As I walked to the park on Saturday morning, I kept trying to calm myself down. I was nervous enough to want to scream. Okay, so maybe I had romantic feelings for Helena, and maybe I did want to ask her out, but the reason I was nervous had nothing to do with either of those things.

I’ve always felt like there was something about my father’s death that Cyan Four Laboratories wasn’t telling me or my mom. Now, I may be completely wrong about this, but ever since my last conversation with Helena on the phone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there really was something more, and that Helena knew what it was.

I arrived at the park fifteen minutes early, quite a feat for someone who usually walks into class at least half-an-hour late. I found Helena already waiting for me. She was sitting on a bench next to the south entrance. As usual, she was reading a book.

“Hey,” I called, walking up to her.

Helena smiled once she saw me coming. She got up on her feet, stashed the book away on her purse, and then offered to take my hand in hers. I gladly accepted.

“It’s good to see you,” she told me.

“Yeah, it’s… good to see you too.” Hand-in-hand, we started walking among the trees. “By the way, isn’t that a weird thing to say on a date?” I pointed out. “Shouldn’t we have done that thing where I ask you if you waited long, and then you’d say ‘oh, no, I just got here’, something like that?”

Helena furrowed her brow.

“Know what? You’re right,” she said. “We messed it up.”

“We totally messed it up,” I agreed, and we both started laughing.

Moments later, we stopped by a man who was selling popsicles, and Helena offered to buy one for me. I ended up buying a strawberry one, and Helena even took a tentative bite off it, even though it was, as she often said, a complete waste of food.

“It’s weird,” she remarked, “how things like these can still feel like a reward to my brain even though I have absolutely no need for food.”

“It’s not weird,” I said, walking beside her. “I mean, I probably don’t have any need for all the sugar in this thing either.”

Helena laughed, “True, true.”

“So, is there any reason you chose to come here, in particular?”

Helena seemed to ponder that for a moment.

“It’s a good spot for a first date, don’t you think?”

I felt a warm feeling in my chest. My fingers were still interlocked with Helena’s as we walked around together.

“Now tell me something about yourself,” said Helena. “I remember we met in an Ethics class, but I still don’t know what your major is. Are you studying Philosophy? Or Law, maybe?”

“Nope,” I said, and we sat on the grass next to each other. “I can’t stand Law, to be honest. And Philosophy sounds way too much work.”

“Then, which one? CS?”

“That’s the one,” I told her.

“Following in your father’s footsteps, I assume.”

“Oh, no, not at all,” I hurriedly explained. “I really don’t want to work with what he did. To be honest, I…” Breathe, Lucia. Just tell her. “After my father died, I swore to myself that I would never get involved with his work.”

Helena nodded slowly.

“It doesn’t look like you’ve been having much success with that,” she pointed out.

I laughed. We stood in silence for a moment, looking into each other’s eyes. Then Helena leaned closer to me, and we kissed. She pulled me down on the grass with her, and we laid together, kissing and hugging each other tenderly for a while.

“This feels nice,” said Helena. “I don’t remember the last time someone hugged me the way you’re doing, right now. I don’t wanna let go.”

I chuckled, then ran a hand through her hair. “Do you always say the very first thing that comes to your mind?”

“Not always,” she said. “But I think I’ve been doing it a lot with you. Maybe you have that effect on people?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But you’re right, it does feel nice,” I told her.

Helena snuggled up to me, and closed her eyes. Like that, she looked almost asleep. Then I felt her take my left hand with hers, and with her right index finger, she started drawing on the palm of my hand.

At first, I thought she was just being silly. But then I realized she wasn’t really drawing, she was writing letters. The first one was a C, then an A, and now the letter N.

C A N Y O U U N D E R S T A N D M E ?

I felt a chill run up my arm once I realized what she was doing. I looked at her face, and saw that she still had her eyes closed. Then Helena placed her hand on mine, palm up, as if asking me to reply.

Hesitantly, I drew on her hand with my finger.

Y E S

Helena smiled, though she still had her eyes closed, and then she wrote:

C Y A N K N O W S A L L I S E E A N D H E A R

That one took me a moment to figure out. When I did understand, I wrote this on her hand:

I K N O W . I R E A D T H E D I A G R A M

I looked at Helena’s face, and saw that she was smiling. She once more took my hand, and this time she wrote:

C A N Y O U K E E P A S E C R E T ?

