(no subject)
Keeping secrets gets easier, the longer you do it.
***
Emmy Hogan asks her how she got shot. It's not the kind of question you ask people, but Emmy Hogan asks people the kind of question you don't ask people. Her answer goes around in circles, the shadows drawing long over her face, and the words I opened the door are in there, and police and two of them died.
Somehow, she manages to hide the truth behind a wall of facts.
***
Sometimes she feels pretty okay--not great, her chest still feels kind of like a chocolate orange somebody gave a good thwack--but pretty okay and she can walk and bend and twist and even lift weights, or an empty bar, anyway. Sometimes she feels less okay and she uses a walker to shuffle around.
She hates the walker. Everybody knows it. Nobody knows that the tennis balls on the feet give her the creeps. One night she has a dream that the carpet in her room turns to water, her bed a raft of drifting seas. She takes it pretty okay until the tennis balls start bobbing up, like air bubbles.
She doesn't wake anybody up, anymore, when she dreams like that. She's getting better.
***
Her dad was really taken with X-23. Laura. He likes people who act like he's not rich or a best-seller or anything. She cracks him up, he says. She should come visit again, and what school was it?
I dunno, dad. I forget.
***
Sometimes she feels a long way from okay. Sometimes, especially if she pushes too hard or stretches too far, she feels like she's coming apart. It's a sick, rotten ache in her center, as if there's a muttering, fatal heartbeat one step behind or ahead of her regular one.
***
Her mother knows a lot of the secrets, but she doesn't know all of them, and that's one of them. Another one is about spaces. She doesn't like them. Every week she has an MRI and her dad has one, too. Twins. She doesn't like it in the tube. It's like being buried; like being in that room again, with the pounding on the walls. When the doctor talks on the intercom she hears them baying and screaming.
Send out your passenger?
Did they say that? Did they?
Sometimes it feels like she's filling up with things no one ever told her. She's full of secrets.
It's hard to breath in here. Her mind turns on her, a scorpion stings itself, her lungs are filling with salt water and her body is wrapped in webs, she can hear her father dying, she wants out, there's a nonmagnetic blanket draped across her legs and it's the pelt of a dying dog, let me out, I'm dying, I'm dying, let me out.
There's a button for her mike. She doesn't hit it.
She's not dying. She knows it. She's just scared. She's terrified.
It's another one to keep.
***
Emmy Hogan asks her how she got shot. It's not the kind of question you ask people, but Emmy Hogan asks people the kind of question you don't ask people. Her answer goes around in circles, the shadows drawing long over her face, and the words I opened the door are in there, and police and two of them died.
Somehow, she manages to hide the truth behind a wall of facts.
***
Sometimes she feels pretty okay--not great, her chest still feels kind of like a chocolate orange somebody gave a good thwack--but pretty okay and she can walk and bend and twist and even lift weights, or an empty bar, anyway. Sometimes she feels less okay and she uses a walker to shuffle around.
She hates the walker. Everybody knows it. Nobody knows that the tennis balls on the feet give her the creeps. One night she has a dream that the carpet in her room turns to water, her bed a raft of drifting seas. She takes it pretty okay until the tennis balls start bobbing up, like air bubbles.
She doesn't wake anybody up, anymore, when she dreams like that. She's getting better.
***
Her dad was really taken with X-23. Laura. He likes people who act like he's not rich or a best-seller or anything. She cracks him up, he says. She should come visit again, and what school was it?
I dunno, dad. I forget.
***
Sometimes she feels a long way from okay. Sometimes, especially if she pushes too hard or stretches too far, she feels like she's coming apart. It's a sick, rotten ache in her center, as if there's a muttering, fatal heartbeat one step behind or ahead of her regular one.
***
Her mother knows a lot of the secrets, but she doesn't know all of them, and that's one of them. Another one is about spaces. She doesn't like them. Every week she has an MRI and her dad has one, too. Twins. She doesn't like it in the tube. It's like being buried; like being in that room again, with the pounding on the walls. When the doctor talks on the intercom she hears them baying and screaming.
Send out your passenger?
Did they say that? Did they?
Sometimes it feels like she's filling up with things no one ever told her. She's full of secrets.
It's hard to breath in here. Her mind turns on her, a scorpion stings itself, her lungs are filling with salt water and her body is wrapped in webs, she can hear her father dying, she wants out, there's a nonmagnetic blanket draped across her legs and it's the pelt of a dying dog, let me out, I'm dying, I'm dying, let me out.
There's a button for her mike. She doesn't hit it.
She's not dying. She knows it. She's just scared. She's terrified.
It's another one to keep.