Page 18 of The Sun and Her Star

“Of course. You’re smart, and you can do anything you’re willing to work for.” I echo the words Papa used to say.

“Hmm … I like that idea,” he says, and when his eyes come back to my face, the smile on his lips reaches all the way to them.

“Really? Sometimes, I think all my ideas are weird.”

“Nah … besides the whole jumping off mountains thing … you’re cool. Now, you reallygottastop talking. This book is starting to get good.” He flops back down, and I stare at him holding my book over his face.

I don’t remind him that he’s the one who sat up to talk to me. I don’t care about being right. Not right now, anyway.

My heart is doing cartwheels.

I have afriend.

The Universe

Graham

“Why you got that smile on your face, boy?” My stepfather’s cold voice cuts through the silence at our dining table like an ax splitting wood.

The cup I was bringing up to mouth trembles as my hand starts to shake.

I slide my eyes to my mother first, and as usual, she’s sitting with her head bowed. Her hands rest on the table right in front of her plate, and she just stares at them.

I know what’s coming, and I don’t want my mother to have a huge mess to clean up when my stepfather’s finished, so I put my glass down.

His palm cracks across my cheek just as I’m turning to look at him. It hurts, but I never let him see that anymore.

When I cry out, it gives him satisfaction, and I mean to deprive him of it for as long as I can.

Hethinksit means I’m giving up.

Hethinkshe’s beating the ambivalence out of me.

Hethinkshe’s whipping the fear of God into me.

If he knew that all he’s doing is strengthening my resolve to see him suffer something terrible, he’d beat me until I was dead. So, after a while, I cry out just so he’ll stop. Not for myself. I don’t think me being alive makes a difference in this world. But, Mama … I don’t know what she would do if I died.

He told everyone that Ellie died because of her past sins. He used Ellie’s death as a weapon against the people in Caine’s Weeping. He told them that holding on to their desire for worldly things would bring similar fates onto their children.

The tiny bits of happiness, the occasional song on the church piano, the men laughing with each other on their porches—all of it stopped after Ellie died.

In our house, smiling without permission had become a crime. This was the second time I’d been caught smiling. Last time, I got off with a slap and a warning that the next time would be worse.

So, after that, without him saying a word, I get up and go get his belt.

The whipping hurts. It’ll leave welts on my back and the latch of the belt tears into the skin of my shoulders on his harder swings.

But it’s worth it because the smile that got me in trouble came from a place deep inside me that I hadn’t even known existed.

And no amount of pain could dim the happiness that I’d discovered in the last week.

Apollo and I spent every afternoon together. And for those two hours, we lay in my hammock, we read and talked.

She told me all about her life in Las Vegas, and I told her about living here in Cain's Weeping.

I’ve read five books, too. All of them about things I’d never dreamed existed.

But, what we have planned tonight is going to be the icing on the cake.

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