Lovebug

If only she hadn’t bought the red one. It had looked so charming in the store - like a cherry candy or a sunburst. A tiny, feathered creature with wings like Valentines. She named it Lozenge, because it looked like one, but also because it was going to have a healing impact on her life. She was sick, and she was sick of being sick. That’s why she’d come to India Flower’s Exotic Pets in the first place. Physicians, psychiatrists, acupuncture, animal therapy, herbal treatments, acro-yoga - they had all failed her. And in the rose-gold lighting of India’s pet store, Lozenge had seemed to ooze a kind of healthful sweetness, like menthol and honey melting off a tongue-warmed cough drop. So she’d brought it home in its silver-wired cage, a ribbon tied around its paw in case it got lost. But of course it wouldn’t. Losing Lozenge, at this point, would be like losing herself.

But within an hour of bringing Lozenge home, possibly losing it felt like the least of her troubles. Because the minute she set it down in its little shoebox of wheatgrass, painted rocks, and crepe paper flowers, which she’d spent the past month poring over, Lozenge rolled dramatically onto its back and began to wail. A high, screeching wail, with little hiccups of silence in between. It flailed its twig-legs and beat its wings so hard, feathers popped free and landed on the carpet like tiny drops of blood. She didn’t know what to do, so she raced to her computer and Google searched “Lovebug tantrum.” She clicked on the first article in her feed: “Lovebug or Humbug? Bad Genes in the Red Breed.” Her heart sunk as she skimmed the article: it turned out that there was a certain lethal mutation in Lovebug genes, only present in the red ones, that reversed their natural temperament. Lovebugs were supposed to be bottomless reservoirs of affection - sweet, docile, and requiring basically no nurturing. Besides their daily wheatgrass meal and their fondness of bright colors, Lovebugs didn’t need to be fed or walked or cared for. They were better than other pets, and certainly better than children. Of course she had to end up with a defective one. A fussy, spoiled, screaming humbug. It was the last thing she needed. 

She thought wistfully of the other Lovebugs in the store, the ones she could have bought if she’d done more research beforehand. The blue one with the green spot on its belly, or maybe the yellow one, pudgy and round like an egg yolk. She’d been sorely tempted by a pink one, which had peed a warm golden liquid in her hand. Its pee smelled like cinnamon sugar. Then, as if to apologize for the inconvience, it had sung to her. A sweet, mumbling song, like a toddler trying earnestly to express its love in its own made-up language. Why hadn’t she gone for that one? Come to think of it, there had been nothing very special about Lozenge - nothing distinctive or endearing like a green belly-spot or cinnamon-sugar pee. But she had, for some inexplicable reason, felt a connection with Lozenge. Like they were meant to be together. That was just her luck. She’d fallen in love before, and had been heartbroken more times than she could count. Lozenge the Lovebug was supposed to be a Step 1 in Project Heal Myself. She’d been trying to take back control. Clearly, God was laughing at her. 

“May I please speak to India?” she asked the man on the phone. She recognized his voice; he was one of India’s employees, the one who had tied the ribbon to Lozenge’s paw. His name was something short and brutish - Hank, maybe, or Brock.

