Splinters of Light

by Rachael Herron

  Nora reached around him and turned off the water; then she kissed him.

  Their tears tasted the same.

  “Just for a little while,” she whispered. “I’m not staying.”

  “None of us are,” he said, which made her cry harder. Then he bit her lower lip until she gasped and pushed against him. He tried to carry her up his stairs, which made her laugh.

  Then they stopped talking. They took up his enormous bed, using all of it, every inch. For one moment, Nora considered the other women who had swum with him across the flatness of his sheets, the other women who had pressed their shaking palms against this exact mattress while his mouth moved against their clits. Expansively, she forgave them all, knowing she had his heart, that she’d had it as long as he’d held hers. When Nora came, explosions literally lit the sky outside. No wonder fireworks were shorthand for sex in movies. Every blast was a little death, every breath another reincarnation. Harrison and Nora laughed with stolen joy—a tenuous tremble of happiness, a kiss shared while balancing on a wobbling tightrope high above a waterfall that didn’t suffer fools.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “Hi,” said Ellie.

  “Holy crap,” said Ellie’s aunt. Her eyes raced up and down Ellie’s body as if counting the number of extremities she still had. She opened the door wider. “Get in here. Your mom’s about to call the cops, you know that? She already called CHP to ask about accidents.”

  Even at almost two in the morning, Ellie’s aunt looked great. Her hair was long and loose, her skin dewy like she’d just moisturized it. She wore a soft gray shirt that swung out at her thighs and black yoga pants. Her toenails were deep plum. She looked like Ellie’s mom, only newer and fresher.

  “What would the cops do? Put out an APB for an AP student out late with her boyfriend on a holiday?” Ellie swept past her aunt as coolly as she could, but her neck and forehead ached with tension.

  “Maybe. Yes. That’s exactly what they’d do.”

  “I didn’t break any laws.” She went into the huge kitchen without a plan. It was her favorite room in her aunt’s house—Mariana and Luke loved cooking together, and it showed. It was always neater than any other place in the house, the dishes done and the pots hanging above the industrial stove, and it always smelled faintly of cumin and rosemary.

  “Really?” Mariana followed close at her heels. “Because you stink like an ashtray.”

  “Is Luke asleep?”

  “Of course he is. He’s a reasonable person. All reasonable people are asleep.” She didn’t say why she was still awake.

  “You love cigarettes.”

  Aunt Mariana sighed. “I should never have told you that. We loved—no, I loved them, past tense. I don’t smoke them because they’re bad for me, and I swear that’s true. And marijuana will kill your brain cells, in case you were wondering.”

  Ellie crossed her arms over her chest. “I didn’t smoke anything.”

  “Did you drink?”

  Ellie raised her chin and fixed her eyes on the blinking red lights on the stove. “You should set that clock.”

  “I don’t know how. I’ve tried, like, twenty times, but since the remodel I don’t know how to do anything in here at all. I got the oven stuck on kosher and couldn’t cook for two days. I keep meaning to ask Luke . . .”

  Ellie punched buttons until the blinking stopped. She checked her phone for the time and then corrected it on the stove: 1:53. The numbers were accusatory.

  “Thanks. Now call your mother.”

  Ellie couldn’t. She literally could not hear her mother’s voice right now. “Can’t you just text her for me?”

  “Ellie . . . ,” Mariana started, but she didn’t finish the sentence. She picked up her phone from the counter and flicked it on. While Mariana sent the message, Ellie fake texted, just for something to do with her hands, her face. SKJiiSK2. Delete, delete, delete. She made sure she kept her gaze on the phone’s screen, serious. Intent.

  An eternity later, Mariana said, “Fine. I texted her. I’ll take you home in the morning.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She hasn’t answered. I bet she’s asleep.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Ellie said. She meant it and hated how it came out of her mouth, as fake as one of the blond surfer girls in her PE class. “Really, thank you.”

