Splinters of Light

by Rachael Herron

  No.

  She would not google early-onset Alzheimer’s. She would not. Her fingers felt an ache at the tips, adrenaline surging in painful spikes. Before she could punch the letters into the search box, she threw the phone away from her so that it landed on top of the blanket at her feet.

  Mariana pulled the sheets up higher, now to just below her eyes. One breath in, one breath out. She taught users of the BreathingRoom app to imagine their breath as the ocean, their thoughts as the waves. You didn’t need to follow waves to shore to make sure of the sea. The water was always there, no matter what.

  What if, one day, the ocean were drained bone-dry?

  There was a knock at the door, and then Ellie stuck her golden head around. “Can I come in?”

  Mariana threw off the covers and opened her arms. “Get in with me, you gorgeous chipmunk of an Ellie-bean.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Her niece ran at the bed like she had when she was a little girl, getting to sleep with her aunt on very special occasions. She leaped and slid in. Mariana noticed for perhaps the first time how long her niece’s legs had gotten. “How tall are you now?”

  “Five-five,” said Ellie. “I feel like I’m going to get a little taller but maybe not by more than an inch or so.” She put a pillow against the headboard and shimmied backward, comfortable in her skin. Mariana wondered if at that age, that terrible age of sixteen, she would have been able to leap into an adult’s bed and cuddle up close. Then, the only person she had cuddled with was Nora. They’d always had their own beds, but every night Mariana had crept out of her own and into Nora’s, folding her body to fit her sister’s, falling into the thick, hard sleep that made her blood feel like maple syrup. The worst way Nora could punish her during a fight was to tell her she couldn’t sleep with her. Mariana had a clear memory of standing next to Nora’s bed one night when they couldn’t have been more than eight or nine—Nora wouldn’t let her in the bed, even though during the day Mariana had been the offended party, upset that Nora had let next-door neighbor Sven cut the hair of her garage-sale-but-precious-nonetheless Barbie. Mariana had been exhausted and too stubborn to patch up the fight. Nora refused to pull back the covers. Mariana’s legs shook, trembling, as she stood next to Nora’s bed for an hour—maybe more—until Nora’s rigid posture wilted and Mariana knew she could creep beneath the blankets. She could trick Nora into cuddling her until the morning, when the fight would likely begin again with just as much spirit.

  Now Ellie was the one she cuddled as often as she could. “Five foot five? How would you know you’re close to done growing? You could go to six-two.”

  “I just know,” said Ellie. “I can tell my body doesn’t want to get much taller.” She lifted the sheet and peeked underneath. “I think my boobs are going to get bigger, though.”

  “If you’re anything like us, they will.” It was a lament. Neither she nor Nora loved their abundant bra size. It was easier to go fast when you had less weighing you down.

  “That’ll be okay. I’ll need a new bra.”

  Mariana sighed and wriggled her feet closer to her niece’s. “I would never have been able to ask for that when I was your age.”

  “A bra? Why not?”

  Why not? Because their mother hadn’t liked to admit that her daughters’ bodies were changing, and when she’d been forced to face it—the first bra, the first box of maxi pads—she’d made them feel like they’d done something wrong. It wasn’t as if their mother had acted mad at them—she was usually too tired to be very angry about anything. Ruthie Glass had worked two waitressing jobs to pay for their small apartment, and when she was at home, she was usually sleeping as hard and fast as she could. Pads and bras were expensive, money that wasn’t in the budget and—when the twins were twelve—suddenly had to be.

  “Your grandma didn’t like to talk about stuff like that.”

  “How did you learn, then?”

  Mariana pushed a second pillow under her head. “We figured it out. Together, me and your mom.”

  “How? There weren’t computers then, right?”

