Harmonious Hearts 2017 Page 13

  Pippa sighs and mumbles, “I’m just ready to… move on.”

  The girl nods and then quickly throws her arms around Pippa—a tentative but serious embrace. Pippa leans briefly on her shoulder but then snaps up and whispers, “We should go.”

  Later that night, Pippa and the girl stand just outside the door’s windowpanes in fervent, tearful conversation. Pippa has tears prickling in her eyes as she clutches the girl’s forearms and shakes her head. Then the two embrace and after a moment, Pippa stretches up to kiss the girl on her forehead, lingering, before bringing her lips to the other girl’s. But she pulls away after only a few stolen kisses, and the two girls slowly back away from each other, leaving to return to her house alone.

  Pippa absentmindedly strolls through the foyer, her face taut, eyes blinking rapidly to avoid an onslaught of tears. She stops in front of her prom picture with her ex-boyfriend, lazily lifting a hand to trace the frame that encloses years of tradition. Society’s natural expectation for the beautiful, smart, ambitious poster child. After all, when hanging up the prom picture, Mrs. Huxtable remarked, “If you keep growing up this fast, soon I’ll be hanging up your wedding photo!” It’s not a stretch to assume Mrs. Huxtable was envisioning the traditional bride-and-groom affair.

  Prying her hands from the picture frame, Pippa resigns herself to continue farther into the house that only knows part of who she is.

  TEN O’CLOCK on a Wednesday night. It has been dark for three hours. The door opens and Mike enters.

  “Is that Michael?” It’s Mrs. Huxtable’s voice, summoned by the sound of the door firmly shutting.

  “Yeah!” he shouts back, carefully unlacing his athletic shoes on the welcome mat.

  Mrs. Huxtable appears in the doorway to the living room. “I left you three texts. Where have you been? It’s too late.”

  Mike pulls his phone out of his pocket, lighting up the screen. “Oh. Well, I was playing basketball. I told you. I don’t check my phone on the court, Mom.”

  “You could have at least checked the time, since no one wears watches anymore, apparently.”

  Mike shrugs. “Sorry.” He begins to shuffle through to the rest of the house, but then he turns back and faces his mother. “Why are you on my case so much, Mom? Pippa stays out late, even when she was with her boyfriend.”

  “Have you done your homework?” Mrs. Huxtable shoots back.

  “As much as I need to do right now.”

  Mrs. Huxtable raises her voice. “You need to get more direction in your life, Mike.”

  “What direction?” Mike yells. “I’m sixteen, Mom. I’m still a kid. We do things like play videos games and basketball and talk about girls—wasn’t it like that when you were younger, huh? Most of my friends don’t know what they want yet, at least not exactly.”

  “Pippa knew,” Mrs. Huxtable says in a smaller, restrained tone.

  But Mike shows no intention of allowing this to be a calm conversation. The words burst from him. “So? I’m not Pippa, and if you haven’t seen that by now, I don’t know if you will. But it isn’t a problem, and I’m not saying that because I’m lazy or something…. Teachers are telling us to—how do they say it—‘explore areas of interest.’ Because apparently even when kids go off to college for what they think they want, most of them end up changing their majors or schools or something, anyway.”

  “Is that a part of that new program?”

  “Yeah, because it’s about being realistic. You know, to prepare us for the real world. Not a perfect one.”

  “Michael—”

  “Mike, stop.”

  Pippa emerges at the top of the staircase. She rests her head against the wall as she descends slowly, her eyes almost closed—tired, not fierce.

  “Pippa, this is between Mike and me,” Mrs. Huxtable says.

  Pippa crosses her arms and the foyer to stand by her brother. “I can hear you from my room, so I’d say this isn’t entirely private. Just leave him alone.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that—”

  Now Pippa’s eyes narrow. “Look, maybe I’ve always worked really hard in school and wanted to go to a good college and go to law school and argue for the rest of my life ever since you and Dad watched Law & Order every night, but I don’t have my whole life planned out, even if I wanted to. Like, guess what?” The pitch of her voice careens upward as her throat tightens. “I’m—I’m bisexual. I’ve kissed Katie—more than once! I don’t know if I’m going to marry a guy or a girl or anyone else, or if I’ll even want to marry, and if I’ll have kids in some way or if I even want kids. And I’m not in a hurry to find out.”

