which birds were around the cave or wanting to come in—because they did still think of the cave as theirs—without having to see them. We asked May if any birds had come in, when she’d been in the cave alone. She said she’d found a few one morning, but that as soon as she sat up they’d been scared away. She imitated herself sitting and then raised both arms at once, making a loud flapping sound like an explosion of wings and feathers. May laughed out loud and made the sound again.
    “That was the last of those birds. They’ll think twice for a long while. Especially if they think I’m hungry . Because I’m a lot bigger than they are!”
    “Robbert and Irene never ate birds,” said Eleanor.
    “Do you eat birds on a boat?” asked Isobel.
    “Hell no,” said May. “Too many feathers, no meat, and you’d have to cook ’em forever. And you can’t cook here at all.”
    “I’m sorry there’s no more rice,” I said, because May had eaten the rest of the rice our first night in the cave.
    May shrugged. We sat for a moment, and May’s stomach started to make noises. No one said anything, because we had heard those noises before, but May slapped her stomach each time and told it to be quiet. Then she laughed in the back of her throat. “Maybe I’ll try seagull after all.”
    • • •
    Aside from naps, we found other ways to divide the time. Since my incident with sand I was extra cautious about all the dust in the cave. May wrinkled her nose and shrugged, but I explained that the smell was less important than the particles in the air being small. Eleanor