Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),
Hi! So....this is my 17th review of the day so I might be slightly burnt out. So excuse me if I put in a couple of spelling mistakes here and there.
First Impression: Soo....this one....was a bit of a filler chapter I felt. That's not bad at all. We are getting a real nice look at the situation that Maisie is in and getting a good picture of why Maisie what she does so that's definitely a really smart move there to include a chapter like this. The overall flow of this chapter was pretty nice, it wasn't that long so there really wasn't issues in that aspect.
Anyway let's get right to it,
The dark apartment was warm and muggy in the still spring air. My mother had told me of a time when springs were wet and chilly, though I hardly believed her. In the world I had been born into, you were sweating by mid march. Every year the summers got a bit hotter, the winters shrunk and withered. Every year a bit more land was lost to the sea. The oil companies had finally stopped trying to deny it, but by now, there was little to be done.
Well this world is not headed in a very good direction by the sound of that.
After a moment, I shook off my melancholy and turned away from the window. The floorboards creaked under me as I made my way to the kitchen. The light in the refrigerator dazzled my eyes with its brightness. Blinking, I saw that the bare bulb shown on empty white shelves.
Well that's a neat description right there to starkly contrast the earlier descriptions from where the mayor was at.
I reached for the bag of medicine Dr. Alvarez had given me. Inside were two small rattling bottles. I squinted at the labels. Each one had a long chemical name I couldn’t begin to decipher, followed by the instructions “Take two tablets by mouth twice daily, with or without food.”
Well that took her quite some time to get around to that but then I suppose she was too distracted by the day's work to check this thing out before food.
“Take them by mouth,” I muttered under my breath sarcastically, “Where else does he think I’m going to take them?”
Well...not all pills are taken from the mouth.
I hid the bag of pills under my mattress, taking the opportunity to check on my sister in the top bunk. Etta’s honey-blond curls looked gunmetal silver in the moonlight, a few strands spread across her face and clinging to her chapped lips, trembling with her breaths.
I felt my heart fill with warmth, the same way it had when I had first peeked into the bassinet. Her face still held some of that baby-plumpness, but she was growing up faster and faster with every passing day. As she lay there with her newly gangly limbs flung out at odd angles, I wished I could freeze her in time, keep her there asleep and dreaming until I had fixed everything, until I had built a better world for her to grow up in. But time waits for no one, as I knew well. The clock never stops ticking.
This whole part is really beautifully written. Definitely puts in perspective what Maisie fighting for and just strengthens the plot of this really well.
I paused in the doorway while my eyes adjusted. The silence in her room felt heavier than in the rest of the house. The phrase still as death surfaced in my mind, but I shoved it down. Mom isn’t going to die. She can’t.”
Oh dear I am getting dangerously close to chopping onions at this point. I really need to sharpen this knife I'm using.
That night, or rather morning, I went through the motions of brushing my teeth and changing into pajamas like I was on autopilot. My first instinct was to collapse into bed fully clothed and with peanut butter on my breath, but I’d been raised to prioritize good dental hygiene, and I wasn’t going to forget that just because I was being blackmailed into being a superhero. Even mutant vigilantes have to have standards.
Well that's a fun thing to slide in there and also great advice. Dental hygiene is extremely important especially to superheroes.
Etta was snoring softly as I collapsed onto my bed like a marionette with the strings cut. My old, creaky mattress had a hollow in the middle exactly my shape and size, and it cradled my bruised body like a nest, pulling me down, down into velvety darkness . . .
With my last conscious thought before sleep enveloped me, I realized: Ah, crap. It’s a school night, isn’t it.
Ouch. That's not a thought that you want to end the day on.
Aaaand that's it for this one.
Overall: Not too much to put her for this one. For what it was meant to do it does an amazing job and I really can't find anything wrong with it. This feels like a nice bit of aligning almost before we break into more action later down the line and that's definitely nice to have a bit of a breather to just process all of what happened to so far. Waiting patiently for more of this.
As always remember to take what you think was helpful and forget the rest.
Stay Safe
Harry
Points: 254163
Reviews: 4102
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