Under Glass by Nalo Hopkinson

Author:Nalo Hopkinson [HOPKINSON, NALO]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC000000
ISBN: 9780759522091
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2001-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

The breath was burning, burning past Sheeny’s throat. Felt like she’d swallowed glass. Maybe she had. Glass wind roaring down to strip flesh from her bones, it had probably blown dust ahead of it before she’d put her filter on. Glass to catch in her throat and scrape it raw, fill her lungs with glistening sand, harden her heart to stone. Always silicone sand in the air, glistening on the ground, even without the glass wind. Old people died from it, coughed to death, spitting gleaming red sand. Stained glass. So lovely.

Sheeny had been nine when her family took Kay in. His dad was his last people, the rest blown sky high when the mountain went. Pneumonia took Kay’s father, and so he’d come to them. Eleven years old. And pretty. Skin just beginning to pimple; swollen, perfect lips; and that delightful, husky, breaking voice. Was about three years before Sheeny really took all that in though—how much she enjoyed the sight of Kay, the smell of him when he’d been working all day, helping Jeff build another shelter over someone’s basement. Concrete igloos with long, curved tunnels for entranceways. You had to stoop to get inside, then crawl through five doors for keeping glass out. She took to helping Kay make those tunnels, so she could watch his heart-shaped backside proceeding ahead of her as he smoothed walls with his trowel.

And soon he’d noticed her noticing. Was in one of those tunnels that she and Kay had first kissed. The touch of his lips and tongue against hers had lodged a sliver of something in her heart. His hand had grazed over her canvas jumpsuit, thick weave to keep glass out. His hand brushed over where her breast hid, under layers, and her nipple jumped to attention. Her heart pounded and pounded, but couldn’t dislodge the sliver. She’d pulled back to look at Kay. Glass in her eye? He looked different, he glowed. She leaned in again, laid the warm flat of her tongue against the hollow of his neck. He groaned. She sighed.

Sheeny hadn’t meant for Kay to go away and never come back, didn’t Mumsie understand? Sheeny’d wanted a boy who would divine her true nature, and love her passionately forever for it. She’d wanted love to blow her world apart, to fall on her like houses. That’s what she’d thought. But when it had finally happened, everyone, everyone could see. In the hitch of her breath when Kay walked into a room; in the way her eyes filled up with him, her fingers moved by themselves to clutch his. They could all see! And they’d looked at her and Kay differently. Some wanting what they had, hating them for having it. Some hoping that something so fragile could survive weeks huddled in concrete huts, hours sifting water glass through gauze and filters for its moisture, days watching the spidery crops in the watery light and hauling the troughs in at the first sign of a breeze. She had hated being so transparent, hated that everyone could see.

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