Page 122 of Death of the Author

Zelu went to her old room next. She paused and sighed, then walked over to the dead English ivy. It had dried to a crisp years ago. With her father gone, it hadn’t stood a chance. She’d never had the heart to throw it away. “I’m so sorry,” she murmured to it. She broke off a brown leaf and sat on her bed, crumbling it between her fingers as she looked around her room.

It was otherwise as she’d left it. She got up and stepped to her desk, where she’d written so much ofRusted Robots.She sat in the chair, feeling her old self stir. She’d been so low back then. She hadn’t known it, but so much was coming. Once she’d hit the ground, she’d had nowhere to go but up. And now she had higher to go still.

She picked up an old copy of Jamaica Kincaid’sAt the Bottom of the Riverfrom the stack of books she’d left behind. Flipping through it, she sniffed the pages. The book smelled so old. She’d wanted so much to write like Kincaid back in college. But she didn’t write like Kincaid at all. Sometimes it was better to get what you needed than what you wanted.

She went to the living room.

Her siblings were eating from a giant bowl of fried plantain. Chinyere had clearly made it because she always fried the plantains super dark, nearly burned. A soccer game was on, but the volume was turned down. They all stopped talking when they saw her walk in.

“Well, hello, stranger,” Amarachi said. “Long time, no see.”

Amarachi was right. Zelu hadn’t seen them in weeks, and she hadn’t explained why. There was an NDA, but it was really the fact that she didn’t feel she could trust her siblings with the secret. And they’d only tell her not to go, and Zelu hadn’t wanted to risk their convincing her. Her siblingswere a united front with their tools of shame and guilt. They knew where she was weakest, and their sheer relentlessness would have been impossible to resist, especially after what had happened in Nigeria.

“Uh... yeah.” She sighed, sitting on the edge of the couch beside Chinyere. “Okay, I just flew in from Colorado. I’ve got some news.”

“Oh, dear God,” Tolu muttered. “Whatnow? You gonna tell us you’re marrying a Saudi prince as a second husband? Or maybe you just bought an automated yacht. Fuck.”

Chinyere and Uzo glanced at each other. Amarachi rolled her eyes.

Zelu curled her fingers in her lap. “Can you all just... sit down?”

They sat. Chinyere and Amarachi on the couch with her, Uzo on the floor (her phone up as she recorded), Bola on a chair behind the couch, and Tolu in their father’s armchair. Her siblings. The closest people on earth to her, no matter how distant they often felt.

Zelu took a deep breath, glanced at the side panel on her exos to note how much charge they had left (90 percent), and then told them everything. She explained about the NDA she’d signed right after she’d agreed to participate. She told them about the flurry of meetings with the #Adventure team directors, organizers, payroll people, doctors, and lawyers. The flights to Florida, Colorado, and Nevada to go through a gauntlet of intense training. She’d gone with her crew to Disneyland and they’d ridden the kiddie roller coasters, worked their way up to the mild coasters, and then finally ridden what she’d viewed as the embodiment of death: Space Mountain. Then she’d gone on Space Mountain again and again, and by the end of that day, she was a different woman.

She’d endured a centrifuge. She’d gone up in a plane and experienced incredible g-forces and minutes of weightlessness. She’d hiked up a mountain in the cold of Colorado. She’d hiked through Death Valley in Nevada. She’d done underwater training. She’d learned techniques for handling intense g-forces from fighter pilots—a combination of breathing exercises and clenching her butt cheeks. She’d met with a psychologist and a therapist.

When she finally stopped talking, they all looked at one another. Chinyere to Tolu. Bola to Chinyere. Uzo to Tolu. Bola to Uzo. Sibling to sibling to sibling to sibling. Glances like a ball in a pinball machine. Something was happening, and Zelu didn’t know what it was.

Chinyere spoke first. “I’m done,” she announced, throwing up her hands.

Zelu braced herself for the acidic, self-righteous lecture, but then she saw that her sister wassmiling. She frowned, skeptical.

Chinyere stood up and shook her head. “You win. I can’t be mad at you anymore. I...” She looked right at Zelu. “Idon’tunderstand you. I don’t know what you are. But... you’re fucking amazing.”

It was like a dam broke; they all started talking at the same time.

“Yeah, thisisamazing,” Tolu said.

“I’m scared, though!” Uzo added. “I’m not even going to Google the details.”

“Don’t,” Bola said. “It’s wild! I cannot believe you’re going to be one of the passengers! When this news drops at work, no one will leave me alone!”

“First one in the family to leave the planet. Can’t wait to tellthatto our uncles,” Chinyere said.

“We don’t need to tell our uncles shit,” Amarachi snapped.

“You sure you can do this?” Tolu asked Zelu. “You know, with your...” He tapered off.

“She escaped armed robbers in Nigeria,” Chinyere cut in. “She can do this.”

“Exactly!” Bola shouted.

Tolu sighed. “Dad would havelovedthis.”

She stayed for another two hours, just talking with her siblings over dinner. The jollof rice and plantain had never tasted so good. They talked about space, the training, how they were all going to navigate the upcoming press. All of her siblings believed that Zelu had manifested this opportunity. “It’sjust too coincidental,” Chinyere said. “You used to talk about being an astronaut all the time before your accident. Then after, not once. You made such an effort to not look back... but the want wasstillthere!”

Zelu didn’t argue with them. To talk about it too much would have made her angry. What had they expected her to do? Keep trying to do something that was basically impossible? How healthy would that have been, really? But she didn’t want to ruin the mood, so she just laughed and nodded and let her siblings talk.

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