Avalanche is actually Risa’s POV but it’s a brief bit followed by another one that does have her name on it, so I guess that’s why it’s deviating from the POV format.

The form she signs has a line saying she does it of her own free will, but of course she’s coerced into it, and It set into motion a cascading series of events that Risa could not have predicted, and yet was expertly orchestrated by Roberta, her associates, and their money.

I like Risa, so let’s be charitable here and assume she means the exact sequence was way more complex than she expected and not that she was flabbergasted by the idea that forcing her to do something that seemed to have no immediate purpose was just part of a larger plan.

Risa has never gone skiing—such frivolous activities were not offered to state wards—yet lately she’s been dreaming that she’s skiing down a triple black diamond slope

I’d argue that piano playing is about as frivolous – are your odds of getting a skiing job really worse than your odds of getting a pianist job? – and also, how does she even know about what a triple black diamond slope is in that case? It seems like memorizing ski trail rankings to the point they show up in your dreams despite never being allowed any activities that even resemble that has to be even more frivolous.

I don’t know why the dream isn’t just her trying to run from an avalanche. That’s simple enough and shown in a broad enough range of media that it makes sense someone’s brain could pull it up, plus a major feature of dreams is usually the fact you struggle to move, which is really not suited by the idea she’s skiing at top speed away from an avalanche.

Then on to the next chapter.

Risa’s gotten her new spine and she can feel her legs and all. Because she is not as pure and perfect as Connorsue, she’s happy about this.

She wishes the connection between her heart and her mind could be more direct—that the part of her that wants this could be firmly ruled by the part of her that doesn’t—because although her mind wants to despise what they’ve done for her, the part of her that knows no reason is filled with joy at the prospect of holding her own balance and moving under the power of her own legs.

Oh, women. Always so weak. Not like Connorsue and his proper, punching emotions.

Cam comes to visit and she keeps being a dick to him despite still not knowing he’s the one who did this to her.

“I need to know why you hate me,” he asks. “I’ve done nothing to you. You don’t even know me, but you hate me. Why?”
“I don’t hate you,” Risa admits. “There’s no ‘you’ to hate.”
…
“Do you think the kids who were unwound to be a part of you wanted it?”
“If they were tithes, they did,” Cam says, “and some of them were. As for the other ones, they had no choice . . . any more than I had a choice in being made.”
And for a moment, within the fury she feels toward the people who created him, Risa realizes that Cam, as much as all the kids who were unwound to make him, is a victim too.

This sounds an awful lot like an abortion metaphor too.

It also skips merrily over the issue that Cam the person who does exist now is totally doing stuff in his own right that’s awful.

it’s not his smile at all. He’s just wearing the flesh of others, and if it was all peeled away, there’d be nothing in the center. He is little more than a cruel trick.

She seems to think he’s some sort of p-zombie even though in their society it’s taken as a given that the unwound kids do persist somehow in the transplants and “muscle memory”. Only Lev actually saw the ghost kid in action, but the concept shouldn’t surprise anyone. Connor’s spent half his chapters insisting that his arm still has its own opinions and that he has to keep in under control with his own will. It should make perfect sense that if you just put a bunch of pieces together without an existing unifying person to control it, they’d do their own thing.

He starts quoting the bible and Risa has to laugh at the audacity of his creators—did it occur to them that filling him with biblical knowledge while playing God was the ultimate hubris? when that’s not even how hubris works. You can’t just scream hubris every time science and the bible get within spitting distance.

Also there’s a good chance they didn’t bother doing it deliberately he’s got plenty of tithe chunks.

He then asks why she finally agreed to the operation and she refuses to tell him. He asks if he can come visit more.

“No matter what I say, you’ll come anyway, so why bother asking?”
“Well,” he says as he leaves, “it would be nice to have permission.”

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Risa is of course totally fine with this because she’s a good girl who doesn’t think women should get special treatment by not existing solely as props for men.

on the day Risa first walks
…
She wants this to be a personal moment, not something shared, but as usual, Cam comes uninvited.

