Girl Minus X

by Anne Stone

  Dany can still hear Mister Faraday taking up her cause with the VP. Dany is glad for the distraction, but ignores him.

  “Got a knife?” she whispers to Eva.

  Eva shoots her a worried look.

  “For the zap straps,” Dany says, shaking her head.

  Eva digs through her purse, and Dany glances at her classmates.

  The secretaries have refilled the bucket, and two of Dany’s classmates are splashing their faces with handfuls of the suspect liquid. After they wash their faces and hands, one of the admins sponges down each student’s clothes and hair. Then the next student moves into place. Same sponge, same bucket. For all they know, those buckets are the best way possible to spread the new hybrid strain.

  George, at least, gets away. One moment, he’s standing by the corner of the building, but when Dany looks again, he’s vanished.

  She looks at the line of remaining students, and a rhizome forms in her head, a spiderweb, tracing each footstep she has taken since the day before, when she sat with Jasper at his desk.

  “You want some tea with your sugar?” she’d asked him. Had Jasper taken a sip from that tea, before she’d taken a mouthful?

  She doesn’t want to think about the other possibility for transmission. Doesn’t want to think about the red rope. Because if Dany became infected while visiting the hospice, at a distance of ten feet, then the virus is airborne, and they are all of them, every last one, dead already.

  No, it has to be the tea. Bodily fluids. Has to be. And that means that the bucket is a problem. She pictures each footstep these kids will take, moving out from this moment in time. Every time a vector’s path crosses with another’s – a kiss, a shared glass, an open sore – there will be a role of the dice.

  Finally, Eva finds a pair of manicure scissors at the bottom of her purse and gets to work. The moment that Eva finally snips the zap strap, the whole world changes.

  Dany’s muscles go slack, the math disappears and it is as if the sky itself has been holding its breath. Eva tucks the tiny scissors into Dany’s back pocket, and, for the first time since Liz entered that history classroom, Dany can breathe.

  “Keep them,” Eva says. “You need them more than me,” she adds, glancing at Dany’s ragged fingernails. But just as quickly, Eva looks away. “I mean, for these kinds of situations. You seem to be, I don’t know, some kind of a natural magnet for trouble.”

  Dany looks at her for a beat, gives her friend a smile. But the smile dies when she thinks of Mac. “I need you to get my sister,” Dany tells her. “Before the ministry can. Take her to Bea.”

  “Yeah, I’ll pick up Little Rabbit,” Eva says, dropping her voice. “But, strictly speaking, is that legal? What if they ask for my babysitter’s licence?”

  Dany rolls her eyes. “Trust me, they won’t. But, like, no hair dryers. There was a thing.”

  “Uh, weirdly alarming, but okay,” Eva says.

  Dany gives Eva the pickup code and then, hands held behind her back, she studies the guard’s boots. Dany is once again in a world that makes perfect sense, a world of guards and zap straps. Only Dany isn’t a stupid thirteen-year-old anymore. She knows better than to fight back. Not if the guard is bigger. Not if the guard is stronger. And not if there are more of them than her.

  Dany will beat them where she is stronger – she’ll use her mind. As she sits with Eva, Dany tracks the guard’s boots. The boots are aimed at the halfway point between her and those kids. Still, his attention – if the direction those boots are pointing is any sign – is beginning to wane. He’s already losing interest in her.

  Faraday steps into her line of sight, eclipsing her view.

  “You okay?” he asks quietly, kneeling down in front of her.

  “Nobody’s okay,” Dany says honestly. She flicks a look at Faraday. Then she glances past him to the VP, who is on the phone.

  Faraday shakes his head.

  Dany stares at the rough yellow paint on the curb, the deteriorating pattern. And for a vertiginous moment, that’s all there is, just the peel of yellow paint, the cool concrete on which she perches, the tidal sounds of human breath.

  “You and your sister,” Faraday asks, “do you have people? Someone I can call?”

  Faraday’s words demolish the centre of her silence.

  His words send ripples outwards. Dozens of images flash through her brain. Liz. Aunt Norah. Mac.

