Under a Broken Sun Read Online Free PDF

I said, adding some balled up paper and trash to the fire. 
    Marilyn laughed a little and scooted up towards the fire.  “He’s famous.  Like, World Famous.  My parents listen to him all the time.  Called for the end of the world on more than one occasion.”
    “Yeah,” I laughed.  “He seemed like a total dick.”
    “He’s mean,” Ashley chimed in.  “He said I was going to hell.  That this was just the beginning and that we’ll all burn and shit like that.”
    Marilyn’s eyes grew wide.  “Wow.  My mom would’ve smacked me good for talking like that.”
    “Fuck ‘im,” Ashley said, trying to impress even more.
    “It’s not God.  It just happened,” I said.  I thought about my dad’s argument about religion, but really, astronomy was his religion.  The universe was his god.  We got into a few arguments about that, how he couldn’t just dismiss everyone else’s god just because his took a different shape, a different discipline.  But hell fire and brimstone and shit like that?  My father and mother would never hear of it. 
    “Where are your parents?” Marilyn asked me.  I looked up, startled, curious how she knew what I was thinking.
    “My dad’s somewhere in the middle of the country, if he’s still alive.  He was on a plane to L.A...”  I looked at the smoldering flames of the parking garage, the hopelessness of the people surrounding it, watching it burn with no fire trucks, no water pumps, nothing in sight.  Was my dad on a plane like that?
    “And your mom?” Ashley asked.
    “Dead.  Ten years now.”  That was all they were gonna get.  I curled up under another cardboard box that I retrieved for myself and closed my eyes.  They don’t need to know how she died.  I didn’t want to remember.  I had to get it out of my head.
    Whenever I thought about her, the nightmares came back.  The one that night was the worst one ever.
     
     
    To understand the dream you have to understand how my mom died.  There are several theories, depending on whom you talk to, and what they want to believe.  Ten years ago, doctors found a tumor in her brain.  Terminal.  Four weeks later, cops found her body down in a valley behind our house.  They investigated and filed the usual report: probably fell asleep at the wheel thanks to the meds she was on, she shouldn’t have been driving, whatever. 
    But I saw it happen.
    Our backyard, in the mountains of California, sloped down towards a highway below; not too steep, but it had a helluva view of the valley.  A road wound below our yard in plain sight.  I used to walk to the edge to smoke some weed, hang out, watch cars.  It was my getaway spot. 
    One afternoon, after calling in sick from school, I stood on the edge watching the occasional traffic zoom by and I saw my mom’s convertible on the highway below.  It was a 1964 cherry red Chevy Chevelle ragtop, and she loved it.  Drove it all the time.  There was no mistaking it.
    I watched her blast through the guard rail over the edge, had to be doing seventy.  I watched her stand up in her car, and as the engine-heavy front took a nose dive, she jumped out and took a swan dive and disappeared from my view. 
    Hard to do if you’re asleep.  But the police never believed me.  Said it may have just looked like that, but she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt and fell out.
     
     
    Back in Philly, in my dream that first night, I was pushing the car up the incline like that Greek dude pushing the boulder up the hill.  I could see my mom’s head in the front seat, her long blond hair tied into a ponytail.  The car should’ve weighed more but it didn’t.  Still, I nearly gritted my teeth to nubs while sweat blackened my gray T-shirt. 
    Towards the curve that she wiped out on, the road leveled off, and pushing the car became easier.  The car started going on its own momentum, and I ran to the driver side to tell my mom the news.
    “There,” I said as I jogged up, “see?  Not