And this is what you get for being good, Risa: fucking nothing.

In brighter news for me personally, Cam has some good dialogue:

“Milestone! This is a momentous occasion,” he tells her cheerily. “It should be witnessed by a friend.”
She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal backpedal.
“Aaaand since no friends are present, I’ll have to do.”

Anyway, so she walks slightly and she’s happy and Cam is all “You’re whole again, Risa! You have a right to enjoy it!”
And although she doesn’t believe that’s true, she can’t fight the moment.

And I guess that’s the connection between unwinding and abortion. People only do it because they’re such awful, selfish people who only care about their own personal wants.

To further the message: and now it’s just Risa with her arm around Cam’s shoulder and his arm around her waist—and she wants to be furious that she wound up stuck in this position with him, but that feeling is overridden by giddy sensory overload from her feet, her ankles, her shins, her thighs; parts of her body that just a few short days ago felt nothing at all.

Risa has been seduced into sexual irresponsibility by the liberal agenda, played here by an abomination of science whose sexy frankenabs have lured her from her true boyfriend.

We then go to Cam, who’s all oh my god Risa is touching me oh my god my life’s ambition to be a crutch is fulfilled *_*

She grips his neck tightly for support. Her hold on him pinches the seam there, but it’s a good feeling. He imagines her putting pressure on all his seams, making them ache. No pain could ever feel so good.

Deliberately meant to invoke those stories about heads falling off or just a happy accident?

Risa then grumbles a bit about Roberta, and Cam is all wait you…not like?

“Who, me? No, I love her dearly. Evil scheming bitches are my favorite kind of people.”
Cam feels a sudden protectiveness and an unexpected spike of anger. “Red light!” he blurts. “She’s the closest thing I have to a mother.”
“You’d be better off storked.”
“Easy for you to say. A ward like you doesn’t even know what a mother is.”

This gets him a slap and a glare from the nurse.

And it’s all just…awkward. Roberta’s done something terrible to Risa, but she isn’t really talking like there’s been off-camera shenanigans here and in fact avoids any direct mention of the literal evil scheme, she’s acting like it’s self-evident just from Roberta’s very existence makes her terrible.

“Did the slap sting evenly, Cam,” she asks with a nasty bite in her voice, “or do the kids in your face all feel it differently?”

It’s starting to be like the characters are all different away from Connor. Lev and Miracolina seemed to similarly settle into a dynamic of mutual badness. And like there, I’m not sure how to read it – Cam ends here mastering his temper, apologizing, but asking her not to be mean about people he cares about. Meanwhile his creepy stalker behavior seems to be treated with a similar lightness to Lev’s and the fact she was kidnapped at his demand is getting straight up ignored.

They eat one meal a day together. “It is imperative,” Roberta tells him, “if the two of you are ever going to bond, that you dine together. Meals are when the psyche is most vulnerable to attachment.” He wishes Roberta didn’t make it all sound so clinical. Growing accustomed to each other ’s company shouldn’t be about Risa’s “vulnerability to attachment.”

Note he’s totally aware of what’s going on: Risa does not yet know that she is here to be his companion.

So he gets that she’s been picked for this without her consent. And he gets that she then went on to make it clear that she definitely did not consent to this in case they were confused. And he gets that they’re doing a bunch of stuff to try to get her to like him anyway.

But Roberta’s terrible for talking about what they’re doing rather than pretending this is just innocent romance novel stuff and it just happens that imprisoning someone and giving them only one person to interact with at carefully chosen points somehow ends with them in love.

Cam goes on to talk about this basketball game where he’s shirtless and all his chosen muscles are on display and she watches as sexy science tricks her away from her true boyfriend.

She backs away from the window into shadows, but they both know she was watching. Not because she had to but because she wanted to, and Cam knows that makes all the difference in the world.

And Cam continues to tell himself this is just innocent romance novel stuff and it really means she loves him for who he is, she just needs time to get to know him.

