Chapter 15:

Lithia didn’t waste anytime making her way through the front door and upstairs. She was ready to tear her dress off and wipe off her makeup but she needed to see someone first.  As rough as her day had been, she knew at least one person in this house whose day had been almost certainly worse.

Lithia went to the door she knew from long experience to be locked, there was no music coming from the other side. That was a bad sign, no music meant things were worse than usual.

“Bobby?” Lithia called as she knocked first gently and then more forcefully; “Bobby, you back yet?”

No response came from the other side of the door. It remained as silent as ever but a moment later it did slowly creak open.

Lithia didn’t come into her brother’s room often, partially because her brother’s room, as Aunt petra put it, smelled like something that crawled out of the bay and died; this despite everything several housekeepers had tried. The big reason though, was that her brother valued his privacy. Lithia didn’t want to intrude on that if she didn’t have too. She usually let him come to her when he needed but therapy days were often different.

“Hey Bobby.” Lithia said as she cautiously pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped through.

At first Lithia thought that the door must have opened on it’s own. While there looked to be several living things in the explosion of a room, her brother Bobby didn’t seem to be amongst them. It took a moment for Lithia to pick her brother out amongst the old clothing, sheets, and food wrappers piled high on the bed and the carpet around it.

“Hey! There you are!” Lithia smiled as she walked over to her brother, concealed in the trash, “For a moment I thought racoons had gotten you again.”

She paused for a moment, waiting for a response but when one didn’t come from the sunken, sullen, teenager she continued the one sided conversation, “Did you get them to lower your dose? I know you were going to talk to them about that.” This did get a response from Bobby. He grunted something she couldn’t understand and rolled over to face away from her.

Lithia sad down and the space in the pile of blankets, clothes and trash his movement had created and put a hand on his arm., Bobby sharply pulled his arm away and too late did she realise that was the arm his medical cuff was clasped on. She knew he hated anything that drew attention to it. Most of the time that included touching the arm they had strapped it too. The cuff gleamed in the soft sunset from the window as Bobby pulled his arm away and what Lithia saw she didn’t like.

“The rash around the injection sites isn’t getting any better. Bobby you’re not using that cream they gave you are you?” This last wasn’t really a question, Lithia knew her brother too well, but she had hoped.

“Why should I?” This time Lithia could understand the grunts her brother made in response.

“Because that has to hurt...” Lithia said, not unkindly.

“Doesn’t. Nothing does anymore... Whatever crap they are pumping into my veins makes sure of that. I think it makes me forget what pain is.”  Bobby rolled over as he said this and the look on his pale, clammy, face broke Lithia’s heart.  Bobby didn’t look like he had been raging or crying, or any of the other emotional extremes he usually experienced, Those Lithia was more than used to but the blank, tired, and numb expression on her brother’s face  almost killed her.

“What did they give you?” Lithia asked gently.

“I don’t know. They don’t even tell me anymore... They just put a canister in the cuff and tell me to get it refilled in a month.” Bobby’s eyes looked like they wanted to start dropping tears, his mouth looked as if he wanted to snarl, and even his voice had the tone of a shout that had long since lost it’s way.

“Does it help?” Lithia asked, not really knowing what to say as she watched her brother again give up the attempts at emotions and slip back into blankness.

“I feel dead. I guess that’s a start.” Bobby said coldly.

“Don’t say that, Bobby. Soon we’ll get out of here. Soon you’ll be of age and I’ll help you rip that cuff off and blast it into a star.” Lithia said.

“It won’t help Lith, with the cuff I’m broken, without it I’m still broken, just a different kind of broken.” he said, staring up at the ceiling fan.

“Stop that, you’re not broken!” Lithia didn’t mean to raise her voice. She knew it wasn’t what her brother needed, but she couldn’t give him what he really needed and that was killing her inside.

