Without looking through them any further, I chose an older notebook with wrinkled pages and crooked handwriting and brought it to Mom’s room. She was sitting on her bed, and when she saw me, she clapped her hands together to close the holographic browser display. Though her brown hair fell over her face and shielded it from me, I could tell she’d been weeping.
“What’s up?” Her voice cracked, yet she pretended as if nothing was wrong.
I handed her the notebook. “Pick one.”
Mom flipped through the wrinkled pages. The handwriting and number of words were the same on several different pages though it was too scribbly for me to read upside down. “Make-A-Wish does it, but they might need my help if it’s crazy. Is it?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. I didn’t look. That’s why I wanted you to choose.”
From the look on her face, Mom didn’t believe me. “Right. You chose this book on purpose.”
My eyes widened, and she slapped the cover shut before I could see what I’d wished for. “Totally random. Why? What is it? Justin Timberlake?”
Her bottom lip stiffened, like she was impressed with what I’d written. “No. No worries. I’ll get started on it. What time are your friends coming?”
The time reading on the wall said 7:30 p.m. They were fashionably late. “Like now.”
She tucked my notebook underneath her arm and stood. “I’d better get downstairs then. No drugs, no booze, no sex. Got it?”
“Why didn’t you just say ‘no fun’? It’s less words.”
Whenever I frustrated her, she responded by putting her hand on her forehead and rubbing it like a genie would pop out and grant her three wishes.
“I’ve never drank, and, despite what you may think, the closest I’ve gotten to sex was getting my butt grazed in the school hallway. Even if I got pregnant, I’d…” I wished I could’ve erased that last statement, so I didn’t finish it. “What are you so worried about?”
“It’s my full-time job.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Have a not great time.”
Five minutes later, Mom was safely in the finished basement and Nat was the first to arrive. We hugged, gently, as a full-body press would’ve hurt. She fingered the delicate gray-and-black-plaid [XW17]scarf around her neck. “Done pacing?” she asked me.
My best friend could’ve charted my emotions. “For now. Where are the others?”
Natalee’s lip twisted. Her expression said it all. “These others that you speak of…”
“None of them? Not even your secret boyfriend?”
She hushed me and patted her blouse down. “Father might’ve planted a bug on me. I only get an hour as it is.”
Mr. Gupta wouldn’t let her date, and he suspected she’d sneak behind his back. He didn’t know what his perfect angel was capable of or what she’d already done.
“Anyway, I’ve got a little ‘get well gift’ in my bra for you,” she told me. “Caught the dispensary right before it closed and bribed a guy on the way in.”
Right then, my mood brightened. I grabbed her hand, and we ran upstairs. “Pizza will be here in ten. That’s enough time.”
Natalee rushed into my room and cracked the window. She handed me a poorly rolled [XW18]cigarette and a lighter. “How did you get Elayna to vacate the premises?” she asked me.
I lit the slender stick, puffed hard enough to keep the cinders alive and burning, and passed it. The smoke warmed my body with a tingling sensation. “Here.”
She held up her hand to refuse it. “Can’t. I’ll get killed coming home smelling like weed.”
Another drag in, I came up with a brilliant idea. “Say you spilled something on your shirt. I’ll wash and dry it. You can wear something of mine until it’s done.”
She gazed down at her black camisole and the white blouse she’d worn over it. “Nah. I had to wash and rinse three times before the scent left my hair last time. It’s all yours.”
An offer to smoke by myself? She didn’t have to tell me twice. I heartily inhaled and only choked twice where she had to pat me on the back. My room felt hotter, bigger, and more circular. The carpet might as well be a fuzzy sponge. How far away was Natalee from me? A minute ago, I could’ve fingered her black French braid, and now she was ten miles away. Too far to reach out and touch.
“I’m dying, Nat,” I said between hysterical giggles. “For real. I’m gonna die.”
Her huffing meant she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell what Natalee was doing — crying, laughing, or floating in thin air. She fanned herself with a cancer wish notebook I’d left on my bed. “They removed the catheter. You’re fine. They’ll do the stem cell, and — ”
“No. Like, I’ll be dead. By December.”
