Then she went on. “I have to be able to find you. But now . . . god, Mariana, I’m so happy that you’ll be okay. There’s nothing in me that isn’t happy about that.”
Mariana looked straight ahead and moved the swing with her free foot, a gentle nudge.
“But you’re going to leave me,” said Nora. The real tears started in earnest then, even though she knew they might break Mariana. “I’m leaving you, but I won’t understand that. So it will be like you’re leaving me.” She couldn’t stop the heaving in her chest—there was a train barreling toward her, and she’d never get the straps undone in time. It was the kind of crying that took over a body, and every part of Nora was weeping, her shoulders, her belly, her knees. Next to her, Mariana gasped and folded at the waist.
Then Mariana stood and straddled the swing so that she could wrap both her arms around Nora. Her face was dry and hot against Nora’s cheek, and even though Nora kept crying, Mariana didn’t let go. Her knee dug into Nora’s thigh, poking her sharply, but it felt good. Something else to feel, something besides despair.
“I keep thinking about what I could use . . . how I would do it. But I’m too scared. And I can’t leave Ellie . . .”
“Stop it.”
“How does a person make that decision? To go?”
Mariana gripped her tighter. “You’re not going anywhere. You’re not making that decision. Fuck you if you think you are.” Her voice shook, and Nora felt such tenderness toward her. Mariana wasn’t good at this. This comforting, this holding—this was as difficult for her as a marathon, as scary to her as a skydive. No, her sister would have preferred either of those to these tears.
“But . . .”
“There. There,” said Mariana, her voice still pale compared to its usual bright bluster. “I’m here. I’m right here.”
She would continue to be there. That was the bitch of it.
They couldn’t—wouldn’t—do this together. Nora was on a one-way trip out of town, and even if Mariana had wanted to come, she couldn’t get a ticket.
Mariana wouldn’t be able to follow.
Nora wouldn’t be able to take care of her anymore.
As if she could hear Nora’s thoughts, Mariana said, “I’m not strong enough for this.”
Nora started, and laughed around a sob. “Crap.”
“You can swear, you know. If you want to. You’re allowed to.” Mariana used the back of her fingers to wipe off Nora’s wet cheeks. It was the first time her sister had ever touched one of her tears. Nora wondered if it would be the last.
Then Mariana paled, the color leaving her lips. “Oh, god. Sorry.” She held up her hand, showing where the tears had mixed with blood. “I bit my finger, and now . . .”
Nora grabbed Mariana’s hands and inspected them. “I thought you’d stopped doing that.”
“I did.”
“When did you start it back up?”
Mariana jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You know. In there.”
Nora straightened. “I’m going to make you take up knitting. That’s what I’m going to do. You can’t say no to me. I’m dying.”
Mariana’s mouth stretched in a grimace that was almost a laugh, and Nora knew her face looked the same.
She went on. “At least you get something out of it, instead of ragged, bloody cuticles. Oh!” Relief swelled like music inside her.
“What? You thought of something?”
“No.” Nora laughed. She couldn’t fix this with Aleene’s glue or with the right words. “I think I’m just fucked.” The word felt pleasingly shocking in her mouth.
Mariana blinked. “Why that look, then?”
Nora felt her smile get wider. “I’m gonna start smoking again.”
“Oh, hell no.”
“Yes, I am.” Nora stood and scrubbed her cheeks with the backs of her hands, but she could feel some of the dust from the rope transfer to her skin. “Let’s get out of here. I have a 7-Eleven to hit.” She thought of what she’d write in her journal to Ellie: Don’t smoke. It shortens your life, it makes you smell like a hobo, and it gives you wrinkles. If you must smoke, do the e-cigarette thing and quit before your thirtieth birthday. Then take up knitting—knit at the bars, knit when your friends look cool with their glowing blue tips, and then give them the hand-knitted socks when you finish them. If your aunt tells you I ever smoked, tell her she’s full of crap even though she’s not—it’s what she gets for telling on me.