  In the guest room she’d slept in many times before, she stripped off her black V-neck T-shirt. Her bra even smelled like smoke. She stripped to her panties and pulled on a blue T-shirt she found in the closet. It fell to her thighs and had red advertising printing on the front, OIL DECK TO SHIP. Something from Luke’s shop, male words that probably made sense when said with a wrench in hand.

  Mariana came in, a glass of water in her hand. She put two pills on the bedside table. “Ibuprofen.”

  “I told you, I didn’t do anything.” The taste of vodka, or gin, or whatever that had been, still sat thickly on the back of her tongue.

  “Just take them. They can’t hurt, and you might thank me in the morning. Who drove you here? Dylan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Had he been drinking?”

  Of course he had. That was the whole point of going out, wasn’t it? He hadn’t seemed drunk, though. Ellie would never have gotten into the car with a drunk driver. She wasn’t stupid. “No.”

  Of course, her aunt wasn’t stupid, either. “Oh, chipmunk.” Her aunt brushed the hair off her forehead, the exact same way her mother always did. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “Nothing.” Tears rose to her eyes. “That’s the point. Nothing. You don’t have to do anything about me.”

  “Did something happen?”

  Ellie shook her head.

  Her aunt persisted. “You want to talk about it?”

  The words surprised Ellie, coming in a torrent, cascading out of her. “What would you do if someone hit you?” She knew as soon as she said it that she’d said it wrong.

  “I’ll kill him.” Mariana’s voice was like a shard of broken glass, but her hand was soft on Ellie’s sore cheek. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

  Ellie raised her hands as if she could grab the words back. “No! Not Dylan.”

  “Who? Where were you tonight? Who hurt you?”

  Ellie couldn’t imagine even her mother being more upset than Mariana looked. A small part of her glowed—it was nice, to be loved like this. The rest of her just felt sick, wishing she’d never brought it up. “No, nothing like that. It was—” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t tell her aunt why she didn’t want to go home. It wasn’t fair.

  Her aunt tilted her head and looked at her. An expression of something Ellie had never seen flickered across her face, and then Mariana said, “Once someone tried to hurt me.”

  Ellie’s breath caught in her chest. She gulped heat.

  Mariana went on. “He didn’t get what he wanted, though.”

  “Who?” This wasn’t what she’d wanted . . . Her aunt still thought—

  “Bill . . . God, I’ve forgotten his last name. I never thought I’d be able to do that.” She rubbed the top of her nose. “We were on a date. He tried . . . more than he should have.”

  “What happened?”

  Aunt Mariana made an unamused sound. “We were at a party at his friend’s house. He got me behind a door that locked, and he . . . Well, let’s just say that I broke his thumb.”

  Ellie’s mouth fell open. “You did?”

  “Yeah.”

  Even though fear prickled her scalp, Ellie had to know. “What did he try to do?”

  “We don’t need to—”

  “Please.” She didn’t want to say I’m old enough, but she was.

  Mariana shifted on the bed and looked at her as if she were weighing something. Then she said, “He told me he knew I wanted him. He said he didn�
��t want to wait. I told him no, that he was wrong, but he pushed me down. I was . . . terrified. He was a big guy.”

  “What happened next?” The need to know was an itch under her skin.

  “He held me down on my stomach. I waited until he lifted his weight . . . and then I fought as hard as I could. Like I said, I broke his thumb. I also bit the shit out of his upper arm.”

  “How did you know what to do? Did you have the class we had?”

  Mariana shook her head. “I don’t know how I knew. But I’m glad I did.”

  “What did Mom say?”

  Another weird look crossed her aunt’s face. “Nothing. I never told her.” She paused. “She was at the party, but . . . Your mother always liked him. She always thought I should have kept going out with him. What happened to Bill? You two would be good together. Why isn’t he around anymore? She must have asked me that ten times. More.”

  A quarry’s worth of space opened below the words, and if Ellie yelled, she’d be able to hear an echo. She knew something her mother didn’t? Why hadn’t her aunt told her mom? Ellie thought they knew everything about each other. Then something else, something even bigger, occurred to her. “Is that why you won’t marry Luke? Because you’re . . . scared of men?” It sounded way more dumb out loud than it had in her head.