“I am broken, that’s what this means.” he said weakly lifting his arm to show the cuff. The cuff was really a long term chemical dispenser, but it’s resemblance  to an old fashioned handcuff had long ago prompted both of them to just start calling it the cuff. At first it was an attempt to make a joke of Bobby’s situation, but as time went on and Bobby felt more and more trapped by it and life in general, it stopped being a joke. Lithia knew that now that cuff was the symbol of his captivity in his own body.

Lithia grabbed her brother’s wrist, her hand wrapping around the cold tight and slightly damp metal.  “This is not you, Bobby. And the only thing it’s a sign of is that Petra’s a bitch!”

She took the cuff and examined it for a moment. The device looked simple enough. It didn’t look that much more complicated than the wrist monitors in the The Amaranth’s hyper sleep chambers.  It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. The chemical release valve was tucked away in a small compartment below the cartridge slot they used to pump him with new drugs. She knew she couldn’t turn it off completely. If he stopped getting anything they’d spot it quickly and he’d be right back in this state, or worse, but she could turn it down some.

“About half way ought to do it.” she thought as she used a fingernail to turn the tiny valve, choking the flow of whatever it was to a trickle.  

“Let me go...” he said snatching his arm back from her; “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Nothing Bobby. I’m sorry.” Lithia said looking at her brother.

“Then get out.” he said, a bit of color coming into his cheeks, “Just leave me alone.”

“Don’t you want to hear about the concert?” Lithia asked not moving.

“Let me guess you dazzled them all and aunt Petra gave you a new car because of how proud she was and three men asked you to mery them .” Bobby said.

“Well I did get a ninety two... For whatever that’s worth.” Lithia said.

“Only a ninety two? Aunt Petra must have been so disappointed.”

“Oh depends who she was talking too. You know her. Brag when I’m not there but she needs to make sure I never actually hear anything good about myself. Otherwise I might start believing she’s actually proud of me or even loves me or something.” Lithia said, moving a little closer to her brother again.

“Oh, she couldn’t let you think that.” Bobby said slowly getting into their favorite activity, Petra bashing, “Would kill all the sympathy she gets for taking in us poor orphans out of the goodness of her heart.”

“I know. She’s so good to us.” Lithia said sarcastically, “That’s why the Judge had to issue an order requiring her to let us come to Terra.”

“You were at the hearing when that happened weren’t you? Please tell me how red she turned when the judge told her she’d have to take us in?” Bobby asked as the ghost of a smile crept  onto his lips.

“Let’s just say my hair is a tribute.” Lithia said matching his ghost with a live one.

Bobby grinned openly at that thought and more than anything it thrilled Lithia to see that. She had hoped turning down the drugs would help some, but she had thought it would take a bit longer to know for sure if it had.

“You know I am going out tonight. You could come with me if you can keep it quiet. I can think of a couple of girls that might be very happy to meet you.” Lithia said leaning over and giving her brother a playful shove.

“I don’t think so.” he said, “Just not feeling like dealing with people right now.”

“Hey! I’m people.” Lithia said, acting playfully hurt.

“You’re not people. You’re just Litha.”

“Not sure how to take that....” she replied.

“Oh it’s a good thing. I hate people. I only sort of hate you.” He said confidently.

“Thanks… You sure?”

“Yeah I’m sure.” He confirmed.

“What if it were a few boys that might be happy to meet you instead?” Lithia inquired.

“Well that’s a bit better.” Bobby said, “Yeah… No... I just want the world to fuck off right now.”

“That’s fair. Well, I’ll be heading out in about twenty if you change your mind.” Lithia said quickly wrapping her brother in a tight hug before he could put up his arms up to stop her.

“We’ll see if I let you in here again.” Bobby said, pushing her off him.

“No problem. Though if you don’t let me in here, that possum is going to come back eventually.”

“I liked him.” Bobby said looking over at the hole in the screen of his window, “I named him whiskers.”

Lithia laughed as she made her way out of her brother’s disaster and to her own room. Now she knew he was going to be, well not exactly okay, but close enough for now. She couldn’t wait to strip off the horrible pink dress and wipe away the powder and goop that had been layered on her face before the show.

