Hannah Choi
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An extract from the novel Orphan City
MICHAEL
Michael opens the heavy curtain and walks inside a crowded room with a stage in the middle. Silvery specks of dust sparkling down from the ceiling, falling on his shoulders like snow. He reaches out and catches the glitter in his hand, before letting it fall slowly to the ground. It moves like it’s timed perfectly to Ri’s voice, the way she cradles the last syllable against the back of her mouth. Patrons sit around the tables and their heads sway like poppies in a shadowy field. He finds a free seat in the corner and sits down quickly.
Serisse is center stage. He sees the silhouette of her wild hair, narrow shoulders and arms above a tall stool beside an automatic spinet. She calls it her little dreambox. She doesn’t need NeoCor, she says, when she’s got her faithful piano. Michael was with her when she bought it in an old junk store. The label said it was made from the Favor Factory.
Light flakes down across the room and a cool breeze brushes in from somewhere like he’s outside. Near enough to the music as if her breath is blowing into his ear. He closes his eyes and smiles. Serisse is singing a song he knows by heart. She was singing it the first time he talked to her at Haven — the children’s ward at NeoCor.
He was thirteen and Serisse was two years older.
* * *
There were only seven children left at Haven. The others never came back. Michael heard the nurses whispering to each other. 112 children gone. How are they going to explain it?
They won’t have to. They never do.
Michael was just relieved that he and his sister were still together. Spared, he thought. But the nurses kept talking and he couldn’t help but overhear. He was getting scared of what they were saying.
The other five children were Trix, a boy with honey brown dreads and suspicious hazel eyes. He was nine years old.
Then the younger boys, Nicky and Jae. One chubby, the other thin like a twig. Both five years old.
Jae’s infant sister. She was kept in the nursery and Michael hardly ever saw her.
And Serisse. Michael was always following her around but she pretended to not notice. One day he found her lying on the rocks near the beach. His sister was playing with the other kids but Michael got bored of their games and went searching for the only kid older than him.
Serisse had wild, frizzy hair. Dark like her skin and eyes. She talked to no one, not even the nurses. Michael thought she had been born mute. But on this day, he heard her singing against the wind and waves. She let her voice get drowned out but then it’d come creeping back up again with the next verse, as a wave crashed in underneath her. He realized she was crying.