Obscura Burning Read online

  Table of Contents

  ~ Acclaim for Suzanne van Rooyen ~

  Copyright Warning

  ~ Dedication ~

  ~ Acknowledgements ~

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ~ About the Author ~

  ~ More YA Fiction from Etopia Press ~

  ~ Acclaim for Suzanne van Rooyen ~

  For Dragon’s Teeth

  “Suzanne Van Rooyan has an epic imagination. You won't be disappointed, but you may be left wanting more.”

  —A.B. Riddle of Underground Book Reviews

  Obscura Burning

  Suzanne van Rooyen

  Copyright Warning

  EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published By

  Etopia Press

  1643 Warwick Ave., #124

  Warwick, RI 02889

  http://www.etopia-press.net

  Obscura Burning

  Copyright © 2012 by Suzanne van Rooyen

  ISBN: 978-1-937976-50-7

  Edited by Rhiannon Morgan

  Cover by Annie Melton

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Etopia Press electronic publication: December 2012

  ~ Dedication ~

  To Mark, with love always

  ~ Acknowledgements ~

  There are a number of people without whom this book would not have been possible. Thank you to the band Explosions in the Sky for composing the music, which brought to mind a boy walking through the desert, peering at an unforgiving sun. It was from this image that Kyle Wolfe was born. Thank you to all the fantastic members of Scribophile.com for helping me with my research about New Mexico, for providing personal anecdotes about life in this dusty corner of the world and for sending me photographs of the State. Michelle Krys deserves a special mention for not only helping me polish my query but also for giving me the confidence to submit that query. I owe a huge amount of thanks to Annie Melton, Rhiannon Morgan and all the others at Etopia Press who loved and believed in my story. Thank you to my family for their unfailing support and to my mom for her willingness to read draft after draft of this manuscript. And finally, thank you to Mark for being my beta reader, critic, technical advisor and number one fan. Without his love, support and encouragement, I wouldn't be where I am today as an author.

  Chapter One

  Danny’s dead

  Sometimes I think dying would be easier than having to live two lives. Every time I close my eyes, I pray I won’t wake up. But whoever’s up there clearly doesn’t give a crap. Sometimes I think that maybe I’m already dead.

  I must’ve dozed off and for a moment, I’m in limbo, floating between two possible realities. The next instant, it all comes crashing down around me, and I have to deal with Danny’s death all over again. It’s like being on a roller coaster except I’m the only one riding it and there’s no getting off.

  One day Danny’s dead, then reality shifts, and instead we’re mourning Shira. And what do I get out of this life-jumping deal? Cold sweats and nosebleeds, and the joy of trying to juggle two dead friends. I’d do anything to make it stop.

  Today it’s Shira’s turn to live.

  We’re in Shira’s bed, tucked into the back corner of her mother’s trailer. Fairy lights dangle from the ceiling, a spiderweb attempt at making the room less depressing. It smells of Shira’s grapefruit body cream and patchouli incense. It smells like sex.

  “We need to talk,” Shira says.

  The sheet clings to my sweaty chest and dust swirls in the sun rays stabbing through the broken blinds. Shira’s always talking, like she can talk away any problem. As if talking can undo the past.

  “About what?” I sit up, wrapping the sheet around my waist, already searching for underwear and socks. Beyond the dirty window, the sun’s just starting to slip beyond the horizon, turning the sky the color of spilled blood. Mom’ll expect me home for dinner soon. There’s an excuse for not wanting to stick around and chat.

  “Kyle, you know we need to talk about this. About us.” Her cheeks are stained from tears shed hours earlier. Her brown bob is a crow’s nest on her head. She’s examining her chipped nail polish, not meeting my gaze.

  “You don’t really want to talk about Danny and how you’re sleeping with his boyfriend, do you?” My words are bullets that shut her up. We both loved Danny, the three of us inseparable. Only difference now is that Shira’s lost him and in that other reality, I still get to love him.

  Shira looks up, her eyes intense and tragic as her bottom lip begins to tremble. It’s not fair putting it all on her. I kissed her, made the first move, but she never said no. We’re both guilty.

  She hiccups and her tears start again. Guilt hardens in my gut, turns to stone as I try not to feel anything, try not to love her, try not to hate her for being alive.

  When I’m with her, sometimes I can imagine she’s Danny, forget all the other crap and just let skin rub against skin. When her hands are knotted in my hair, her lips are on my throat…the fire and Danny’s death just feel like a bad dream. A reality jump later, I’ll wake up and it’ll be Shira who’s gone, her ashes scattered in the dust on the reservation.

