Chapter 7

Hide and seek. On a ship the size of Serenity, it wouldn’t seem a possible game to play. But, on a ship like Serenity, with the idea of streamlined forgotten by the designers, the tables were turned.

“You stay, count,” River said to Simon as soon as they were out of the infirmary. Her face was serious, but he knew what those words meant.

“All right,” he said. Then she was gone. Sitting down on the couch in the lounge, ignoring the slightly foul smell that rose from it as he sat, he closed his eyes and began to count. This was certainly not something he had planned for today, even though he had begun to count on some kind of interaction with River every day. He would have called it play, would have called it normal—but she did not smile. Last night, as he recorded the day’s events in short sentences in his journal, he had commented on River’s overall behavior, nearly putting down the words “almost normal”. Then he had stopped, and crossed out the words with a sudden fierceness. River wasn’t normal—he couldn’t let himself forget the gravity of what had been done. They had stolen her smile away, stolen her laugh, and he would never forgive or forget.

After the flash of anger faded, though, he wrote, “doing well”. He hadn’t lost hope yet, but it was likely that he could never help her to be even “almost normal”. He had to appreciate what he had. And that was a sister, alive, who still knew who he was, who ate and drank and responded to him, and who even interacted in almost playful ways. He wasn’t sure if hide and seek meant the same to River now, but he was more than willing to play along.

Realizing he had lost track of the number he was on, he decided it was long enough, and rose to begin the search. He walked up to the kitchen, looking around in the more obvious places. As he passed through, the conversations floated around him, an outsider who would soon be gone. And he was, as after the two large cupboards by the stove, not even River could fit into the many small compartments that made