Bittersweet by Shewanda Pugh Page A

tonight.”
    His eyes were darting and over bright, while a lone hand massaged his neck rough. Behind him, a gray Nissan pulled up before a slight Asian guy jumped out. He made it up the walkway while bumping his head and whistling a tune. Once close enough, Edy recognized it as the latest Beyoncé hit.
    “Excuse me,” she said to Hassan. “But I have dinner. Thanks.”
    A few minutes later, they sat at her kitchen table splitting her sweet and sour chicken.
    “It’s not that she doesn’t want you to come over,” he said. “Because she’d never say that.” He took way too much interest in stabbing his pork fried rice. “It’s just that the two of us weren’t getting along today. I didn’t want you to see that.”
    “Because I’ve never seen you disagree with your mom?” Edy said.
    His face pinched.
    “It’s okay, Hassan. Really. I know what’s happening. Stop trying to protect me. I love you for it, but it is what it is. I’ll adapt. We’ll adapt.”
    “Will we?” he said and looked rebuked the moment Edy’s head snapped up.
    “Yeah,” she said. “Of course.”
    Did she make too much of him looking away?
    Maybe.
    The days trekked on, with them reaching a silent agreement. Rani cooked and Hassan delivered meals—dinner mostly. Edy made due with cereal for breakfast or leftovers. In that way they reached an impasse. Her mom dropped in and out, mostly out, as her senate race became unexpectedly tighter. After all, Massachusetts was a Democrats’ state and no Republican had any business being competitive there. But it had happened before. So her mom campaigned and fundraised and had luncheon after luncheon endlessly, too many with Cam at her side. Meanwhile, no word had come from her father. Not even an email. Edy had no idea what country he was in or even if he had left their country yet. She told herself he was doing important work. She told herself that soon enough she’d be an adult, on her own, and it would always be like this, not knowing where her parents were. She was provided for, while children in the Congo starved. Everything else, all the contrived necessities as her mother once put it, were weaknesses a foe could exploit.

Seventeen
    Edy’s eyes flew open and a gust of glacial wind knocked the air from her lungs so she expelled it in a single puff of smoke.
    Ice.
    It coated the floor. It was the floor. She looked up to find it her prison.
    On unsteady feet Edy eased up to a crouch, her hand low and pointed to the ground. A look straight up revealed the sort of mega florescent lights reserved for school.
    But no windows. Not anywhere.
    A tendril of concern unfurled within her. Was she in a freezer of some sort? That made absolutely no sense. They didn’t even own a deep freezer at home; deep freezers were for people committed to cooking. Rani owned a deep freezer, but it was the sort that you lifted and stuck your head in. She kept legs of lamb and whole chickens locked in there, not people who wandered off.
    The Dysons had a walk-in freezer, but this wasn’t it. This stretched on both higher and longer than the one they kept at home.
    Plus, Edy couldn’t find a door.
    Fear clawed at her, but she shoved it back. She faced no immediate threat here. Yeah, the cold bit at her but she could think and reason. So, she’d think this thing through.
    Edy hugged herself and began to pace, slow, then with building momentum. A shot of the foot and a slip later had her head slamming hard on ice. Her skull shrieked with pain. The crying she heard wasn’t her own.
    “Wyatt?” she said eventually.
    Snow began to fall. Edy stared straight up at the iced roof and saw no opening, no natural explanation. Ice shavings. Faux snow. Christmas cheer, maybe.
    A bark of a cough pierced the air and clung in so much silence. Another followed like a wet splat and by the third, Edy found her feet.
    “Wyatt?” she choked out. Affirmation came in a cough. “Please! Wyatt, where are you? I can help you. I—I