I wrote back on the palm of her hand, agreeing. She then wrote me three messages, ending each one with a long press on my hand, which was maybe a period. What she wrote was:

I T H I N K G I U S E P P E W A S K I L L E D .

I N E V E R T O L D Y O U T H I S .

U N D E R S T A N D?

Of course I understood. “Y E S”, I wrote on her hand.

Beside me, Helena faked a yawn. I turned to look at her, and saw that she had opened her eyes.

“Geez,” she said, “I guess I must have dozed off. Sorry.” She sat up on the grass. “Falling asleep in the middle of a date, how lame is that?”

“I don’t mind,” I told her, sitting up as well. I had to play along with the lie, now, haven’t I? “And besides,” I added, “you look cute when you’re asleep.”

Helena smiled, and looked away.

“You know, I’m really glad to be a replica, right now,” she told me. “I would be blushing like crazy otherwise.”

I laughed. I didn’t know whether Helena was being sincere or just acting for appearances’ sake, but the idea of this mature young woman blushing because I called her cute was amusing either way.

“You’re really a wonder, you know.”

The words escaped my mouth before I could give them a second thought. Helena and I looked into each other’s eyes.

“So are you,” she told me. Then, just a second later, the redhead covered her face with her hands. “My god!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

I chuckled. “It’s hard to believe you’re older than me when you act all shy and innocent like this.”

“Shut up,” she retorted, after uncovering her face. “It’s not even a three-year difference.”

That surprised me. “How do you know that?” I asked. Then I saw the expression on Helena’s face change from embarrassment to sadness, and I knew at once what the answer to that question was.

It was my father. He had died on the week before my fourteenth birthday. Of course Helena knew about that.

“Come on,” I told her. I stood up, grabbed her hand, and pulled Helena to her feet. I then started to sort-of-drag her around on the way to the nearest exit. I called us a car.

Maybe my resolve then was a façade, a front I put up in order not to fall apart in public and in front of Helena. The truth is that I felt weak, and shaken, and it was taking me everything I had to not burst into tears. So Helena thought my father was murdered, what of it? It doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone. Nor does it hurt any less every time I’m reminded of his death. As I sat in the car beside Helena I was convinced that all of this was a mistake. I was once more left empty and miserable. I should have known not to get myself involved with his work. Involved with her.

And then, there was a part of me that felt that running away wouldn’t be right. Because this time it didn’t just concern me, Helena was a part of it too. And if I ran away again, and left her alone all by herself, that would be unfair of me. Maybe because of what happened several days before, when she confessed that she also missed my father, but there was something about her that I couldn’t simply ignore.

It was for that reason that I set our destination to the movie theater. When we got there, I bought us both tickets to whichever movie was up next. A comedy, or maybe a romance, I don’t know, I don’t remember paying the least bit of attention to it. We sat through the entire movie in silence, holding each other’s hand, the sound of the theater drowning my sobs. I’m sure Helena must have been crying too, even if no tears would fall from her eyes.

The movie ended, and I still didn’t know what it was about. Something with a lot of airplanes, and some people playing a game, or whatever. Credits rolled up, people walked out, eventually the two of us were the only ones left in the theater. I hadn’t even noticed this much, until I heard Helena’s voice from beside me.

“Lucia,” she called. “It’s cold in here.”

That made me snap back into reality.

“Sorry,” I told her. “Let’s go.”

We walked outside, still in silence, still not letting go of each other’s hand. Once we were outside the theater, Helena turned to look at me.

“Thank you,” she said, looking into my eyes. “I guess I needed this.”

I nodded. I knew exactly how she felt, because those were my feelings about it as well.

A car stopped on the street beside us. I guess Helena must have called it. She let go of my hand.

“So, um…” I saw Helena tuck a rebel lock of hair behind her ear. It was the second time I’d seen her do this, and I assumed it was a nervous habit. “I guess we’ll… see each other again, sometime? Just… just call me, okay?”

I saw her turn away and get into the car. A sudden feeling of dread grew inside me. I shouldn’t let her go. Not now. Not like this.

Before I could realize what I was doing, I had already jumped forward and grabbed Helena’s arm.

“Um, Lucia?” she asked me, puzzled. “What are you doing?”

“Do you…” I made something up on the spot. It didn’t matter what. All that mattered was stopping Helena from going away. “Do you want to go see Freddie? At my place?”

Helena smiled, then laughed. I let go of her arm, suddenly ashamed. But it worked, though, and I realized that once I saw Helena get out of the car and stand in front of me.

“Sure,” she said, taking my hand once more. “I’d love to.”