The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (22 page)

             
“Well, at least I know
one thing for sure.” Maura spoke up after Brynna had sat back in her seat. “You two will never date.”

             
“What even made you think that was a possibility in the first place, Maura?” Brynna snapped irritably. A cigarette was burning away between the fingers o
f the hand she had rested on her face.

             
“I don’t know.” Maura replied calmly. “You’ve never fancied boys your own age. I thought you had decided to try someone a little older.”

             
“No. If I was going to date an older man, it would not be that one. If one for
ces their gaze past his good looks, all one would see is an infuriating, arrogant plague.”

             
“I think that's a little harsh, darling.” Maura reasoned, still in that calm and cool tone. Her zen attitude was obviously grating on Brynna's frayed nerves.

             
“No.
It really is not. Please, by all means, forgive me if this is too harsh, but I think he is just about the most aggravating presence I have ever encountered.”

             
“I think you’re just tired and cranky.” I chimed in casually but with a condescending scorn to my
voice that one would use when disciplining a very rambunctious, contemptuous child.

             
“I do apologize if I missed this but did I ask you what you thought?”

             
“No, but I’m going to tell you anyway!” I shot at her after crossing my arms over my chest
defensively. “This is a free country!”

             
“If on Pangea we decide to split into countries, remind me to render ours a fascist regime so that
I never have to hear that irritating sentence ever again. God or Gods, I hate when people say that.”

             
I watched her b
lue eyes find me in the mirror she had pulled down from the car's ceiling. I was shaking my head in disgust at how nasty she could be. It wasn’t just a matter of being intelligent. She wasn’t satisfied unless everyone was clear on the fact that she was sma
rter than they were. If they doubted her, she would tear them to pieces by reminding them that not only was she more intelligent in the present but that she was always going to be. It was how she kept everyone in their places.

             
There was a long moment of s
ilence when James got back into the car and started it up.

             
“Do not talk to me.” Brynna snapped at him without any provocation.

             
“I wasn’t going to.” James replied calmly but I saw him roll his eyes. Already, he was tired of her ridiculous personality quir
ks. He had to have sympathized with me; I had been forced to be in her company for seventeen years.

             
I shouldn’t say all of that. I did love Brynna dearly. She was my sister, after all. However, I can't lie and say that I didn’t contemplate holding her hea
d under water for several minutes to stop one of her rants.

             
If I am going to be completely honest, I would say that I owed her. She helped raise me. When Maura briefly left us, all of the responsibility fell on Brynna’s young, fragile shoulders. She never
threw that time that she had cared for us selflessly in my face or used it to manipulate me. She just pretended it never happened.

             
That was with me, at least. With Penny, she never stopped taking care of her. In fact, Penny spent more time at Brynna’s th
an she did at home with my mother, father and me. I will never pretend that Brynna's influence on either of us wasn't what shaped our personalities for the better. Anyone that truly knew our family would be able to tell you that if we were left to be raise
d completely by our parents or even Maura, we would be in much worse shape, perhaps even irreparably damaged.

             
“Is your clock right?” Brynna asked James suddenly.

             
“Yeah. Why wouldn't it be?”

             
“Because Daylight Savings Time was yesterday and people tend to
forget about it.”

             
“What?!” James looked at the clock. “Well, that's great. Why didn't you tell me that before?”

             
“I'm sorry, I assumed that you were in the ninety-nine point nine percent of the population that remembered something as simple as turning yo
ur clock back an hour.”

             
“That is enough!” Maura exclaimed from behind her hands. When she covered her face, we knew that her impatience with our annoying shenanigans was reaching a dangerous level.

             
“Well, we now have only three hours to get there.”

             
“Bef
ore they take off?!” I exclaimed in horror. Neither replied, so I knew that we were officially at risk of being left behind. I bent forward to rest my face on my knees, feeling a sharp jolt in my chest that I was all too familiar with. My heart was poundin
g like the drums carried by soldiers of some ancient war fought with swords and shields in the shadows of towering mountains. My chest constricted to smother my lungs before I could draw the breath that was needed to protest.

             
“Do not have a panic attack r
ight now, Violet! We do not have time!” Brynna snapped but she turned around in her seat to check on me.

             
“I will handle this.” Maura told her irritably. “Just turn around and be quiet.”

             
“This is positively the worst night of my life!” Brynna put her sung
lasses down and laid her head back against the headrest. “James, make haste.”

             
“I'm on it, darling.”

             
“Do not refer to me by a condescending pet name ever again.”

             
“Yes, dear.”

             
“I swear to you, James Maxwell, on every Bible, Qur'an, Bhagavad Gita, and L.
Ron Hubbard book ever printed that if you so much as look in my direction, I will reach over and smash your head against the steering wheel until you are...”

             
“James! Brynna! That is enough!” Maura shouted over them. They both fell silent but Brynna
contin
ued to scowl as she laid back with her eyes closed.

