Suicide Club Read online

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  For my father, Geoffrey Heng (1957–2017)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my editors, Melissa Cox at Hodder & Stoughton and Libby Burton at Henry Holt, for bringing Suicide Club into the world. Not only did your wise, razor-sharp edits make this the best book it could possibly be, your generosity, enthusiasm, and friendship also made the publication process a true pleasure.

  To Juliet Mushens—agent extraordinaire, human whirlwind, hard-nosed hustler, insightful editor, unflappable cheerleader, caring friend—thank you for making my dreams come true. You inspire me every single day. To Sasha Raskin, thank you for making US publication possible, as well as for all the great lunches and conversations.

  Thank you to everyone at Faber Academy. Special thanks to Joanna Briscoe for reading the first ten thousand words of what would become this book and telling me not to give up. Thank you as well to Nicci Cloke for all the encouragement and advice. To my Faber classmates, especially early readers Melanie Garrett and Carol Barnes, thank you for all the feedback and support.

  To all my friends, thank you for making me laugh, feeding my brain, and keeping me sane through this process. You give me faith that this world is full of adventure and possibility. To Sam and Christine, thank you for fifteen years of communal naps, inside jokes, public screaming, and long-distance love. To Vadim, thank you for Thanksgivings, Kenya, and all the Things We Did. I wouldn’t have done it without you.

  To my mother, thank you for raising and loving me. Thank you for reading to me as a child, taking me to the library and letting me use all the library cards. You have given me countless gifts, but the love of reading is one that has shaped my life and made me the person I am today. Thank you to my brother, Kevin, for being my biggest fan since 1993. Thank you for being the smartest, kindest brother I could ever ask for. I love you both.

  To Kalle, husband, soulmate, and best friend, thank you for telling me on that snowy New York night in 2009 that I should be a writer, five years before I would write my first short story. You understand me in ways that no one does; you read and nurture parts of my soul unknown to even myself. Thank you for being my biggest cheerleader, wisest mentor, harshest critic. I quite literally wouldn’t be a writer without you. Thank you for making me laugh helplessly every day, for challenging my mind and my soul, for making me feel a freedom, a lightness I had never felt before meeting you. You are the best thing in my life. I love you.

  Before you know what kindness really is

  you must lose things,

  feel the future dissolve in a moment

  like salt in a weakened broth.

  What you held in your hand,

  what you counted and carefully saved,

  all this must go so you know

  how desolate the landscape can be

  between the regions of kindness.

  —“Kindness,” NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

  PROLOGUE

  The man stood in a windowless room. He wore a tuxedo, black as coal, cut sharply against the cliffs of his shoulders. The room was empty, except for the glass bottle and box of matches at his feet.

  * * *

  Some watching the video that night would have closed it at this point, taking it for advertising or spam. But others watched on, intrigued by the formality of his dress or the hard glint in his eyes. Those who kept watching would have heard him state his name and age. They would have heard him explain the reasons for what he was about to do, how long and hard he’d deliberated before coming to this decision. Why he did not want to live another two hundred years. They heard him say that his family had no part in this, and that he had chosen to dress up for the occasion.

  * * *

  Once the man finished speaking, he picked up the bottle from the floor, tipping its contents down his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed under the fleshy creases of his neck as he drank. When he finished, he gave his invisible audience a long, silent look.

  “They leave us no choice,” he said at last. “DiamondSkinTM, ToughMuscTM. Replacements. Think how much easier it was when you could just take a kitchen knife to your wrists and watch the life pour out of your veins.”

  * * *

  More observant viewers would have seen that a trail of clear fluid was now trickling down the side of his mouth as he spoke.

  “Something has to change. In being robbed of our deaths, we are robbed of our lives.”

  * * *

  He struck a match. The flame shivered under the cool fluorescent lights.

  “They leave us no choice.”

  When he touched the tip of the match to his outstretched tongue, the flame seemed to pause for a moment, as if wondering where to go. But then he breathed in and the flame grew and grew, filling the alcohol-soaked cavity of his mouth, darting down his throat and up his nasal passages. The man spoke no more.

  ONE

  The cake was a huge, tiered thing, painted with buttercream and decked with tiny red flowers, floating on a glass pedestal in the middle of the crowded room.

  No one talked about it, or even looked at it. But every now and then, someone would linger a little too long by the drinks table, pretending to assess the various bubbly greens on offer while peeking at the cake out of the corner of their eye. Todd stood dutifully by Lea’s side, a slender flute of pale cordial in hand.

  “Lovely party,” he said, nodding as if someone had asked him a question. He beckoned at her with his glass. “Great drinks. I’m really enjoying the Spirulina Spritz.”

  Lea smiled absently. Her eyes flitted over the crowd, taking in the navy dresses and delicate silver jewelry, the tasteful suits in varying shades of gray. The flowers on the cake stood out like pinpricks of blood in an otherwise bloodless room. Even the bronzed faces, framed by shiny locks, so well hydrated and even-boned, seemed gray to her.