“Hold on,” he said. She waited for a full five minutes, in which time Lozenge screamed so loud it sprayed a fistful of feathers into the air. It left a bald spot, about the size of her thumb, on its voicebox. 
“Shit,” she said.
“Hello?” said India.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s me. From this morning.”
“Oh, hello! This is Lozenge’s Mommy?”
“Uh...yeah.”
“Wonderful. Has it made its Lovemilk?”
“What?”
“Didn’t I tell you about the Lovemilk?”
“No.”
“Oh, sweetheart. That’s why I recommended you pick a red one. They’re perfect little naturopaths. When they bond with you, they secrete a warm, milky liquid that is like gold for the immune system. All sorts of healing properties. When I met you, I took one look at those shadows under your eyes and I thought, that girl needs a nice big pot of Lovemilk. Make sure you don’t let it go to waste - any time you see Lozenge dripping, grab a cup and collect the milk before it disappears into the wheatgrass. It goes with just about anything - coffee, cereal, smoothies, you name it.”
“What about the other ones?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The other colors? Do they make Lovemilk too?”
“We have a few that aren’t quite red, but seem to have Lovemilk glands...we have a maroon, for example, and a pink.”
“Okay. What about the other colors? Like, yellows and blues?”
“The yellows lay eggs with aphrodisiac yolks, and the blues don’t make anything, but they can swim, and if you drop them in a bowl of water, they infuse it with a pale lavender discharge that does wonders for the skin. Sometimes it’s colorless so it’s harder to spot, but it will almost always have a glittery sheen to it, so bottle that baby up and use it on your face in the morning! You’ll look ten years younger.”
“Okay, great. Do you think I could, um...buy one of those instead?”
“I’m sorry?”
“A blue one would be perfect, actually. I could really use that discharge for the, uh, shadows under my eyes.”
“You mean you want another Lovebug? To keep Lozenge company?”
She took a deep breath.
“Lozenge isn’t happy here, so I was thinking I could just bring it back and...well, exchange it.”
There was silence on the line. And then:
“Oh my dear, I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lovebugs are always happy. It’s not in their nature to be unhappy.”
“But Lozenge is crying. No, screaming - and tearing its feathers out. And -” She peered into the shoebox, where Lozenge had quieted. She thought for a moment that it had cried itself to sleep. But it must have sensed her presence, and as it laid eyes on her face, it began to writhe against its wheatgrass bed and kick the painted stones against the sides of the box. It grabbed a big one in its paw and hurled it at her nose. 
“It just threw a stone at me,” she said. “It must be sick.”
“No, my dear,” said India, sounding both grieved and smug. “Lovebugs are never sick. People are sick, and Lovebugs were designed to help them, nurture them. But there are some people that are too sick to be nurtured. And those people break Lovebugs’ hearts. Lovebugs can’t tolerate people like that.”
“I - I don’t understand.”
“Lovebugs are literally made of love, my dear. Their tissues, their milk glands, their egg sacs, their bone marrow, are synthesized love chemicals, more concentrated and more potent than in any normal animal or human. They are delicate creatures. When they try to bond with people who are beyond healing, their love chemicals begin to overproduce, and their tissues self-destruct.” 
“What are you saying?” She sank into a chair next to the shoebox, where Lozenge was now tearing the petals off the crepe-paper flowers. “Beyond healing? Are you saying I’m dying?”
“I’m not a doctor, sweetheart. I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust Lozenge. Keep caring for it, as best you can. Try to minimize its pain. In cases like these, there is always hope. Sometimes Lovebugs react in this way to conditions that are bleak but not fatal. They are hypersensitive to people’s health, but they cannot predict the future. Once they sense improvement - even the slightest mitigation of danger - they will recover. So take care of yourself. That’s the most important thing.”
“I don’t even know what that means!” She was crying now, and Lozenge was puking crepe-paper petals into the wheatgrass. “I came to you because I had run out of options! Lozenge was - is - my last chance.”
“I’m so sorry, dear. There’s nothing else I can do for you.”
“Wait!” She grabbed her laptop and opened her search history. “I read an article about a rare condition in red Lovebugs. That sometimes this happens, because of a genetic mutation. Couldn’t it be possible that Lozenge has this mutation? That Lozenge is the sick one?”
“Lovebugs are never the sick ones,” said India. “Lovebugs are reflections of the people they bond with. They care for you, and when they can’t care for you they go into panic mode. Lozenge’s body is telling it that it has no function in the world.”
“Because I have no function in the world.” She said this quietly, under her breath. But India heard her.
“Don’t say that yet,” she said. “You say that, and Lozenge dies. And you won’t be far behind.”

***

She told Elijah about it at the Paint Bucket. The two of them had been working together for ten years, manufacturing blocks of paint and melting them into cans for customers. She spent most of her time in the back of the shop, mixing resin, solvent, and additives in a waist-high barrel that looked a bit like a butter churn. She liked to do this with her eyes closed, the mauves and beiges of the store dissolving into lush greens, summer-sky blues. She pretended she lived out in the countryside with a sheepdog and a couple of cows, making bread and butter and ice cream from scratch. She pretended her body was toned to perfection, all sinew and muscle from working all day in the sun. Vigorous lungs, radiant hair, a caramel tan. A man came once a month to deliver something - she neither knew nor cared what it was. She didn’t even care who he was - it only mattered that he lingered by the mailbox and watched her churn butter like she was brewing something magical, telling her what was such a pretty woman doing all by herself, out in the middle of nowhere?

