The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “Shut up, Jonah.”

  “Do I have to give you back the money?”

  “No. And stop talking. Heroes don’t chatter as they ride off into the horizon.”

  “Does it always taste like sunshine when the unicorn talks to you?”

  “Yes. What did he say?”

  “He said what he loves most about you is your stoicism and patience.”

  “Steve’s a liar. He’s pathological. That’s the first thing you need to know. Now gimme ten bucks back—I’m going to stop at the first gas station I see and buy some earplugs.” He sniffled. “Make that thirty. You’re getting some allergy medication.”

  “Okay. I bet by then it will be sunset and we can drive the trailer into it and then you can have your moment.”

  I rolled my eyes, slumping in the saddle as I did. I had this terrible image of us riding into our next fight to a soundtrack of sneezes. Then Steve butted in with his sunshine-mind and reminded me that image wasn’t everything, and it was better than leaving the kid behind. He reminded me that I’d thought of Jonah as cannon fodder earlier in the day. Then he pulled up an image of a scrawny teenager with braces—yours truly—and pushed the word potential at me in bold. Sometimes, he said, they even grow out of their allergies.

  I straightened up in my saddle and felt Jonah do the same behind me. That was when it occurred to me that I was a role model now. What a terrifying thought. I glanced down and saw that the waheela had done the same. His spine was a firm line, his head was high, and his steps were light. Well, light for a waheela. Giant frosty paw prints stretched out behind us on the cracked cement.

  This isn’t the life I’m used to. Even I could hear the whine in my mental voice.

  A chuckle like a warm breeze echoed in my head. You’ll get used to it, Steve said. Then he began to prance the way you see horses in parades do. I think, he said, tossing his mane like a woman in a hair commercial, that you may even grow to like it.

  I probably will, I said, but only if you stop acting like a stereotypical teenage girl. We’re warriors, damn it.

  And we look good while we’re doing it. He raised his knees even higher, his hooves cutting a staccato rhythm as we went. I rested the butt of my spear on the tip of my shoe, and threw my shoulders out. No sunset, and it smelled more like sweat, horse, and teenage boy than victory, but I could live with that. It wasn’t ideal. But sometimes you’ve just got to go with what you got and make it look good.

  Copyright (C) 2012 by Lish McBride

  Art copyright (C) 2012 by Hannah Christenson

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  Contents

  Begin Reading

  Two girls in wrinkled black dresses sat in the front pew at their older brother’s funeral. They had never sat in the front pew in church before, and they disliked how exposed they felt. Behind them stood their brother’s entire eighth-grade class, the girls in ironed black dresses and gold cross necklaces, the boys in dark suits, bought too big so they could get another use. Few expected more funerals, but the suits would serve for graduation in May—which, after all, was a funeral, too.

  The girls’ aunt gave the second reading, which was one of the letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. The younger sister, Brigid, loved the rhythm of those words, “Saint Paul to the Corinthians.” She didn’t know who the Corinthians were, but she imagined a small, dusty town, the people crowded around the town square as someone stood, just like her aunt, and read the latest letter from Saint Paul. This letter informed the Corinthians that though their outsides were wasting away, their insides were filling with the light of God. Life was a wobbly tent, but God had built a sturdy house in heaven. The older sister, Sinead, thought this God-house probably sounded good to people in the desert two thousand years ago, but her brother’s house wasn’t just sturdy: it had a pool. Also, her brother’s insides had not grown stronger. He had wasted away, all of him. This stupid reading confirmed her suspicions that God was like any other adult who lied and told you horrible things were for your own good.

  Sinead and Brigid felt as alone as it was possible to feel while smushed up against someone on a pew, unaware that the other person was also furiously contemplating God. They were doing their best not to be aware of anything. Noticing things, they had discovered, was dangerous. Was that Ian’s English teacher sobbing three rows behind them? Was that the priest saying Ian’s name in the homily? Were those flowers already wilting on the coffin in the early-September heat? Before, Sinead would have gotten angry about these things. Brigid would have tried to figure out their meaning. Now, the sisters found it safer to sink into the fog of mourning, though they didn’t know to call it that. They were just trying to be very still, in hopes that events would pass them by.