  “I should go.” I pull my T-shirt over the scars. They’re still glossy pink, puckering the flesh across my ribs and chest, across my collarbone and shoulders, rippling up my neck, splashing up my jaw and cheek. I’m a total freak show.

  If the scars bother her, she doesn’t say. It’s just a pity fuck, her way of trying to make me feel better. Like anyone would choose to sleep with me looking like this. I’ll take the sex, regardless of how it’s given, over “It’s not your fault” speeches any day.

  “I’ll call you later,” I add, doing up my fly before pushing my feet into sneakers.

  “We still need to talk about our part in the memorial. Danny’
s mom is waiting to finalize the program.” Shira looks so vulnerable, naked under the white sheets with raccoon eyes and black nails. The turquoise bracelet she always wears jangles softly with every movement.

  “I said I’ll call you later.” I’m being an ass and Shira deserves better.

  She’s so small for a girl of seventeen. As flat-chested as a twelve-year-old, with a pixie face. Tacked to the wall behind her, posters of horses are just visible beneath the screaming faces of Marilyn Manson and Slipknot. Dream catchers dangle feathers from her ceiling, the only evidence of her Native American heritage.

  “Dream catchers aren’t even Navajo,” she told me once. “They’re Sioux, but the tourists love them.”

  Dead roses and glittery strings of beads cling to the frame of her mirror, and stuck to a corner is the photograph of three smiling faces. The three of us at prom: Danny in his silver suit, me in blue, and Shira in black. Danny asked me to dance that night and I said no. Guess we’ll never have that dance, not in this reality or any other.

  Outside, the evening brings some respite from the heat of the day. Even Shira’s cacti are struggling in the drought. Some slouch like old men with hollow bellies while others have lost their limbs to thirst, their broken arms lying withered and forlorn in the dust. It’s June. There should be roiling thunderstorms every day, but instead there’s just dust and sizzling heat.

  A breeze ruffles my hair, and the stillness of the evening makes me think maybe things aren’t that bad until it’s shattered by the chorus of wind chimes hanging off Shira’s trailer. That’s her mom’s fault. She makes the damn things, sells them to tourists who stop in town for gas and Tex-Mex on their way out to Shiprock.

  My stomach rumbles. The bowl of cornflakes at breakfast is just a wisp of memory, but I don’t want to go home yet. Don’t want to meet my mom’s sad smile and my dad’s hurt eyes. You’d swear they were the ones who got burned. I’m the one wearing the scars, but they’re the ones ashamed.

  It’s a long walk from Shira’s at the edge of nowhere, up through the red rocks and crippled juniper, back to the dirt road that takes me into town. Coyote’s Luck, population 2,817.

  A lizard joins me, soaking up the last of the sun’s rays at the top of an outcropping. From up here I can see all the way across the emptiness of New Mexico. Yucca and creosote bush, rock and dust. Shiprock rises like an angry fist from the earth, fingers of breccia clawing at the distant sky as the sun dips beyond the horizon.

  Looking at that expanse somehow makes me feel less lonely.

  Lying back against the stone still warm from the day, I stare up at the stars. They’re brilliant out here, like someone scattered bright silver quarters into tar. One looks out of place though, and it is. It blinks blue where the others are white.

  They’re calling it Obscura; a planet about the size of Mercury that just spun into our solar system unannounced and took up residence between us and Mars. I don’t understand the physics of it all, but it seems the unwanted lump of rock has got herself stuck, forming this perfectly straight line with Earth, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. She’s fouling up the TV channels and interfering with radio broadcasts. There’s a bunch of doomsday nuts preparing for the end of the world as well. I don’t care about any of that. Bring on the apocalypse.

  The desert turns chilly and dinner beckons. Thoughts of Danny’s memorial replace thoughts of strange planets. Shira’s determined to involve me even though there’s little point to it. In this reality, Daniel’s dead. Asphyxiated by smoke and killed by falling beams, so says the coroner.

  They buried him a month ago while I was still on a morphine drip in the hospital. He’s rotting beneath the ground beside the bones of his uncle and his two-day-old sister. All the pretty words have been said. Can’t see the point of lighting more candles and saying more prayers.

  Besides, when I wake up tomorrow, it’ll be Shira who’s dead again.

  The night of the fire is a gaping wound in my memory. It might be because I downed a bottle of tequila before playing with matches, or might be PTSD amnesia. That night’s not a blur, but a brilliant canvas of flames. My only memory is fire. The heat: glorious, choking heat and tongues of orange licking at the rafters, a burst of cinders, and the screams. Then nurses and morphine.

