So Lucky_A Novel by Nicola Griffith

Author:Nicola Griffith [Griffith, Nicola]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374718343
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

Before we moved to this country, when my little sister was two she used to sit in the back garden—the yard— and dig up worms with her hands. When she didn’t squash them by mistake she’d drop them in one of those miniature plastic buckets and croon to herself while they hauled their way up the smooth sides to freedom, fighting for every quarter inch. When they got to the top she’d flick them to the bottom again. They kept trying. Over and over. When she got bored she ate them.

* * *

I SAT IN THE BACKYARD. It was mid-morning but clouds were already gathering and the air tightening: thunderstorm weather. Miz Rip stalked a swaying weed. It was only her second time outside; she adapted frighteningly fast. She was still young, of course; her brain still elastic, still forming its neural networks. My brain was set in its ways. And now there were holes in it.

I lay on the grass and stared at the clouds gathering like silverfish. I wondered how it would feel to surrender like vapor to the wind, let go, give in. I could throw myself in front of a car. But that was a little melodramatic, and there was the driver to consider. A fall from a tall building would work. Carbon monoxide—but I would hate that awful exhaust stink to be the last thing I smelled. Pills. I had a lot of those now. Rose would miss me, but she had Louise. CAT could stagger along on its own. It was healthy enough financially since I started selling the mailing lists. There was nothing to stop me really. My mother would be upset, but she had survived the loss of her other daughter. She hadn’t seen me in nearly a year, hadn’t even visited after the diagnosis, and it seemed too hard to travel to London now. Aiyana might never come back.

I plucked a blade of grass idly. My life wasn’t mine anymore, anyway, it was the disease’s.

Miz Rip jumped onto my chest. She’d brought me a dandelion. Its scent was fresh and sharp; the stem oozed slightly. Rip smelled exactly like herself: dusty sunshine. A bird sang. I blinked hard. It was a lovely day. Really.

* * *

MAY WAS HOT. From my air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned co-working space was only ten yards, but the pavement wavered in the heat and my cane seemed to sink into the blacktop. A man I passed at the door pretended not to see me struggle. The woman behind the reception desk smiled in a bright Southern way, as impersonal as dropping a coin in a beggar’s cup; before the cane she’d greeted me by name.

At his designated desk, Christopher was happily tapping away. “The latest FDA proposals are in Dropbox.” He looked at me more closely. “Are you all right?”

I propped my cane against the windowsill and sat. “I’ve been better.” I opened Dropbox and tried to pay attention to the FDA’s proposal to tighten their accelerated drug approval procedures, but I was so tired that the words eeled out of my grasp.

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