Would she see Ellie at twenty? Given the medical regimen, given that her daughter was almost seventeen, it was possible. Only just, but still possible. She’d never see her at thirty. They still weren’t talking about it, not directly, though Nora knew they’d have to start, and soon. “You still have to go to Smith,” Nora had said the week before when Ellie had been deciding which schools to send her SAT scores to. They were phenomenal scores: 2210. It was all Nora could do not to put a bumper sticker with the number on her car. She’d tried not to push Ellie to one school or another, but Smith, with its tradition of educating strong women, would be perfect for her. She knew it.
“Oh, god,” Ellie had said, her pencil stilling in midair. “Should I not go there?” It was obviously the first time she’d thought about it. Nora should never have even brought it up. “I shouldn’t go. I’m so stupid.”
“No,” Nora had said. “You have to go.” Then she’d rushed into the backyard, where she’d stood in the cool air with her hands pressed to her cheeks for a long, long time.
Now, in the garden of the doctor’s office, Mariana said, “Your face is covered in blood and dirt.”
“Figures,” said Nora.
“You’re seriously going to buy cigarettes.”
“You coming?”
“You’re going to let me smoke? Shit yes, I’m coming.”
“Oh, no,” said Nora over her shoulder, already halfway up the walkway back to the reception door. “You don’t get one. You’re not dying. You have to stay healthy. It’s me who gets to drive this car right off the edge of the cliff.” Her grin as she pulled open the door was electric. “What do you think heroin is like? Maybe I’ll try a little of everything. I think I’ll try a little smack. I have no idea what it is, really, but I’ll give it a shot.”
Mariana stopped walking and put her hands on her hips. “Over my dead and totally disapproving body.”
“Okay. Just cigarettes.”
“Just one, and then you throw the pack away.”
“Oh, my cancerous silver lining.” The rapture felt like forgiveness. “I’m getting menthol.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Addi was getting closer to finding the Dragon Queen’s clutch of eggs. She and Dyl, unknown to his group of Incursers or her group of Healers, had been leaving the game play every night to explore the outer edges of the Queendom Hinters.
It was her idea—Dyl hadn’t believed her. If we walk that way, won’t the game just push us back into play?
The only correct answer to that was, Can’t hurt to try. We write the stories here—and by that she meant she wrote the stories—why can’t we tell it that way? Out there? The Hinters wouldn’t be mysterious if they knew the terrain. And if they were assigned there later in the game, then they’d be experts already.
When she was with Dyl, Addi was fearless. She leaped, swung, tore, raced, climbed, and jumped. She sailed carelessly off cliffs, landing in low waters with a laugh. She cursed, liking the way the game took her swear words and made them automatically into asterisks and exclamation marks. She even killed sometimes (but only when totally necessary).
When she was with Dylan the boy—no, the man—Ellie was three parts wreck, one much smaller part confidence. When he kissed her, his mouth strong and hot, she kissed him back with abandon, forgetting the brick wall they were leaning against, or if they were in his car, not feeling the emergency br
ake in the middle of her back. But as soon as his hands moved south, she tensed—every inch his fingers crept under her shirt or into the waistband of her jeans felt like another year of worldliness traversed backward. The first time he’d put his hand inside her underwear, she’d giggled like a freaking baby.
She was almost seventeen.
Mentally, she was good with it. Ready for sex, and specifically, for sex with him: Dylan. The flatness of his wide hands excited her, and she wanted to push his face down her body until she felt something . . . new.
Why, then, did she close like a poppy at sunset when he tugged at various pieces of her clothing? She wanted him to, so it didn’t make sense.