  A few pews back, two of Ian’s classmates trailed out, sobbing. The reading had ended, and the cantor began to sing “Alleluia.” The congregation rose to their feet, and their mother’s hymnal slipped out of her black lap. She chanted along in a low, flat voice neither of them had heard before. Their father did not stand, but sat upright at the edge of the pew so stiffly he almost looked funny. His suit was rumpled and he’d slathered himself in cologne to hide the scent of alcohol. Sinead and Brigid were used to the cologne, but they had never seen their father look so small before. They had done a good job ignoring their surroundings, but their strange, frightening parents dragged them back into reality. They stared hopelessly at Ian’s fat, luminous coffin.

  The reception after the funeral filled the house with earnest thirteen-year-old girls bearing food made by their mothers. Every girl in Ian’s class brought food, and most of it was lasagna. Lasagna with beef, lasagna with pork and spinach, “garden lasagna” featuring broccoli and Alfredo, Mexican lasagna with hot peppers and tortillas, and one particularly vile concoction made with whole-wheat pasta and dairy-free cheese. All of the lasagna piled up in the kitchen, since the girls’ parents had brought in caterers. Their mother didn’t have the heart to throw it away, so she shunted it to the refrigerator.

  The sisters spent the reception hiding in plain sight, or trying to. They glued themselves to their grandmother, who had flown in for the occasion. Their grandmother was a sour old lady who smelled like cigarettes and gin fumes. But she was also tall and heavyset, so they could literally hide behind her as she talked to second cousins and great-aunts and even a step-something, the girls didn’t catch what. Sometimes the sisters held hands. Brigid was the one who did the hand-seeking-out, but Sinead was secretly glad for something to hold on to when strangers stooped down to say they were sorry. Where were they when Ian was sick? Sorry? Sinead would make them sorry.

  There were still people in the house that night, straggler aunts and loud neighbors. One of Ian’s coaches was out back with their father, smoking cigars and laughing too loud. At some point, their mother noticed the girls scavenging in the kitchen and sent them up to bed. Sinead made Brigid go up first, since her bedtime was an hour after her sister’s, but once Brigid was gone Sinead felt unmoored. She was too proud to give up her older-sibling right to a later bedtime, but she also didn’t want to be in the room with the loud, sad adults. She found herself contemplating the whole-wheat dairy-free lasagna. Their mother had left it out to rot, and the faux cheese was buckling and sweating.

  Sinead heard Brigid turn on the shower in her bathroom. Brigid had only started showering before bed a few months earlier, to imitate her older sister. This infuriated Sinead generally;
tonight it felt like a slap in the face. Sinead snatched up the casserole dish and took the withering lasagna up to Brigid’s messy pink room. She carved it up with a butter knife and hid the uneven squares under Brigid’s pillow, beneath her covers, in her shoes, under her dresser—anywhere it would either squish or rot. This was a cruel thing to do after Sinead had spent all day comforting and being comforted by her sister. But the comforting also served to remind Sinead that it was just the two of them now, and that she could no longer enjoy the position of invisible middle child. She had embraced this identity with gusto—her favorite book was The One in the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo—but now she was the oldest. In the books she’d read, the oldest was bossy and bullying, or foolish and frivolous. In their family, the oldest was either sick, or played pranks.

  As Sinead stashed the lasagna in the tradition of her dead brother, she began to feel as if she were being watched. She whirled around, sure that she would find Brigid in her pink bathrobe, her hair piled on her head in a towel, like women in old movies and their mother. But the shower was still roaring, and Sinead found herself staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  Except it wasn’t her reflection. The face was Ian’s.

