Icon by Genevieve Valentine

bribed to get her this apartment, because the paint was fresh and the furniture was new. Her mother looked rested and healthy, and that was good. It made Suyana less guilty.
    â€œCome sit,” her mother said after a silence awkwardlylong. “I made lunch. I thought your boyfriend would be here—is this too much food? Is he not coming?”
    She meant, Did I do something? Suyana’s throat was tight. “No, he’s coming. He’ll be here soon. Sit down and tell me everything.”
    Her mother was well fed. Her mother had joined a church committee to organize a school for children in the slums outside town. Her mother had gone to the Heritage Festival during the summer. She was thinking of going to see Machu Picchu with three of the women from her church.
    â€œI’ve always wanted to see it,” her mother said, and Suyana thought about the postcards in the town square when she was too young to understand anything at all, except the anger that sometimes pooled in her fingertips when she thought about her mother.
    â€œIt will be beautiful,” she said, made her smile wider than it needed to be. “I’ll get you a new camera to take with you.”
    Her mother demurred—Suyana did enough, it was already too much—but her mouth turned up at one edge. Suyana nodded, falsely solemn, said that maybe she would just look, just to see if there was a camera on sale somewhere.
    The bell rang.
    â€œThat’s Ethan,” Suyana said, standing as her mother stood, but her mother put a hand on her shoulder so firmlythat she sat back down. From this angle, her mother’s eyes were as sharp as she remembered.
    â€œIs he the reason you’re unhappy?”
    Suyana couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t feel the tips of her fingers. Her spine was going to fall to pieces. She was ten years old, and all her skill at lying escaped her.
    â€œNo,” she said.
    And it must have been true, or true enough, because after a moment her mother nodded, and went to open the door.
    Ã— × × × × × ×
    Later, in bed, she said, “Thank you.”
    â€œYou’re welcome,” Ethan said, in the lecherous drawl he only used when he was teasing, and she flicked him on the shoulder so hard he yelped through his laughter.
    She’d tried to think of it as an operation, at the beginning. To go through the motions she’d seen in movies (and in the other sort of movies) and play at it all. It had been pure, clinically productive in its strangeness—she felt remote and sharp during sex, noting responses and trying to decide how to set a pattern that could sustain itself for however long this contract needed to go on.
    But the day had come when he moved his hands somewhere and breathed something into her skin and it all felt better, felt more , and now the line between Necessary and her own weakness was a lot less clean.
    It was still useful, she told herself often. Lying all the time means you have no room for error. If you both believe something enough, then your mark will start making excuses if they catch you in a mistake. (“Strange girl,” Ethan said sometimes, early on, when she’d broken the lovebird act with a direct question or a stony face. Then he’d shake his head fondly, lean in to kiss her temple, and go to bed beside her. He’d never had a troubled night’s sleep, not once in a year.)
    â€œI mean it,” she said. “It was good to see my mother. Thank you.”
    He blinked over at her, trying to smother a yawn. “Did she like me?”
    â€œEveryone likes you, Ethan. Go to sleep.”
    He snorted. “So she hated me.”
    Suyana rested her hand across Ethan’s eyes. He laughed quietly, just his shoulders shaking against the mattress for a second, before he closed his eyes. His eyelashes brushed the palm of her hand.
    Her mother actually hadn’t said a word about Ethan, who had been