The Famoux

Chapter 2

emilee

A week has passed since the Clarus incident. The world still finds much to say about Bree Arch, especially since another Darkening is due to come up any day now. It'll be the first one without the set number of Famoux members there to entertain.

We're to be swept up into darkness at the usual time, evening. The sun will set, and it will not come back up to greet us the next day. Thus, the streets of our little town in Southeastern Eldae are never more alive on the day before a Darkening. There's an anxious sort of bustle about the square, an apprehensive droll in everyone's manner of speaking. We try to take the concept lightly, but a Darkening is too, well, dark. Gone will the sun be, despite its promise to rise in the morn and descend at twilight.

On the first Darkening after the disappearance, I noticed that the sun was a lot like my mother. Bright, beautiful, radiating warmth; a source of life and a source of comfort. And still, the world somehow draws it away time to time, causes it to retreat within its beams and swallow its own light whole.

I made it home safely after Carstan threw me into the creek. They ran away the moment I hit the water, and I was more than glad when my head came up from the surface and I saw this. The weather was rather frigid, but I jogged the whole mile distance without stopping, and when I returned home, tuned out all questions from my father.

"Emilee, why are you all wet?" he had asked when I burst through the door. The worry and volume of his question attracted the attention of my older brother Dalton, who promptly brought up the fact I was missing a shoe.

"It's nothing," I said, breaking my gaze at the floor to look up at Dalton and give him a glare. He, unlike my father, knows about what Carstan's group does to me. He'd given up trying to get them to stop years and years ago.

Dalton's nearly white eyebrows flicked upwards teasingly in a silent reply. I expected him to say something more, just to get a rile out of father, but he kept his mouth shut and his brows raised. I rolled my eyes and started up the stairs, my father's preceding inquiries ignored. It's really hard to take my dad seriously anymore, especially with the condition our mother left him in. He's only concerned about us when he isn't deeply enthralled by the shadows mom casts in the emptiness of his head--shadows we can't see, and he can't describe.

I like to imagine he sees all her brightness in there, stowed away inside his mind. To fit so much light in one place ought to have been the reason for his condition––for his slipping memory and his lack of focus. So much light in one place ought to drive a man crazy, I suppose.

The next Darkening is predicted for tonight. It might just be the lurking shock from Bree's death during the last one, but they've given us the day off from school. They say it's for "preparation." This is probably in case someone tries to shoot at schools instead of the Fishbowl, which is scheduled to be in Trulivent anyway this time.

Dalton is out with friends, like he always is. Brandyce is working at Red's grocery store, the Stash––her most current odd-job. She works six laborious hours a day, five days a week, giving her a discount we don't exactly need on groceries. All the same, she's planning on using that discount today to pay for necessities, just in case the Darkening lasts longer than expected.

Or, just in case she's in a hurry. To run.

I'm spending my day off the only way I know how: Running around Trulivent, praying Carstan doesn't find me. Red is too constricting to stay in––its center is dominated by the Stash, and I don't want to run into Brandyce on her break. She's always got something to say about how much of a burden I am. I can't stay home, because father's there, and I'm never in the mood for babysitting him.