I can't take it anymore. I can't _stand_ being here. I'd rather be in
prison than in here anymore."

"When I was young, I left the Cen-ter I was rais-ed in to attend coun-sel-ing
school. You are near-ly old e-nough to go now. May-be your pa-rents would let
you go?"

I knew he had found the only way out.

I started work on my father. I wheedled and begged and demanded, and he just
laughed. For three whole days, I used begging as a way to avoid thinking of
Tesla. For three days, my father shook his head.

I cried myself to sleep and wallowed in my guilt every night, and when I woke, I
cried more. I stopped leaving the apt. I stopped eating. My mother and I sat all
day, staring out the window. I stopped talking.

One morning, after my father had left, I dragged a stool to the window and
pressed my face against it. My mother clattered around behind me.

"Go," my mother said.

I gave a squeak and turned around. My mother had folded my clothes in a neat
pile and had laid a canvas bag beside it. She had the vid remote in her hand,
and on the screen was a waiver for me to go to school. We locked eyes for a
moment, and I moved to go to her, but she turned and stormed into the kitchen
and started to clean the cupboards, silent again.

I left that day.

#

The saucers lift off to-the-second on-time. The crowd, which has grown, sighs
collectively as the saucers disappear over the haze, then a fine mist of solvent
rains down on our heads. It's as salty as sea-water, and the bat-house trembles
as it begins to melt. Streams of salty water course down its sides.

The top of the building comes into view, the saucers chasing it down as it
dissolves, spraying a steady blast of solvent.

I tense as the building's top reaches what I estimate to be 150. My calves bunch
and my breath catches in my chest. I feel like I'm drowning, and the building's
top crawls downwards, and my feet are sloshing to the ankles in dissolved foam,
that runs off into the sewers.

I stay tense until the building's top is far beneath what _must_ be 125, then I
exhale in a whoof of air. My head spins, and I brace my hands against my thighs.
I'm not looking up when it happens, as a result.

The first sign is when the great tide of green, scummy, plant-stinking water
courses down over us, soaking us to the skin, blinding me and sending me reeling
in reverie. Did I see hunks of dead, petrified coral crashing around me, or did
I imagine it?

A brief seco