The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012 by Neil Gaiman

Author:Neil Gaiman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy, year's best, anthology, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781607013693
Publisher: Prime Books
Published: 2012-07-01T21:00:00+00:00

Younger Women

Karen Joy Fowler

Jude knows that her daughter Chloe has a boyfriend. She knows this even though Chloe is fifteen and not talking. If Jude were to ask, Chloe would tell Jude that it’s none of her business and to stop being such a snoop. (Well, if you want to call it snooping to go through Chloe’s closets, drawers, and backpack on a daily basis, check the history on her cell phone and laptop, check the margins of her textbooks for incriminating doodles, friend her on Facebook under a pseudonym so as to access her page—hey, if you want to call that snooping, then, guilty as charged. The world’s a dangerous place. Isn’t getting less so. Any mother will tell you that.)

So there’s no point asking Chloe. She talks about him to her Facebook friends—his name is Eli—but the boy himself never shows. He doesn’t phone; he doesn’t email; he doesn’t text. Sometimes at night Jude wakes up with the peculiar delusion that he’s in the house, but when she checks, Chloe is always in her bed, asleep and alone. The less Jude finds out the more uneasy she becomes.

One day she decides to go all in. “Bring that boy you’re seeing to dinner this weekend,” she tells Chloe, hoping Chloe won’t wonder how she knows about him or, if she does, will chalk it up to mother’s intuition. “I’ll make pasta.”

“I’d rather die,” Chloe says.

Chloe’s Facebook friends are all sympathy. Their mothers are nosy pains-in-the-butt, too. Her own mother died when Jude was twenty-three, and Jude misses her terribly, but she remembers being fifteen. Once when she’d been grounded, which also meant no telephone privileges, her mother had left the house and Jude had called her best friend Audrey. And her mother knew because there was a fruit bowl by the phone and Jude had fiddled with the fruit while she talked.

So Chloe’s friends are telling her to stand her ground and yet, come Saturday, there he is, sitting across the table from Jude, playing with his food. It was Eli’s own decision to come, Chloe had told her, because he’s very polite. Good-looking, too, better than Jude would have guessed. In fact, he’s pretty hot.

Jude’s unease is still growing. In spite of this, she tries for casual. “Chloe says you’re new to the school,” she says. “Where are you from?”

“L.A.” Eli knows what he’s doing. Meets her eyes. Smiles. Uses his napkin. A picture of good manners.

“Don’t go all CSI on him, Mom. He doesn’t have to answer your questions. You don’t have to answer her questions,” Chloe says.

“I don’t mind. She’s just being your mom.” And to Jude, “Ask me anything.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“What year were you born in?”

“Nineteen ninety-four,” he says and there isn’t even a pause, but Jude’s suspicions solidify in her mind with an audible click like the moment in the morning just before the alarm goes off. No wonder he doesn’t text. No wonder he doesn’t email or call on the cell. He probably doesn’t know how.

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