How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang

Author:C Pam Zhang [Zhang, C Pam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

She comes to some time later. Taste of copper. Her chin and tongue gone numb. She turns her head left, right. Sees her own hand, outstretched.

Empty.

Lucy scrabbles through the poppies, heedless of how many roots and stems she upturns. The field is returned to mud by the time she sits back on her heels, panting. Blood drips off her hurt chin. Torn petals wink, but there is no gold. There is no gold. Surely she didn’t drop it. She clenched her fist so tight as she fell that there are marks from her fingernails on her palm. She didn’t drop it.

Unless it was taken.

Halting, dizzy, she drags herself to Teacher Leigh’s porch.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles when he opens the door. “I brought it—I did—for your research—I, I don’t know where it is. I know where it came from—the plateau. It has a history. We found it. The water. You can write about it—please. We’re leaving, and—and you can write about it.”

“What do you mean?” the teacher says. She’s half-fallen on him and he pulls back, horrified. Her blood on his clean white shirt. She gives a gurgling laugh. Sprays fresh pink. She was right. His clothes would never last on a trail.

“The gold,” she slurs. She hopes he understands through the mud and blood in her mouth. “I, I mean me. Us. You can write about it . . .”

Exhausted of words she holds her empty hand up to him, again and again, as if he could see on it the precious imprint.

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