Felix Yz by Lisa Bunker

Author:Lisa Bunker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2017-04-26T14:55:12+00:00

It’s later and I’ve been kicking around, being crabby and stuff, and I’m realizing that even though I don’t want to write about looming death, I still want to write about something. I’ve gotten into the habit. So, how about some more backstory instead? I’ve been thinking about the time right after the accident, and Grandy is here and says vo’d be happy to narrate for Zyx the magic typist, so here we go:

“It was a complicated and frightening time. Your mother was practically mad with grief over your father, and for several days the doctors thought you were going to die. Recall that we had not the least inkling at first about the presence of our new friend *zyxilef in our lives . . .”

[Um, better explain that: *zyxilef is Zyx’s full name. The * is a new letter Grandy invented. It stands for a cork-pop sound you make with your lips. The rest is my name spelled backward—also a Grandy invention (of course). Vo says since my name ends with XYZ, and since that’s like the X and Y and Z axes in a graph of three-dimensional space, we needed another letter for Zyx’s extra dimension. But it’s hard to make a Z sound right after a cork-pop sound, so everyone but Grandy just says Zyx.]

“. . . just an eradicated impetuous scientist and that scientist’s young child so paralyzed as to be rendered practically incapable of breathing, let alone moving. They tried everything to revive you—drugs, mostly. That was hard to watch. You were still little older than a baby, and I couldn’t bear to watch when they put the IV needle in your soft little arm.

“I was not there the whole time. Your mother was in another room the first day, sedated, and after that needed a good deal of looking after for several days. And, of course, I had my own grief to cope with too. Still, I ended up spending many hours at your bedside.” Vo falls silent, then goes on more softly. “You were a heartbreaking sight, Felix. Your little body frozen in that bizarre posture. You looked like a statue of a child cast in bronze. As though you would ring if struck.

“Well, there we sat with the beeping of the heart monitor, and that truly horrible fluorescent light that leached the color out of your face so that you looked dead. I remember on the second day, I dredged up a little table lamp from somewhere, to add some yellow to all that gelid blue. I had no idea if you could hear or understand me, but in case you could, I talked to you. I made up silly stories about a two-dimensional frog—”

“Tidy Teddy, 2-D Toad. I typed out one of the stories the other day. Zyx helped me.”

“Why, yes, that’s right. I’m so pleased you remember.” Vo pauses a moment, I guess to enjoy feeling pleased. “In any case, for many days nothing we did seemed to have any effect whatsoever.

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.