On the day of Eve's graduation, over 70% of the people in her class were matched with their clock partners.
Hers had reached zero.
She had met no one.
This kind of thing simply wasn't supposed to happen. All people had matches, all people had functional watches. All people had their lives laid out for them.
Eve felt lost. Even up until the end of her senior year, she had been the subject of ridicule in the hallways. She was never going to find love, and that made her a freak. In her secret places she knelt and cried over the stark, unflinching numbers that stared back at her from her wrist. They were unremovable. No surgical procedures had been invented for the removal of watches, and tearing it off would cause unrepairable damage to her arm. They were never going to go away. They would always be a brand of her failure.
After the graduation, Eve ran away to the corner of her mother's garden where a wooden swing awaited her. She loved such vintage, strange things, and she enjoyed mechanics. Growing up, she had built all kinds of little machines and tiny robots and mechanical organisms. She was good with her hands, good with intricate work. And her love for machinery was yet one more thing that made her different from everyone else.
On the swing, she cried. It wasn't so much the fact that her life would never involve loving someone else; that didn't bother her as much as the realization that no one would ever accept her. She would have difficulty finding a job, difficulty fitting in anywhere, because life had denied her so many things that everyone else had.
Her quiet sobs were heard only by the grass and the trees and the sky, only the organic things. Her graduation cap and gown lay piled in a heap on the grassy earth, pressed into the mud for all she cared. She didn't notice her mother's presence in the garden until warm arms wrapped around her shoulders.
"Stop feeling so sorry for yourself," said her mother.
Eve looked at her sharply, face swollen from crying. "What?" she muttered weakly.
Her mother stated, "You're making this much worse than it needs to be."
Eve looked away. She expected more sympathy.
"Think about it, Eve," said her mother, squeezing her shoulders gently. "You are capable. You're strong. You're talented. You're beautiful."
Eve had heard the ridicules of the boys in her class and thought otherwise.
"Have you seen what your hands can do?" Her mother's hand dug into the pocket of her apron and emerged bearing a tiny mechanical bird. It was crafted from scraps of polished metal, extra screws, random springs. She held it up to Eve, and it gleamed in the sun. Its structure was masterful. Eve took it reluctantly and stared at it.
"Eve, I don't care what the world says about you," said the mother softly. "You can do things that no one else I know can." She wrapped her fingers around her daughter's wrist, hiding the clock. "It is not up to some clock to determine what your life is going to be. It's up to you, Eve. You're the one with a head full of sense and imagination. I know that's who you are. And I know that you're going to make it. You're going to be able to make a life for yourself."
Three days later, Eve had answered an ad in the newspaper. She was going to work at a laboratory.
This was the beginning of her new life.