Elijah knew that she preferred to work in the back - that she had a special place in her head that she went - and so most of the time he left her to her daydreams, melting and canning the blocks she made and chatting up customers. On slow days, the two of them sat on the counters in their paint-speckled aprons and talked about little things that had happened in their time off. Little victories, little failures. Elijah fought with his roommate over rent money. She bought a new medication that didn’t work. Elijah wrote a song on the guitar. She climbed a full flight of stairs. 
When she told him about Lozenge, his eyes bugged. 
“Those things are expensive,” he said. “A dog would have been cheaper.”
“I don’t want a dog,” she said. “A dog can’t help me.”
“But a lumbug can?”
“Lovebug. L-O-V-E. And yes. I mean, I hope so.”
Elijah, who’d been fiddling with his guitar, stopped strumming and stared at her, a funny look in his eyes. She felt her throat constrict. 
“So they’re, like, extra affectionate?”
“No...I mean, maybe, I don’t know. You should just read the research.”
“Sounds like pseudoscience.”
Elijah fished around in his backpack and retrieved a smushed mustard sandwich. He ate this for lunch everyday, and she always wondered if perhaps there was a sliver of turkey or ham or even lettuce in between the puddles of mustard, but she could never spot any. It just looked like two pieces of bread stuck together with bright yellow glue. 
“I hope not,” she said, to her skirt. Sometimes she lost her temper with Elijah - he was never snide or malicious, but he didn’t have much of a filter, and tended to say things that rubbed her the wrong way. She didn’t feel like fighting today, though. Mostly because she was terrified he was right.
“But hey,” he said, “Maybe it will work.”
She looked at him, surprised. 
“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe it will.” 

***

She drove home hopeful, only to discover that Lozenge had puked up an entire flower. It was a big green one with petals shaped like crescent moons. It shimmered with digested wheatgrass and Lovebug-spit, which must have some luminescent qualities, because her own spit was not quite so shiny. Lozenge lay motionless in the corner of its shoebox, punctuating the stillness with the occasional shudder. She wondered if its breathing had slowed so much that the shudders were its last gasps of life. Or maybe it was just having a bad dream.

She tried in vain to coax some water down its throat, then gave up and began gingerly stroking its feathers. It perked up a little at her touch. What had India said? Lovebugs are designed to nurture you. 

“Fucking scam,” she muttered. “You’re supposed to be nurturing me.”

Lozenge simply blinked at her. Its eyes were huge and soft and powdery; they reminded her of the marshmallows her mother used to sprinkle on her hot chocolate when she was little. That was before she got sick, and transitioned to a strict diet of vegetable broth, white meat, and the occasional rice pudding cup. She remembered the marshmallows were pink and heart-shaped. Sometimes she plucked them out of the hot chocolate and ate them whole; other times she watched them melt into sudsy clouds before slurping them up. 

Lozenge seemed to understand that she was remembering something - something happy but also sad - because its gaze became somehow more intense. She wondered suddenly if the powdery texture of its eyes was a sign of illness. When her own symptoms were at their worst, sometimes her eyes became dry and crusty. She quickly Googled this, and found that eye powder in Lovebugs was - thank god - a good sign. It meant the Lozenge was secreting Lovemilk. It was trying, even in the midst of its suffering, to nurture her. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, even though she had no idea if Lozenge could understand her. “I know you’re trying.”

She cupped Lozenge in her hands and held it over a plastic container. Warm, golden liquid dripped through her fingers. She held one to her mouth and licked it. It tasted like melted marshmallow, and all at once she began to cry. The tears just rose up in one big wave. No throat-tightening or pinprick-tears, just a sudden wash of salt on her cheeks, like the beach at night, like seashells and kelp and her mother’s hands on her waist, guiding her towards that dark plank of water that always looked so still, until it wasn’t. The waves sprang out of nowhere. 

***

In the morning, before filling out her pain charts, she made a Lovemilk smoothie. Lozenge had made about a quarter-cup. Her hips ached and her head thrummed and her throat was raw - the usual cocktail of discomfort - but she realized with a rush of adrenaline that she was not feverish, and her feet were not curled into hermit-crab shapes from cramping. She flexed her fingers, and then her back. No stiffness or snapping. 

