Lifespan of Starlight Read Online Free

taste of the muffin makes my brain melt. It’s like the flavour of all the meals
I’ve ever eaten, all at once, in one bite of muffin. But halfway through it, a wave
of nausea washes over me and I realise that if I keep eating I might see it all again.
I sip the water in between bites but it’s not long before I have to stop. I shuffle
back in the chair.
    How insane. Half a glass of water and half a muffin sit in front of me. I’m so used
to having half and only half of everything that I seem to have a barrier against
eating more. I suddenly wish that Mum were here now, sharing with me. Except this
time, I’d be giving half my rations to her.
    The other people sitting at tables are mostly adults, washing down sandwiches with
the latest coffee concentrate. A couple of guys in Murdoch High School uniforms are
getting stuck into the biggest triangles of orange cake I’ve ever seen, and I find
myself calculating how many illegals they could accept into the city if they cut
back citizen rations by maybe 300 points each day.
    There are more like me, of course, mostly living outside the city limits: other single
mums like mine who couldn’t bear to lose their babies, people who campaigned against
the ration system, or are too ill to work. They’re not exiled, exactly; it’s more
that without access to water and food rations, they’re forced to go looking. Anywhere
but here.
    It feels wrong to leave anything to waste, so I force myself to finish the glass
of water. Then I wrap up the remains of the muffin and take it home with me.
    It’s not long until Mum’s due back so I get busy ordering food for tonight – veg
sausages, mushrooms, real butter. I still have a whole 80 points of my daily maximum
left once I’ve hit the final order so I blow them on a fresh orange, all the way
from northern New South Wales. It costs 50 credits on top of the ration points because
of transport costs, and I have this pang at the extravagance.
    Just this once, I promise myself. We have reason to celebrate.
----
    As soon as I hear the ping from the delivery drone, I dash out to the front chute
in bare feet.
    Mrs Richardson must have been waiting for her delivery too. She steps out of her
door at the same time as me, immediately looking away when she sees me.
    ‘Hey! How are you, Mrs Richardson?’ It’s a bit immature, but I can’t help it. Mum
hates it when I do this.
    ‘Yes, hello,’ she mumbles without making eye contact. I hang back while she selects
her package and shuffles towards the kitchen. She’s always worried, I think, that
I’ll ask to share her rations, but Mum and I have always coped on our own. And anyway,
we already owe the Richardsons enough for keeping quiet all these years.
    When Mum moved here I was a few months old, just a single woman and her baby. The
Richardsons were really kind at first. I think they must have felt sorry for her.
In their minds, the only way that Mum could be a single mum would be if Dad had died.
    It took a few years before they realised that wasn’t true. I still remember the first
time Mrs Richardson turned away after I’d called out to her in the hallway. As if
I didn’t exist. It was around the time that I was due to start school. They must
have worked out that if I wasn’t going to school, I wasn’t chipped.
    The truth is that my father’s an Egyptian national who was working here as a tactical
specialist when he met Mum. But once he’d trained the local staff, they cancelled
his visa, citing limited resources. It didn’t matter that Mum was pregnant by then,
or that he faced persecution from his own government because of the work he did here.
    Now we can’t find any record of him at all, but Mum still clings to the hope that
he escaped detection when he returned and is living underground. We can’t search
for him too often because of what it would mean for us all if we were found out.
    Our evening delivery is way fatter than usual tonight. Heavy. I pull it out of the
chute