“Don’t talk like that.” Her words spun around like a blended smoothie in my brain. “And stop smoking. You’re burning through it — ”
My fingers tingled. “You said burning. Ha, ha.”
“ — and acting weird. You’ll be here. Trust me.”
“But what’s here? Like here in this spot? Or everywhere? When you die, don’t you go everywhere? Somewhere? Or nowhere. Nowhere. Where do you go? Do you know? Why am I rhyming so much?”
To me, Natalee’s head stretched and expanded like a balloon. “This is the last time I buy you anything stronger than a multivitamin.”
She confiscated the half-smoked cigarette from me, extinguished it on the sill, and threw it out of the window. I stumbled to the edge of my room to go after it, but she caught me before I could lift the window high enough to squeeze through. If my mother saw it in the bushes, she’d totally freak out. Or, the gardener would be happy.
“I jump out of this window and die tonight, I’m doing something with my life! I stay here, go to school, I’m doing nothing but what I’m expected to do. That’s death every day, isn’t it?”
Natalee squeezed me tight around the waist. I outweighed her by a good twenty pounds, but she’d positioned herself between me and the wall. “I hate it when you get like this.”
Breathless, I brushed my hand through my hair and dropped to the floor in her arms. My heartbeat pounded up through my neck. I lightly patted my chest. The incision hadn’t bled under my bandage. I was, however, sweaty and hungry. My armpits didn’t stink, and I might be presentable in case a guy she invited came over and wanted to hook up. Who was I kidding? The guy I almost hooked up with was going to pass me around to another guys.
My best friend held me on the floor, and if she’d let go, I didn’t know where I’d end up. I battled my emotions, and they won. I shook with uncontrollable sobs and collapsed on my rug. The soft fibers caught the wetness from my face. I was in no condition to party. I’d be better left alone. So, I lay in [XW19]a half-fugue state and hoped she’d give up and abandon me. Her time had to be up soon. Natalee continued to comfort me anyway.
Another time lapse happened. I don’t remember how I got in my bed and under the covers or how the delicious pepperoni taste got in my mouth. Natalee had left long ago. Mom was on top of the covers on my right with the pizza resting on the comforter. She was a neat freak. I’d seen her scrub a plastic shower liner once. She’d never have gone for me eating greasy Italian food anywhere in the house, much less in my bed, without a tarp and industrial cleaning spray nearby at any other time. Red sauce plus my clumsiness was a recipe for disaster.
Everything was different now. Say I broke a rule. What would she do, ground me? In weeks, I’d be a corpse. Who cared about rules and laws and things?
Aware of my cramping stomach, I wolfed down a pizza slice. I’d been eating raw food for months, and my body was not used to dairy or dough anymore. I could feel the revolt coming on hard. But it was worth the discomfort, and it wouldn’t be fatal. It’d just feel that way.
“A half hour ago,” she told me. “She said call or text her tomorrow. You can have your holo back although you have that base covered.”
She’d found the temporary. “Okay,” I said, almost choking on the bite I’d
just swallowed. “Death sentences are a downer.”
Eyes glued on the holovision display, she asked me straight up, “Was the weed good? This room smells like a gangsta rap concert. And, stop it with the spray. It doesn’t help.”
I sniffed my shirt, and the marijuana stench burned my nostrils. I’d passed out and forgotten to cover up what I’d done. “Ehh…kind of trippy. Sorry.”
“Save me the ‘for the pain’ excuse. I didn’t buy it the last three times, remember?”
I nodded out of respect. She was right.
Mom spoke slowly between chews. “There’s no parenting manual. Especially single parenting. I know what the other moms say about me. ‘Lucy’s out of control,’ and ‘If she was my child, she wouldn’t be acting out like this. I’d beat her like her mama should’ve.’ Or, my favorite, ‘It’s because her father isn’t around.’”
“You’re special to him,” she’d say. Yeah, I bet. Fourteen years and not one phone call, text message, or e-mail. But, I’m special? Sure.
“Your father…was my first love, and I was his. Everything after that…is complicated.”
