Painless

Chapter 1.

The sun has just risen, weak and watery-looking, as if she wants this day even less than I do. The white curtains in our room are dirty and torn, and not nearly thick enough to keep it dark inside. Years ago, we didn't have any curtains at all, but because my sister woke up as soon as the sun did, my father bought the cheapest cloths he could find and hang them in front of our windows. We need to replace them, but we have more important things to buy with the little money we have; new coats for the winter, shoes without holes in them, a new wheelchair for my mother.

I prop myself up on one elbow. Avila is still in bed. On normal days, she's already awake when I get up, but I already expected to be the first this morning. I have trouble sleeping when I'm nervous, and today I've got enough reasons to be.

I climb out of the bed as quietly as possible and reach for the tube of cream on my nightstand. The doctor wants me to put the cream on my burning wounds twice a day. The tube is expensive, but it helps: the scars are lighter and smaller, and the terrible itches are now less terrible.

As soon as the cream is dry, I get dressed. Green trousers with a brown shirt. It's warm and stuffy in the room, so I shouldn't wear my supple leather boots, but they're the only pair of shoes I got without holes in them. I put them on, with two pairs of socks, because the boots are a bit too big for me. My father always buys my shoes too big, so I can wear them for two years instead of one, but my feet have stopped growing, just like the rest of my body.

I make as little noise as possible, but Avila wakes up anyway when I walk through the room. "Sorry, try to fall asleep again," I say. I expect her to jump out of bed immediately as she realizes what day it is, but instead, she turns around again so she faces the wall, and says nothing.

Even though it's forbidden by law, and even punishable, everybody in my school has been talking about the Test for weeks. Even Rommie, who I've known since we were six and in all that time she's never showed her true emotions, admitted to me that she's nervous. And even Qing sometimes shows a crack in his shield of indifference.

But Avila is remarkably quiet. I've always been more emotional than her, but lately it seems like nothing gets to her anymore at all.

I walk into the kitchen, and see my mother sitting in her wheelchair. She lit a candle, which is nearly burned out. The flames are so close to her face that I want to drive her chair back, out of fear that her eyebrows will go up in flames.

I don't understand how my mother can sit near a fire this easily, after less than a year ago, her youngest daughter got stuck in a fire and nearly died. I am still alive, but my body will never be the same  - the scars might be a little smaller now, but they will never fully disappear. Neither will the pain and the itches.

The fire makes my mother's face scarier and uglier than it is. The shadows distort her features and the prettiest thing about her, her thick, red hair, doesn't show in the dark. In another world, my mother could've been very beautiful. But here, where she sits in a wheelchair and is in constant pain, nobody notices her delicate face with full lips and eyes the colour of grass.

I yawn gently, making my mother flinch. Usually it is impossible to scare my mother, because she's always on her guard. But now she is so deep in thoughts, she didn't even hear me coming in.

She sighs with relief when she sees me. "Good morning, Elle." Even though my mother named me, she refuses to call me by my full name, Eliana.

"Good morning, mom. Do you want a glass of milk?" She nods and I grab a stool. Without it, I can't reach the upper cabinet. My sister looks more like my mother than me, except one thing: Avila has the long, muscled body my father has, while me and my mother are only 158 cm. My mother once told me she thinks I'm this small because I never wanted to be breastfed. I always threw up after drinking it, so they decided to give me goat milk instead.