She hummed to herself as she blended the smoothie. She threw everything into it - all the oils and ointments and herbal remedies she’d accumulated over the years, most of which were unflavored and more or less useless, all the peppermint capsules and olive leaf drops and fish oil gels, all the seeds and grasses and nut butters. A handful of frozen strawberries, a banana. In the pain-scale section of her health journal, which was filled with 8’s and 9’s and 10’s, she wrote 6. 

Lozenge was sitting upright in its box, cooing at the flower it had puked up the night before. She hadn’t known that Lovebugs made sounds, but it thrilled her. It made the whole thing seem more real. Like Lozenge was a living, breathing, spiritual creature and not just another placebo pill. The cooing sounded a little bit like a human baby - soft, sweet, wet. It had been so long since she had been around children. She tended to avoid them, afraid her strange brew of illness would rise from her skin like steam and climb up their nostrils and infect their brains. 

She knelt by the shoebox and tickled Lozenge’s belly. It hiccuped. She wondered if it was really so simple - having someone, or something, to care for, was all her body really needed. It had been so long since she’d nurtured, or been nurtured - she didn’t count her doctors, since they’d more or less bankrupted her, and she didn’t count the house plants she’d raised over the years, since they’d all died within a few weeks. Her mother was the last person she could think of, and she had died so young, no rhyme or reason. Her grief and bewilderment over her daughter’s sickness had been her only health risk; there was no other reason to explain why she dropped dead one morning, in the middle of whisking batter for elderberry wheat germ pancakes. That was before doctors started recommending elimination diets, and her mother was constantly coming up with creative, nutrient-rich recipes, in the hopes that if she could just feed her daughter the right things, she would get better. When she collapsed, the electric mixer went flying, and the beaters, still spinning, sprayed the walls with purple batter. It had looked so much like blood.

“What are you trying to tell me?” she whispered to Lozenge. “What am I doing right?” Lovebug just cooed and cradled her thumb in its paws. “Or,” she said, “what was I doing wrong?”

