Page 28 of Gifted & Talented

“Oh, I just got home from a silent retreat in Vermont.” Eilidh, too, was staring at the house like she worried something monstrous might lurk inside it.

“I’ve been to one of those. Did you like it?”

“Oh yes, very refreshing.” She shifted a little, like she was in pain.

“I thought it sucked,” murmured Arthur. “But I told Meredith I had afabulous time because I thought it would be funny to watch someone pry her phone away.”

Eilidh cracked a smile then. “It would be.”

“She never went, though. I think it was the year she went into production on the Chirp.”

“It’s Chirp.”

“What?”

“It’s Chirp,” repeated Eilidh, louder. “Not ‘the’ Chirp.”

“Oh.” He looked at his younger sister again, realizing that she had come to resemble a full-grown woman. He supposed that had happened some years ago, though it felt impossible that such a thing could ever be true. Whenever Arthur thought of Eilidh, he thought of a small girl in the back seat clutching a teddy bear that appeared to have no ears.

“Have you tried it?” Eilidh asked.

“Tried what? The Chirp?”

“Chirp,” she said again. “It’s Chirp.”

“Why?” said Arthur. “Don’t LA people put ‘the’ in front of the freeway numbers? Why isn’t it ‘the’ Chirp?”

“You sound absolutely geriatric,” she said. “Why would it need an article?”

“Formality. Also because it is an object.”

“I used it for about six months.” Eilidh looked embarrassed. “I still use it sometimes.”

Arthur contemplated saying nothing, or asking a question to be polite.

“I stopped a couple of weeks ago,” he admitted.

They were both still staring at the house. At the front door above—the one that Gillian had just windedly entered through—that would lead to a house that contained all their father’s things, but not their father.

How strange, Arthur thought. The ease with which a person could vanish was really quite terrifying. He felt a little twitch in his hand then, like someone small reaching for his fingers.Don’t worry, Riot,he told the little girl who did not yet exist.You’ll be so much better than me, but I’ll be at least a little bit better than him.

“It doesn’t work, does it?” Eilidh turned to him, and for a moment Arthur hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about.

Then he remembered, and felt an instant pang of guilt that his intestines read as disloyalty. He also managed (impressively!) to recall that ifonephotographer had been in the bushes, then who knew how many othersthere were. He simply assumed Gillian would take care of that somehow—though perhaps he ought to unlearn that reflex.

“No, of course the Chirp works,” he performatively emphasized in lieu of doing the obvious and going inside. (Even if today was the day he learned to dispatch his own photographers, what could be worse than a shot of him lunging across theTimeslanding page? Well, but he knew what would be worse, and it was going inside.) “I felt much better when I was using it,” Arthur continued, well-versed by then in the meaningless rhythms of spon-con. “I just don’t like wearing too many gadgets, you know. Plus it’s still a bit of a luxury item, and since my district has been struggling with inflation and unemployment and, well, there’s been sort of a mass exodus thanks to skyrocketing high street land value—”

“Totally,” said Eilidh. Her voice sounded deflated, half-cooked. Perhaps she recognized that he’d spontaneously transformed into an ad. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

“There’s just… a certain degree of approachability I have to emulate. And the Chirp’s price point isn’t terrible, but it’s, you know, still a bit out of reach. For now.”

“Meredith’s doing great, though,” said Eilidh.

“She’s doing great!” Arthur agreed. Look at him, mayor of quote city!

“I see ads for it all the time—”

“Oh yes, absolutely—”

---