Reincarnated

“I can’t believe you went through with it.” Ada crosses her arms over her narrow chest and stares at me wide-eyed across the tiny cafe table. She looks at me like she has never seen me before. Which is fair. Because she hasn’t. Not like this.

I’d gotten the deluxe package. Hey, if you’re going to be Reincarnated, you shouldn’t cut corners. We have all heard the horror stories of people traveling to the Lunar colonies for a quick weekend rebirth on a budget and coming back with melting faces or ill-fitting hairlines.

I used to work with a woman who had just wanted new hands. Nothing fancy. She had a crooked thumb and a massive scar from falling out of a tree as a kid and not seeing a doctor to get the thing set properly. It was all she talked about. I mean, I get it. Blemishes like that can hurt your career in our industry. No one wants to bring an associate to a corporate retreat with something so obviously wrong with them.

The crazy part is, she could have afforded the spa I went to. We all get paid loads. But, she wanted something quick and cheap and didn’t think new fingers were worth a few months’ salaries.

She hadn’t even bothered coming back to work, just emailed her resignation. Cathy saw her a few weeks later at a market and said her hands were still bandaged. Said she had to pay triple for reconstruction after the Lunar quacks were done with her. Poor lamb. But, not really. Don’t be a cheap asshole.

I set my latte on the conduction surface between us and steam immediately starts to float up out of the murky beige liquid. Ada shifts her gaze to the tabletop, fidgeting. The cafes in Limon make her feel uncomfortable. Everything in Limon makes her uncomfortable. Too much shine she told me once. Ada isn’t a cheap asshole. Ada is poor as fuck. My corporate job and lifestyle seem ridiculously unattainable to her and so she is constantly cross about the places I bring her and insists on paying for herself like a dick even though we both know she can’t afford whatever shallow shit I drag her to. Shallow shit is what she calls it. I would never. I love the shine.

Which is why I chose to be Reincarnated. Not only is it essentially an unspoken requirement if I want to keep climbing the ladder at work, but I was never a natural beauty like Ada. The bitch. She has what is called Classic Beauty. She has long wavy black hair and big stupid eyes that are such a normal brown they stand out among all of the mod colors. My own violet eyes seem obscene next to hers. She is slim and has completely unblemished skin. All-natural. Classic. Like I said, total bitch.

But, you can see her collar bone a little too clearly. The smell of public transportation hangs to her a little too closely. And the hard look in her eyes makes the people who only know softness uncomfortable. Add to that her completely unmodified appearance and she is clearly out of place in Limon.

We grew up together. Both of our families had taken the Lunar relocation package offered to laborers and we were raised in those dusty slums being fed the lie that it was somehow an improvement over the less dusty Terra ghettos. One of Ada’s fathers was killed in a work accident and her other dad fell apart without him. She was only five and was soon living at our apartment more than her own. We were basically sisters. Until I left, of course.

I took a deal with a Terra business to work a year without wages for two additional tickets in the University lottery. The long hours in addition to a second and third part-time job paid off; my name was drawn and Ada’s wasn’t. I went to school on Earth, got hired right out of graduation, and became the bougie, rich goddess I was always meant to be.

When Ada relocated to Old New York, only an hour away, we reconnected. She had gotten out through a scholarship for teachers willing to work in the Terra public schools. She knows that one in twenty of those teachers don’t last long enough to complete the five-year requirement before they can transfer to a private school, but she is stubborn as hell.

So now this is our life. We meet at least once every few months so she can critique my choices as we indulge in some overly expensive activity, then we eventually land back at my townhouse to get wasted on rosé and watch shit television. I fucking love her.

“Don’t be a prude, Ada. I look amazing and everyone else is doing it.” Solid argument. She shrugs and gingerly pokes at her teacup, sliding it off the conduction panel before carefully picking it up. I snatch mine straight off and roll my eyes at her naivete…poverty….same thing? “It’s co-op porcelain. It doesn’t get hot.” She flushes a bit then takes a sip of her steaming tea. When she sets her cup back down she keeps it away from the panel.

“I’m worried about you Gabi.” Uh oh, serious voice. I suddenly feel the need to look literally anywhere but those stupid brown eyes. “I don’t care that you are making tons and use half of it on shallow shit. But, you are making some permanent fucking changes and I just…I don’t know. At what point are you no longer you?”

