Prologue

The cold bites into my arms, legs, and feet, seeping up through the floor and in through the cracks in the wall. No matter how tightly I draw the blanket around my shoulders, the fingers of cold peel back the rough wool and settle on my skin. A single shaft of moonlight slices through the dark, narrow as a ruler, but it's something. At least I can kind of see. In its soft milky glow, tiny particles of dust float and swirl, their speed picking up each time a breeze breaches the cracks in the walls. The walls are made of sturdy wooden boards, more than two decades old, and do good work of keeping most of the elements out. Only the wind whips at my face, the frost creeping gradually toward my fortified corner.

This corner of the shack has old blankets and some cardboard jammed together to block the cold, scraps from just over the small ridge outside my shelter. The junkyard is too far for me now; even if I could make it there, I could hardly drag anything back with me without collapsing.

So here I sit, among soggy cardboard panels, black plastic garbage bags, punctured on nails to hold them in place, and a pile of newspapers, which serve the dual purpose of materials to stuff the larger cracks in the wall and toilet paper. Even though I'm living in a dingy abandoned shed outside the Bronx, I still have a certain level of personal hygiene to maintain.

A chill seizes me as the wind rattles the walls with renewed fervor, trying to upend my shelter. Shell, that's cold! I pull the blanket up and over my head, hoping it will keep the chill out. Unfortunately, all this does is steal my breath. Morbidly I consider letting myself suffocate, if only to spite the shrieking wind that has it out for me, but eventually I lift the blanket from my face. The cold air floods my lungs and I choke as I pull the blanket snug over my skull.

How did I get here? Believe it or not, it was a choice. I came to this shack because I wanted to, although sometimes I question my motives. To think, I'm the so called "genius". The inventor. The brains. Good lot that's gotten me; bundled up and shivering in the middle of nowhere without food, water, or my family.

Enough of my griping. Here it is: I left them. I abandoned my family without a word of warning. They didn't know I was leaving until I was gone. I made certain of that, never saying too much or too little, maintaining my routine as best as I could even when I was vomiting from the pain of my headaches and barely able to pull myself out of bed in the morning. My sickness has taken a lot out of me, depleting my mental and physical energy, increasing my susceptibility to cold and causing me physical pain. My body simply can't handle the stress of a junkyard trip, or stand the cold. Cancer can do that to a turtle.

Cancer. The word sounds weird to me. Experimentally, I say the word aloud in a hoarse, unused voice. It crackles, pathetic sounding amid the roar of the wind outside, but it still manages to unsettle my stomach. It's such an ugly word. Cancer is the overpowering chemical scent of disinfectant, the sticky feeling of sweat beading on your skin, the numbing exhaustion that you feel when you've been awake less than an hour. It's a drain that sucks the energy from your body, the thoughts from your mind, and the colour from your vision. It's the pain that leaves you breathless and the faintness you feel on a rooftop patrol.

Maybe it was wrong of me to leave them. Maybe it was selfish of me, to abandon them and deny them a proper goodbye. But I do know one thing.

They're better off without me.