  If I could just remember what happened, could piece it all together for myself, then maybe the world would go back to normal.

  Tomorrow will be better. Danny will be alive and I won’t be a half-melted monstrosity. Shira’ll be scattered ash, but at least she won’t demand so much of my attention. No memorial for her. Danny doesn’t expect me to dredge up more words, more lies and weave them into some poetic elegy that only offers a temporary balm for the living. The dead don’t give a damn.

  * * *

  “Dinner’s on the table, sweetheart,” Mom shouts from the living room as the screen door bangs shut behind me.

  Pork chops, beans, and mashed potatoes. Gag. I shove it in the microwave anyway.

  “How was your day, son?” Dad peers at me from behind thick spectacles.

  I answer with a shrug.

  “You all set for the memorial?” He grabs an alcohol-free beer from the fridge, pauses, offers me one and I almost accept, but shake my head. What’s the point when it’s nonalcoholic? It tastes like piss.

  “Don’t think I’m going.”

  “Daniel was a good friend. Might be good to get some closure.”

  Danny was more than a friend. I wonder how Dad would react if I told him it was Danny—not some East Coast tourist in a miniskirt—that I was sneaking into my room at night. Maybe I’ll announce it at the memorial, walk up to the podium and look all the closed-minded townies right in the face and say, Daniel sure was a good buddy and one hell of a fuck.

  “I’m thinking about it. Still got a few days,” I say instead, and Dad smiles. He’s about to clap me on the shoulder when his hand stops midway above my left arm and his smile wobbles.

  He makes a fist and waits for me to bump it. Maybe he’s afraid to hurt me even though the scars are all healed up now, or maybe he’s just too grossed out to touch me.

  I leave his fist hanging and retrieve my meal from the microwave.

  “Thanks, Mom.” I bound up the stairs to my room, and slam the door shut.

  I eat at my desk, watching my pet vinegaroons, Rictor and Shatterstar, devour a cricket. They look ferocious, like giant cockroaches in battle armor, but they’re gentle really. Poor misunderstood bugs, judged on looks.

  Disembodied voices from the TV float up to my room. My folks have turned it up thinking it’ll drown out their fighting. Sometimes I eavesdrop, hear the exasperation in my dad’s voice as he consoles my mom that his son will still find a wife one day, that there’s a chance he could still have kids. It’s my mom’s crying that prompts me to turn up the radio. Neil Young and static…thanks to Obscura hovering in the sky.

  I grab my headphones and MP3 player instead, not that I can hear much on the left any more. Metallica. Not my favorite, but the angry noise drowns out my parents’ voices. It was Danny’s favorite album…still is in that other life. It’s hard to keep things straight, to know which one of them is dead when it changes on a daily basis.

  I toss the pork chops out my window. The coyotes and crows can have them. Scrabbling under my bed, I retrieve an A3 drawing book and bag of colored pens. The first few pages are half-finished comics, a story yet unfinished waiting for my imagination. Then there’s a multicolored map scrawled across several pages, denoting my life: pages filled with boxes, each dated and timed, connected by lines as I try to make sense of what’s happening to me.

  With a ruler and green pen, I draw a new box, jotting down the details since waking up at Shira’s.

  I glance at my watch just to be sure. Tuesday, 21:47, June 26.

  The map is a spaghetti mess of interweaving lines and text boxes. I’m not sure when my life got so complicated. Maybe when I was bandaged in the hospital, delirious in an opiate-induced haze,
or maybe in those first few days after Danny’s spinal fusion, days I spent pacing the halls waiting to find out if he’d ever walk again.

  My starting point is marked in red. April 6. The night of the fire.

  I stash the book under my bed and strip naked. The stink of sex clings to my skin. Girls smell different, ripe and cloying. It’s a smell that gets everywhere. Even my hair reeks of girl-musk.

  The tiles are cool against my back as I stand beneath a jet of cold water. Although my burns have healed, the scars are still sensitive. If the water is warmer than tepid it feels like I’m on fire all over again.

  Running a hand over my mangled flesh, it’s as if I’m feeling the strange surface of some weird planet. Caressing Obscura perhaps. Her cratered and shale-smeared crust probably looks a lot like my skin. At first it was terrifying, the bubbles and swaths of too smooth flesh, the pink knots and swollen ridges slithering down my belly. Now it’s fascinating, all the warped shapes and odd textures. Surreal really, like it’s not my body that got deep-fried.

  Not sure what the big deal is about me not being able to have kids. My left ball only looks a little more wrinkled than before, less hairy and more like a prune. The plumbing works just fine. Sex doesn’t feel the same, but then with a girl, how could it?