The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) Read Online Free Page B

finished. Her mother knocks and brings her supper, which she eats in her room. Her mother doesn’t say anything and backs out of the doorway with one finger against her lips. When Mia finishes eating she climbs into bed. She stares at the wall and thinks about the money under her jewellery box. She gets up to look at it but turns to the window instead. And there is the boy.
    His eyes are big again. She moves closer to the window. She slides it open and looks at him.
    Come on , he says. I’ll prove it to you .
    You’re really crazy , she says. But she slips on her shoes and climbs out the window to stand beside him. The night is quiet except for the insects which are so constant that Mia doesn’t really hear them any more.
    The boy walks into the shadow side of the house, to her mother’s window. He hisses at Mia.
    Mia knows that this will be like walking through the spider web that she and her mother have made, so she hesitates. But then she reflects that when she walks through a spider’s web at night it has been rebuilt by morning. So she follows the boy into the shadow.
    The boy has placed a brick under the window and he gestures with his fat arm for Mia to stand on it. Even though she has the same sugar-sick feeling she has when she looks at her money, she does as he says. The boy puts a finger to his lips, and Mia is again reminded of her mother. She peers through the window. The curtains are closed but there is a tiny space where they do not meet.
    The tall man is there. He sits on a chair and her mother on the bed. To Mia’s relief they are both fully clothed and talking over something like friends, like she has seen girls at school huddled over notes, charms, secrets. A packet of paper or white plastic lies open on her mother’s lap. The tall man is the opposite of the truck drivers. Calm and pale in his suit. All quiet and no cigars. Of all the men in the world he alone seems to give her mother the attention she deserves.
    It’s nothing , Mia whispers. It’s just Mama and the tall man talking .
    But the boy pushes the back of her head until her eye is turned once more to the window and she sees. The tall man bent over her mother like a stick insect. The needle he holds to her mother’s arm. The package sitting open on the bed, full of smaller packets, the same as the ones she gives the truck drivers. The blood sucking into the needle and the tall man’s face hardening. Her mother drops one end of a belt. Mia steps down.
    They take the blood , Álvaro whispers. He pulls Mia away from the window by her arm. She stumbles after him towards the edge of the jungle. The edge of the jungle is just an idea. It must be driven back year after year with a machete. Her mother usually does this, but the truck drivers sometimes help. Mia can see where the stems were severed last year. It is almost time to begin again.
    Vampires , she says.
    The boy may have won but instead of looking triumphant he nods sadly. My brother , he says. They took my brother last year. He became one of them. Skinny like that and pale and cold. He and my father had an argument and he ran away to Cancún. They found him in a gutter behind a nightclub. They cut his throat.
    It’s your imagination , she wants to say. But instead she says nothing. She puts a hand on his shoulder and is glad for once of the boy’s unhealthy warmth.
    He looks into her eyes. Where is your papa? he says.
    She shakes her head. A mosquito hovers in her ear. The awful humming sounds nothing like a song any more. It is more like when someone has thumped you hard on the side of the head.
    You can go now , says Mia. I’ll see you at school.
    He fumbles in his pocket and she thinks it is like the truck drivers with their pants coming out of the bushes snorting but he pulls out something shiny.
    Here, have this. You will need it. He hands her a small tin crucifix on a chain. Then he walks off down the edge of the highway. She watches his round shape diminish in the