Read Online Silence by Michelle Sagara - Free Book Online

the last minute.
    Emma finished dressing and went downstairs. She expected the kitchen to be quiet, and it was; Petal was hyper but not yappy. Her mother was not yet in the kitchen. Emma glanced at the clock and winced. She put the coffee on, because if her mother was stil not here, she was going to need it, and she took milk, blueberries and cereal to the table, which she also set.
    She stopped on the way to get napkins and holered up the steps, waited for five seconds to hear something like a reply, failed to hear the wrong words—of which there were several— and continued on her way. When her mother came thundering down the stairs in a rush, she handed her mother the coffee and ushered her to a chair. This would have been awkward had Mercy actualy been awake.
    Then again, given the last few days? Being awake was highly overrated. They ate in relative silence, because Petal had emptied the dry food dish and was trying to mooch. He didn’t actualy like any of the food his two keepers were eating this morning, but that never stopped him.
    Emma, who had marshaled her arguments, waited, with fading patience, for her mother to tel her that she was not going to school today. When it was dangerously close to 8:00, she gave up on that, and instead said, “Don’t forget, I’m going to Amy’s party tonight.”
    “Amy’s? Oh, that’s right. You mentioned it yesterday. You’re going straight from school?”
    “What, dressed like this?”
    Mercy seemed to focus for a minute. “You look fine to me,”
    she said, but it was noise; Emma would have bet money that she hadn’t actualy noticed what her daughter was wearing. “Are you going to be home for dinner?”
    “Why, are you working late?”
    Mercy nodded slowly.
    “I’l grab a sandwich or something if you’re not here.” Emma pushed her chair back from the table and gathered up her empty dishes. “I won’t be too late,” she added.
    “When is not too late?”
    Emma shrugged. “Midnightish. Maybe 1:00.” She waited for any questions, any comments. “Mom?”
    Her mother looked up.
    “Are you feeling al right?”
    “I’m fine,” her mother replied. Emma thought dying people “I’m fine,” her mother replied. Emma thought dying people probably sounded more convincing. They certainly did on television.
    “You’re sure?”
    Mercy looked at her daughter and shook her head. “Of course I’m sure. I’m always fine the morning after I’ve seen my dead husband in a hospital.”
    The silence that folowed was profoundly awkward. It was worse than first-kiss awkward. “Mom—”
    Her mother lifted a hand. It should have been a familiar gesture; Emma used it al the time. But coming from her mom, it looked wrong. “You can mother Michael,” Mercy Hal said firmly, and with a trace of annoyance, “and any of the rest of your friends. I already have a mother, three bosses, and any number of other helpful advice-givers in the office. I don’t need mothering.”
    Emma, stung, managed to stop herself from saying something she’d probably only feel guilty about later. Guilt, in the Hal household, was like the second child of the family. The secret one that you tried to lock in the attic when respectable people were visiting.
    Instead, she turned and walked into the hal, where she gave herself the once over in the mirror, frowned at both her eyes and her lips, which were slowly returning to normal, and then picked up her backpack to wait.
    Michael rescued her at 8:10.
    The walk to school would have been the same type of awkward The walk to school would have been the same type of awkward that breakfast had been, but it was made easier by Michael, because Michael didn’t worry that someone would think he was crazy. Michael, by dint of understanding his own condition, also understood that he saw the world in entirely different ways than the rest of the students in his grade did; he was used to this.
    Because he was, he didn’t realy question what he saw, and he