SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

“Except she doesn’t really look like she loves him , now. He won’t understand—”

“He should know she does,” Candice said sharply. “She needs him. She won’t get better without him to come back to. So no more of that nonsense. I know you gave into him. Head full of fluff just like your father. Soon as we get home, you’re putting that thing back in the attic where it belongs.”

Back in control. Becca opened her mouth to protest, to explain the new wonder. She just lost her daughter, whatever she says. She needs this . Instead, she said, “Yes, Mum.”

Why do I keep excusing her?

Candice nodded. “We may as well get it over with, then.” She opened the ICU door and beckoned Sam inside. “You can say hello, now, sweetling. She’s coming home with us this afternoon.”

Sam bounded in, pulled up short.

“Mum?” The lost tone in his voice sank like a knife in Becca’s ribs.

“It’s okay, mate,” Becca murmured. “Her brain is bruised, so it’s hard for her to move. But you can still tell her all about the soldier.” Becca shot a hard look at Candice. “She’d like that.”

Candice raised her eyebrow, but said nothing.

The typewriter disappeared into the attic to make way in the living room for Julie, her equipment, and pills. Sam sat beside her on the fold-out bed with his notebook, filling the otherwise silent room with his theories until Candice snapped.

“No more nonsense, that’s enough!” She snatched his notebook up. “Your mother needs rest and care, not silliness and running about.”

“Mum,” Becca said, clearing plates from dinner.

Candice spun on her heel. “And you, as bad as your father, nothing but a waste of time and energy, leaving the work to everyone else.”

Sam started to cry. Becca opened her mouth, but Candice cut her off with words from twenty years ago: “Don’t start with me, young madam.”

“He needs this. He’s seven years old!”

“Old enough to grow up. You both are. Other people are more important than nonsense!”

“Oh, like ‘she’s going to be fine,’ that kind of nonsense?” The words shot out of Becca’s mouth before she could stop them. She stepped forward, hand stretched out as if she could snatch them back.

Candice’s face paled, her mouth an ‘o’ of shock, two pink spots of fury in her cheeks. “How dare you talk back to me.” Her voice dropped to a growl. Becca flinched. Candice snatched up the gravy boat, marching into the kitchen with notebook and gravy.

“Mum,” Becca began, but Candice didn’t pause. “Mum, I didn’t mean it, I—”

Candice threw the notebook in the bin, dumped the gravy on top of it, and slammed the boat in after so hard it shattered. She turned to Becca, hand half-raised for a slap. Clenching the plates to stop them rattling in her hands, Becca fought not to flinch again. Sam hugged his knees, heels slipping off the edge of the seat, and Candice seemed to suddenly remember him. The hand dropped to rub his shoulders.

“It’s time for bed, sweetling,” she said. “In the morning, you’ll see this was for the best, for your mother.”

Sam slunk off to Becca’s old room. Becca glared in the silence.

“You shouldn’t have taken it out on him,” Becca said softly.

Candice stiffened and whipped the tea towel off the rack. “You know not to answer back.”

Sam didn’t appear for breakfast. Becca checked every cupboard she’d hidden in as a toddler, the ivy behind the house that Julie had always made her cubby, under every piece of furniture she could lift or wriggle into, even up the apricot tree in the rain. No Sam.

“Why would he do this?” Candice fumed. “Doesn’t he know how hard things are already?” She all but wrenched the cupboard door off its hinges. “This is what I’m talking about, running away instead of learning to cope!”

“He was coping, in his own way. Not everybody has to cope your way!” Becca shot back.

Candice sucked in a breath in shock. Becca plunged ahead, using anger as courage.

“Why did you have to destroy his notebook?” she shouted. “Why do you always have to win ?”

The slap came out of nowhere. Becca reeled against the wall, her cheek on fire.

“I raised you better than that,” Candice spat.

“ Dad raised me. You just controlled me. There’s a difference.”

Candice raised her hand for another slap, but Becca swatted it down and shoved past her into the cluttered hallway. “Check the street!” she shouted before Candice could follow. She barged into her room and snatched her bag from under the bed. I can do it. I’ll just leave. It’s my life. I’ll fix things with Rick, go to work, drinks with the guys, live my life. I love Julie, but I’m not helping her here. Becca shoved her clothes in the bag with numb hands. She’d find Sam, and then she’d…

What? Leave him here? She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting against the nausea that clawed up her throat.

She couldn’t leave him here.

Years stretched out in front of her like a prison sentence. Starting over again , no job, no friends. Facing Candice alone, without backup. Without Julie.

Dragging at air, she squeezed her fingers around her wrists, ran for the bathroom to be sick—

And tripped over a bucket, landing on a fire poker.

The hell are a bucket and fire poker doing in the hallway? Massaging her jarred ankle, Becca rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling, where the attic ladder pull-cord swung slowly.

A shifting thump came from the ceiling. Becca smiled despite herself. She’d discounted the attic ladder as out of his reach. But standing on a bucket to twirl the ladder cord around a fire poker and pull the ladder down—that sounded like her father’s grandson. Becca eased the stairs down and crept into the attic.

Sam stared at a box, almost ravenous, scribbling on the backs of envelopes. As she approached, the typewriter clicks came, muffled—he’d wrapped her dad’s old shirts around the machine to quiet it. Becca couldn’t stifle the grin. He frantically pressed a key over and over, scribbling as he went.

Becca sat, but he didn’t look up.

“Grandma’s mad at me,” he whispered.

“Grandma’s worried about your Mum.”

“Are you mad at me?”

Becca hugged him close. “What’ve you got there?” She pointed at the envelopes.

Sam bit his lip. “She took my notebook, but…I’d already gotten pretty good at remembering the codes. I was working on remembering the rest.” He cringed slightly, breath held.

Becca looked over his scrawl. The patterns held steady, three symbols to a phoneme. “Do you remember how you figured them out?” She sifted in the attic piles for some pieces of card and a pen. “Let me show you how to make a decoder ring.”

Sam grinned.

“So how’s our soldier doing?”

“Someone’s chasing him. He almost got caught near Yoorannis but that’s when the shuttles showed up.”

“Near where?” Becca peered at the envelopes in the dim light of the attic window. Sam pointed, and she squinted harder. “Yoor…Uranus. It’s a planet.”

“Like in space?” Sam’s eyes widened. “He’s a space soldier?”

“Maybe an astronaut. He must be clever, sending the message out.”

“He did what you said, asked what he didn’t know,” Sam pointed to another section, then frowned. “If he’s in space, then…it’s not my Dad.”

Becca sighed and squeezed Sam close.

Feet slammed on the attic stairs. Candice’s head rose from the floor, her face like ice. She glanced at them, and Becca was nine years old again with her new dress covered in mud. She clutched Sam, leaning between him and her mother.