  Then it wasn’t. Sinead took several gulping breaths. One of her aunts had sent her books about grieving, so she’d known that she might end up hallucinating. She must be hallucinating.

  This did not stop her, however, from snatching up the dirty pan, running into her room, and locking the door behind her. She threw the pan beneath her bed, jumped under the covers, and turned off the light. Then she switched it on again and covered her mirror with a sheet. But that really made her room look haunted, so she took the sheet down and stared at her reflection, willing her brother’s face to appear. The reflection remained her own, which made her feel stupid. Stupid was a familiar, oddly comforting feeling.

  Brigid sat on her floor in the dark, drawing a picture. She used her tiny reading light, which was designed for airplanes, though Brigid had gotten far more use from it during long waits in the dim, fluorescent hospital. She almost missed sitting in the boring corridors, compared to funerals and evil sisters. Bits of lasagna were still mushed into her hair, and Brigid was drawing a picture of her sister’s head on fire. Sinead’s curly hair stuck out in all directions, like she’d been hit by lightning. Brigid added her parents to the picture as little stick figures, off in the distance. They didn’t do anything about the flames.

  Brigid felt bewildered and hurt by the lasagna bombing. She did, however, recognize that a prank war had begun, and she had to respond in kind or risk humiliation. Unfortunately, she had the younger sibling’s handicap of not having seen as much television or read as many books as her older siblings, so she was reduced to deflecting the same prank back at them. For a time, Brigid had experimented with turning the other cheek, but this had only resulted in more spiders in her bed, more covert arm-twists, and more stuffed animals fed to the neighbor’s dog. Clearly, Sinead was attempting to take over Ian’s turf, and the only effective response was swift, brutal retaliation.

  Brigid completed three more meditative, vengeful pictures of her sister before quiet settled over the house. When she was sure everyone was asleep, she slid open her door and crept down to the kitchen. The clean, shiny counters reflected the blue light thrown off by the oven clock. Brigid was old enough to understand that her house was full of “nice” things, though “nice” to her meant “alienating and not to be touched.” When Brigid opened the fridge, a chill crept along the back of her neck, like someone was blowing on it. But the kitchen was empty and silent and blue.

  The white light of the fridge was warm and calming, so Brigid left the door ajar after pulling out Sinead’s special orange-mango juice. No one knew why Sinead liked this juice so much—their mother blamed their father, other mothers, television ads—but everyone else in the house thought it was nasty, and only Sinead ever touched it. Brigid left the juice on the counter, then got up on a stool to retrieve salt and hot sauce from an upper cabinet. She shook in as much hot sauce as she could, then poured in some salt. After shaking the mixture together, she examined its color and consistency in the fridge light. Satisfied, Brigid placed the bottle back on the top shelf exactly how she’d found it, with its label facing the milk. She took a moment to admire her handiwork and shut the door with a schuck.

  Ian stood on the other side of it. Brigid stumbled away from him, and put her back against the counter. He had hair again, the straight, tufty blond stuff he’d grown in after the first time he’d gotten better, not the curls from the pictures before Brigid was born. He wore shorts and a polo shirt, like he was on his way to the country club. But his face was pallid and green, and his eyes were ringed by the deep, scary circles that had appeared right before he died. Brigid didn’t feel fear, or even shock. All she could think was, I thought I’d never see you again.

  Brigid became aware of a soft hissing sound. Her elbow had knocked over the salt, and it was pouring onto the floor. When she looked back up, Ian was gone.

  Brigid forced herself to go to the closet, find a dustpan and broom, and sweep up every last grain of salt. Seeing her ghost brother was terrifying, but having her father find salt all over the floor was equally scary, if not more so. Once the floor was clean, her terror surged back and she sprinted up the stairs.

  As she rounded the bend, she nearly crashed into her mother. For a flicker of a moment, Brigid was sure she’d been caught, but then her mother looked over Brigid’s shoulder and said, “Ian, you better go wash the fishes.”