Should I ask the obvious question — why tell me about him now? I decided not to for fear she’d stop talking and take it to the grave. Though I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to hear the rest. I did turn my head and give her eye contact.
Mom measured her words. She’d have only one chance to tell me this story, and I’d memorize every syllable. “We thought there was no chance I’d end up pregnant because…”
I tried to control myself, but I cut her off. “Why not? What kind or protection did you use?”
She told the truth. “Nothing conventional.”
“What does that mean? He…” I did a motion with my hand which she stopped.
“Can we start over?” she asked me. “There’s a better way to tell this.”
I tossed my chewed crust onto my bedspread, and it didn’t even get a rise out of her. “Is there? Because all you’ve told me since I was born was that he’s alive. I’ve had to assume the rest. He doesn’t love me, he doesn’t love you, and he doesn’t want anything to do with us.”
“That’s not totally true, Luce. He loves you.”
My stomach cramps took a back seat to the angry fire raging in my body. “He loves me?” Blood pulsed through my brain. “He’s missed every holiday and birthday, and you’re saying he loves me? Or you? Give it to me straight, Mom. I’ve heard worse.”
She bit her lip. “You’ll never forgive me.”
I’d suspected the answer for a long time, and I’d force her to say it out loud. “’Never’ is six weeks from now. Tell me.”
Following a sigh, she confirmed one of my greatest fears. “He doesn’t know you exist.”
CHAPTER THREE
My father might’ve loved me and been there for the triumphs and awkward moments had he known I was on the planet. He’d never rejected me like she’d allowed me to believe. My entire life a thought nagged in the back of my mind. He doesn’t want me. Nope. The person I’d trusted the most hadn’t let me think differently.
“He doesn’t know you exist” replayed in my mind on a steady loop. Nonexistence. Worse than death. With death, the certainty of life was there and then ceased to exist. Loss. But to him, whoever he was, wherever he was, I didn’t exist. No gain. No loss.
A dull ache crept from the base of my neck up through my head. Though the throbbing was intense, I screamed, “Liar!” at her over and over until I heard my bedroom door shut.
I tossed off the covers and stumbled to my bathroom. I wretched until all that was left were groans. Then, I cleaned up and searched the house. Each room, every closet and imaginable hiding place. I’d driven her away by making her admit to the truth.
From my bedroom window, I noticed whitish-blue condensation drops on her transport windows. She hadn’t driven it. No surprise there — the onboard computer had a tracking mechanism. “She walked out?” I said out loud. We lived in a safe neighborhood, but it was unlike her to go.
Later, she’d ask me for forgiveness. No. Heck no. I’d cling to my grudge like a death shroud, turn over in my casket, and die before letting go of what she’d done. I messaged Natalee: “You wouldn’t believe what’s going on over here.”
Minutes passed and Nat hadn’t responded. The time on my heads-up holophone display read 11:15 p.m. in large, blue script letters. Made sense. Mr. Gupta switched on their cell dampener at ten p.m. By morning, my emotions would be higher. Tonight was one of a million times I’d wished she’d hacked his system. She had the know-how. Computer science was her pre-high school pathway, and she’d never gotten an A-minus in her life.
I fought off sleep for as long as I could but lost the battle sometime in the middle of the night. Next thing I knew, my virtual clock’s morning sun pried my eyes open. In the night, I’d forgotten to set the automated window’s glass tint from opaque to blackout. No sense in doing it now.
In the sweatshirt and leggings I’d worn last night, I wandered downstairs to the kitchen. I’d heard movement there, and our cleaning lady wouldn’t have arrived this early. Unless someone had broken in the house to cook, my mother was fixing breakfast. Pancakes and sausage from the smell of things. A full pot of strong-smelling coffee had been brewed, and a bowl of fresh fruit lay on the counter. What was this, a dream sequence on a freaking holovision sitcom? She’d untied my life last night and left me holding the strings. But I was hungry.
I sampled a plump strawberry from the bowl. The gush of cold, sweet tartness over my tongue whet my appetite for more. Two pineapple chunks and a few red grapes later, the refreshing sweet taste overcame the initial sourness. My thoughts overwhelmed me.
