Apex Magazine Issue 129 by Apex Magazine

Author:Apex Magazine [Magazine, Apex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Magazine
Publisher: Apex Publications

Outside, I saw that Ovoke had taken a break from the rhetoric too. She smirked when she saw me and came over to give me a hug. She felt the way she looked: delicate, as if she would crumble if I squeezed her too tightly. What was it about her fragile look that all the boys found irresistible? I held her at arm’s length to inspect her as if trying to find her appeal.

She smiled at the confused look on my face, raising an eyebrow.

I never missed an opportunity to tease her, and I couldn’t resist it now. “I would say I missed you, but I don’t want to lie.”

She laughed. “And yet you hold me like you care.”

I struggled with a response, and she filled in for me. “Is it because I’m dying?”

“Of course,” I agreed, hoping my off-handedness would hide the double bluff. “Why else would I care?”

She smiled again, and I soaked in her presence as we leaned against the parapet in companionable silence.

“Do you want to feel it?” she asked blandly after a moment.

“Feel what?”

“My tumour. The death inside me. I can feel it, you know.”

I looked away, over the railing. When we had first met during registration for the program, she’d told me she suffered from ovarian cancer. She’d told no one else, not one of her close friends from our university days when I had been just a course mate she hardly noticed. She hadn’t told her new friends here, either. Just me, who didn’t fawn over her like everyone else. Me, who teased her like a brother, and never let her take anything too seriously.

The way I was around her was also her preference. Not like everyone else, who were always in puppy-mode around her, even when she wasn’t ill. They didn’t see what I saw: a strong, intelligent, frighteningly competent woman with teeth and claws and a mind all her own. When I saw her fight, I called her fearsome, horrifying, a raging animal in a world too delicate to cage her. When others saw her fight, they called her “brave.”

It was easy then to see why she told just me.

“I told only you,” she had said, “for the same reason I left home for this rigorous, unhealthy program. I don’t want to be treated like I’m a sick, broken thing. I want to live before I die.” And then she’d added, “If not caring is your normal, then that’s what I want.”

But I had always cared, even when it felt hopeless to do so, even when I didn’t want to.

I realized I’d not answered her about touching her tumour. I didn’t want to respond. Teasing her about death made it seem less real, but really talking about it was too hard. I had to keep pretending that I didn’t care.

“Hey, mumu,” I teased her, rather than humour her macabre mood on this, a day to acknowledge the new challenges ahead of us at the Academy of Laws. “We had better go in before the patrollers come looking for us.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.