  Eva gives their teacher a warning look.

  But it’s fine. Faraday is fine. To a point.

  “It’s just me and my sister. When it comes down to it, we’re what we’ve got.”

  Eva gives her a withering look.

  “And Eva,” Dany says, rolling her eyes. “We’ve got Eva.”

  Eva nods, emphatically. “And your aunt, dummy,” she adds.

  Dany frowns at the curb. She promised to tell Eva more. And she really should have told Eva about her aunt before now. She should have told her eight weeks ago when Norah’s parole got revoked. But it’s hard. Finding the words for things is just so hard. But the truth is, Dany and her kid sister are screwed – and talking about it doesn’t help. She flicks a look from Eva to Faraday, and settles her gaze once more on the guard’s boots. “Look, Aunt Norah’s gone. So there’s nobody I can call.”

  Eva gives her a strange look, but Dany ignores her, settling her gaze on the knot of Faraday’s tie.

  “I’m sorry,” her teacher manages.

  Then he pulls out his notebook and scribbles something. He tears out a page and puts it on her lap.

  “Now there is,” he says. “If you and your sister ever need help, call me.”

  For a beat, Dany just looks at him, then she glances down at the paper.

  Eva rolls her eyes. “Oh, and I suppose you have a personal law firm on retainer?”

  Dany ignores her. Nodding at the paper, she tells Faraday to put it away. For a second, a fraction of it, he looks hurt. “Numbers,” Dany explains, before he can get entirely offended. “I’m just, I’m good with them.”

  “I bet you are,” Faraday says.

  Dany hears the car coming from blocks away. She’s the only one who seems to notice, or the only one who gets the significance of the sound. She’s been waiting for it. The police officer assigned to her high school is in need of a new muffler. He might as well have turned on the siren.

  She turns to Eva. “You’ll get Mac right away? No matter what. No distractions. You swear?”

  “You don’t have to ask,” Eva says. “No hair dryers. Pinkie swear.”

  That isn’t the kind of distraction she means, but Dany hears the misfire of the police car’s exhaust, and she knows that this is Bricker’s doing. In spite of what she’s learned, about how it is always worse to run, sometimes worse is the only open pathway.

  The low rumble of the muffler is a few blocks distant, but, as the car draws close, the Doppler effect will lower the tone briefly. If she has to guess, she’d say the officer’s car is five blocks off. This, in a neighbourhood with as many addicts as baby strollers. Today, she is glad for each and every one. The officer can’t go past fifty, not here. Forty is pushing it. She does the calculation in a flash, and knows, worst case scenario, she is cutting it very close. But she needs to wait until Bricker’s eyes are off her.

  Bricker, smiling, has heard the muffler now. After a glance her way, he turns his back and looks out over the parking lot expectantly.

  “Mister Faraday,” Dany says, “can I ask you to turn around? Just for a human second.”

  He looks a question her way, but still, with a sigh, Faraday does it. Shaking his head, expelling a long breath and with a look approaching regret, he turns his back on her.

  Dany grins at Eva.

  “Don’t wait. Stay away from that bucket. Go get the kid,” Dany whispers. And then her eyes find her path and Dany
is up and running.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 13

  Brit, with its barred windows, looks more like a juvie prison than a high school. The main building is enormous. But Dany runs full out – not holding anything back. She is almost at the steps – the ones leading down to the track – when Bricker finally calls out. A beat later, behind her, she hears the guard’s heavy steps in pursuit. Still, Faraday hasn’t outed her – and that buys her an all-important fifty-yard lead.

  The guard, she knows, will never leave the school grounds. She’ll lose him once she hops the fence – but that’s a good two-hundred-yard sprint.

  Still, Dany can make that in her sleep.

  Hitting the schoolyard fence at a run, she clambers up, and though her arms are hot with pain, she’s over it in a second. In truth, using her muscles feels good, even if her scars hate her for it. She smiles, picturing the guard who follows.

