Split the Sun by Tessa Elwood

Author:Tessa Elwood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Running Press
Published: 2016-10-07T20:36:23+00:00

The walls press in around Yonni’s skinny glass bed, heavy and gray. Metallic to match its metallic scent. A little sweet, a little burnt. The large slat of a headboard, coated in digiscreens and readouts, whirrs and blinks and monitors the tubes.

My mother sits across the way, chair balanced on its two back legs. She holds a datadisc high over her head, between her thumb and forefinger, shifting as if to block the ceiling light.

Yonni lies peaceful in bed, seems to have more color. The reprieve before the end.

“Funny how the small things are often the strongest,” she says. “Maybe it’s the surprise, the power of the unexpected. You were unexpected.”

“You mean getting pregnant?” I ask. It’s warm in the room, and I’ve sat here a long time, forever, and still Mom stays. I don’t get it.

“That too.” Mom sighs. “I was very young.”

This is probably where I should say, “It’s all right.”

I don’t.

“But I was thinking of your marching into my office,” she says. “Out of the blue after how many years? Ten? I never thought to see you again, and there you were—a force of nature. So much power in your hands, and you didn’t even know.” She clutches the datadisc in a tight fist. “You scared me. I’d forgotten what that feels like.”

And here, I probably should apologize, but I don’t. I’d meant to be scary. Yonni needed meds—high-end, experimental. Dee wouldn’t help me, Greg had disappeared, and Dee wouldn’t say where, and Decker had laughed me from the room. I’d had no money and no help, and the only person who could offer both had dumped me when I was eight.

“Would you really have told everyone about my connection to the Accountants if I hadn’t paid for the treatment?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say.

I’d have screamed it from the rooftops.

I sit up, back straight, chest pounding. Bittersweet metallic in my nose and on my tongue, but this isn’t the medical room. It’s my room. The floor of my room. The carpet brushes soft under my fingers, scattered in blankets and pillows. Yonni’s thin wooden nightstand tipped sideways on the floor. Her bed looms crooked, caved in.

Oh. Right.

My head’s hollow, brain rattling as I scrub my face and take in the broken mess of my bedroom. I’d left the lights off last night, curled up on the floor. Knowing Dad, he probably started on the couch first.

No, don’t go there.

I push my hair from my eyes and crawl over to the bed. Pull the dangling sheet off the rest of the way. A long crack splinters the wood frame all the way down.

Way to go, Dad.

The sheet reeks of sweat and sex. I ball it up and there, on the floor where the fabric pooled, lies my Gilken digibook.

The screen’s cracked.

I drop the sheet for the slate. Press the thin power button on the outer edge. It’s sticky. The whole screen’s sticky and busted. It doesn’t light up.

“Come on.” I lift my finger and press the button again, and again.

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