The Liar's Guide to the Night Sky by Brianna R. Shrum

Author:Brianna R. Shrum
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510757813
Publisher: Sky Pony
Published: 2020-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHEN THE SKY CLEARS and the exhaustion sets in, we find a copse of trees to sink into and eat lunch.

Lunch is a total feast: granola! Jerky! Some cheese. I feel a little weird eating the beef and cheese together because it’s not kosher, and even though my parents don’t keep it anymore, that’s something I never felt right about. There’s a lot of mitzvot I don’t keep, like, a lot, but the kashrut stuff was too drilled into me as a little kid, I think, living near my grandparents out here. So yeah, I feel weird. Weird enough to hesitate. But preservation of life is like, NUMBER ONE and supersedes almost everything when it comes down to it, so that matters a whole lot more than not eating milk and meat together. This feels pretty preservation-of-lifey, so I tear into both.

My stomach hurts.

I twist open the last water bottle in our bag and take a long drink. “Fuck,” I whisper.

Jonah glances at it grimly and takes a swallow, Adam’s apple shifting with the effort.

His eyes linger on the water level.

I follow his gaze and say, “We could just . . . we’re surrounded by snow, right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But it’s—we can’t just eat it.”

“Why not?” It comes out defensive, angry almost. I blink at myself. “Right. Sorry. Right, the hypothermia. We’ll die.” I don’t say anything else. I just take another swallow, smaller this time. Less than I want to. Less than my throat is begging me for.

Neither of us speaks for a minute, and I wonder if he’s thinking what I’m thinking: that neither of us had said that word yet: die.

And suddenly it’s a real possibility.

After taking a moment to breathe, I glance up at him and offer him the bottle.

His pupils dilate right in front of me, looking at it.

We used to play a game like that back in middle school, back when one of us learned that your pupils dilate when you look at something you want. We’d say the name of someone cute and watch everyone’s eyes. Or, if someone didn’t know about the science, we’d troll him by having him look at whoever it was we wanted to know about.

Of course, we’d always just accuse whoever we wanted of the appropriate level of pupil dilation, because like that would have ever actually worked. Like we could have actually seen the tiny physical response like that with the naked eye.

The point is, this time, I see it.

He shakes his head and stands, shaking his hands out.

“Get up,” he says.

“Excuse me?”

“Get up.”

I scoff at being told what to do but ultimately stand like he says to.

He’s moving from foot to foot, and I don’t know how he has the energy but I guess he does. Probably the burst from that whole ninety calories coursing through him.

“It’ll warm you up, man—move.”

“I’m tired,” I say.

He rolls his eyes and says, “Christ, you whiner.”

I rub my hands together and hop in place to get my blood moving. “You’re an asshole.

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