  Once she’s crossed the street, Dany turns and walks backwards, facing the guard, holding up both middle fingers. All the while, she has a smile on her face. But the guard, far from stopping, takes that fence in a loping run. The bastard parkours over the fence. He pauses to pull off his N95 mask – Eva has to have given it to him – and that’s when she sees it. The guard has a grin on his stupid face. She’s seen it before, in the dogs, the ones who see the chase as just another kind of play. Even as their teeth punch holes into the flesh on your arms, their tails never stop wagging, not for a second.

  Dany swears.

  A moment later, she turns tail and runs, wishing, all the while, for the stupid guard to fall and break his neck. Her bad luck, to piss off a guard who has the heart of a dog. You run, it chases. Still, that doesn’t make him terribly bright, just a creature of instinct.

  Dany knows the back alleys better than any rent-a-cop.

  She knows these streets as well as she knows her sister’s face. She knows which walkways connect up to the next alley, and which ones bottom out in a dank stairwell. She knows which dumpsters will let you onto low roofs. She’ll lose him quickly in the labyrinth of back streets and alleys. Once she loses him, she’ll head home, pack up a bag and, one way or another, she’ll get her sister out of the city.

  Dany is already making plans. She’ll call in every last favour she can. Eva was only the first ask. She needs to borrow money – she can ask Bea – and she’ll need a little bit of help, too, from the old Russian shut-in, Kuzmenko. Hell, he doesn’t even need to know he’s helping her. He owes her, anyway. For the better part of a year now, she’s done the old Russian’s garbage disposal.

  Dany races down the alley, legs pumping, lungs burning. She needs to get Mac out of the city before her baby sister goes the way of Liz and Jasper. She runs hard, as hard as she can, but the guard – running at a calm lope – is easily keeping pace.

  That’s when the first cramp hits.

  Dany tries to pinch it away.

  She tells herself it is nothing, but a bony finger is digging its way into her side with each step she takes. She can’t afford to feel it. Not now. But the pain – like the thought of Liz ­Greene and, a half a breath after, Jasper – gets to her. The pictures bring to mind other pictures. Mac, for one. Aunt Norah, for another. The images hit her like successive blows.

  Her aunt is in the worst place of all. Where the outbreak started.

  If she doesn’t get to her aunt, the virus will. Inevitably, more and more people who are infected with the new strain of the ­virus – perhaps even Liz herself – will be sent to the hospice.

  Her aunt will die.

  Dany can hear the guard’s approaching footsteps and knows that he is getting close. She feels a hit of fear and adrenaline, and forces herself to pick up the pace in spite of the pain, holding her side as she runs.

  The guard, unfortunately, is in decent physical shape. Better than Dany. Her bad luck, he is probably a runner. He gallops easily along, not seeming to tire. His legs are longer, and he is better fed. When she glances back, she sees an eerie smile on his face.

  Because the guard is enjoying this.

  Dany is already pushing her limits. She’s been malnourished for months. As for reserves, they’re what she’s been living on. Running faster isn’t the answer.

  She has to run smarter.

  Dany takes in the possibilities. There are a lot of RVs and converted vans in her neighbourhood, the people who live in them, one step from homeless. Dany puts an RV between her and the guard, cutting across a lawn. The RV blocks her from sight as she dodges into the space between two apartment buildings. A slim passage lets out the next street over. Before he catches sight of her, she slips over a residential fence, crosses a yard and, clambering through a hole in the cedar hedge, lets herself into another alley. In the distance, she hears the silent warning.

  In one instant, there is the distant low drone of a muffler, and in the next, it is gone.

  The cop is close. A block or two. Stopped by the school? She isn’t sure, but it’s bad luck. Now, at any moment, that cop might come creeping. He might even call for backup.

  And Dany is running on empty.

  Her lungs burn and her side feels like she’s being stabbed with a screwdriver. She doesn’t have the stores for this kind of physical work. Doesn’t eat enough to run, not for long. Her legs are seizing up, and her knees are all wobbly. Still, with all the twists and turns she’s taken, she’s passed out of the guard’s sight for the moment.

