The Last Hunter - Descent - Jeremy Robinson [6]
I turn to my mother. Her white blouse is covered in red streaks. There is no humor in her eyes as she looks at Justin and says, “Your mother is on her way,” and then leaves.
“What happened to you?” I hear my father ask. He pokes his head in a moment later, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Oh...geez.”
“Sorry,” I say, eyes on the floor.
When he doesn’t reply, I look up.
He’s trying to mask a smile, but failing miserably. “You’re lucky it’s your birthday, Sol.”
“How angry do you think she is?”
“Chernobyl, at least.”
Chernobyl is bad, but nowhere near as bad as super nova. If dad is right, she’ll be over it by morning. I smile back at my father. “It flew.”
My father snickers, looking at the red stained wall. He rubs a hand through his curly black hair. “I can see that.”
The doorbell rings. “That’d be your mom,” Dad says to Justin before leading him from the room. He stops at the top of the stairs and turns back to me. “Clean yourself up and brush your teeth.”
“What about the room?” I ask.
“No amount of scrubbing is going to get that dye out of things. We’ll worry about it in the morning.” He takes one step down and pauses. “Sorry about the poster, Schwartz.”
I hear Justin say a quick, “I see your Schwartz is as big as mine,” from the foyer before opening the front door for his mother.
I look up at the poster. The circle around my birthplace is smudged, the ink running. “Yeah...”
As my mother changes and my father explains the red dye on Justin’s clothes to his mother, I enter the bathroom. Head lowered, I wash my hands and face. With water dripping from both, I reach out and take hold of a hand towel and dry myself. With the towel still over my face, I sigh. I think about my gifts. My birthday. My age. My life in general.
I sigh again. At least tomorrow is Saturday.
I pull the towel from my face and look in the mirror. My skin is white, like snow. My eyes are bright blue. My hair is so blond it only contains a hint of yellow. But I’ve seen all this before and it doesn’t hold my attention. That’s when I see it. Something taped to the shower door behind me. An envelope. On it, the words, “Happy Birthday”, have been written backwards so I can read them in the mirror.
The envelope is in my hand a moment later. I tear into it. My eyes catch sight of what’s inside. I stumble back, sitting on the toilet. As I take out the contents of the envelope, my eyes blur over. I can’t read the words, but I know what I hold. Plane tickets. An itinerary. A map that looks just like the ruined poster on my wall.
“Happy birthday,” the voice of my mother says. I blink my eyes. She’s crouching in front of me, dressed in jeans and a gray Phil Collins T-shirt. She’s smiling.
I wrap my arms around her in a burst of emotion and say, “Thank you.”
My father is standing in the bathroom door. I launch at him, hugging him around the neck, feet dangling above the floor.
When he puts me down, I sniff and wipe my eyes, feeling no embarrassment over the tears. “When are we going?”
“Summer in Antarctica begins in about seven weeks.”
The tears well again, as a single thought repeats in my head.
I’m going home.
2
I can’t sleep. Like the owl that hunts at night, I’ve gone nocturnal. My imagination is in overdrive—Justin would say, “It’s gone plaid.” But it’s actually an improvement. I normally lose sleep to thoughts of awful things. Those frightening images don’t have a chance to manifest tonight. My mind is on Antarctica. What will I see? Penguins? Weddell seals? The South Pole? Where will we go? Can I explore? Who will I meet?
It suddenly occurs to me that Merrill Clark himself might be there. My father has kept in loose contact with him since I was born. They worked together at Clark Station for three summers in a row. I’ve heard my mother tease Dad about Dr. Clark being my real father. She says the same thing about the mailman sometimes, too. So I know she’s teasing. But it implies they’re close. Or were. Of course, it also implies they’re