  Mariana laughed. “You make us sound ancient.” But Ellie was right—how had they learned about what was going on inside their bodies? The Internet hadn’t existed in the mideighties. They’d learned from osmosis. They’d read Judy Blume books to learn about bras. Nora, a better, faster reader than Mariana ever was, whispered the words to Mariana at the kitchen table while their mother snored on the couch. At the library, they’d pored over the Whole Earth Catalog, staring at the products that might or might not have been vibrators. In seventh grade, Becca Tripton had told them she’d had sex with a ninth grader, but she’d been their only firsthand authority, and Becca had also thought you could get pregnant from a toilet seat, something Mariana and Nora had a hard time believing. “We read as much as we could. And we guessed.”

  “How did you guess about something like your period? She must have told you something.”

  “She gave us a brown paper bag.”

  Ellie made a sound like someone was tickling her. “What was in it? Oh! Did it have one of those sanitary napkins with the straps and the belt?”

  “Are you kidding me? Do you think I’m eighty years old?” At Ellie’s age, forty-four and eighty were practically the same thing. “I never wore a belt.” Thank god. Mariana had always had a hard time with period management—she still did. Nora had always been good at it—she’d always known when she was going to start and always had in her purse exactly what she would need. She’d always had what Mariana would need, too, pressing a tampon into her hand in the hallway at school, not needing to ask why Mariana looked so panicked. Even now, Mariana could be at work and feel total surprise when she got a cramp. But why . . . ? It had to have been . . . oh, four weeks since the last one. Of course. Always a total fucking surprise. “No, in the bag was a box of tampons and a box of mini pads and a cartoon leaflet titled something like Your Body and You.”

  “How old were you?”

  “When we got our periods? Twelve.”

  Ellie nodded knowledgeably. “That’s the median age.”

  “Really? It used to be thirteen, I thought.” Poor girls. Everything was so hard at that age, and to have to balance sudden, new blood at an even younger age was just rude.

  “Hormones,” said Ellie. “In our tap water.”

  “What?”

  “I wrote a paper about it. Female growth hormones are everywhere now, in our water and in the plastic things we buy and the animals we eat. It’s why girls get breasts earlier nowadays. Some boys even get boobs. And it’s why our periods start sooner.”

  Mariana glanced down at her own chest. “Unfair.”

  Ellie shrugged. “It is what it is. Did Mom ever tell you about when she taught me how to put in a tampon?”

  Mariana barked a laugh. “No.”

  “Yeah. She was so uncomfortable about the whole thing.”

  “I bet she was.” Nora might have always known when her period was coming, but she sure hadn’t liked to talk about it. She liked to manage it. To handle it.

  “I needed her to! I wasn’t going to just put something up there without help.”

  Mariana couldn’t contain her hilarity. “You’re killing me. Did you make her put it in?”

  Ellie laughed, too, her girlish giggle shifting to something more grown-up right in the middle. Mariana realized she was laughing like she did with a friend. “Oh, my god, Ellie, I’m dying.”

  “Of course I made her. And it hurt, so I made her take it out and put it back in. It took, like, an hour. It was awful.”

  “Oh, my god, if I didn’t know you like I do, I would swear you were making that up.”

  Ellie looked surprised. “What’s wrong with that? Who else is supposed to show me if not Mom?”

  “You’re right, chipmunk. I love that you don’t give a shit.�
� It came out of her mouth wrong. It wasn’t exactly what she meant to say, but it was true: Ellie didn’t give a shit about some things. She didn’t seem to care about the way she looked, for example. She wore sloppy clothes that she liked, T-shirts with holes at the stomach that had dinosaurs roaring at robots on them. Her favorite pair of jeans looked like mom jeans, big in the butt, a little too long at the bottom, but with pockets that Ellie loved to fill with things she found when she was outside. Even when she was little, when Mariana “borrowed” her to stay overnight in her small, old apartment in San Francisco, Ellie managed to fill her pockets with rocks and sticks and leaves of plants that smelled good. Trees were set in sidewalks and gardens were more expensive to maintain than cars, but Ellie brought the natural world inside with her without really trying. She still did that. Tonight, she’d gone out on the porch after dinner to talk to someone on the phone and had come in with cobwebs in her hair, as if she’d been wriggling under the porch.