  “Why I won’t . . . No, of course not.”

  Confusion made the words jumble together in Ellie’s mind. She spoke without knowing what she would say, and then the words were out and she couldn’t take them back. “Mom hit me.”

  Aunt Mariana’s whole body jerked. “Are you serious?”

  Tears filled Ellie’s eyes again. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t like her face even hurt anymore. “We have to get Mom well.” The words rushed out of her, a knife-sharp release.

  “Shit.” If a voice could be pale, Aunt Mariana’s was white. “I know.”

  “How?” Ellie knew she sounded babyish, her voice high and tight, but she couldn’t help it. “There has to be something she’s not doing right. We have to help her fix it. I know they say it’s genetic and everything, but there has to be something she did that triggered it. Environmental something. I read about exposure to DDT. Maybe it was that. And if that’s it, then maybe it’s something surgery can take out. Or something.” Tears came hot and fast now, and she struck her cheek with the back of her hand, harder than her mother had. She smacked the wetness away.

  “Oh, love.” Aunt Mariana lay down next to her on top of the covers and shut her eyes. She even smelled like Ellie’s mother, as if they used the same shampoo or something. Ellie realized that if she was quizzed, she couldn’t name the brand of lotion Mom used. It was in a yellow bottle—she knew that. But if Mom left and wasn’t there to ask, if she wanted to go to the drugstore and buy the same lotion, she wouldn’t be able to. The thought made her cry harder.

  The difference between her mom and her aunt, though, was that Mariana just closed her eyes and let her cry. Her aunt had never been able to watch Ellie cry, not even when she’d had to take her to the emergency room for her broken ankle. She’d just shut her eyes as if she could pretend it wasn’t happening.

  She was doing the same thing now. If Ellie had been at home, Mom would have been holding her tight, rocking her, telling her everything was going to be okay. Ellie had always thought that was the way you helped someone.

  But it was kind of okay, this way. Just crying, with Mariana next to her, her eyes closed, her face as sad as Ellie felt.

  Finally, when the majority of the stupid tears had stopped, Ellie said, “What are we going to do?”

  Mariana opened her eyes carefully. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re supposed to.”

  “I wish I did.”

  “Can’t you just make something up?”

  “Is that what you want? For me to lie to you?”

  Ellie thought that would be just fine. It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to work out. Don’t you worry about a single little thing.

  “I can’t, honey. I can’t just tell you that.”

  “It’s hereditary,” said Ellie. “I bet you knew that.”

  Mariana nodded slowly. “I did.”

  “Do you have it?”

  Mariana sucked in her lips for a second. “Did you talk to your mom about this?”

  “She’s barely looking at me. I don’t think she trusts me to talk about anything. She tries to bring up being sick, but I . . . I kind of get nervous and—I just hate it when she brings it up. She gets those pink spots on her cheeks, you know, when she’s trying to keep something bad from me. Anyway, she’s already told me she’s going to die; what could be worse than that?”

  “Did she say that?” Aunt Mariana had the same bright patches on her face.

  “No. I mean, yes. She didn’t say no when I asked her.” Ellie felt a heaving in her chest and worried she was going to lose it entirely. “What about me?”

  “Honey, it’s all about you. Everything she does is about you.”

  Ellie rolled onto her back and took a deep breath that tasted like salt. “Bullshit.” But it felt good to hear. Especially if it wasn’t her mother saying it. “You didn’t answer me. Do you have it?”

  “I’m going to open this window,” said Mariana, hurrying to fumble at the latch underneath the slats of the blind. “Hot in here.”

  “Do you?”

  The window slammed up so hard, Ellie was surprised it didn’t shatter.

  Mariana turned and wiped her hands on her leggings. “No. I don’t.”

  Instead of being comforted, as she thought she’d be, Ellie had to fight back the urge to draw an invisible weapon. If she were in the game, Addi would be holding her bronze knife by now.