  But it was a success, by all accounts. The party was a success.

  She wouldn’t forget to smile. Healthy mind, healthy body.

  * * *

  “There they are! My favorite couple.”

  “Natalie.” Todd brightened, tilting his head in welcome.

  Natalie delivered her air kisses with the forbearance of a celebrity deigning to have their picture taken. First to Todd, then to Lea, careful not to actually touch their cheeks.

  “You look—wow—great,” Todd said, still nodding. Lea suppressed the urge to grab his head and hold it still.

  She did look great, though. Her sheath dress shimmered in the candlelight, shadowy indigo. It looked as if Natalie had been poured, a creamy, fragrant liquid, into the sleek dark length of it.

  Lea flashed a smile, mentally cataloging her own appearance. She measured her straight black hair against Natalie’s glossy brown curls (Natalie’s was more luscious, more full of life), the burnt umber of her skin against Natalie’s pale, freckled visage (prone to UV damage and melanoma, so here Lea had a clear advantage). Natalie’s face was angular and long, which, together with her l
arge front teeth, gave her an equine aspect. Lea, on the other hand, had never lost her baby fat and her cheeks remained full and plump, lacking in angles altogether. It was something which had bothered her as a girl but that she prized today. As with most lifers around the same age, their bodies were as similar as their faces were different, nearly identical in stature and muscular tone.

  “Please,” Natalie said. “Don’t patronize me. Can you see these lines?” She pointed to one smooth, rouged cheek. “I know you can, so there’s no need to be polite. I’ve had the worst week, just the worst, must have taken at least three months off my number. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

  She pressed her lips together. It was evident that she did, in fact, very much want to talk about it, but no one said anything.

  “Lea!” she said suddenly. “Tell me all about you! You are naughty, always keeping things to yourself.” Natalie glanced coyly at Todd.

  “Trust me, I’d love to have some secrets. But with friends like you…”

  They burst out laughing. Todd laughed too, right on cue. Their laughter was rich and cascading, a golden ribbon unfurling through the party, making people turn to look, people who were until then perfectly secure of their position in life but at that moment felt something was missing.

  More friends arrived to join the group, and the flirtatious barbs continued. Lea was up for a big promotion, which she made sure to slip in casually while complaining about how much more work she was getting. She felt the information sink in and waited for the reaction it would generate. Sure enough, Jasmine jumped in with a cautionary tale about how promotions tended to turn co-workers against you; after all, that was what happened to her when she was the first lifer at her firm to get to director level before she hit a hundred.

  The conversation fizzled, and they cast their gazes about, looking for a new topic. Some pulled out their tablets.

  “So,” Natalie said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Have you seen it?” She tossed her hair, the lush ringlets giving off the faint scent of coconut. Her neck was firm and smooth. Like the flank of a racehorse, Lea thought.

  “Seen what?”

  Natalie rolled her eyes, pushed her shoulders back. Her left shoulder, Lea noticed with satisfaction, was slightly lower than the right. Lea drew herself up to her full height as well, glad that her sleeveless silk top showed off the definition of her upper arms, the symmetry of her clavicles.

  “The video, of course,” Natalie said.

  No one looked up from their tabs, but Lea felt the air freeze. She saw the man’s eyes, hard and shiny, pupils perfectly opaque, like a fish. His mouth, filling up with heat and fire, melting into brown and black and red, flesh vanishing into smoke and flame.

  “Oh, God,” said a tall man with poreless mahogany skin. He sipped on his vitamin spritz and shuddered. “Can we not talk about that again, Natalie?”

  Natalie’s new fiancé, Lea remembered. She looked at him closely, taking in his height, posture, muscle tone. She noted the dark intelligent eyes, long lashes, elegant, broad forehead.

  “What? We know everyone’s thinking about it,” Natalie said.

  “Unfortunate, unfortunate, very unfortunate. How could we not?” Todd bowed his head.

  “Exactly!” Natalie crowed.

  “They’re sick,” someone else chimed in.

  “Disgusting.”

  “Antisanct.”

  “Imagine children watching that.”

  “Imagine us watching that. Who knows how many months you lose watching that kind of thing?”

  “Right! Just think about what it does to cortisol levels.”

  “Pure spectacle, that’s what it is.”

  “And to do it like that. I feel nauseated just thinking about it.”

  Suddenly Lea could smell it—the acrid burn of flesh, the eye-watering sting of smoke. The man’s eyes, filled with a hard, unfamiliar conviction, a deep sadness. Something inside her lurched. Revulsion, she told herself. Shock.

  “Are you okay, Lea?” Todd said. “You look a little pale.”

  Everyone was looking at her now.

  “Oh, yes, Lea,” Natalie said, eyes wide with concern. “Now that Todd’s mentioned it. How are your vitamin D levels, darling? I can recommend a clinic, you know, if yours isn’t quite up to the mark.”

