VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9.
10: Sunny
I cry when I get home, just little, silent tears that slide down my temples into my hair. Maybe, if I cry long enough, they’ll wet my pillow underneath and I’ll have actually left a mark. Maybe then these tears might do something, be worth something, might fix some of the anguish deep inside me.
I can still smell rosewater in the air of my room, light and floral, from where I sprayed it on Kevin’s roses last night.
The sun streams in through my open blinds and slants over my feet–it’s hot, too hot, but it also feels appropriate somehow, like if I can’t cry in great, gasping sobs like Mina does–even my crying is voiceless, God, I’m so pathetic–then at least I can express my discomfort some other way, even if that’s just by forcing myself to have burning hot feet in the sun.
…Did I mention how pathetic I am?
The problem with being pathetic, though, is that knowing you are doesn’t magically give you the ability to fix it.
I guess most things in life are like that, even though they say acknowledgement is the first step.
I wish it felt like a more useful step.
But I’m crying, and the room smells like roses, and my feet are hot and my body is cold from the frigid air conditioning, and I’m dwelling on how pathetic I am because it’s easier than naming the real problem, which is kind of shaped like Kevin, which is to say the exact same shape a hesitantly blooming rose in the middle of thorny branches, but is mostly about being voiceless, and how I can never quite seem to say what needs to be said in the moment it needs to be said.
So maybe being pathetic really is the problem after all.
I roll over with a sigh, facing the dove-grey wall, and peel back the covers of my bed to reveal the fine, pencil-light lines of text I’ve written there. I’m not sure if Dad knows I’ve done this–Heaven knows Mum doesn’t, she hasn’t been in my room for years–but if he’s ever noticed, he hasn’t said, so even though I feel like I’m committing some great sin by writing on the walls of my own room, I keep doing it.
Not often.
There aren’t many things written there.
In fact, there are three:
She would rather walk alone in darkness than follow anyone else’s shadow – r.g. moon
I raise up my voice—not so I can shout but so that those without a voice can be heard – Malala Yousafzai
I want to be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren. – Eowyn
I sigh. Deeply. Down to the very tips of my toes, to the roots of my soul, filling myself with rose-scented air that’s cool and clean, and I trace the tips of my fingers over the words I’ve sketched on my wall as though I can absorb them by osmosis, as though if only I read them often enough, touch them deeply enough on the eggshell-smooth surface of the bounds delineating this space as mine, one day–one day–my soul might learn them.
Kevin thinks I’m mad at him.
I’m mad at Rick, and Jimmy, and the world for being big and hard and harsh and unfeeling. For being callous. For being a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and insisting that it signifies nothing.
Because that same, secret, quiet part of my soul that insists that violence is an affront to the way things should be… It insists that life has meaning, too. And I hate life for refusing to comply.
My fingers are knotted in the sheets, so hard they’re cramping.
I take another deep breath and force myself to let go.
On my back, I stare up at the ceiling.
Kevin thinks I’m mad at him. And unless I can find my voice somehow, he’ll keep on thinking that, unless I can figure out some way to articulate the shadowy thoughts spinning in my head, making me dizzy until I have no sense of time, or place, or being.
How do you explain that to another person?
How do you explain that to another person without them thinking that you’re mad?
How do you explain that to another person when you barely understand it all yourself?
Coldness on my cheek. I’m crying again, more quiet, useless tears that do nothing expect leach my voice from me.
If I want to hold on to Kevin, I have to find my voice.
If I want to find my voice, I only have to do the impossible, the thing I’ve been trying to do since I was born–Oh, Sunny, you were such a quiet baby, such a delight, so easy, so quiet.
My chest, my throat, I’m aching with everything I have to say.
I reach for a tissue in the box on my bedside table.
A jar of paper roses spins wildly, clonk-clonk, gyrating, tipping… Falling.
Ch-thonk.
On the carpet, a dozen and a half paper roses spill out across the floor.
Now I just have to decide how badly I want them back.
Keep reading: Chapter 11