Read Online The Sky So Heavy by Claire Zorn - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Claire Zorn
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throat. ‘Like I said, I’ll be back.’
I didn’t wait until he had finished putting his boots back on before I closed the door.
‘You’re a tool,’ I said to Max. He responded with an awesome display of his superior intellect and gave me the finger.
I didn’t know why exactly, but I felt sick in the stomach.
Ten
Our world was made of the dull light filtered through the gauze of the sky. It became a small, self-contained thing, a snow dome of our very own. The rest of the world may as well not have existed. CSI didn’t come back with Dad. And I wasn’t surprised. The army with their truck of dehydrated goodies didn’t come back either. We didn’t get a visit from Lokey or Mrs White or Mick. No one walked through the bleak picture framed by our living room window. I went back to Lucy’s house, knocked on the door. Still nobody was there.
I had stopped testing the light switches ages ago.
I waited until we had finished all our other food before we started on the army rations. My jeans had started getting loose around my hips. We went days without words other than ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Eight weeks without power. Eight weeks since I last saw my dad. Ten since I last saw my mother.
When we ran out of newspaper to light the fire we started on Kara’s magazines. When they were done we started burning books. It sounds like a horrible Nazi-style travesty, but all we were burning were Kara’s self-help manuals and Dad’s Jon Cleary collection. Problem was there weren’t that many in the house and we soon ran out of those too.
In my social studies class we had done a unit on asylum seekers. A guy from a refugee advocacy group told us about the refugee camps in the Sudan; he said it was common for members of a family to take turns eating on alternate days.
I decided I would eat every second day.
Max didn’t like it. He said he should do the same but I told him that was bullshit and that I was in charge.
Eleven
The axe was where I had last left it: around the side of the house, under the tarp, like the body of an accident victim. I picked it up, heavy in my hand, and walked down to where our back garden edged onto bushland. I selected my victim: a young grey gum, tall but relatively skinny. I swung the axe and the blade thudded into the trunk. I swung again and the blade landed several inches above the first cut. I tried again, making a third and equally inaccurate cut. Clearly there was a technique required that I had failed to factor in. There had to be an easier way. I looked back toward the house and my gaze fell on our patio, where the seven-piece timber outdoor setting Mum had chosen from Barbeques Galore stood unwittingly. I walked back across the lawn and up the patio steps. I pulled one chair away from the huddle, its legs scraped the concrete in protest. My hands were white with the cold and I was distracted for a moment by the way they looked like a skeleton’s. I thought of my seventh birthday when my uncle Mark dressed up in a skeleton costume and I was so scared I peed myself in front of half my class, who were at the party.
I put one foot up on the seat of the chair and lifted the axe. Between the moment that I put my weight behind it to swing and the moment it cracked into the lacquered timber, I imagined it glancing off and carving through my ankle. I would bleed to death on the porch. At least it would be quicker than starving.
Would Max eat me? He should. I thought of how I should have told him – before I went out there – that if I accidentally cut my foot off and died, he should eat me to survive. Just like those rugby players in that plane crash movie we had to watch for PE. Take one for the team.
The axe split the seat of the chair and thudded into the concrete. It took longer to break up the chair than I thought it would. I took the dismembered parts into the house. I would chop up the rest as we needed them.
Twelve
We ran out of washing-up liquid so we started using
I didn’t wait until he had finished putting his boots back on before I closed the door.
‘You’re a tool,’ I said to Max. He responded with an awesome display of his superior intellect and gave me the finger.
I didn’t know why exactly, but I felt sick in the stomach.
Ten
Our world was made of the dull light filtered through the gauze of the sky. It became a small, self-contained thing, a snow dome of our very own. The rest of the world may as well not have existed. CSI didn’t come back with Dad. And I wasn’t surprised. The army with their truck of dehydrated goodies didn’t come back either. We didn’t get a visit from Lokey or Mrs White or Mick. No one walked through the bleak picture framed by our living room window. I went back to Lucy’s house, knocked on the door. Still nobody was there.
I had stopped testing the light switches ages ago.
I waited until we had finished all our other food before we started on the army rations. My jeans had started getting loose around my hips. We went days without words other than ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Eight weeks without power. Eight weeks since I last saw my dad. Ten since I last saw my mother.
When we ran out of newspaper to light the fire we started on Kara’s magazines. When they were done we started burning books. It sounds like a horrible Nazi-style travesty, but all we were burning were Kara’s self-help manuals and Dad’s Jon Cleary collection. Problem was there weren’t that many in the house and we soon ran out of those too.
In my social studies class we had done a unit on asylum seekers. A guy from a refugee advocacy group told us about the refugee camps in the Sudan; he said it was common for members of a family to take turns eating on alternate days.
I decided I would eat every second day.
Max didn’t like it. He said he should do the same but I told him that was bullshit and that I was in charge.
Eleven
The axe was where I had last left it: around the side of the house, under the tarp, like the body of an accident victim. I picked it up, heavy in my hand, and walked down to where our back garden edged onto bushland. I selected my victim: a young grey gum, tall but relatively skinny. I swung the axe and the blade thudded into the trunk. I swung again and the blade landed several inches above the first cut. I tried again, making a third and equally inaccurate cut. Clearly there was a technique required that I had failed to factor in. There had to be an easier way. I looked back toward the house and my gaze fell on our patio, where the seven-piece timber outdoor setting Mum had chosen from Barbeques Galore stood unwittingly. I walked back across the lawn and up the patio steps. I pulled one chair away from the huddle, its legs scraped the concrete in protest. My hands were white with the cold and I was distracted for a moment by the way they looked like a skeleton’s. I thought of my seventh birthday when my uncle Mark dressed up in a skeleton costume and I was so scared I peed myself in front of half my class, who were at the party.
I put one foot up on the seat of the chair and lifted the axe. Between the moment that I put my weight behind it to swing and the moment it cracked into the lacquered timber, I imagined it glancing off and carving through my ankle. I would bleed to death on the porch. At least it would be quicker than starving.
Would Max eat me? He should. I thought of how I should have told him – before I went out there – that if I accidentally cut my foot off and died, he should eat me to survive. Just like those rugby players in that plane crash movie we had to watch for PE. Take one for the team.
The axe split the seat of the chair and thudded into the concrete. It took longer to break up the chair than I thought it would. I took the dismembered parts into the house. I would chop up the rest as we needed them.
Twelve
We ran out of washing-up liquid so we started using
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