  Mike is staring at his sister with raised eyebrows, perhaps bewildered that she’s taking his side. Mrs. Huxtable stands rigid, blindsided by this information she’d never considered.

  After a pause, she softens. “Oh, Pippa….”

  Pippa sighs. “Maybe that wasn’t the best comparison, but I… I just wanted to say it. My point is just that I think some things take a while to figure out, and the exploring that leads to that direction—as you say—is also important.”

  Mrs. Huxtable steps forward, resting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Pippa. We just want to make sure Mike is putting effort into school.”

  “I know. Just, maybe instead of asking him what he wants to do every time we’re talking about my plans for college, maybe just ask him what he’s interested in right now. Even if it doesn’t sound like it relates to a career. Sound good?” She looks up at her mother and brother for confirmation.

  Mrs. Huxtable nods.

  “Thanks,” Mike whispers.

  “Good. Pass the message to Dad, will you?”

  “I will,” Mrs. Huxtable says. She grips Mike’s shoulders now, trying to make eye contact with him. “We’ll work on this so you can find what you’re passionate about, okay? We just want to help you.”

  Pippa begins to leave, but Mrs. Huxtable calls after her, “Oh, and Pippa?”

  “Yeah?” She glances back.

  “Could we have Katie over for dinner sometime this weekend, maybe?”

  Pippa shares a small smile.

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  THE SUMMER comes to a close, but it’s a sunnier time for the family than it began. And it’s time for Pippa to depart. Boxes and plastic bins are dragged to the foyer and out the door by all four family members.

  “Honey, I would have loved to help you move in, but I guess you prefer these books to bringing your embarrassing dad along,” Mr. Huxtable says to Pippa as he lifts a box labelled BOOKS through the door.

  Mrs. Huxtable chuckles. “Imagine how she would have struggled to pack if we didn’t have the minivan!”

  “Well, we do, so I can bring all the clothes and books I want,” Pippa says, dragging another bucket into the foyer.

  “As you deserve,” Mr. Huxtable says, “with all the scholarships you got.”

  Pippa smirks. “Too bad they mean I’ll be five hours away.”

  “Hey, you’re growing up,” Mr. Huxtable says. “You know you need to go where the money is.”

  “Oh, stop,” Mrs. Huxtable laughs. “We know it was the right choice for many reasons… and only some of them were financial.”

  Pippa allows her smile to widen as she hefts a suitcase. “Definitely.”

  When everything is loaded, Mr. Huxtable and Mike stand in the foyer to bid the women goodbye. Pippa shares a hug with her father. “I know you’ll do great, kiddo,” he says as she pulls away.

  She turns then to Mike, awkwardly looming at his father’s side. He’s already the tallest of the family, but he hasn’t yet acquired the air of confidence to fill out the stature. Any lingering tension breaks when Pippa reaches out and embraces her brother, tightening her arms around the middle of his back. Only a moment passes before Mike reciprocates, wrapping his arms around her.

  “I’ll miss you,” she whispers.

  “Ditto,” he replies, his voice gruff but genuine.
/>   “Text me anytime,” she adds, and he nods in response.

  “Ready to go?” Mrs. Huxtable asks.

  Pippa nods, turning to leave. But before closing the door behind her, she stops for a moment to gaze at the foyer—the mouth of the house she has outgrown, but filled with the loved ones she has come to better understand, and who have come to better understand her.

  Yet she does not linger long, as there’s a world out there with endless opportunities to continue discovering and exploring.

  OLIVIA ANNE GENNARO is a student at Indiana University, Bloomington, studying English Secondary Education with a minor in creative writing. She plans to be an English teacher by day and a writer by night, specializing in middle grade and young adult fiction, and hopes her interactions with young people have the power to change the world for the better.

  Olivia blogs and talks about books online when she’s not doing so in real life. When she isn’t writing, reading, or doing homework, she can be found watching TV dramas and falling down Wikipedia rabbit holes, listening and singing along to music, or attending a musical or play.

  Twitter: @booksnbigideas

  Blog/website: booksandbigideas.wordpress.com

  Lovers in the Great Collapse

  By Amy Carothers

  Humanity succeeded in eradicating disease—until an injection meant to kill sunburn killed the world. Gillian and Jacqueline, among the few immune to the resulting virus, will be put into cryosleep to carry on the human race. Their dreams are filled with each other, but will those dreams come true when—and if—they awaken to a new world?

  I. The Pod

  IT’S A strange sort of sleep.

  The cryopod is not what they promised. The way Hakim talked, it was so… miraculous. No more plague. No more nuclear bombs. I’d slip under the shimmering blue fluid and watch it crystallize the glass before my nose. Blood flow slowing, heartbeat stuttering, drifting off to sleep.

  One blink of an eye, and it’s a brave new world.

  Except it’s not like going to sleep, and it’s not like blinking an eye. It’s… beyond, I think, what anyone ever expected. Not awake, but aware of consciousness, unable to stir. Every once in a while, adrenaline slices through the fog, fluid-filled lungs gasping to life, eyes struggling to flutter open, floating in empty darkness….

  But mostly, the pod is just cold.

  Ice. Chapping my skin, burning beneath my fingernails, jolting my synapses to life rapid-fire—streaks of orange and the faint scent of scrambled eggs, tingles brushing my lips, the cloying perfume of daisies. The taste of Jacqueline Gray.

  My worst fear is that it hasn’t been a day, it hasn’t been a single hour, and I’ll stay frozen forever, Jackie’s cryopod right next to mine, separated from her for this eternity and the next by steel, and fluid, and ice.

  Not twenty more years, not ten, not five. Please, God, no.

  But whenever the panic surges, I realize I was only conscious for that moment. I’m dragged back into a gulf of snapshots and smears, and the world within my dreams feels even more real than the one without.

  THE SYRINGE was impossibly blue. The thick liquid inside glimmered almost malevolently in the laboratory lights.

  “That’s it, huh?” I asked softly. Goose bumps thrilled along my spine. “That’s what’ll put me to sleep?”

  “Essentially,” Hakim replied, setting it back down and wiping off his fingerprints so that his reflection blinked back at him—complete with strands of silvery-gray escaping his brushed-back hair and patches of unnoticed shaving cream dotting his jaw. He peered not unkindly at me from behind the thick-rimmed, oversized glasses sliding down his prominent nose.

  Dr. Hakim Hussein. The man who would save my life.

  “Humans, shockingly,” he continued, “are not supposed to be frozen in boxes. We’re meant to be warm. Stasis would kill us if we didn’t firm up our cells first. This will keep your blood from crystallizing, so the ice doesn’t split apart your cell walls.” He offered a smile that fell far short of lighthearted. “That would be fatal.”

  I swallowed.

  He continued along. “The next trouble area is eyes. First we apply a few chemical eye drops.” Hakim gestured to a small pot of yellow fluid. “Next….” He handed over a case. I pressed the clasp, revealing rows of contact lenses, opaque and milky. “These will protect you from blindness but should be removed immediately after waking. They’re unsuited for UV rays.”

  So many commands to keep straight. It wasn’t like the formulas I used to memorize for algebra tests—the stakes were so much higher than getting into university. Do this or you die. Do this or Earth dies.

  I pushed the lens case back over. Voice shaking a little, I ventured, “So, what if we’re not capable of getting the lenses out? What if we can’t pull out the tubes? What if… we’re not even strong enough to get ourselves out of the pods?”

  Hakim smiled. “Gillian Larchwood, not strong enough for something? The very thought!” Then he sobered. “Yes. It will be… disconcerting. Just remember, waking up is the pod’s job, not yours. The Mayflower will thaw you gradually, micro-adjusting temperature and oxygen levels. It won’t be fun, but… trauma will be minimal. Reminiscent of emerging from a hangover”—he looked over the rims of his glasses, chuckling—“not that you’d know anything about that.”