It wasn’t a question she could ask Samantha. Sam was remaining “chaste” for her someday husband. (It didn’t stop her from going down on Randall Watson behind the ceramics classroom, something she and Ellie had argued about. It counted as sex, Ellie said. Sam said no penetration equaled no sex, and they hadn’t spoken for a week after the argument. When they made up, they called it their Clinton fight.) She could ask Vani, who had no problem talking about sex, but Ellie felt the same shuttering of self when she was around Vani, too. She turned young again. Soon she’d sit in the middle of the floor and bang on a xylophone like a two-year-old while the rest of them had amazing grown-up lives.
She wanted to ask her mother.
And she couldn’t. Her mom was sick.
Ellie thought she was supposed to have had wrapped her head around it, but she hadn’t. It didn’t make sense.
Sick was sick. Other people were sick. Mrs. Hill, her fourth-grade teacher, had gotten thinner until she disappeared and died. The librarian with the angry eyes had ovarian cancer and a seriously bad attitude—she was so mean she’d never die. Her mom didn’t have cancer. The Internet said early-onset Alzheimer’s was bad. Ellie couldn’t google it a second time. She hadn’t told Sam or Vani. She’d tried to tell Dylan twice, but both times she’d tried to type out the words, she’d erased them at the last minute. She didn’t know what to say, and besides, maybe the diagnosis was wrong. Mom had said she was going for more opinions and that she was going to try all the treatments available. She’d said that Ellie could ask her anything she wanted.
Ellie didn’t want to ask her anything. Mom got that look—that awful one—and besides, Ellie was busy. She had finals, and Mr. Lippman was no fucking joke. If she didn’t figure out The Sound and the Fury soon, she was doomed. Her SATs had been good, thank god, and she’d listed Smith College to send them to, but she didn’t know if she was supposed to hear back from them or just wait until admissions opened in December. And then there was Dylan. . . .
For the last few weeks since the Mom Catastrophe at the park, Ellie had begged off seeing Dylan in person. Instead, they’d been creating a story in Queendom. Inventing it as they went along.
The Hinters were beyond amazing, as if that part of the world had been designed for them. Being with him in-game every night until three or four in the morning sometimes—her mother never checked after she said good night as long as Ellie left her door open—was almost as good as being with him in person. Maybe . . . maybe it was even better, since she didn’t have to decide how far to go with him physically. Online, there were just the boundaries of her screen and their imaginations.
Okay, her imagination. Every night he typed, Tell me a story. Then she would write. She told the story as it came to her. Sometimes she held up her hands, staring at them, wondering where the words came from. When she wrote papers for school, each word weighed seven pounds. But when she was telling stories in-game, the words came easier than breathing. She ran through the game, inventing it, Dylan at her side.
Now Dyl jumped across a river full of thrashing eels and held out his hand to help Addi. His text scrolled across the screen. I get that last bit, about protection, but she could protect them anywhere, right? Like, she’s the most powerful. Why do you think her eggs are out here, anyway?
Doesn’t it make sense? she typed back. She has to hide them somewhere, to escape extinction. She’s dying, and this is her only hope. The last clutch was found by Incursers, and they not only broke each egg, but they roasted the tiny broodlings on spits in the Queen’s Square.
With his sword, Dyl lopped off a branch of a magical Islan tree. Addi picked it up, tucking it into the herb satchel at her waist. Thanks.
Dyl typed, I remember that.
Did you take part in it? She wanted to know if he’d been one of the celebrants that night.
I was . . . otherwise occupied.
Out loud, Ellie said, “Oh, my god!” Her fingers paused before she typed the command to race to the next HectaRock. She got to the top, protecting it so he couldn’t join her. You had another Queendom girlfriend!
Just for a little while.
Who?
You don’t know her. She doesn’t play anymore.
Why not?
Her husband found out about us.
Ellie’s jaw felt stiff. Wow.
She was forty-two. With three kids.
Holy crap.
Dyl ran around the HectaRock twice, as if playing ring-around-the-rosy.
You know, if you do that ten times counterclockwise, you find an Easter egg.
Now you’re shitting me.
You’ll never know till you try, will you?
