Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Author:Akwaeke Emezi
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-09-09T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Jam went down to breakfast in the morning as if the skin of her life was normal, as if it hadn’t bubbled and warped and fallen off. Pet was a loud secret in her, a wrong note in the usual harmony of her house, making it discordant, guilty. She could feel the wrongness warbling through the floorboards, and it made her want to finish the hunt quickly, so the secret would no longer be a secret, so everything could return to how it all used to be. Deep inside her, Jam wasn’t sure if that was even possible, but she held on to the hope anyway.

“You doing okay, love?” Aloe asked across the breakfast table, and Jam started, her fork clattering against her plate. She’d been so in her head, his voice was a surprise, his concerned face a foreign arrangement of skin and muscle. Her mother was still upstairs.

I’m fine, she signed. She wished he and Bitter would stop asking how she was, if she was mad at them. Their worry felt like a blanket they kept trying to throw over her shoulders, one she kept having to shrug off. They had tried to talk to Jam about Pet, but she didn’t want to, and her parents weren’t the type of people to force her to open up, so they let her walk away from the conversation each time, and Jam pretended as if she didn’t see the synchronized disappointment flashing over both their faces. It built a stone of guilt in her chest, and Jam added it to the pile that had been forming there since she told Pet to stay. The best thing to do was to focus on the hunt and not on her parents or the lies she was telling them with her silence. She ate breakfast quickly, then retreated up to the bathroom to pee and was washing her hands when Pet appeared. Jam felt it gathering in the air before its body showed up, and she watched it appear bit by bit, fur and feathers and horn like dried blood.

Hey, she said.

Pet nodded at her and crouched against the wall next to the shower, its body aggressively eclipsing the rest of the bathroom. It watched her through the mirror, its mouth hanging open, smoke puffing out in short breaths.

How was your night? Jam asked, wondering where it spent the time away from her but not wanting to ask.

Busy. A hunt takes preparation, readying for readiness, it replied.

The bathroom door slid open, and Bitter walked in, tying a scarf around her head. Jam froze with her hands tangled in a towel, her heartbeat spiking to a blur.

Don’t worry, Pet said. She can’t see me.

“Morning, sweetness.” Bitter dropped a kiss on Jam’s forehead and slid the mirror aside to show the shelves behind. “I just looking for my face serum. You seen it?”

Jam shook her head, and Bitter hummed to herself, looking around the bathroom. Jam watched her with wide eyes. There were two bathrooms in that moment, lying on top of each other.

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