“He doesn’t know I’m alive.” The whiny hollow in my voice made me want to claw out my throat. My mother, the one who advised me not to chase a boy who wouldn’t fight for me, never rang the opening bell for my father to leave his corner and swing.
Suddenly, my hatred for her reached another level. The life I had left had been turned upside done. What would a nutritionally balanced breakfast do for me? Nothing to the slow simmer between us. Not until I got answers. I repeated myself. “He doesn’t know I’m alive.”
“Lucy…”
“Does he?”
“No.”
Her canary blouse ruffled as she poured batter into the skillet and waited for its skin to bubble.
My response was a colorful description of what she could do to herself for lying. I’d never used that level of profanity in front of her, and I half-expected a knife thrown at my head for it. Instead, she hardly broke motion and replied, “Let’s try this again. Good morning, Luciana. Your bowl of fruit is on the counter. Kale smoothie in the fridge.”
“Morning. Liar.”
“Luciana…ponte algo de ropa. Curse again and see what happens.”
For a second, I thought she was commenting on my outfit. “I am dressed. You’d know that if you could look me in the face, liar.”
Mom turned around. “I’m gonna say this again in English so you understand. On all that is holy, you call me a liar one more time, you’ll need Murdoch and five more cops bigger than him to pull me off you. Now, eat your freaking fruit.”
Message received. I dialed it down. “How do you plan to erase fourteen years of lies?” I didn’t call her a liar. “All the times I asked you about him. Remember what you said?”
I’d asked about his absence on a community playground once. Three-year-old Lucy wondered why the other girls had a dude helping them up the slide and she didn’t. At eight, Lucy and her mom were in line for an animated movie. Where was he? she asked her. Every time the response was the same.
“Let me remind you what you said.” My voice, unsteady and loud, wavered. “I ask, and you say ‘He’s not interested.’ That was a lie, w-wasn’t it?”
Avoiding my eyes, she crossed her arms and turned her back to me.
What was the truth? She was going to tell me. Here. Now. “Don’t
you think I deserve to know the truth?”
The clink of knife and fork continued against her plate. “Yes and no.”
I bit my lip. “Not this time. Give me better. You owe me better.”
She swallowed whatever food she’d chewed and resumed cooking. She cracked, seasoned, and scrambled two eggs. An egg hadn’t passed my lips in months. What was she going for or trying to do by making actual food in front of me? Make me jealous? Temper my raging fury with breakfast? She could try but stuffing my guts into submission would get her nowhere.
“Your wish…the one from the book…is to meet your dad. It’ll have to wait until the plane.”
My next swallow of pineapple stuck in my throat. I choked it down. “Plane? To…I’m not going anywhere with you. Not without an answer. Can I even fly? As a matter of fact, I…”
Mom held up her hand to choke off my protests. “We’re going to see him. Today.”
Meet my dad? Right. Maybe she’d introduce me to a light-skinned guy with good hair and a murky nationality but not my actual parent. What a nice ironic sentiment. Living the last bit of my life, and now I get to meet him? Who is he? Or, better yet, who am I?
“When?”
“Flight is at eleven. Four hours, cross-country.”
“East? Where is he exactly? And keep the answers short, please.”
She fried the last pancake, turned off the stove, and slapped in onto a plate. Didn’t take long for my will to break. I stole it and crammed it into my mouth. Hot and doughy cinnamon heaven.
“When you walked into my room last night, I was trying to locate him through the one person I know who can find him. Truth is, I lost track of them both years ago.”
Okay, so that’s why she pulled down the display so fast. My clammy fingers tightened around the kitchen island’s marble surface as I munched on cantaloupe. “This is too important for guesswork. Give me his name. I’ll find him. I’ve got websites I’ve bookmarked…”
“Neither of them lives under their given names. Your father hasn’t for years.”
The suspense tightened my insides. Screw the raw food diet. Figuring all of this out called for a pancake rolled around two sausage links with a syrup pocket in between. “Why?” I mumbled. “The hiding I mean.”
The Nuclear Winter Page 3