Addi sat with crossed legs on top of the giant rock, watching with great satisfaction as Dyl ran ten times around it. His sword kept striking the back edge of it and falling to the ground with a metallic clatter. He didn’t even have time to type about it—he just kept running.
After eleven circuits, Dyl stopped, taking up his normal avatar swaying motion. You’re so full of it.
Ellie laughed so loud it echoed against the pale peach walls of her bedroom. Gotcha.
Oh, man, you’re going to get it, Ellie.
She wriggled farther into the pillows behind her. It was dissonant and super-hot when he used her real name in the game. Anyone could wander into their field of vision at any point—it was dangerous, this flirting where any member of the Revolution could see them, read their words. Yet no one would. They were alone in their land, the one she wrote and made and owned. Addi jumped so far off the rock it looked like flying for a minute. I intend to make sure I do, she typed. Her keystrokes felt bold. And I’m going to collect interest, too.
Dyl strode to stand in front of Addi. If she pushed her avatar close to him, his body pixelated, fragmenting before it pieced itself back together behind her. She walked through him. Then he walked through her, trying the same thing.
You know what blue balls are?
Ellie laughed again. They’re bull crap. You’re not going to die.
Feels like I am.
I don’t feel sorry for you.
You wound me, Addi Turbo.
She drew the short blade she carried and parried a thrust in his direction. No. But I could. We haven’t checked the northwest quadrant of that copse of trees yet. She could have hidden them there.
What do we do if we find them, anyway?
Ellie hadn’t stopped to think that far ahead. But she knew, instantly. We guard them. With our lives. Dyl, an Incurser, had one job—to kill dragons and their broodlings. Queen Ulra was failing, and there was no guarantee that after this last clutch of eggs there would be any more. The next queen might be in an egg, right now.
His reply was instant. I will guard them with you.
It might cost your life.
Not too high a price, I think, to bring you joy.
Goose bumps rose all over her body.
This really might be love.
Ellie’s mother stuck her head in the door. “I’m going to bed. Need anything?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks for my gift certificate. I love it.”
That morning, Ellie had sent her an Amazo
n gift certificate for Father’s Day, a riff on an old joke. Years before, when she was eight or nine, Mom had taught her how to ride a bike. Dad had been saying he’d teach her, but then he hadn’t shown up four times in a row. Her mother running behind her while yelling directions hadn’t gone well, and there had been a lot of tears and more than a little road rash, but once Ellie had gotten the hang of it, it had felt like she was soaring. “You’re a better dad than Dad,” she said, and while her mother had looked a little horrified when Ellie had said it, she’d also looked amused. That year, Ellie had given her a Father’s Day gift (gumballs in a glass jar, obviously meant to share), and she’d given her something every year since. The gift card this year was easy—she’d cobbled it together from the amount she’d had leftover from her Christmas gift cards. A couple of clicks, the typed words, “To the best dad ever,” and hit send. She’d heard the ding from the kitchen as it had landed in her mom’s in-box, and she’d felt like an ungrateful child suddenly, something she hadn’t meant to be. She still meant the sentiment. Sure, she’d call her dad later, but chances were he wouldn’t answer—he rarely did. But Mom was the one she should be talking to, hanging out with, instead of playing Queendom, and instead, Ellie had sent her a gift card with money her mom had given her in the first place.
But her mother was still smiling, still looking grateful.
“You’re welcome.”
Ellie should have at least made her a card or something, like the ones she’d loved when Ellie was a kid. It hadn’t mattered if the lettering was crooked or the doilies were mashed; Mom had treated the cards as if they were made of solid gold, carrying them with her all day, admiring them loudly whenever Ellie looked her way.
A pause. Her mother said, “You okay in here?”
The music on the game turned slow and sad—violins again—Addi and Dyl walked across a dark blue desert under the two three-quarter moons. “Yeah, I like it. I get to . . . I get to tell stories.”
Splinters of Light Page 16