Unlike Bobby’s room Lithia’s was very orderly. There were no piles of clothes on the floor nor did she keep stacks of dirty dishes on her chest of drawers. Instead of the air being musty, stale and with a hint of dirty socks, the air in her room was sweet and teased with the scent of jasmine from a candle she had accidently left burning. Quickly rushing over, Lithia snuffed out the flame and wiped away the melted wax from the polished dresser top. Lithia shuddered to think what her aunt would have done if she had found out. The candle notwithstanding though, nothing else about Lithia’s room was out of place.  

Lithia hung her dress up on a hook at the back of her closet alongside half a dozen others that made up her concert wardrobe. She didn’t know why she bothered to keep them though. Inevitably her aunt petra would discard all of them and provide new ones for her next fall. Lithia considered tossing a few of them in her bag and taking them with her next time she left the house, surely she knew someone who might want them, and anyways her closet was getting too packed to find anything, despite Lithia’s almost compulsive attempts at organization. She went back over to the dresser and opened a small jar, the smell of alcohol and other astringents was almost overpowering as she dipped a small brush in and started dissolving the thick layer of artificiality that had been plastered over her face. Using a cloth to wipe away the cleaner and the last dregs of makeup she looked herself in the mirror before applying just the slightest bit of eyeliner, and a dab of color on her lips. and washed her face. She had to scrub off the superficiality of the world she had been in earlier this evening. Lithia was getting read to head out into the Under City, that part of San Francisco far below the Terraces. It was a place where you didn’t want to draw attention, because attention would often mean attention from the desperate or the untreated mentally ill that called that place home. Still it was a place she loved, yeah it had it’s problems, but despite them Lithia had made more and better friends there than she had at any other time since coming to earth. She knew that the little makeup she did put back on was unwise, but for her that was also part of what made that place attractive, the thought that she was just a little unsafe.

Lithia kept a few tattered and torn sets of clothes from her teenage years in a special drawer under her bed. She had piles of comfortable, ripped, stained denim jeans and hooded sweatshirts made from some thick, soft, material that you just couldn’t find in the Upper Terraces. The smell of many campfires and the cold, damp aroma of rain water saturated every stitch of clothing in this drawer. She quickly found Her favorite set of jeans the ones with the tattered faded and frayed  ankles. She could almost still pick out a faint yellow mustard stain near one of the pockets but she didn’t care. These were perfect Under City fatigues and she put them on like armor. Dressed like this no one would guess she spent most of her time living the life of a rich resident of the highest part of the city, no she looked like everyone else in the lower sections. Perhaps a little better fed and groomed than most, but that alone wasn’t enough to set her apart.

Lithia knew she could have probably used the front door, there wasn’t a lot her aunt Petra could do to stop her from going anywhere but she didn’t want the fight. There were still many ways Petra could make Lithia regret it, and only some of them would be targeted at Lithia directly and she was not prepared to drag her brother into this long running battle with her aunt. Instead, Lithia climbed out the window, careful to pull it closed behind her and climbed down the thick latticework of vines that clung to this side of the house.

Lithia turned back for a moment looking back up into her brother’s window. The lights were off but the fact that it was open and there seemed to be a bowl of food sitting on the ledge made her smile. If Bobby was already trying to attract a new roommate, he really must be feeling more himself. She hoped any new pet he might attract would be a better house guest than the previous one.

...

The walk to the tram into the Under City was a long one, Lithia had to take the pedestrian elevators down several levels before she got to a public train station. Everyone she passed along the way gave her the kind of looks that seemed to say louder than words that they knew she was up to something.

The train Lithia caught was almost empty, but this wasn’t unusual. Very few people in the Tarresses ever used the public trains. Lithia knew it would fill quickly though. As the train went further down into the older and lower parts of the city it would fill up until it would be standing room only.

Lithia smiled to herself as she watched the people filter on and off, the real population of the city making their ways to work, home, or to those little diversions that they could afford. Lithia wondered about them, what their lives were like, what their stories were. When she was a little younger she used to make up stories about them to herself, little dramas about people and lives she would never know.   

