The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
“Oh. Okay.” But at the door, Haley stops. A tiny smile makes her cheek dimple. “Bye.”
For the first time all year, the tiger goes hungry. Emmy slouches against its sharp ribs, doodling in her notebook. When she opened herself up, her insides were smooth and bare. Until this afternoon, she barely remembered what it felt like, not carrying that leaden weight, that magma heat. She floats cool and light as an angel.
“I’ll feed you other things,” she tells the tiger.
Even as she says it, she wonders. If the tiger eats up all her badness, will it stick around? If another kid needs it more than her, she’ll be sad, but she won’t stop it leaving. With one hand, she reaches behind and strokes its matted fur.
It bumps its broad forehead against her, rough tongue licking over her arm like it means to grate her skin. Emmy squirms away, refocuses on her notebook. Drawings of the tiger trail off into hearts and flowers. And a letter H.
Not believing her daring, Emmy lifts her pencil and writes, H-A-L-E-Y. Then she snaps the notebook shut, shoving it in her bag. With a wave to the tiger, she leaves the woods on Jell-O legs. She wants to stare at her notebook for hours; she never wants to open her notebook again. Later, in bed, she presses her hot cheeks to cool sheets and wonders if there’s goodness in her after all.
At recess, Emmy sits under the straggly pine trees, alternately sketching and snapping pine needles. Her chest hurts like she caught a balloon under her ribs. She almost feels sick, but she doesn’t remember the last time sick felt good.
On the playground, Haley hangs from the monkey bars upside down. It’s so cool that Emmy sets her notebook aside. Her heart thunders until everyone must hear it. Jesus certainly does, and she manages to squeeze out a quick prayer: Please let her like me.
Mom would yell at her for that. This isn’t the sort of prayer to waste Jesus’s time with. It’s a stupid wish. But no one else even pretends to listen, so she buries her face in her kneecaps. Please, please, please.
Sudden footsteps scuffle, laughter cracking like glass. Emmy whirls around, but Jessica dances out of reach, waving her notebook. “Give that back!” Emmy cries.
Grinning, Jessica rifles through it, and then stops. There’s a deathly pause.
“You like her,” Jessica whispers.
First Emmy turns to stone. Then she turns to fire. The badness almost shoots out her nose; it almost bursts her eyeballs.
“Hey!” Jessica yells to the other girls. “Emmy likes Haley!”
“No, I—”
They rush her like lions, their mouths gaping red. Perfect painted fingernails flash in the sun as they clap and chant, “In our class, there was a girl, and lesbo was her name-o!”
“Knock it off!” She can’t even tell a teacher. That’s the worst part. If she tells anyone, the whole class will get lectured about “courtesy” and “respect,” Jessica and the girls will laugh it off, and things will be worse than before. So she sinks to the ground, the fence hard against her back. Curling tight around her knees, she waits for the recess bell.
It rings, but she doesn’t move a muscle until the playground empties. Shaky, she climbs to her feet. Across the soccer field, Haley watches, her expression unreadable.
The stench of rot fills the tiger’s grove. Dead things, evil things. This is probably how the Devil smells, sulfur thick enough to shut your throat. Emmy stands quivering, her eyes on fire with tears. Shaking maggots from its fur, the tiger snarls. The glint of sharp yellow teeth sets Emmy’s heart thumping faster.
“Come on,” she whispers. “I got something for you.”
Kneeling in the mud, Emmy rips herself apart. Fingernails deep in her own flesh. Skin and muscle shredded like old jeans. Fury gushes out like battery acid, scorching Emmy in its wake. She’s a volcano, she’s a thunderstorm, she can’t even see straight.
Hot black anger smokes on the dirt, stinking like barbecued flesh. Bile pushes over her tongue, slicks the pile of heaving rage so that it gleams oily in the late afternoon light.
The tiger growls. But no matter how much it eats, there’s more to give. The other girls will never, ever let her live this down. The year’s ruined, the next one too. Forget Haley liking her.
And what’s going to happen to Jessica? Nothing, of course. Worse than nothing. She’s going to flounce through life with her okay grades and shiny hair and her pretty little smirk. Everyone’s going to love her because that’s just what happens sometimes, even though the sheer unfairness makes Emmy throw up.
A very long time later, she is empty. The tiger washes its paws, wincing, dainty. Emmy flops against its side. With a reeking tongue, the tiger licks her hair and face until her tears quit trickling through. Its stripes are widening; it’s almost black with orange stripes, not the other way around. Under her hands, its skin feels tight, like a water balloon filled too far.
Maybe if she keeps feeding the tiger, it’ll explode. Maybe if she stops, she will.
“Well, if it isn’t Miss Sunshine!” Even at seven thirty in the morning, Mom’s makeup looks like a magazine. “I think you need an earlier bedtime. These bad moods are something else.”
Emmy grunts, propping her chin on one hand. Her untouched cereal decays to sogginess. “Can I stay home from school?”
“What? Why?”
“My tummy hurts.”
Mom’s disappointment cuts like Jessica’s sneers. “Are you fighting with the girls again?”
Inside, her heart hardens up. She shakes her head.
“Love your neighbor, kid.”
“I know.”
“Then why aren’t you doing it?”
Because it sounds easy, when she’s cross-legged on the Sunday school carpet. Because no one else has this problem. Other people just decide to be friends, or to get over things, and then they do. No one gets stuck the way Emmy does. Maybe if she was good enough to love other people, other people would love her back.
But she can’t say all that. If she opens her mouth, all the fire and brimstone will flood out like vomit. And there’s no tiger to take it away, not here.
By the time she gets to school, her ribs are cracking under the pressure. The other girls cluster around the playground. Haley’s with them, talking to Jessica. That stings, but no one pays any attention to Emmy. She loiters by the trees along the back fence. Someone taps her shoulder.
“Hi,” Haley says.
Emmy swallows. “Hi.”
“Um.” Haley scuffs her shoe against the asphalt. “I wondered. If you wanted to hang out after school tomorrow? We could make forts in the park.”
“I—I have Bible study.”
“Thursday?”
“Okay,” she says, head spinning. “Sure.”
“Okay.” Haley starts to head inside, but then she pauses. The dimple returns. “I’ll wear a dress.”
Once again, the tiger starves. Emmy can’t sit still. She can’t stop talking. For two nights, she scours her closet. No dresses, of course. That’s okay. From movies and Archie comics, she figures she needs a button-up shirt. She got one last Christmas, dark purple. It’ll do.
Before the big day, she takes an extra-long bath, scrubbing between her toes. The next morning she combs her hair one hundred times and swipes Mom’s mouthwash to gargle. “Don’t you look nice?” Mom says. “See what I said about early bedtimes?”
When she steals glances in the mirror, Emmy doesn’t see badness. She sees a girl who deserves a “happily ever after” as much as Jessica does.