  Ellie had considered it, the idea that her aunt didn’t have it. She’d thought about it, too, living with her aunt, in this gigantic house on Potrero Hill. Luke had money, like, serious money, not just safe money like her mom. If Ellie lived with Mariana and Luke, she could probably get a car, a new one. But Ellie would have to change schools, and the idea of meeting new friends seemed exhausting. She’d just keep her old ones. And Dylan. No matter what, she wanted Dylan. And maybe Mariana wouldn’t even stay with Luke, anyway. Maybe she and her aunt would both be fuckups together. Mariana’s business would flop. Ellie would drop out of high school. They’d live on the street. Ellie would learn how to play guitar, and they’d busk in BART stations. Not Civic Center, where the junkies slept wrapped in newspaper like slabs of fish, but out in Walnut Creek or Pleasanton, out where poverty made commuters feel guilty.

  Ellie suddenly wanted Queendom. Her fingers itched to play, to make up a story and have it come true. What she wouldn’t do to slice the heads off a dozen Cyrnals or two, to watch their purple blood splashing to the ground, the oily blue smoke rising from the earth as the beasts turned into dead, headless husks.

  Her aunt didn’t have it.

  “I want to get tested,” she finally said.

  Mariana didn’t say anything, confirming what Ellie had suspected. “What? She won’t let me? She can’t just tell me I can’t get tested. I mean, that’s what she said when I asked, but, dude. I have the right to know.”

  “It’s a mammoth thing to consider. It’s so big I don’t think your mom has even thought her way through it yet.”

  That figured. “I’m not considering it. I’m going to have it done.” It would be negative. She could feel it. She was healthy.

  “What are you going to do about Dylan?”

  The subject change was abrupt and unwelcome. “What about him?”

  “Are you going to sleep with him?”

  Ellie’s face burned. She thought she was going to. She wanted more of those feelings she got in her midsection when he kissed her, those wild flips that felt like tadpoles wriggling right under her ribs. And sex had always been something sh
e’d planned on talking about with her aunt, never her mother, even before her mother got sick. But now that Mariana’s eyes were on her, she felt angry. Tricked, somehow. “I don’t want to talk about it with you.”

  “That’s fine, little one.”

  Ellie tensed, her legs and arms stiffening. “I’m not little. I’m so fucking sick of you and Mom treating me that way. Can you just go away, please?”

  “But . . .” Whenever Ellie had spent the night with Mariana in the past, Mariana always slept in the bed with her, not that she’d ever shown up this late before. It was part of the fun, part of the girls’ weekend fun. Ellie had never asked to sleep alone there before. And if truth were told, Ellie didn’t really want to sleep alone tonight in this big old house that didn’t sound like hers. But she couldn’t—wouldn’t—ask her aunt to stay with her. Like a baby.

  “Okay,” Mariana finally said. “I’ll drive you home first thing. And you better be wearing chain mail. Your mom is gonna be pissed like she hasn’t been since I crashed that stupid car.”

  Even though the story of how Mariana had failed to set the parking brake on her mom’s old beater Civic, allowing it to run away, unoccupied, down a hill, across a highway, and into a copse of trees where it smashed into tiny pieces, was one of her favorites, Ellie didn’t smile. She closed her eyes and gave a fake yawn.

  When she opened them again, her aunt wasn’t in the open doorway anymore, and the only sound was the distant, mournful bleat of a foghorn through the open window. Ellie was alone. She pulled her feet up, tucking them against her butt.

  She closed her eyes and prayed to have no dreams at all.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  After the fireworks stopped, Nora crawled out of Harrison’s bed, her limbs heavy. “I have to go home. I have to wait for her.” Harrison nodded and pressed her hand, barely waking.

  At home, Nora didn’t sleep. She sat on the sofa downstairs, the television on the Home Shopping Network, the volume off. When her eyes drifted closed, she propped them open using determination born of fear. Her leg muscles cramped with disuse. She straightened and shook them, then stuck her heels under the couch cushion Ellie liked to hold against her belly. From outside came random pops and squeals followed by the occasional M-80 blast that set off car alarms and made neighborhood dogs bark.