***

In the spirit of Healing, she logged onto her COMA account and messaged her friends. (COMA stood for Chronic-Obscure-&/or-Mysterious Afflictions.) She’d come up with her username, Symptomania, when she was fifteen, and had always been meaning to change it. But over the years her she’d grown close to some of the women on the site, and thought it might be jarring for them to meet her all over again, as someone new. But that didn’t stop her from dreaming up new names, post-recovery names: Merryweathered, Battlescarred, StrongerNow, JustKeepSwimming. These names seemed so juvenile now. Like she’d spent her whole life in the desert, waiting for rain. Maybe it was the identity she’d created, the community she’d immersed herself in, that was keeping her body frozen in its dysfunction. 
Symptomania: Hey guys, I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think I’m going to delete my account. It’s not because of any of you, or because I’m better per say, but…
But what? She couldn’t think of a polite way to phrase it. Because you guys are holding me back? Because I need new friends?  
...I’ve just reached a turning point in my life.
There. Nice and vague. She moved the mouse to log off, but AliceinQueaseland was already starting to reply. She felt her heart shudder. Alice was one of her oldest friends - at least, in the way you can be friends with someone you’ve never physically met. Alice practically lived in the groupchat, and had been one of her few constants, besides the sickness itself. 
Aliceinqueaseland: NOOOO! Why?!!!!
Symptomania: I just feel like I’ve been sequestering myself. Online, I mean. 
Aliceinqueaseland: You’re saying that to me?
Symptomania: I need to get out there. 
Aliceinqueaseland: Why not get out of the Slop Bucket, or wherever the fuck it is you work?
Symptomania: The Paint Bucket.
Aliceinqueaseland: Right.
Symptomania: I need the money. My mom’s savings are almost gone - eaten up by health stuff. 
Aliceinqueaseland: Come work for Cheshire.
She sighed. Alice - or whatever her real name was - had somehow, in the midst of her COMA, started her own tech company, which had become ridiculously successful over the past decade. Alice had been inviting her to come meet her at Cheshire for years, but she had decided long ago that she would never pursue a virtual relationship beyond the groupchat. There was still a small part of her that wondered if young, tech-savvy Alice was in fact a balding, middle-aged Frank. 
Symptomania: Love you Alice. 
Aliceinqueaseland: You’re killing me, Sym.
Shavasana, another COMA friend, joined the chat.
Shavasana: What’s this I hear about leaving? It’s not forever, right?
Symptomania: I don’t know.
Shavasana: You’re ashamed of us.
It was a statement, not a question. There was a smiley-face emoji after the period, but emojis were like filler words - they didn’t mean anything. This was another reason she had to start making real friends - so she could read their faces, distinguish joy from derision, humor from hurt. 
Symptomania: Of course not.
Shavasana: Whatever. Before you go let’s play Ask Me Anything.
She smiled. This was Shavasana’s favorite game. 
Symptomania: Okay. Why is your name Shavasana?
It was a silly question, but she’d always wanted to ask it. She was no stranger to yoga - it had been prescribed to her by countless doctors who’d given up on trying to formally diagnose her - and shavasana was the best part, it was like dessert. She could just lie still and let the pain, intensified by the movement, soak into the mat. She came up with different visualizations: some days she was a candlestick and her pain was melted wax; other days the pain was cake frosting, slowly dripping through the crumbles of her body. The stillness felt so cool and sweet, she could almost taste the shavasana in her mouth. So she’d always wondered why, in a groupchat for the chronically ill, someone would choose such a lovely concept as their username. 
Shavasana: The definition resonated with me.
Symptomania: Which definition?
Shavasana: Corpse pose. 
She felt her heart go still. She thought about how she must look to other people, if they could watch her doing yoga. Grunting and wincing her way through the sequences, finally shuddering into paralysis on her sweat-soaked mat. What did it mean that, in the moments when she felt closest to peace, she probably looked like she’d suffered a stroke? 
Shavasana: My turn. When are you going to fuck Elijah?
Symptomania: Oh my god. Never.
Shavasana: Come on. You guys have the whole store to yourselves. And shelves and shelves of warm, sticky, slimy, oily paint. 
Symptomania: Okay, first of all, they’re stored as blocks. And second, ew. 
Aliceinqueaseland: Why are they blocks?
Symptomania: I don’t know, I guess they last longer that way….? We usually melt them into cans for customers, but sometimes they just buy the blocks.
Aliceinqueaseland: Weird. 
Shavasana: You said you wanted to get out there.
Symptomania: That is NOT what I meant.
Aliceinqueaseland: Okay my question - and be honest - why are you really leaving, and where are you going?
Symptomania: Those are two questions.
Aliceinqueaseland: Just answer.
She glanced at Lozenge, who had fallen asleep in a puddle of Lovemilk. It had a sweet, flickering smile on its face.  It made her think of candles and campfires and the moon-shaped string lights her mother used to hang across their back porch. She would always hang them slightly crooked, so instead of moons they looked more like lemon wedges, or like mouths of gleaming, obsessively-brushed teeth. 
Symptomania: I got a pet.
Aliceinqueaseland: And?
Shavasana: So what? 
Symptomania: It’s a high-maintenance pet. Kind of like a kid. I just feel like I need to focus on that right now.
 She logged off before they could reply. She couldn’t even begin to think of an answer to Alice’s second question.

***

She regretted it the minute it happened, but by then it was too late. She just closed her eyes, leaned forward, and did it - like blowing out a birthday candle without making a wish. Hoping the wish would materialize in place of the snuffed flame, in a haze of sugar and smoke. 

“Whoa,” said Elijah, staggering backwards like she’d slapped him. “Um…”
“Shit,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
Her lipstick, which had read toasted almond on the label, looked more like black cherry on Elijah’s mouth. She’d kissed him crooked - the red stamp of her lips sliding off his mouth, like a peeling sticker. 
“I wasn’t thinking.”
He reached for her hand. She flinched; his skin was warm and sticky with paint. He said her name.
“You’re my friend,” he said. “You’re like my sister.”
“I know,” she said. “I feel that way too. I just...wasn’t thinking. It’s been a weird week.”
“Okay.” He gave her a long, troubled look. “Are you okay?”
She shrugged, her face burning. The bell on the door clanged - a customer. 
“I should go.”

