Danny opened the sink cupboard, looked back at him, and slipped the photo neatly into the garbage. As his new brother walked back out of the kitchen, Noel wanted desperately to hit him, to stop him, to make him understand, but he just stood digging crescents in his palms with the ragged edges of his nails.
He realized that he hated Danny. Danny, who was here because Noel’s sister was not, who secreted his strange fluids on the concrete floor, who made a low keening screech in the night, who’d shredded Noel’s book. Maybe his sister was not because Danny was here.
As soon as he’d fished Maya’s photo out of the trash and put it back in its album, Noel went to his tab. It only took a simple question: are storks bad. The nets were inundated with vitriolic conspiracy rants and he read them now, one after another, even though he didn’t understand some words. He read how the stork babies secreted a mind-altering pheromone like the ones that bonded pregnant mothers to their newborns.
“There is no pheromone, Noel,” his mother told him that night, when he said, voice shaking, that they needed to wear masks around Danny. “Is that what’s upset you? It’s just a myth.”
Noel knew better. Danny was making her forget.
On the screen, an explorer stuck in an ice crevasse takes the pickaxe to his trapped arm. The adults groan or stammer laughs, gesticulating with tumblers of sloshing wine. Noel makes himself watch the axe thwack, the blood trickle and steam, until the man’s arm tears away. Then he slides from the couch into his chunky plastic flip-flops, and goes to the kitchen to find a Fanta.
He expects Danny to be there, because Danny doesn’t like crowds of people unless their mother is nearby, but the kitchen is empty. A forgotten pot of coagulating spaghetti bubbles on the burner. The lime green radio built into the counter stutters static from the storm. Noel looks to the heavy back door and sees a wash of red sand around it.
Danny is outside. Noel finds a crate of lukewarm Fanta in the corner and tugs one free, replaces it with a handful of francs. He searches slowly for a bottle opener while he thinks of what might happen. Danny’s skin is soft. Danny doesn’t breathe well in Harmattan season. Stupid of him, to go out in the storm.
Noel knows in his hot angry gut that his mother will blame him if Danny is hurt. He could tell Jean to go look, but Jean would pick him up and bring him back without a flicker of irritation on his face. If Noel finds him alone, he can punish him for being so stupid, so selfish. Nobody will notice bruises among the welts.
Noel has never hit Danny before. The thought of it unsettles his stomach, but he loops it through his head as he sets the Fanta aside, pulls someone’s track jacket from the hooks on the wall. By the time he wrestles his way out of the door, a brief shriek of wind that the adults won’t notice with the volume up, he thinks he knows how it will feel.
Outside, the dust flies like shrapnel. Noel hides his face in the peaked hood of the jacket and wishes he’d brought his goggles. The transplanted eucalyptus trees are lurching with the wind, near cracking, as he battles his way into the courtyard. Sand peppers his exposed calves and feet like a thousand tiny wasps.
Through the maelstrom, Noel catches a flash of angular silhouette: Danny, hobbling away toward the parking lot, through the archway of thrashing trees. Noel opens his mouth to shout and ends up chewing sand. He pulls the hood tighter and follows Danny, eyes squeezed to slits, fists clenched inside the balled up ends of his sleeves.
By the time he fights his way to the end of the tile and scuttles down the worn steps into the lot, Danny is sitting where they buried the water scorpion. His head is bent against the wind and his overlong arms envelop his knees, compacting him. Waves of dust belt across him, rocking him back and forth.
“What are you doing?” Noel demands, fists still clenched, chest still scalding. The wind scours his words away, but Danny notices him. He looks up with all of his glittering black eyes. Then he reaches into the dirt and pours a handful over his head. The puff of dust is nothing in the storm, but Noel understands. He understands even before Danny’s thin distorted voice slides under the windy howl.
“This is you,” Danny says, shaking another handful of dust. “Watch this.”
Noel’s stomach plummets. He reaches for his anger. “Get up,” he shouts. “You’ll get us in trouble. You’ll get me in trouble.” He tries to kick at him and loses his flip flop. “Come back inside!” His eyes are stinging from sand and now tears, sliding thick down his grimy cheeks. “Come on,” he pleads. He tries to haul Danny up by the shoulder, but his hand’s shrugged off.
Noel feels a panic welling inside, panic for Danny’s face crumpled purple, for a grave dug with one shovel. “Stay, then,” he hollers. “Stay and get sand in your lungs and die.”
Danny’s head cocks up at the last word. He considers the sand trickling through his fingers. “This is Maya,” he says.
Noel doesn’t realize he’s no longer standing until his kneecaps scrape the dirt. “I’m sorry,” he says, crawling forward, face level with Danny’s. “Danny. Sorry. It wasn’t your fault. It’s not your fault.” He goes to drape his arms over Danny, but is shoved off. “Come inside,” Noel begs.
Danny turns away. Another billow of dust blasts across them; Danny takes the brunt of it and every bit of him wilts. As the wind roars louder, Noel strips off his jacket and pulls it over their heads like a tarp. Danny stiffens, then allows it.
Their breath is hot underneath the nylon. Noel feels his skin press against Danny’s clammy back. He feels the puckered marks left by flying sand.
“Not your fault,” Noel mutters. The storm dances all around them.
He waits, and waits, for the echo.
THE THREE RESURRECTIONS OF JESSICA CHURCHILL
Kelly Robson
Kelly Robson grew up in the foothills of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. In 2018, her story “A Human Stain” won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette, and in 2016, her novella “Waters of Versailles” won the Prix Aurora Award. She has also been a finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, and Sunburst awards. In 2018, her time travel adventure “Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach” debuted to high critical praise. After twenty-two years in Vancouver, she and her wife, fellow SF writer A.M. Dellamonica, now live in downtown Toronto.
“I rise today on this September 11th, the one-year anniversary of the greatest tragedy on American soil in our history, with a heavy heart…”
Jessica slumped against the inside of the truck door. The girl behind the wheel and the other one squished between them on the bench seat kept stealing glances at her. Jessica ignored them, just like she tried to ignore the itchy pull and tug deep inside her, under her belly button, where the aliens were trying to knit her guts back together.
“You party pretty hard last night?” the driver asked.
Jessica rested her burning forehead on the window. The hum of the highway under the wheels buzzed through her skull. The truck cab stank of incense.
“You shouldn’t hitchhike, it’s not safe,” the other girl said. “I sound like my mom saying it and I hate that but it’s really true. So many dead girls. They haven’t even found all the bodies.”
“Highway of Tears,” the driver said.
“Yeah, Highway of Tears,” the other one repeated. “Bloody Sixteen.”