  “Perfect, actually.” Lea smiled, ignoring the barely veiled insult. “And no, thank you. I would never leave my Tender. Jessie and I go way back—she was assigned to our family when my mother made senior VP.”

  “Of course,” Natalie said. She pressed her lips together and turned back to the others.

  * * *

  It won’t kill you to be nice. At least try.

  I am, Lea thought. I am trying. Irritation flared in her belly. She saw her mother’s face, the lines emanating from the corners of her eyes. Then she heard her voice in her head again: Wrinkles are caused by the loss of elasticity in the skin, a consequence of wear and tear that can be delayed, but not eliminated, by RepairantsTM.

  Ever practical, her mother. Even after she’d been dead for thirty years. Her spine had remained upright till the very end, her downy hair as black as it had always been, kept neatly cropped close to her skull by monthly visits to the salon. Her skin retained its elasticity far better than some of her lighter peers, who had withered decades earlier. Her muscles stayed firm, her feet smooth and well-groomed, her mauve lips full. Such were the benefits of being the CEO of Talent Global and having access to Tier 4 treatments.

  Uju had lived to a hundred and forty-two—forty-two years older than Lea was now. It had been a good outcome for someone of her generation, someone who had been in her sixties when the Second Wave began. For Lea, however, a hundred and forty-two would be failure. Three hundred was now the number to beat.

  Don’t waste it. I gave you everything. Everything your brother couldn’t have. Her mother’s voice was quiet now, but Lea heard in it the ache that always made her snap to attention, that threatened to open up the wound that the decades, so many of them, could not heal.

  She looked around the room at the sleek, glossy haircuts, the smooth foreheads and ramrod spines. The beautiful, wealthy, life-loving people conversing in low voices, politely laughing and clinking glasses from time to time. She took in the premium vitamin spritzes, the fine crystal flutes, the high ceilings and expansive view of the city down below. The space she had rented for the party was usually reserved for corporate functions, but select employees at the Healthfin fund she worked for were able to book it for special occasions.

  No, she hadn’t wasted anything, Lea thought. Her mother would surely have been proud.

  * * *

  “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Lea!”

  The room burst into thunderous applause. Cameras flashed. Lea smiled the way Uju had told her to eighty-eight years ago: Your eyes, make sure to use your eyes, or it looks like you don’t mean it.

  She picked up the knife and sliced into the bottom layer of the cake. The Styrofoam gave a high squeal when the plastic blade went through it, but even as she winced inwardly, Lea never let the smile leave her face.

  TWO

  The pavement was a slipstream of browns and grays. The jacket-clad men and women all walked in the same way—elbows pinned to their sides, heads down, gaze directed at the heels of the commuter in front of them.

  Lea didn’t know what it was that made her look up. Perhaps it was something in the air, the smell of summer giving way to fall, that first nip of coolness brushing her cheeks. Perhaps it was the delicate ankles of the woman in front of her, clothed in dark mesh. Or the leftover buzz from her birthday party the night before, a desire to take in the expanse of the street, the eggshell blue of the morning sky.

  When she saw him the air went out of her lungs. He was crossing the road some way ahead of her. He moved slowly, unaware of the disruption he was causing to the flow of commuters around him. Lea could see the looks of annoyance on their fac
es as people were forced to veer off their usual unthinking paths. The impatient clicks of tongues and issuance of sighs filled her head. He, however, did not seem to notice and only kept walking at the same ponderous pace, one heavy footstep after another.

  This old, oblivious man couldn’t be her father. Yet she couldn’t tear her eyes from him. She saw how his once-black hair had faded to gray, how thinly it sat against his scalp, the unkempt edges of it curling at his lined neck. She drank in the curve of his jaw that used to hold more flesh than it did now. She watched as he brought his chin to his chest and his hand to his nose, pinching its base as if preparing to go underwater. The gesture was unmistakable.

  Lea felt a violent jerk in her chest. A pressure on her diaphragm, a tightness in the throat. Eighty-eight years since the day he’d disappeared without saying goodbye, and there he was again. On the other side of the road, as if he’d never been gone at all.

  Let him go. Uju’s voice to twelve-year-old Lea. We have to let him go. It’s better this way, after what he’s done. He doesn’t belong in your life.

  The crowd was bearing the man farther and farther away, despite his slow pace. Now he was on the other side of the street, disappearing down the pavement. Soon he would be out of sight.

  Her mother had been right then and she was almost certainly right now, especially now. Everything Lea had worked so hard for, decade after decade, was about to pay off. She’d done it with her mother’s support and discipline, yes, but she’d also done it in spite of her father, everything that he’d done and was.

  Lea bit down hard on the inside of her cheek, sucking the soft flesh between her teeth. She started elbowing her way through the crowd.

  “Watch out!” A stray shoulder rammed into her chest.

  He was getting farther away. Only his lack of speed allowed her to keep her eyes on him; he was like a pebble in a stream, forming ripples in the crowd that surrounded him. Now all she could see was the top of his gray head, bobbing amidst the swirling human currents.