  But Ellie didn’t seem to mind what Mariana had said. She twisted a bit farther down the bed and turned on her side so she could face her aunt. She breathed softly, and Mariana wanted to wrap her up and hold her tight, but she didn’t want to startle her. This was nice enough. This, in her sister’s miraculous sheets.

  Her sister . . .

  Nora had said she needed to wait. That she wasn’t ready to tell Ellie. She’d said she needed the exact words. Maybe a counselor. I’m thinking of hiring someone to help me figure out exactly what to say. That, as much as anything, had turned Mariana’s bones to ice. If Nora needed help finding the right words, then the rest of them should probably give up on language entirely.

  Breathe. Now. This moment was all she had, this moment with the sixteen-year-old she loved the very, very most. “Who were you talking to earlier?”

  Ellie’s expression was sleepy already, her cheeks soft, her lashes low. “Mmmm?”

  “When you went out on the porch when we got home.”

  A different smile creased her niece’s face. “Yeah.”

  “Oh, really? I know the sound of that ‘yeah.’ Who is he?”

  She smiled more deeply. “No one.”

  “Hmmm. I know that guy, and he’s usually pretty hot.”

  One shoulder lifted and dropped. Ellie kept her eyes closed, but her expression was complicated. Satisfied and worried, all at once.

  “Okay, you want me to guess.”

  Ellie nodded once.

  “He’s a pirate.”

  Ellie’s eyelids flew open, her face amused. “Kind of. But only in the computer way.”

  “Isn’t that almost as dangerous as the high seas nowadays?”

  “Nah. And if I tell you anything, you have to not judge him. Or tell Mom.”

  Fair enough, if she could wrangle info out of her. “So an online pirate.”

  “He torrented the game we play.” Then Ellie covered her mouth with her hand.

  “A gamer. I should have known. Is this Mynga 7?”

  “No.” Scornful. “I haven’t played that in, like, months.”

  “That Queen-whatsit?”

  “Queendom. It’s awesome. The topography is sick and it’s totally interactive. You get to make up your stories as you go. Like, I’m writing story lines, and other players are picking them and playing them.” Pride lit Ellie’s eyes. “I’m . . . He likes the stories, too.”

  “Okay. So this guy is a player. He . . . Let me guess. He rides a winged something.”

  “Close.”

  “He’s a shape-shifter.”

  Ellie shook her head. “No.”

  “A dragon.”

  “I wish he was.”

  “He kills them.”

  Ellie looked admiringly at Mariana. “I wish Mom ever noticed what was going on in my games.”

  “She does,” said Mariana, knowing Nora didn’t.

  “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  Mariana snuggled farther down, bringing the pillow with her. Ellie smelled adolescently like bubble bath and, faintly, like sweat. “So he kills dragons. And you protect them, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m a Healer.”

  “So you protect and heal dragons and he kills them. I’m getting it. Star-crossed lovers, am I right?”

  Ellie shifted, as if suddenly uncomfortable. She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

  Mariana felt the pang of worry again. She could almost hear it, one note being struck deep inside her. Ellie was too young to actually think she was in love or star-crossed. “This is a crush, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re saying it’s more?” Mariana pushed up on her elbow.

  “Nah,” said Ellie, but she closed her eyes.

  Mariana poked her in the shoulder. “Don’t play a player. I’m not your mother.”

  “Is there . . . I’m not sure, but is there something wrong with her?”

  “Are you trying to change the subject on me? Tell me about the boy.”

  “No, really. I think there’s something wrong with her.” Ellie rolled back onto her side and grasped the edge of Mariana’s pillow lightly. “I do. She hasn’t been acting right.”

  “What do you mean?” Mariana’s fingers went cold.

  “Distant.”

  “Like . . .”

  Ellie released a deep breath. “Like she’s having a hard time remembering who she is. I came home the other day and she was watching TV.”

  “Oh, my god. You’re kidding me.” Mariana tried to inject lightness into her voice.