Then back to Risa, who’s talking about how the stockholming is going:

She hears no news of the outside world. For all she knows it no longer exists, and this island clinic—which is not a clinic at all—quickly feels like home. And she hates that.
As much as Risa dreads the daily meal with Cam, she also finds herself looking forward to it. It’s out on the veranda, weather permitting, and whichever meal it is, it’s always the best meal of the day.

One day, Cam brings up the Day of the Slapping to apologize again, and say that he’s got state ward parts and he knows what it’s like.

“They’re not the nicest of places, are they? You have to fight for every bit of attention, otherwise you live a life of bare adequacy, which is the worst life of all.”

As we discussed last book, no, criminal neglect is not the same as bare adequacy. The book then gets something far more horribly right than it knows:

“Do you know which homes you were in?” she asks.
“Not really,” he tells her. “There are images, feelings, specific memories, but for the most part, my language center didn’t come from state wards.”
“I’m not surprised,” Risa says. “Language skills are not a strong point at state homes.”

Right, because language requires human interaction which neglected children don’t get. The only Wards who should have be able to communicate coherently are orphans who were already talking by the time they were dumped at the baby warehouses.

Cam asks if she knows who her parents are, and she says nobody knows. He offers to find out and Risa says, after a bit, that she doesn’t want to know. This was not true of last book and disappoints me. Cam looks sad and Risa, deep in enemy territory and denied other contact, feels bad and takes his hand to say it was so incredibly nice of him to offer.

Cam knows what this means. He starts talking to her about her “dead” boyfriend and Risa wonders if this means that his handlers don’t know about Connor’s survival either and come on Risa, why would they tell him anything important?

“I would never ask to take his place in your heart, but I hope there’s room for me in there as a friend.”
“I make no promises,” says Risa, trying to sound less vulnerable than she truly feels.

Holy shit Risa how did that line not set off a million alarm bells.

Cam then asks if she thinks he’s ugly and gets sad when she doesn’t answer immediately, so she says she doesn’t and it’s just he’s so special and unique and stuff she has no idea what he is.

Later, Roberta comes to show her the lines she’ll be reading,

“Your histrionics are uncalled-for. There’s absolutely nothing in there that isn’t true.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s not the words, it’s what’s implied!”
Roberta shrugs. “Truth is truth. Implications are subjective. People will hear your words and draw their own conclusions.”

Jesus christ Roberta you can make her say literally anything why are you being all weird and concerned about technical truths?

But maybe this is a bit of editing weirdness. The bits before this are dripping in suggestions Risa’s coerced, but the line that follows now that the author’s said she’s being forced to say whatever Roberta wants has none of that:

“I was paralyzed—a victim of the clapper attack at Happy Jack Harvest Camp. I used to hate the very idea of unwinding, then overnight I was the one with a desperate medical need. Without unwinding, I would have been denied a new spine. Without unwinding, I would be confined to this wheelchair for the rest of my life. I was a state ward. I was an AWOL. I was a paraplegic— but now I’m none of those things. My name is Risa Ward, and unwinding changed my life.”

And weirder still, it’s much farther from the “technical truths” than the first public announcement we see – in that one, she’s listing off people who died rather than get her organs. This one is ignoring the fact she could’ve gotten a spine at the time and refused. And that’s public record – she was injured, she refused, she was let go because the lack of spine meant she couldn’t be unwound.

Speaking of such shifts, Risa then thinks about how she thought she could handle anything but how can she handle A life of minor celebrity, all the comforts you could desire, a smart and charming boy infatuated with you … and the abandonment of everything you believe, along with the abdication of your conscience.

Risa is only doing this because she thinks they’ll kill hundreds of kids but she’s terrible for getting a spine while Connor gets an arm and it’s just whatever no big deal.

We then learn that somehow Risa’s decided technical truths are the best option right after the “scheming evil bitch” says that’s her evil bitch scheme and that’s what’s behind her halfhearted statements. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her at all that she could try to deliberately undermine her position, let alone how incredibly weird it is to think the most important thing here is that she doesn’t lie.