             
I kept my face on my legs, trying to steady my breathing the way Maura was instructing me to. She stroked my hair which soothed me slightly until finally, the worst of the attack had passed and I was con
sumed by a sudden exhaustion. I turned slightly so that I could lay my head on Maura's lap.

             
God was merciful because I dropped off to sleep again. My mind remained blank, lost deep in some vast expanse of nothingness so peaceful, I could have cried with j
oy. In that swirling blank space, I escaped the horror I felt at being left behind to burn on the earth with the unlucky.

XXX

             
Awakening from a deep sleep to find oneself even more exhausted than they were before the slumber is just about the most
unpleasant, infuriating experience regarding the tendency of the human body to attack itself. I rubbed my eyes sleepily as my vision cleared; through the window that my face was rested against, I saw Brynna and James standing with my older brother, Elijah.
I perked up upon seeing him but the grogginess in my body never fully dissipated.

             
I looked next to me to find that the car was completely vacated. When I saw Maura and Penny hurrying towards the housing buildings of Elijah's school, I knew that Penny, as
she always did, needed to go explore the bathroom. Why are children so fascinated with strange bathrooms?

             
I was getting restless and impatient. I was tired of being cooped up in the car. I knew that we were running out of time and that made my impatience
grow even more. I wondered when my mother and father would contact us, asking where we were. If Brynna was to be believed, they were already at the launch site and waiting for us to arrive with impatience of their own. I was so not in the mood for one of
their lackluster lectures. Their obvious ambivalence had always been very depressing.

             
“Well, you were smart to think that I wouldn't need convincing. You know me, with my fascination of all things apocalyptic, right?” I had cracked the window ever so slig
htly in order to hear their conversation.

             
“Wow, Brynn, you weren't kidding.” James told her and I heard Brynna laugh airily.

             
“I didn't know that you thought I was.” She replied. “He's an Environmental Science minor, for the sake of all deities and Gods.”

             
“And my sister is a bit of an arrogant genius, in case you haven't noticed. But in reality, James, she talks like this to scare people like you off.”

             
“People like me?”

             
“Yeah. You're what the people in the old south would call a 'suitor.'” All evidence
of playfulness in Elijah's voice had disappeared suddenly. Threatening seriousness stood in its place. The only person who held any sway over what Brynna did was Elijah. His opinion mattered to her more than that of anyone else because he was, as she descr
ibed, her “intellectual equal.” He was fiercely protective of her, even more so than he was over me or Penny. In high school, their mutual friends had joked that Brynna had a one-man, round-the-clock Mafia to keep their nasty male peers at bay.

             
James was
now on the receiving end of the Mafia man's blunt weapon. I looked up cautiously to see Elijah glaring icily at him, his distrust and disapproval plain.

             
“I am most certainly not a suitor.” James told him calmly. “I just knew after I had that dream and met
with those people that I had to find her. I don't know how I knew or why I had to bring all of you with me. But I knew that there was no getting around it. Not that I wanted
to get around it but I just knew that it was a certainty, do you know what I mean
?”

             
“Not really.” Elijah replied. “But I was cool after you said you most certainly weren't a suitor. She's my little sister and despite her vast knowledge on everything, she sometimes makes really stupid decisions. No offense, but dating a man twice her a
ge would be the epitome of a stupid decision.”
             

             
“This is ridiculous, Eli.” Brynna snapped at him finally. “And if I decided to date him or anyone else twice my age, there would be nothing you could do about it.”

             
“Believe me, I know. But that doesn't mean
I wouldn't kick that guy's ass. That's my job as your
brother, right?”

             
“According to Maura, who is most certainly not the best judge of how to handle unsavory circumstances, is she?”

             
“Don't start getting on Maura already. Didn't you say you only just we
nt home a couple of hours ago?”

             
“This conversation is over.” Brynna snapped before walking back to the car. I jerked downwards and in the process, banged my head hard against the door.

             
“I already know you were eavesdropping so you can stop pretending you
're asleep. I know you quite foolishly think you are smarter than me and I must encourage you to think again.”

             
I sat up, scowling darkly. Her fierce blue eyes, amplified by the thick black eyeliner and mascara around them, stared through the crack in the
window at me. It was like looking into the eyes of some horrendous spectral creature from beyond the grave whose eyes could pierce one's very soul. Or it was like looking into the eyes of an angry raccoon who was sniffing at something dead on the side of t
he road. It depends on how mad I truly was at that moment.

             
When Maura and Penny returned, we all squeezed back into the car. Elijah hugged me and I grinned as I squeezed him back. He looked happier than he had the last time I had seen him. At that time, l
iving with our parents in the midst of all the emotional baggage was wearing him down more than he cared to say. While Brynna escaped to the city, Elijah escaped to college. I had hoped to follow the latter's path myself someday.

             
Of course, that wouldn't
be happening anymore.

             
“So I figured that 'Pangea' place was something. They said it could be inhabited by humans. And immediately, I pictured some sci-fi movie plot about humans trying to overtake it and farm it for resources.”