  “Don’t laugh. It was weird. She never wastes time.” Ellie put the last few words in air quotes. “But the TV was on an infomercial. About hair something. Like maybe to take hair off. Or get more hair. I’m not actually sure what it was. It was just making noise, and she was staring at it like it meant something. Like it was her computer.”

  Mariana couldn’t do this. She wasn’t prepared. Dissemble, cover. Hide. “Was she working on her next piece, maybe? Did you ask her? Maybe she’s finally writing about the hold the tube has over normal mortals like us?”

  “I thought maybe that’s what it was, but I said hi, and she just looked at me weird.” Ellie stuck the corner of her thumbnail into her mouth. Out of habit, Mariana gently pushed her thumb away.

  “Don’t bite your nails.”

  “I’m not. And then later, when I came down for dinner, I asked her about it. She said she hadn’t watched any TV at all. She pretended like she didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  “Oooh. I know. She’s going hairy in places she can’t mention, and she was trying to hide it from you.” Mariana gave a laugh that felt as forced as it was. “Depilation happens, you know, even in the best of families.”

  “Fine. Whatever. That’s probably it.”

  They were humoring each other.

  “I’ll find out,” said Mariana.

  “You will?” The hope in Ellie’s voice melted Mariana inside. The sweetest thing, the most honest, true, and brave thing about the relationship between Nora and Ellie was how much the mother and daughter cared about each other. Mariana had always stood outside it, watching. Admiring. Wanting. Nora would kill for Ellie, that was obvious and natural. That’s what mothers did. And Mariana knew she would lay down her own life for Ellie, too. In a fucking heartbeat.

  But Ellie would die for Nora, too. A child didn’t normally feel like that, did they? They hadn’t felt that way about their mother, Ruthie, although both of them had tried their best. Ruthie’d always been too distant, too busy, trying to scrape nickels and quarters together out of thin air and thinner tips. Then Ruthie had died so young, when they were only twenty, falling asleep at the wheel of her car on the way home from Pedro’s Cantina. They’d never known their mother as adults.

  Jesus. Mariana lost her breath. Ellie wouldn’t—might not�
�know Nora as an adult, either.

  Jesus fuck. Without Nora to take care of Ellie . . . Without Nora to take care of her . . . Mariana’s brain stalled, then spiraled in a downward dive.

  Ellie said, “I think the migraines might be back. Or something. I think she’s in pain and she doesn’t want to worry me, but I’m sixteen, for Pete’s sake. I can handle it. Doesn’t she know that?”

  Mariana stared at her niece. It was gorgeous to witness, all that love swimming in Ellie’s eyes; it was like seeing sunshine break into diamonds, like watching emeralds run out of your kitchen faucet.

  “I’ll find out, chipmunk.”

  “When you do, tell me.”

  “Okay. I will.”

  “Promise?”

  Was it a lie if you loved this hard? This brightly? “I promise.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Have you figured it out yet?

  The pop-up box made a soft ping that felt like a shiver.

  Ellie hadn’t even seen Dyl’s Incurser approach her hut’s window. Now she could see him, outside and swaying with that rocking motion all the human avatars used. Cmd-shift-O opened the door, and Dyl’s character strode inside, his sword swinging wide. In the game he was taller than Addi the Healer. Ellie wondered if that would be true in real life, if she’d be able to stand under his arm. She bit the inside flap of her cheek. Have I figured out what? Awesome. Was Dylan going to start being like everyone else now? Would he ask her constantly (like her school counselor did) what she wanted to “do with her life”? Would he try to guess (like her mother did) what careers might suit her brain/hands/eyes/temperament? Ellie couldn’t figure out whether she preferred spearmint or wintergreen toothpaste. How was she supposed to figure out what kind of cubicle she wanted to fill in, like, five years?

  Have you found out what’s wrong with your mom?

  Oh.

  Of course that’s what he would ask. Dylan was, like, the nicest guy she’d ever met in her whole life.

  Not yet, she typed.