Chapter 47
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
NORA
Nora wiped her face with the sleeve of her shirt, relieved and devastated that Airik hadn’t followed as she walked through the streets of the city.
She walked in a straight line down the center of the street until her ankle started to throb.
For an abandoned planet, there was too much noise—bots doing their work, the eerie whistling breeze tunneling between buildings, and the occasional hiss and sputter of an animal no doubt dying in an alley from kudra.
Every time she heard something too close, she’d turn—terrified yet resigned—knowing it could be the last thing she perceived.
She didn’t want her last thought to be of Airik’s beautiful, heartbroken face.
So she thought of her brother’s funeral instead. How she’d stared at the tiny casket containing his body as it had disappeared into the ground.
She couldn’t remember his face anymore. There were pictures, and of course she’d recognize his face if she saw it.
But in her mind, he didn’t live. No moving memories.
No sound of his voice or how he might’ve felt holding her hand.
Only the brittle image of blond messy hair and blue eyes—the opposite of her dark features.
Frustrated that she couldn’t even conjure a simple placeholder for her brother and unwillingly drawn back to Airik’s tears, she forced herself to think of that day. When she’d been nine. A meditation on mental torture, Nora had perfected since then.
Their father had promised them a day at the beach, despite the surge warnings. Those had started to come daily since ocean temperatures had passed another “critical point.” But life couldn’t stop, and there was an alarm that would sound if an errant wave was detected offshore.
It had been a quiet morning, overcast and a little chilly. A handful of families had dotted the beach, but only a few had braved the waves. Nora had decided that she would, too. Her swim coach had told her she was a strong swimmer.
Just as they had reached the shore, their father’s watch-comm had gone off.
Joe’s panicked face had projected above her father’s watch, spouting off words she hadn’t understood. Most likely something to do with the HyperGates that had been malfunctioning again.
Her father had ended the call, then scrubbed a hand through his thick, dark hair.
He’d turned to Nora and Theo with an apologetic look and said he would join them, though it would be a little while.
He’d told Nora she could search for shells on the beach but under no circumstances was she to go near the waterline.
He’d said he trusted her because she was a big girl.
Do you understand? her father had asked, crouching to meet her at eye level. Theo is too small. He can’t swim like you.
Nora had glanced at the lapping waves. They would’ve barely reached her ankles. She had read that the best shells were gathered at the edge where the sand was wet.
I understand. I’ll be careful, she had said, whipping her braid over her shoulder in annoyance. Theo had laughed as it smacked him in the face. Always a little too close. Forever behind her.
She remembered waiting for a very long time for her father to return.
Theo had started squealing and complaining, and the other families had watched as she failed to keep an almost three-year-old entertained.
She had thought that if they went to the water’s edge, he’d splash around and let her look for shells in peace.
Or better yet, she could try to teach him something.
He had loved to be included and watched whatever Nora did in awe, like she was the smartest person in the world.
So she had carried him to the shoreline and told him to sit. Don’t get wet, she had instructed, kneeling next to him to search. He’d smiled a mousy grin, his baby teeth having come in crooked.
She remembered the seashell precisely—striped and creamy, with a pleated texture and a small crack on one side. It even had both halves still intact.
She’d been studying it, her back to the ocean. Taking Theo’s finger, she’d let him feel the ridges. This is called a bivalve, she’d told Theo.
An alarm had screeched across the beach, but it had been too late for a warning. The swell had risen too quickly, powered by an ever-warming planet that bred unpredictability.
A man had run toward them, shouting.
Nora, frightened and told to be wary of strangers, had scooped Theo up and backed into the waves. She couldn’t think with that sound. It’s gonna be okay—
Cold water had pummeled both of them, tearing Theo from her arms.
Instantly, Nora had been pounded into the seafloor against a rock, losing consciousness.
Later, she would learn that the strap of her swimsuit had caught on driftwood, lodged deep in the sand.
A scar on her scalp ran from above her ear to the top of her head, a mark she would carry for the rest of her life.
She’d awoken on her back, then bolted upright. I’m okay! she had shouted, startling a woman who’d had a hand on Nora’s chest. Everything had suddenly been very quiet.
Turning to her left, she’d seen her little brother on the ground, his body absolutely still as a large man pounded on his chest. Nora had stared, her eyes and throat burning as another man leaned over Theo’s face with an ear over his nose.
His little foot had peeked between the crowd around him, too pale.
Around her, dozens of people had gathered, hands covering mouths. She remembered her confused reflection in cheerful sunglasses worn on silently horrified faces. She’d pushed the man hitting her brother away.
As if an icy hand had gripped the back of her neck, she’d felt compelled to press her ear to Theo’s little chest.
The silence on the other side, where a heartbeat should have been, had leeched into her like a disease, killing her slowly.
No sound. She had fallen back, feeling nothing.
My dad… she’d heard herself say.
A dozen people around her had started to shout. To find her father.
And then she’d spotted him. Cresting the dune, out of breath.
The sound of the ambulances had gotten louder. Nora had watched her father, whose eyes were locked on Theo. It was in that moment, at only nine years of age, that Nora had first understood what it was to wish to be dead.
Her father had turned his head back the way he had come.
Years later, she would adopt the same habit.
She would turn to look behind, wondering whether retracing her steps and trying again would make things better.
Had her father wanted to walk back down the dunes, come back up, and see something different?
Maybe someone else’s child? Maybe Nora on the ground instead of Theo?
After that, there was only ever silence around her, interspersed with screams and wails into the night.
She’d remained seated at the burial for hours, long abandoned by her parents, vaguely aware of Joe sitting several rows behind.
She’d wondered what it looked like in Theo’s casket—in the cold, lonely ground.
If it was soft inside, where they’d lain him to rest. Nora had tried sneaking in her panda teddy—the one Theo had already bitten the nose off—before her mother had ripped it out, saying it was suffocating him.
Sometimes Nora wondered what the world would have been like if she had been laid in that box instead of him, in a freshly pressed dress instead of a tiny suit with a teddy-bear bowtie.
Every second she’d been left there, staring at the dark hole in the ground, had been time for a malignant growth to take root, telling her that her life had been mistakenly spared for his.
The thoughts constricted around her limbs, twisting tendrils watered by her mother’s initial accusations, eventually chilling into apathy toward her daughter.
Both of her parents might as well have died that day, too. Her father had died only a few years later. Fallen into a steep ravine in the Shenandoah Mountain ridge and found by a hiker a day later.
A heart attack, Joe had told her.
She didn’t believe it. Her father had been an experienced hiker and climber. Annoyingly concerned for safety before that day at the beach, which had been the first time he’d been lax about supervision.
She had nodded her head at Joe as he’d explained to her how it had happened, thinking of the hiker who was now also devastated from an event rooted in Nora’s negligence.
For a few years, it would be just her mother and her, becoming isolated in the aftermath that dragged on and on. Joe hadn’t been permitted to come around much—it had been too painful for her mother to see his face, aging when her father would no longer do so.
On a near-daily basis, maybe because there had been no one left to talk to, her mother had reminded Nora how useless and selfish she was. How she’d ruined everything for the people she was supposed to love. In an attempt to reach her mother, Nora had told her she loved her.
I wish you didn’t. Your love is poison.
As she’d grown, Nora had existed in a half state of being, taking only enough to stay alive but not enough to live. It was too hard—to want to be more. How could anyone who had experienced that—being the cause of such horror to her own family—expect for life to be kind?