  “Not really. I’ve only ever drunk once.” He did a double take, looking so aghast that I burst out laughing. “Wait! Blame Jackie!”

  “‘Blame Jackie,’ she says!” he moaned, lifting his eyes to the ceiling. “Gillian, just to be clear, you absolutely cannot be intoxicated during stasis, else your blood is likely to freeze. So please curb your budding alcoholism.”

  “We split half a hard lemonade!”

  But he seemed so scandalized that I dropped it.

  He walked me through the rest of the procedure, from the oxygen tubes they’d feed down my throat to the finger clip meant for monitoring my heartbeat. When he was done, I quietly shut the notebook in which I’d jotted down the whirl of instructions and warnings.

  “It’s pretty invasive,” I said softly.

  “Oh yes,” Hakim replied, pausing to look at me from behind those big, round spectacles of his. “I thought you knew better, Gillian. Everything is invasive now. There are… moments in human history in which we all collectively straighten our spines and buckle down. Whether or not it’s comfortable, whether or not it’s what we’d prefer, whether or not it’s… safe.” He smiled bittersweetly. His fingers curled against the tabletop. “We all do what we must.”

  He took a deep breath.

  “We all do what we must.”

  II. Station 111

  TWO MONTHS before the ice crusted before my eyes and my stream of consciousness slowed to rolls of honey, my family and I waited in the endless line in front of Station 111’s front gates. It took a week just to get inside the scuffed, dirty entrance hall, little more than a cattle call of unwashed, hungry people in a rainbow of earthen shades.

  “Stick out your arm,” commanded the guard. I still remember his sunken eyes and his threadbare uniform. Yellow lights flashed above, a droning voice urging us forward over the PA system.

  “Wait,” I said, disheveled, but the crowd was jostling at my back, pushing us forward—me, my father, and my little brother.

  I was first. The guard grabbed my elbow through the bars. The prick was swift. He passed the blood sample through the window for testing, just like everyone’s, for my entrance to the safe house to be decided. “Wait!” I tried again, twisting. “Dad! Owen—”

  “Go on, Gilly-Bean. We’ll be right along,” Dad said, trying to muster up an expression of optimism. He was tall and rust-haired, his mouth set in a firm line. Memories of him were made up of bedtime stories and driving lessons and grilling on Sundays.

  He used to shave his face every day. Now it was covered in stubble. It aged him.

  I was wrenched away from the line, pushed into the trembling crowd of people w
ho had also already been tested and were waiting for their lab reports, masses of refugees with their ragged clothes and dirty faces. I stood on my toes, stomach twisting as I watched Dad and Owen reach the guard with the syringe. Owen was crying. Owen, my little brother. Owen, who was so pudgy when he was born, bruised head to toe from coming out facedown. Owen, who smashed the record of Purple Rain I got for my thirteenth birthday. Dad had to hold him still for the guard to draw his blood.

  Finally, the guards pushed them over to my side of the room. I breathed for what felt like the first time in an eternity, suppressing stinging tears as Owen threw his arms around my waist.

  “Hey, buddy,” I whispered, hoping he couldn’t feel my heartbeat going wild. “You were really strong over there.”

  “Assholes,” he said tearily into my shirt. Dad barked out a laugh.

  I had no time to tease. The gates swung open. A man in a rumpled white coat appeared, rifling through a clipboard.

  “Ah….”

  He cleared his throat and ran his finger down his papers. Owen squeezed my hand so hard that I lost feeling in my fingers. Dad’s lips moved wordlessly. Praying?

  The Larchwoods. The Larchwoods. Call the Larchwoods, please. Let us inside.

  The man’s eyes flicked up.

  “May I have Larchwood?”

  “Thank God,” my father croaked.

  The man fixed his eyes on us. Striking eyes—hazel gray in the middles, ringed with deep green. Their heavy bags did not diminish their intensity. When he spoke, his voice was authoritative, yet gentle.

  “Just Gillian.”

  And then, “I’m sorry.”

  FOR A moment, it was incomprehensible.