She nodded, unable to look him in the eyes. When he had gone, she licked her lips. They were sweet. Not the waxy-sweet of her lipstick, but something softer, muskier. She didn’t know what she’d expected - she knew she didn’t like Elijah in that way. But part of her wanted to kiss him again, just to taste his skin, to test her courage, to explore a version of herself that was thoroughly unknown to her. The self that was not starving for nourishment, the self that fed and nurtured instead of consumed. The self that mothered so fiercely, so steadily, that no one would ever guess the fathoms of her own need. The pulsing, limitless need that had driven her own mother to exhaustion. In her mind, this was the self that Lozenge had awakened, the self that would pursue, reject, love, offend. The woman in her farmgirl fantasies was, she supposed, a gossamer version of this self. A woman that flickered on the edges of her consciousness, a woman that she had always half-believed would take the reins from her, once she was cured. The man in the daydream was nameless, faceless - he never mattered as much as the feeling of being watched, kindling the curiosity and wonder of strangers simply by being alive. 

Her arms ached as she stirred the paint in the barrel. It was dark, reddish-brown. Chocolate. Wine. Blood. She tried to distract herself, daydream her way into a story more lurid and lively than her own. She didn’t care anymore if it ended happily. It could be a murder mystery, occult horror, gothic tragedy. A witch brewing aphrodisiac in the woods, the fumes luring men to her thicket from surrounding kingdoms. An incredibly restrained vampire who drew blood with needles instead of fangs, slowly collecting samples until she could fill a tub with them, bathe in her dessert. A girl kidnapped by a dragon, made to whisk vats of bubbling magma for her own incineration. 

She poured the paint into a block-shaped mold and slipped it into the freezer, where it would solidify. She wondered, for the umpteenth time, what the purpose of her job was. Why bother with the molds if Elijah was just going to melt them again for customers? There was the occasional oddball who wanted the blocks straight-up, razor-edged and shimmery with ice crystals. She’d always assumed that they were just going to store the blocks in some closet; perhaps the paint stayed fresh longer if it was frozen. She had a sudden image of herself as a block of flesh-colored paint, all youth and softness and skin, congealed in somebody’s basement for future use. Perhaps the basement would belong to a dollmaker whose marriage was in crisis. He had a fresh batch of doll-children, bare and succulent as unfrosted cookies, just waiting to be painted. But he was too consumed by the wreckage of his relationship - he had no time for art. So the doll children crumbled, one by one, all except her, in her shiny little cube. She was like a frozen egg. An unrolled dice, a life’s worth of possibility. 

She opened the freezer and stared at the shelves of paint blocks. They were sorted by color: cold colors on top, flesh-tones in the middle. Like the layers of the earth, the hottest colors lay at the bottom, almost unreachable beneath racks of gray, teal, mauve, beige. She realized, suddenly, that she wanted one. Mango, maybe, or a slit-vein red. The blocks glowed in the dark of the freezer, as though illumined by their own radiant heartbeats. She reached for a pale yellow. It didn’t feel right in her hands. She tried a pink, an orange, and then finally settled on a deep purple-red. Its label read Elderberry. She felt her throat close, and quickly slipped the cube into her purse, hoping it wouldn’t melt in the car home. She ducked her head on her way out, so she wouldn’t have to look at Elijah. She saw him wave from the corner of her eye. She didn’t wave back. 

***

She found Lozenge in the exact same position she’d left it: prone on its back, legs in the air, wings splayed languidly to the side. That was how it liked to sleep: a little drama queen, consuming as much space as possible. She sat beside it, stroking its feathers and trying not to think about Elijah, or Alice, or Shavasana, or the stack of unpaid bills on the table. She’d been avoiding the hospital; the savings her mother had left her were now completely spent, and even if she were to wake up completely healthy the next morning, she would have to start looking for a second job. 

She realized, suddenly, that Lozenge’s chest wasn’t moving at all. Usually, its breathing made its belly swell in an out, like a feathery balloon. 

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”

She nudged it, gently. Then again, harder. It remained perfectly still. She lifted it in her hands; its body was soft and weightless as a cotton ball. The wheatgrass underneath it was damp - not with Lovemilk, but with something dark and purple. She felt her legs give way. She sat on the couch, Lozenge cradled in her shirt, and dialed India’s number on her cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, India, it’s Lozenge. I mean - Lozenge’s mom.” 
“Oh, hi!” India sounded surprised. Perhaps she hadn’t expected either of them to last this long. “How’s the baby?” 
“It’s - um - I think it might be dead.” She felt tears coming, and rubbed her eyes with her fists.
“Oh, honey. Did it ink?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Lovebugs usually release ink when they die. The color depends on the breed, but it tends to be either black or purple.”