I arch one of my new perfectly formed eyebrows and pretend to check my flawless cuticles. The soft pastel pink skin is still a shock to see compared to my old pasty flesh. I get lost in the way the light reflects off my smooth forearms while I turn over Ada’s words. “I am still me, Ada. Just…better.”

She snorts so hard the next table stares at us. Ada is beautiful, but she sticks out here. A gorgeously bound book is still out of place in a tablet store.

“I am! I know I look different-”

“That’s an understatement.”

“-but I am still Gabi. I still love you.”

“Do you?”

I glance at her then. She looks so sad. Suddenly I realize this conversation is much more than her judgment of my lifestyle. Ada is about to tell me goodbye.

I feel too hot. The cafe suddenly feels terribly small and my chest is tightening painfully. I didn’t realize how desperate I am to keep Ada in my life. All of these small changes I have made, these steps I was taking knowing she couldn’t follow, brought us here. And I am stuck. I have closed too many doors and tossed away the keys. I can’t go back and now the distance between us has grown too large to cross.

My mouth keeps flapping open like a fish while my panicking mind races through different arguments to keep her with me. I know there has to be a magical combination of words that will fix this. There has to be.

“I will always love you. You are my sister Ada.”

She shakes her head and in horror, I see her eyes glistening with tears. “I will always love you too Gabi, but I see the way you look at me when we are in places like this.” She sweeps her arms out to encompass the minimalist decor, everything edged in gold and cleaner than so much white has the right to be.

“We don’t have to do this anymore! I can come to Old New York, we can-”

She barks out a laugh. “Can you? Look at yourself Gabi! You chose to appear in a way that will forever separate you from anyone like me. Permanently.”

“Like you fit in so well here!” I regret the words before I even say them, but the swell of frustration pushes them out of my mouth anyway. “You keep coming here despite how much you supposedly hate it. I don’t see you spending your free time around people in your own neighborhood!”

“I come here for you! Every time I come here and spend all of my savings to join you for a drink or an unnecessarily technologically advanced cup of coffee I feel a piece of you is gone. You never offered to come to me until now, until it is too late!” The women at the other table are openly staring now and the barista is shifting around uncomfortably, probably praying we will stop yelling so he doesn’t have to have the awkward confrontation of asking us to leave.

“Ada, I am still me. Please.” I feel so desperate. I will do anything in this moment to keep her.

“If you could undo it would you?” Almost anything.

“I…” The way I used to look made me stand out in every room I entered. I was never beautiful, never even unique looking. Just plain. Since I Reincarnated early this month I noticed an immediate difference in the way I am treated. After the initial wave of compliments and comments on the change, I was asked to join more meetings, invited out on dates by coworkers I had never spoken to before. Would I truly trade the feeling of fitting in, of being accepted, for a continued friendship with someone who hates everything I am becoming?

“Is change truly so awful, Ada? It isn’t like I am hurting anyone.”

She rolls her eyes and it feels for a moment we are teetering on the edge of letting the conversation fall into our old banter and moving on to gossiping about the people we are sleeping with. But she sighs, and I feel a wave of vertigo as the conversation tips the other way.

“It is if it means turning your back on who you are. What do we have left connecting us besides the memories you are so intent on erasing? When was the last time you even visited your family?”

It all feels so unfair. Her accusations feel like physical barbs and I need to defend myself from the pain. Despite whatever truth it holds. “You’re just jealous.”

And there it is. I finally said it. The guest that has always sat at our table, but was never acknowledged. Since the moment I won the lottery and left our town, I have not once accused her of jealousy. Not when I received a job offer at a prestigious corporation or bought my new home while she was still in low-income housing. She has never claimed jealousy. Not when she teases me about my purchases or scolds me on my fashion. It was a line neither of us have ever crossed because we knew it would tear the thin membrane that holds our friendship together.

Ada sits completely still for a century or a breath. Finally, she digs in her purse and throws money on the table before standing. “I love you always Gabi, and I will miss you forever.”

I stay there for a while after she leaves, watching the way the light reflects off my new skin.