Horizon. Sophie Littlefield

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СКАЧАТЬ it was her bad half, her remembering half, the one that kept hold of all the things she wished she could let go. And other times it was her numb half—yeah, that was three but who was counting—the numb self she’d learned to call up from deep inside with the help of the herb cigarettes that Sage made for them. She swore they got you high and Sammi wasn’t so sure but what did it matter, eleven herbs and spices or whatever was good enough for her, so she and Sage smoked like they’d been smoking forever and that was what mattered, putting that paper to your lips and sparking it up and sucking it down, with your friend beside you. And getting to the numb.

       Thinking. Remembering. Going numb. But never all at once.

       Right now, pulling herself up the low branches, swinging up to the ledge, the different parts were coming and going. That thing with Cass and her dad—

       What the hell? Her dad would fuck anything that moved, but he wouldn’t even let Sammi walk down to the water with Colton after dinner. But she couldn’t think about it tonight. That had to wait. So she was pushing back on the thinking half and calling up the numb half. She was just killing time, it was nothing.

       “Sage,” she said kind of soft, tapping on the window glass. She had one arm wrapped around the branch, the wood digging into her inner elbow painfully, leaning down against the cold window. Sage and Kyra were no doubt sleeping, they’d left the party at least an hour ago, Kyra looking like she was going to puke again, which was nothing new. Kyra had been puking since they got to New Eden, so much that Corryn had started making her special crackers out of kaysev flour, she even poked holes in them to make them look like saltines.

       “Sage!”

       But Sage was already there, pushing the window open, yawning.

       “You scared the shit out of me. What are you doing?”

       “I couldn’t sleep,” Sammi lied. “Dad’s snoring again.”

       It was a pretty good lie. Her dad did snore, sometimes, if he’d been out all day on the road with Earl, or if he’d been doing something hard-core like cutting wood with the axe or hauling stumps with chains. Sammi figured snoring was just one of the ways old people dealt with physical exhaustion. Which was okay—would have been okay, anyway, back when they lived in a six-bedroom house and her mom and dad were, like, in a whole other wing—except that now they shared a trailer barely big enough for one person to live in, much less two, and it was nice of her dad to let her have the bedroom except he slept in the living room, which was the only other full room in the trailer, and she couldn’t even go to the bathroom without having to walk right past him, which was just wrong since her dad was longer than the twin mattress he’d put on the floor and he always had a leg or arm falling off the side. She didn’t want to see her dad like that and she figured he for damn sure wasn’t proud of it either.

       Of course, that was all before she knew about him and Cass. Cass! When he was supposedly with Valerie, who was totally boring except at least she was old and normal, someone her dad should date—not Cass, who had been cool until they got here when she had some sort of breakdown and barely even cared about Smoke anymore and besides she had a kid for God’s sake, but evidently Aftertime meant that parents could just fuck around and do whatever they felt like and to hell with the kids even while they were still ordering them around.

       “I thought I’d hang out,” Sammi said quickly, not wanting to go down that path. “You know, I thought we could be quiet if Kyra’s, like, needing her sleep or whatever.”

       “Oh, dude, get this,” Sage said, forgetting that she was exhausted and pulling the window open wide so Sammi could scramble inside. Sage and Kyra were roommates in the House for Wayward Girls, which wasn’t actually what the place was called, just their nickname for it. Red and Zihna, who were really old, were like the housemom and housedad and had the big bedroom downstairs. Kyra would probably have to move over to the Mothers’ House when her baby came, but that was months and months away. Sage had been impregnated at the Rebuilders’ baby farm too, but she had miscarried right after they got to New Eden so it was kind of like she hadn’t even been pregnant. “Kyra’s getting this, like, line on her stomach.”

       “What do you mean?”

       “I guess it’s a pregnancy thing. That’s what Zihna says, anyway. Zihna says it’s probably going to be a boy because the line’s from testosterone and you get more testosterone in your system if you’re having a boy.”

       “Like with the bacne?”

       “I know, right? That’s so disgusting.” Sage made a face. “Here, look, she won’t wake up.”

       As Sage tugged the blanket carefully off their sleeping friend and shone a flashlight on her, Sammi thought about how Sage always acted like pregnancy was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Not around Kyra of course, because that would be mean, but when she and Sammi were alone. And that made Sammi wonder…maybe Sage wasn’t as relieved about having had the miscarriage as she pretended to be.

       Which Sammi kind of got. At least if you had a baby, there would be something to do all day long. And someone to love you back. For you, not for who people wanted you to be. Everyone was so messed up, from everything they’d seen, everything that had happened. A baby wouldn’t be like that—a baby would never have seen cities getting blown up and burned down, whole fields and farms leveled, all the plants dead. And now, with the kaysev and all, a baby would never go hungry.

       Of course, there was still the Beaters.

       Sage lifted the oversize T-shirt Kyra wore as pajamas, and sure enough, there on her still-mostly-flat stomach was a faint gray line running from her belly button down. And a few black hairs lying flat against her skin.

       “Shit,” Sammi said, impressed.

       Kyra sighed and shifted in her sleep and Sage pulled the covers back up over her, then snapped off the flashlight. They sat on the floor with their backs to Sage’s bed. Sammi, who saw well in the dark, could make out the shapes of Kyra’s bottle collection on top of the dresser, a few wilted weeds stuck in some of them.

       “I saw Dad with Cass tonight,” Sammi said, surprising herself. She hadn’t planned to tell. Sudden tears welled up in her eyes and she pushed them angrily away.

       “What do you mean, with?”

       “Like, with his tongue down her throat and his hands in her pants. And she wasn’t exactly saying no. They were down on the dock doing it like, like dogs.”

       They weren’t exactly doing it, of course, and not like dogs either, but Sammi was pretty sure they’d been headed that way. And she’d bet this wasn’t the first time.

       “Oh wow,” Sage said, seeming genuinely shocked. “I never would have thought that.”

       “Yeah, no shit.”

       “I thought she was, like, with—”

       “Smoke? Yeah.”

       There was a silence, and Sammi figured they were both thinking about Smoke, how messed up he’d been when they first got here, bone showing through his skin, scabs oozing pus, missing a couple of fingers, scars crisscrossing his face and body. For a while Sammi visited him a few times a week, and then she just sort of stopped. She felt guilty about that—guilty as hell, since Smoke had always been there for her and her mom back when they all sheltered at the school. But she couldn’t stand looking at him half-dead, because it reminded her too much of when her mom СКАЧАТЬ