  Brigid realized her mother was back on Ambien. She had foolishly hoped her mother would sleep better once she stopped spending every waking hour at the hospital, but apparently not. She pressed herself to the wall and let her mother sleepwalk down the stairs.

  Despite the fact that she was furious with Sinead, Brigid jimmied open her door–Sinead kept it locked, though they had figured out how to break into each other’s rooms years ago—and jumped into her bed. Sinead woke with a groan and Brigid hissed, “Shhhhhh!”

  “Euh?” Sinead said.

  “I saw Ian,” Brigid said.

  Sinead stiffened, then put her arms around her little sister. She noticed her hair smelled like tomato sauce. “I saw him too,” Sinead said.

  “What are we going to do?” Brigid whispered.

  Sinead thought about the brave older sisters she’d read about in books and said, “We’re going to help him.”

  Sinead didn’t actually believe in her own bravery, but her borrowed stock phrase seemed to calm Brigid. It calmed Sinead a little bit, too. When Ian was alive, there had been very little either of his sisters could do for him. When he was well, they had tortured him, or tortured each other; as a result, when he was sick, every earnest gesture had felt forced. They had loved their brother, but they hadn’t liked him much. Now here he was, turning to them, of all people. Of course they would do right by him. Of course they would help.

  Sinead woke early and cleaned up Brigid’s room while Brigid caught up on sleep in Sinead’s bed. She shook lasagna out of Brigid’s shoes and scraped off everything that remained under Brigid’s covers. Then she stripped the bed and took the whole mess downstairs. She put the sheets in the washing machine, pushed the rotting lasagna down the garbage disposal, and scrubbed the pan until her fingers hurt. Finally, when the evidence of her crime had been thoroughly erased, she let herself have breakfast. She poured herself some Rice Krispies, sliced up a banana, and sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop.

  Technically, it was a school day, but Sinead and Brigid were taking a “leave” of a few weeks. This was supposed to help them recover from the trauma of Ian’s death, though Sinead suspected it was actually so the other students wouldn’t have to deal with their uncomfortable grief. Sinead had felt miserable and adrift in the days following Ian’s death, but now that she had a purpose, those feelings disappeared. She felt happy, even privileged, to be sitting at home in the mor
ning eating cereal and a banana and Googling “ghost brother,” though this only brought up television-show recaps and one site about “Haunted Gettysburg.”

  Brigid found her sister poring over her computer in the kitchen, a half-eaten banana by her side. Brigid had been deemed too young for a laptop, which filled her with uncharacteristic fury. She casually opened the fridge and found that the mango juice hadn’t been touched. Brigid appreciated that Sinead had cleaned up her room, but she felt uneasy letting her sister off entirely. She let the mango juice be.

  “A ghost comes back because of unfinished business,” Sinead said, without looking up from the screen.

  Brigid tried and failed to think of what unfinished business their brother might have. In all the books she’d read, “unfinished business” meant things like buried treasure or unsolved murders, which she didn’t suppose Ian had any of. “We should search his room,” Brigid said.

  The sisters went up to Ian’s room, which no one had opened since he went back to the hospital for good. Sinead carried a thermometer and a compass, which the internet had told her were useful for detecting paranormal presences. The thermometer was to register sudden drops in temperature. It was less clear what the compass was supposed to do, but Sinead imagined it would spin wildly, like in movies about the North Pole.

  Ian’s room had always been neat and uncluttered, utterly unlike his sisters’. His dresser was lined with soccer trophies, and his sneakers stood in matched pairs beneath his bed. The clock still blinked midnight from a late-summer power outage. His bed was made. It looked like a display room.

  “Anything?” Brigid said, nodding toward Sinead’s tools. Sinead shook her head in what she imagined was a curt, professional manner. The thermometer did not reveal any strange differences in temperature, and the compass did not point anywhere but a woozy north.