Defy Me (B&N Exclusive Edition) by Tahereh Mafi

Author:Tahereh Mafi [Mafi, Tahereh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062886422
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

Juliette Ella

“Stop—stop it, oh my God, that’s disgusting,” Emmaline cries. “Stop it. Stop touching each other! You guys are so gross.”

Dad pinches Mum’s butt, right in front of us.

Emmaline screams. “Oh my God, I said stop!”

It’s Saturday morning, and Saturday morning is when we make pancakes, but Mum and Dad don’t really get around to cooking anything because they won’t stop kissing each other. Emmaline hates it.

I think it’s nice.

I sit at the counter and prop my face in my hands, watching. I prefer watching. Emmaline keeps trying to make me work, but I don’t want to. I like sitting better than working.

“No one is making pancakes,” Emmaline cries, and she spins around so angrily she knocks a bowl of batter to the ground. “Why am I doing all the work?”

Dad laughs. “Sweetheart, we’re all together,” he says, scooping up the fallen bowl. He grabs a bunch of paper towels and says, “Isn’t that more important than pancakes?”

“No,” Emmaline says angrily. “We’re supposed to make pancakes. It’s Saturday, which means we’re supposed to make pancakes, and you and Mum are just kissing, and Ella is being lazy—”

“Hey—” I say, and stand up.

“—and no one is doing what they’re supposed to be doing and instead I’m doing it all by myself—”

Mum and Dad are both laughing now.

“It’s not funny!” Emmaline cries, and now she’s shouting, tears streaking down her face. “It’s not funny, and I don’t like it when no one listens to me, and I don’t—”

Two weeks ago, I was lying on an operating table, limp, naked, and leaking blood through an aperture in my temple the size of a gunshot wound. My vision was blurred. I couldn’t hear much more than the sound of my own breathing, hot and heavy and everywhere, building in and around me. Suddenly, Evie came into view. She was staring at me; she seemed frustrated. She’d been trying to complete the process of physical recalibration, as she called it.

For some reason, she couldn’t finish the job.

She’d already emptied the contents of sixteen syringes into my brain, and she’d made several small incisions in my abdomen, my arms, and my thighs. I couldn’t see exactly what she did next, but she spoke, occasionally, as she worked, and she claimed that the simple surgical procedures she was performing would strengthen my joints and reinforce my muscles. She wanted me to be stronger, to be more resilient on a cellular level. It was a preventative measure, she said. She was worried my build was too slight; that my muscles might degenerate prematurely in the face of intense physical challenges. She didn’t say it, but I felt it: she wanted me to be stronger than my sister.

“Emmaline,” I whispered.

It was lucky that I was too exhausted, too broken, too sedated to speak clearly. It was lucky that I only lay there, eyes fluttering open and closed, my chapped lips making it impossible to do more than mutter the name. It was lucky that I couldn’t understand, right away, that I was still me.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.