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.
“This is where you hang out?” Haley asks. Beneath the trees’ green tunnel, it’s earthy-cool. If Emmy squints right, she can almost pretend they’re in a real forest.
“Yeah.”
She’s not taking Haley near the tiger. Closer to the tennis courts, the path dips down beside the stream. The reeds haven’t choked it yet; last winter’s dead leaves meld into a mulchy smell that Emmy likes. They find a tree with branches sticking out low and straight, perfect for propping sticks against. While Emmy gathers dead wood, Haley sticks pine needles and clods of earth in the cracks.
Sometimes their fingers brush when they’re arranging sticks. Emmy wonders if Haley notices.
In the distance, twigs snap and leaves rustle. Emmy frowns, scanning the path. She hasn’t fed the tiger in two days—is it hungry enough to leave the grove? She’s pretty sure it wouldn’t eat Haley, but she’s not ready for anyone else to see it yet.
“You okay?” Haley asks.
“Thought I heard something.”
“A dog, maybe? Hey, I think we’re done.” Haley scoots inside the fort and grins at Emmy. “Come inside!”
While Emmy takes a seat, Haley peers out the gap they left as a window. After a minute or two, she turns around. “Wanna play Truth or Dare? I’ll go first. Truth.”
“Have you ever . . . uh, cheated on a test?’
“No way!” Haley giggles. “Okay, Truth or Dare?”
“Truth.”
“Have you ever had a crush on anyone?”
Emmy’s jaw keeps sticking. “Yeah.”
The fort isn’t very big, and somehow, Haley’s migrating closer. Their knees are almost touching. “Truth,” Haley says.
“Have you ever had a crush?” Emmy says.
Haley’s dimple deepens. “Yeah.”
There’s a long silence. Emmy clears her throat. “Dare.”
Haley glances out the window again. “I dare you . . .” She waits a long time. “I dare you to kiss me. On the cheek.”
Oh. Oh. Their knees bump. Blood rushes in Emmy’s temples. Wiping her hands on the hem of her fancy purple shirt, she takes a deep breath. Haley’s half turned, cheek presented and waiting. Fighting the butterflies in her stomach, Emmy inches forward. She tilts her head, and—
“Oh my God!”
The butterflies turn to knives.
“She was actually gonna do it!”
Emmy shoves herself backward. Just outside the fort stand Jessica and her minions, laughing and laughing. They clutch disposable cameras from Shoppers Drug Mart. As Emmy gapes, Jessica lifts her camera higher.
Click. The flash blurs through tears.
Haley’s laughing too, hard and mocking. The dimple’s never been deeper. “Oh my God. Jessica, it worked.”
Click.
Click click click click.
The fire goes so hot, it freezes. Sudden burning coldness drives like snow, burying Emmy whole. Distant buzzing fills her ears; otherwise, there’s nothing but blankness and ruin.
She stalks past the other girls without saying a word. When they follow her, she breaks into a run; it doesn’t take long to lose them in the bush. Silent, she staggers into the tiger’s grove.
It waits for her, yellow eyes calm, paws crossed. Emmy splits herself along the same seam as always, but her badness seeps out frigid and slow and translucent blue. When she lifts it, it burns like frostbite.
The tiger snarls, but Emmy hesitates. This sin is beautiful, like breaking winter. Sharp edges and frost too deep to thaw. For the first time, she doesn’t want to give it away. It came from her; it belongs to her. And the coldness feels good, it feels clean and hard and right.
Voices ring nearby. Twigs snap under approaching feet. The tiger tilts its head, waiting. Come, its eyes say. Take. Eat.
With the woods her table, Emmy lifts the coldness to her mouth. She holds it on her tongue, savoring the sting before swallowing. It runs through every vein, down to the tips of her toes.
“I think she went this way!”
The tiger smiles. A gentle, calm smile, one that knows her. She recognizes that smile, but she’s never understood it, not really. As the coldness spreads, Emmy loses herself in the tiger’s golden gaze. Her bones crack, her blood freezes to stopping.
It all happens in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.
Then she rises, glorious, the sunlight shattering on her fur.
MEG ELISON
The Pill
My mother took the Pill before anybody even knew about it. She was always signing up for those studies at the university, saying she was doing it because she was bored. I think she did it because they would ask her questions about herself and listen carefully when she answered. Nobody else did that.
She had done it for lots of trials: sleep studies and allergy meds. She tried signing up when they tested the first 3D-printed IUDs, but they told her she was too old. I remember her raging about that for days, and later when everybody in that study got fibroids she was really smug about it. She never suggested I do it instead; she knew I wasn’t fucking anybody. How embarrassing that my own mother didn’t even believe I was cute enough to get a date at sixteen. I tried not to care. And I’m glad now I didn’t get fibroids. I never wanted to be a lab rat anyway. Especially when the most popular studies (and the ones Mom really went all-out for) were the diet ones.
She did them alclass="underline" the digital calorie monitors that she wore on her wrists and ankles for six straight weeks. (I rolled my eyes at that one, but at least she didn’t talk about it constantly.) The strings like clear licorice made of some kind of super-cellulose that were supposed to accumulate in her stomach lining and give her a no-surgery stomach stapling but just made her (and everyone else who didn’t eat a placebo) fantastically constipated. (Unstoppable complaining about this one; I couldn’t bring anyone home for weeks for fear that she’d abruptly start telling my friends about her struggle to shit.) Pill after pill after pill that gave her heart palpitations, made her hair fall out, or (on one memorable occasion) induced psychotic delusions. If it was a way out of being fat, she’d try it. She’d try anything.
In between the drug trials, she did all the usual diets. Eat like a caveman. Eat like a rabbit. Seven small meals. Fasting one day a week. Apple cider vinegar bottles with dust on their upper domes sat tucked into the back corners of our every kitchen cabinet, behind the bulwark of Fig Newmans and Ritz crackers.
She’d try putting the whole family on a diet, talk us into taking “family walks” in the evening. She’d throw out all the junk food and make us promise to love ourselves more. Loving yourself means crying over the scale every morning and then sniffling into half a grapefruit, right? Nothing stuck and nothing made any real difference. We all resisted her, eating in secret in our rooms or out of the house. I found Dad’s bag of fish taco wrappers jammed under the driver’s seat of the car while looking for my headphones. Mom caught me putting it in the garbage and yelled at me for like an hour. I never told her it was his. She was always hardest on me about my weight, as if I was the only one who had this problem. We were a fat family. Mom was just as fat as me; we looked like we were built to the same specs. Dad was fat, and my brother was the fattest of us all.
I’m still fat. Everyone else is in the past tense.
And why? Because of this fucking Pill.
That trial started the same way they always do: flyers all over campus where Mom worked, promising cash for the right demographic for an exciting new weight-loss solution. Mom jumped on it like she always did, taking a pic of the poster so she could email from the comfort of her broken-down armchair with the TV tray rolled up close and her laptop permanently installed there. I remember I asked her once why she even had a laptop if she never took it anywhere. She never even unplugged it! It might as well have been an old-school tower and monitor rig. Why go portable if you’re never going to leave the port?