Storm by Virginia Bergin

sleeves—her arms were covered in tattoos—and worked at my face so lightly I could hardly even feel it. And as she worked, we chatted—and drank!—and she told me all about how she’d gotten expelled from school (she hit a teacher who had said that she shouldn’t have hit a boy for calling her a slut) and had to lie to her mom about the whole thing because her mom didn’t know about the pregnancy, but Grace was going to tell her when…
    That’s the problem with any conversation these days, isn’t it? Sooner or later it blunders into the unbearable. She didn’t have to say it for me to know it: her mom had died when the rain fell.
    â€œShe wouldn’t have been cross with you for long,” I told Grace. It seemed like the right thing to say.
    â€œShe wouldn’t have been cross at all. She’d have gone ballistic.”
    I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. Grace grinned. “Seriously, she would have gonecrazy,” she said.
    â€œI guess my mom would too,” I said. Actually, I could only picture my mom crying. “She’d have gotten over it,” I said. “She’d just be glad you’re OK.”
    â€œYeah…”
    â€œHey!” I said softly. “You’re gonna be OK now, aren’t you?”
    â€œI guess…”
    â€œI mean, it seems pretty cool here,” I said, changing the subject for her, for both of us. Or at least, I thought I was.
    â€œIt is pretty cool,” she said pretty coolly.
    What I noticed even then was how she didn’t exactly seem as wowed by it all as I was. “It’s a great house,” I said. That definitely had to be a change of subject, didn’t it?
    â€œYeah—it’s Xar’s.”
    â€œHe owns this?!”
    â€œIt belonged to his parents, so…I guess it’s his now.”
    â€œWow…”
    I thought about our little house in Dartbridge. Guess I owned that now.
    â€œBut anyone can own anything now, can’t they?” she said.
    â€œS’pose…”
    â€œI could claim Buckingham Palace…”
    â€œWe should do that!” I said. I was drunk. I’ll admit that. But still, I could just see it: me and Grace and the baby out on a balcony waving to…no one in particular, a few random dead people where a crowd should be, angry packs of dogs yapping at us.
    â€œHe’s on a power trip, if you ask me,” she said, suddenly ultra-serious.
    â€œWho? What—Xar?”
    She nodded.
    I snapped out of my drunken daydream. “How d’you mean?”
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    â€œGrace?”
    â€œHe sort of controls everyone a bit. A lot. I mean, people go along with what he wants because…” She stopped what she was doing and rubbed her belly. “There’s nowhere else to go, is there?”
    This felt like another treacherous swamp.
    â€œIs he horrible to you?” I asked.
    She hesitated. “It’s…more complicated than that. He…he thinks the rain is a good thing.”
    That’s what she said, and she stared at me. As if she was expecting an answer. Maybe some kind of answer other than—
    â€œ What? ! ” I almost laughed.
    I almost did. HOW COULD ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND THINK THAT?!
    She didn’t even smile. “You know, because of the environment and stuff,” she said. “He’s very environmental.”
    â€œGrace?!”
    â€œHe really loves the Earth,” she said.
    Massive stuff crowded up in my head—about polar bears and tigers and rain forests…but still. “That’s not environmental. That’s just… mental ,” I said.
    It was not meant to be a joke. It was… Ah, the people I had seen die. The hurt. Ah. The hurt. We are all hurting. There can be no one alive who does not hurt.
    â€œI don’t think it’s that he hates people exactly. He just thinks the planet would be better off without