  Dany glances around.

  One hundred metres to the west, the long alley empties out on a busy six-lane road, the western limit of her ’hood. That strip is a desert, as far as she is concerned. Running along the six-lane, they’ll spot her from a mile off.

  To her immediate left, there is a small recessed parking lot and though the front is open, the back is set under a building. It is dark, cavelike and somehow looks inhabited – though no one looks to be there just now.

  A dead end.

  A bad idea. No, a terrible idea.

  Then the guard comes into view, his back to her. There, at the top of the street, and Dany is out of steam. There is no more run in her. There is a butcher’s knife planted in her side and her lungs are on fire. Before he sees her, she dodges into the underground.

  And there, Dany is trapped.

  | Chapter 0 = X + 14

  Dany steps between the dumpster and the compost bins, eyes darting between nooks.

  Tucked between the dumpster and the wall, there is an old foam mattress soaked in urine. And worse, much worse, down its middle is a brown slick that one sniff tells her can only be human feces. The mould-mottled and shit-streaked thing is horrific. Disgusting. There is no way she is going near that foul thing. Nobody in their right mind would.

  Dany shakes her head, following her own logic through to its conclusion.

  She burrows into the mattress fold, forcing her small frame into the compressed space. The whole of it is wet and foul. On the inside, the thing stinks worse than a public toilet. She chokes on the smell of rotting meat and stale sweat and the musk of dog urine and worse, the smell of human shit. She tries to hold her breath – but it’s too hard. Her lungs are desperate for oxygen after the run. The smell is intense in such a small space, stifling, stomach turning. Every breath fills her mouth with water and bile. If she doesn’t get out soon, the retching will give her away.

  A deep long-ago memory resurfaces. The memory is very old, because they shut down public swimming pools eons ago. But yes, she finds that nameless muscle that lets her plug the passage to her nose. And that helps, a little.

  The footsteps approach.

  Her heart is pounding so loud she is sure the sound will give her away. She hears the rent-a-cop’s heavy boots. His steps slow and then stop. The guard backs up, and Dany imagines him looking first this way, then that.

  Those heavy boots clomp her way, the sound growing steadily louder.
She closes her eyes and holds her breath.

  The guard pauses.

  “You’re not a bad runner, girl,” he says. “I’ll give you that. But why don’t you come on out now? Make it easier on both of us.”

  Dany pats her front pocket. There, she feels the reassuring shape of a small canister of pepper spray. Her aunt attached the tiny cylinder to her key ring months ago. But she can’t risk the jangle of keys, can’t pull it out, not now. Not yet.

  “You know you’re done. I’ll pull you out of there, so why not save yourself the pain. If you make me get my hands dirty, I’ll be pissed.”

  But in such a small space, the pepper spray will be a mistake. She’ll blind herself as well as him.

  “All right, then,” he says. “We’ll do this the hard way.”

  Dany hears the first of the compost bins go down, flipped onto its side, no doubt spilling out a new host of horrors.

  “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” sings the guard.

  The second bin goes over, spilling out rotten veg and eggshells and, worse, a big rat that scurries past her nook.

  “Catch a girly by the toe.”

  Dany’s hand shifts. She reaches into her back pocket, drawing out Eva’s manicure scissors. If that guard doesn’t shut up – Dany pauses, glancing at the miniscule scissors – she’ll what? Give him a pedicure? She shoves the tiny scissors back in her pocket, disgusted. A heavy creak comes next – the metal lid of the dumpster. In the silence of a held breath, she hears the guard poking around.

  “I can smell you, girl,” he says. “I know you’re close.”

  Dany’s heart is pounding against her rib cage. She holds her breath, but her lungs burn and a tiny gasp escapes her mouth.

  The guard falls silent.

  Dany hears it, too. A distant rattling. The heavy metal lid of the dumpster slams to a close, and the guard gives up the rhyme scheme.

  “Little bitch,” he mutters. And he takes off, footsteps jogging the other way. Chasing a sound in the distance. The rattle of a shopping cart.