When the train doors opened up on the very lowest stop, Lithia pushed her way along with the crowd of people all trying as quickly as they could to get off the train and vanish into those places they had claimed as home. For the people above it was a quick and cheap way to keep the poorest of the poor out of sight and out of mind.  

Lithia stood on the old platform as people around her either made their way up the cracked stone steps to the streets above, or filtered onto one of the other trains on this level. When Lithia had first started coming down here, the only trains were the up and down lines, but a few years ago some engineer working to try and make life down here a little better had started restoring ancient  electrical trains and getting the tracks back into something like good repair. Lithia watched one of these trains pull out of the platform beside her, it’s metal wheels screeching deafeningly. She thought about catching one of them to get her closer to her destination but in the end decided not too, it wasn’t far and she felt like a little walk to help her sink into this place a bit better before she actually met anyone.

Lithia made her way up the broken steps, popping off her Helix earing as she went and slipping it into her pocket. Very few people who lived down here had access to the earrings and a few people even feared them.  Lithia didn’t want to draw the focus of one of the anti-Helix gangs or, worse the Right to Light movement.   

The street was cold as Lithia emerged from the old rundown station. Upper levels of the city had long since blocked out most if not all of the warm sunlight, and turned this level into a place of perpetual night. Here and there one of the old sunlamps that had been put in as San Francisco had started building up, and people were still expected to live down here, still shone dimly, but mostly if there was light, it was coming from an old streetlamp, or even more often from a trashcan someone had built a fire in. That was just life down here, cold, dark, damp and often slimy.

As she walked down the torn and cracked street she had to wonder what this place must have looked like when it was new, when the sun could still reach it, when the old beautiful buildings weren’t crumbling and covered with the thin layer of mossy slime that was the only thing that seemed to grow down here.

“It must have been the greatest city in the world.” Lithia thought, picturing the ruined facades gleaming and clean, sun shining through spotless clear glass in their windows. Lithia stopped to look at the remains of a massive dome. It, and the columns that had once held it up, had crashed down into an old dried up pond. Scattered around it were the remains of carved women, their broken forms highlighting the loss of what must have been some great palace. She wondered what it must have looked like centuries ago when it was first built. Maybe it had been a grand music hall or maybe some sort of palace of fine arts. Either way there was something almost sad and funerial about the way the ruins just laid here in the twilight under the massive city above it.     

Lithia turned onto a large old stone road, the locals called it “One oh one.” for some reason. It was as ruined as everything else in this part of the city, but the worst of the rubble had been cleared off to the sides so that the people who called this place home could use it as a sort of makeshift highway. She walked along the cracked asphalt road occasionally passing people both alone and in small groups who were making their ways out to the bay. The bay waters may have been long devoid of anything close to life, but for the people down here it was life. Standing on the beaches and cliffs they could watch the waves roll lazily in, and feel warm sun on their skin.  Lithia watched them as they stood on the shores, a few of the braver ones risking to go out to the Golden Gate market.

What had once been a massive grand bridge at the mouth of the bay of San Francisco, had long ago given up all pretence of utility and had slowly transitioned into a sort of combination market and carnival, a place where tourists came to pretend to learn about the old city while eating overpriced food from carts and buying souvenirs from places they don’t realize they haven’t seen.  Her destination wasn’t the bridge though, and after a walk down a steep trail she came to the small stretch of cool clean beach.  Lithia smiled as she stepped out on to the soft sand as the sun was just finishing its descent down into the sea casting the sky in dark pinks and brilliant blues.

“Lithia!” came a chorus of voices as she made her way to the water.

A small group of somewhat ragged people broke away from a weak fire in a pit further down the beach and ran toward her. A young man pulled out ahead of the others as they came, reaching Lithia first and wrapping her in a hug that might have been rib crushing if the man had ever had enough food to put on real muscle.

“Was starting to think you’d never get here.” the man said, finally releasing Lithia as the rest of the group caught up.

“I’ve been looking forward to this all day.” Lithia said smiling and let them lead her to the beacon of their small fire.

Next Chapter: Chapter 16: