A Spindle Splintered (Fractured Fables #1)(28)

Primrose unglues herself from Charm with an almost audible snapping sound and turns to me, that silly smile still in place. “And what about you? What will you do?”

I open my mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. I just stare back at her, jaw loose, feeling all those galaxies of possibilities spinning around me. I’ve never thought about the future. I never had one.

Charm’s hand finds mine and squeezes. I squeeze back. “I don’t know,” I answer, and it’s the simple, glorious truth.





11


IT TAKES ME about three weeks to figure it out.

I spend the time bouncing between home and the hospital and Charm’s place. I don’t actually need to be in the hospital. The doctors tell me the first few globules of protein have appeared in my organs, but I still feel better than I have in years, and there’s still nothing they can do but hand me some steroids and suppressants to slow it down. Mostly I think they just want to continue poking and prodding at me. They keep scheduling me for more samples and tests and biopsies, followed by interviews with panels of doctors whose attitudes have moved from baffled to ambitious, as if they’re seeing themselves presenting their findings to packed lecture halls, using laser pointers to circle my miraculously empty lungs. I should be worried about transitioning from dying girl to lab rat, but I can’t seem to be worried about anything. And I already know—in a wordless, formless way—that I’m not sticking around.

Between appointments I’m mostly at Charm’s place, which is conspicuously less disastrous than it used to be. There are even curtains on the windows now, instead of towels held up with binder clips; I would worry about what this means in terms of how hard she’s falling for Prim, except that Prim seems to be falling just as fast. The first time I show up she tells me about the Swiss Army knife Charm gave her with a degree of sappiness generally reserved for bouquets or diamond rings. “It’s mine! Charm says I don’t even need to hide it!” I can’t believe how much I missed those exclamation points. “It’s a tool and a weapon!”

“Yes, but remember there is no dueling in Ohio, for any reason.” Charm says this with the peculiar emphasis that indicates there was another Incident. There’s already been problems with a bank teller who didn’t use her proper title and the HVAC guy who tried to give Prim his number and wound up with a nosebleed. “What should you do if you get in trouble?”

Prim sobers and recites, “Text you on the phone, like a normal person.”

Her education in modernity is going pretty well, all things considered. Charm and me take her on lots of long walks through town, pointing out crosswalks and traffic patterns. We wasted an entire day in Pam’s Corner Closet & More, explaining everything from fake fruit to microwaves. There have been some stumbling blocks (toilet paper, the internet, the whole concept of wage labor), but Prim is pretty sharp, it turns out, and I already knew she was brave.

In the evenings we tend to her cultural literacy by getting high and binging classic Disney movies and Austen adaptations (she agrees that the 2005 Pride and Prejudice is the superior version, because it is). Charm and Prim let me sit between them on the couch, my head on Charm’s shoulder, my feet slung over Prim’s legs, all our hands jostling in the popcorn bowl. It feels like all the slumber parties I never had growing up. It feels like a happy ending.

At Mom and Dad’s it mostly feels like an endless party. Dad keeps baking cakes for no reason, humming off-key in the kitchen; Mom uses up all her vacation days at work, rather than hoarding them for some looming medical emergency; we reinstitute family game night and I discover, to my deep dismay, that Mom has been going easy on me in Settlers of Catan for twenty-one years. She straight-up stole my longest road without even a flicker of remorse.

I have the nagging sense that there are things I should be doing—applying for jobs or joining the Peace Corps or meditating on the profound gift of time—but all I seem to want to do is lounge around Roseville with everyone I love most.

It takes me a while to realize I’m saying goodbye.

I’m putting away groceries with Dad one evening when I pull a fresh set of twin sheets out of the bag, still wrapped in plastic. “Are these for me?”

Dad is halfway inside the fridge, rearranging Tupperware to make room for the milk. “They were half off! I figured you wouldn’t want to take your old set with you. You’ve had them since what, middle school?”

I stare at the fridge door. “Am I … going somewhere?”

Dad reemerges with a pot of leftover lentils in one hand and limp celery in the other. He gives me a shrug and a smile that hangs a little crooked on his face, bittersweet. “You certainly don’t have to. I guess it just felt like you might, now that you have…” He shrugs again. I consider all the ways he might have ended that sentence: a future, a life, a story still untold.

“Huh. Yeah. I guess.” I feel it again, that sense of galaxies spinning around me, hanging like fruit ripe for the picking, and I know he’s right. I stack diced tomatoes on the counter in silence before clearing my throat. “Would you and Mom be … okay, with that?”

He goes very still, a box of Cheerios in one hand.

“I mean, if I left for a while, maybe like a long while, you wouldn’t freak out?”

Dad sets the Cheerios down and spreads his hands flat on the counter, his back to me. “When you disappeared, I thought that was it. Charmaine kept saying everything was fine, but I didn’t really believe her. I thought maybe you’d run off, and that she was covering for you.” His voice is low and thin, like he’s forcing it through a tight throat. “It hurt like hell. Of course it did. I kept thinking about all the hours I spent trying to keep you here, trying to save you—or maybe myself—”