Horizon (03) by Sophie Littlefield Page A

out on North Island, the long lazy afternoons when, if they got hungry, they just ate handfuls of kaysev. They were careful…mostly.
    Valerie held up her hands, palms out, as though defending against Sammi’s anger, against Sage’s anguish. Sammi noticed that she had on a blouse with a scalloped collar, like something a nun would wear, something that should have been thrown out twenty years ago. How did she do it, how did Valerie keep finding things to make her look so virginal, so pure, long after everyone else had resigned themselves to dregs and spoils, the Aftertime battle fatigues? She’d smoothed her shiny hair under yet another headband, this one covered with plaid fabric, and somehow that made Sammi all the angrier.
    “Why do you always defend her?”
    “Who?”
    “Cass. Why do you defend Cass? She’s not your friend.”
    “Of course she’s my friend,” Valerie said, but the line appeared between her eyebrows again, and Sammi knew that Valerie suspected, deep down, maybe buried so far that she didn’t even know that she knew something was wrong. “I think the world of Cass, she’s overcome so much, and she’s such a great mother to Ruthie and—”
    “She’s not your friend. She fucks my dad! ”
    Sammi hadn’t meant to yell, but the words rang out sharp and clear on the chilly morning. Sammi watched the puff of her breath on the frosty air; it dissipated and was replaced by another and another. Breathe in, breathe out. Everyone kept breathing, kept living, and what was the point? Everyone betrayed everyone else—was that the cost of survival?
    Something interesting was happening to Valerie’s face—it was crumpling in on itself, like a pretty tissue-paper flower splashed with water, wilting and fading before her eyes.
    “Sammi…”
    “She is. They’ve probably been doing it ever since they got here. Hell, probably before that. I saw them. Down on the dock, they were like—like—he had his hands inside her clothes, Valerie. I don’t know how he can even look you in the face every day, but that’s my dad.”
    Valerie had a hand to her throat, her narrow fingers twitching against her perfect pale skin, like she was going to faint or something.
    And still Sammi couldn’t shut up.
    “He left my mom, did you know that? Even before everything got fucked up. He went off to find himself or whatever and just showed up when he felt like it. I hardly ever saw him—” the lie rolled easily from her lips, to Sammi’s surprise; lying shouldn’t be so easy “—and he never even tried to find us after. He had his business, I’m sure he told you about it, right, and that’s all he cared about.”
    “No,” Valerie said in a choked voice. “He loves you. He always did. He told me he sent people to check on you, your safety meant everything to him—”
    “You know what he sold in the Box, right?” Sammi felt the thrill of forbidden knowledge; she only knew this because she’d heard it from Colton, who overheard it from a couple of the raiders who used to go up to the Box for medicine trades. They’d stay there for a few days and party, and then return to the shelter they were in before coming to New Eden. “Drugs. Booze. Sex. Like, as in prostitutes?”
    She spat out the last word, making it as ugly as she could, curling her lips around the syllables—and still there was a little thrill to the revelation. She realized that until now she had been trying not to believe it, trying to explain it away. She’d told Colton to shut the fuck up, that her dad traded food and medicine, that he protected people, helped the ones who needed it. But of course that was a lie. Just another one of her father’s lies.
    “Kind of funny,” she said, making her voice as bored as she could. “My dad’s a pimp, and Cass, well, since she’ll fuck anyone, I guess that makes her his whore.”
    Valerie’s arm shot out so fast that Sammi didn’t have time to duck. The slap was more shocking than painful, hard