No matter how hard she tries, though, things come out of her mouth that she can’t believe she’s said. Unwinding is the least of all evils. Is there actually a part of her that believes that?

I feel that that one’s confirmation that yup, that was meant to be a swipe at abortion and that’s why the author is bringing it up again to mention how incredibly horrible it was of her to say.

Cam comes to visit.

“We have our first interview together next week—they’re flying us to the mainland—has Roberta told you?”
Risa sighs. “I know all about it.”
“We’re supposed to be a couple. . . .”
“So I’ll smile and do my job for the camera. You don’t have to worry.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t see it as a job.”

Risa, being good, doesn’t see anything fucked up about the part where he just admitted he knows she’s getting forced into the couple role and he’s trying to guilt her about how the thing he’s forcing her to do isn’t sincere enough. Being good, she doesn’t even say anything that could hurt his precious feelings but just stares at the sky silently because any words might sound too assertive.

He starts telling her about the stars and Risa decides fuck it, time to give up. That’s how this goes – you hold out a bit to see if the other guy rescues you and if not you accept you’re the new guy’s property.

Risa has to remind herself that her choice to get with Proactive Citizenry’s program was not out of selfishness—so shouldn’t her conscience be appeased? And if not—if her conscience is the only thing dragging her to dark depths, shouldn’t she be able to cut it loose in order to survive?
…
Perhaps it’s time to let the mountain erode, and so to spite the part of herself that would resist, she gets out of her chair and lies on the grass beside him, looking up at the spray of stars.

So evidently no, the mere fact she’s doing all this for other people’s sake isn’t enough and to think otherwise is abandoning your conscience in favor what’s easy, just like liberal science wants you to!

He touches her and she gets upset:

“Don’t! You know I don’t like to be touched.”
“Is it that you don’t like to be touched . . . or that you don’t like to be touched by me?”
She doesn’t answer him. “What’s that one?” she asks, pointing. “The red one?”

Risa made a mistake and wasn’t fully good there, but you can see she corrected herself immediately, stopped asserting herself or saying anything that might upset the boy, and jumped topics instead.

Cam, seeing weakness, decides to keep pressing. He asks about Connor.

“Impulsive. Brooding. Occasionally self-loathing.”
…
He’s also clever, loyal, passionate, responsible, and a strong leader, but is too humble to admit all that to himself.”

Sure he is, Risa. Sure.

Cam decides to tell her about the kid on the bus being in his head and how he had a crush on Risa.

At first it boggles Risa how he would know this, and when the truth dawns on her, a surge of reflexive adrenaline triggers her fight-or-flight response. She gets up, fully prepared to run back to the mansion, or jump off the cliff, or whatever it will take to get away from this revelation

The most reasonable response all book. But then Cam is talking and, again, her feelings mean nothing if they get in the way of acquiescing sadly to whatever he wants. He claims the Risa crush was somehow in the algebra part because that kid who said he was utterly untalented was amazing at math. He goes on to say that therefore Roberta got Risa for him.

When Risa mysteriously continues to be horrified, he explains that yes, he did literally say that the other kid had the crush but actually the other kid just alerted him to Risa’s existence but Cam’s crush is a distinct entity somehow. (But also, he remembers the last words the kid said to her when neither word processing or memory should be anywhere near the algebra, suggesting that he sure got an awful lot of brain from that particular kid.)

You know what’d have worked? If it was just recognition. If the other kid hadn’t felt anything, if it was just a sudden flash of “I know this person” that Cam clung to in the early days because so many of his memories connected to nothing at all and seeing a real picture that matched something in his head meant so much to Cam that he got obsessed. Not only would that make more sense, but making what he’s doing have more to it than just a crush making him think he deserves that person as his property.

Risa keeps asking him to leave and eventually he does, for now. Alone, Risa has a breakdown about how she can’t deal with this. After what we’re told is ten straight minutes of I can’t give in to this—I must give in to this—I can’t give in to this she goes back inside, hears him playing a guitar, decides that the fact he can play despite being made of different people proves he’s a real person, and plays piano with him, giving up completely.