She glanced again at Lozenge’s cage. From a distance, she could see the purple puddle more clearly than before. It looked like a melted popsicle. 

Yes,” she said, so softly she could barely hear herself. Her tears plunked into her lap, speckling Lozenge’s feathers. “It inked.”
“I’m sorry,” said India. “I’m sure, by now, the two of you are bonded.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I’m still here. I’ve actually been feeling better, these last few days. I thought we - Lozenge and I - were going to be okay.”
"Oh sweetheart, you are okay. It’s not your fault.”
“But it has to be. You said Lovebugs are reflections of their owners. If we suffer, they suffer. I must have...I don’t know, I must have done something to-”
“No,” said India, her voice firm. “You didn’t do anything. Just like your own sickness isn’t your fault. It never was.”
“You don’t know that.”
It was true. When an illness had no name, no definition, no cure, how could you ever really know where it came from?
“I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” said India. “That was misinformed. I’ve actually been speaking with a few specialists, since our last conversation. There’s a lot of hogwash circulating on the internet concerning Lovebugs, and usually I don’t pay it much attention, but it turns out, there is some truth to the Red Breed issue you brought up a few weeks ago.”
“You mean the genetic mutation?”
“Yes. The trials are still in their early stages, but it looks like there may be a fair bit of evidence confirming your theory.”
She smoothed her fingers over Lozenge’s wings. With her eyes closed, she could almost pretend she was combing a little girl’s hair.
“It wasn’t my theory,” she said. “I just brought it to your attention.”
“Right,” said India. “I’m glad you did. Because you need to know that Lozenge dying wasn’t your fault. It’s a problem with the Red Breed. In fact, I’ve....I’ve had several calls just like this one, over the past few days. With families of Red Lovebugs.”

She couldn’t think of anything to say to this, so she thanked India and hung up. She closed her eyes again, and stroked Lozenge, and thought about her mother’s hair. They both had the same hair - thin and wispy and silver-blonde.
“It’s like we’re ageless,” her mother used to say. “We have fairy hair.”

After a few minutes, she set Lozenge back in its shoebox, on an unstained patch of wheatgrass. Then she pulled the paint block from her purse and set it on the table. She had no idea what to do with it.

She figured she should so something with Lozenge’s body, before it secreted any more strange fluids. She was half-expecting it to burst into wild, technicolor flames. 

She carried the shoebox into the backyard, along with a shovel. She got down on her knees and dug a small grave, the dirt giving way easily beneath her, black and soft as coffee grounds. She laid Lozenge inside the hole. Part of her wanted to jump in there with it. Not to die, exactly, but just to stare up at the sky, warm and snug in the soil. Two mutations, two Red Genes, one sinking into the earth and the other still struggling to get back on her feet. It drove her a little bit insane to think about the simplicity of the Red Gene theory - the arbitrary cruelty of the universe, the meaninglessness of Lozenge’s death, and her part in it. The connection they’d had, that imaginary tether, like a snipped umbilical cord. Now they were just two bodies, as free and as unconnected as anyone else, bonded only by the fact that they were each - in their own ways - stuck in the ground. 

She smoothed the soil over Lozenge’s body and placed a rock over it. The rock was bulky and brown, not at all the kind of gravestone she wanted to Lozenge to have. And then, all at once, she knew what to do. She ran back inside and fished the paint block out of her purse. It was starting to melt. Then she held it over the rock, counted to three, and dropped it. It ruptured, a beautiful elderberry spray, across the grave. She knelt down and wrote Lozenge’s name on the rock with her finger. The rock dripped a lovely, iridescent violet, not unlike Lozenge’s death-ink, but somehow brighter and not quite as depressing. She wondered what the ink meant - if Lozenge had been trying to communicate one last message. Underneath the name, she used her own ink to draw a heart, the letters RIP inside. 

Then she went inside and made herself a cup of marshmallows, adding a Swiss Miss packet and some water as an afterthought. She sat by the window and watched the rock. The ink sparkled in the sun. From this angle, the letters looked like they’d been carved from some precious stone, like topaz or amethyst. She felt certain that Lozenge was secreting some nourishing ointment into the soil, and that tomorrow morning, she’d wake up and find flowers growing on its grave.