Quaranteen: The Loners

by Lex Thomas

  David lifted himself to his feet. He saw Hilary bolt from the Pretty Ones and into the mix. Sam was one thing, but Hilary never left the sidelines during a drop. David tracked her path to Lucy, who was hefting food toward the exit with Belinda.

  Hilary grabbed Lucy by the hair and flung her to the ground. David pushed off to stop her, but Will was already ahead of him. David ran up and kept pace with Will. He was afraid of what Will might do to Hilary.

  “I got this,” David said, putting his hand out to block Will.

  “Focus on the food.”

  “Get off me,” Will shoved back. “I’m serious.” David stumbled, and Will took the lead. Ahead of them, Lucy flailed underneath Hilary, who had both hands in Lucy’s hair, pulling her around like a dog by the ears. Will got to Lucy first and grabbed hold of her. David ran to Hilary and clutched her by the waist. David yanked Hilary off of Lucy and spun her away. He held her firmly in his hands. It was the first time he’d touched her since the night she’d broken up with him. He didn’t want to let go.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at her. Her eyes were still savage from the fight, but David’s voice seemed to tame her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, and jerked free of him.

  When David reached out to take her hand, a rock hit him in the forehead. He didn’t lose consciousness, but he clutched his eyes shut and bent in pain. When he opened them again, Will was already hurrying Lucy off the quad. All around, rocks, bricks, pencil sharpeners, staplers, and other small objects rained down from above.

  David looked up to see white-haired kids throwing those objects out of second- and third-floor windows. Their target was a large group of Varsity guys who were dragging a huge unbroken pallet of food toward the gym. The Varsity guys were pelted over and over, bricks ricocheting off their helmets. The ones without helmets bailed until there weren’t enough of them to haul the pallet. Ritchie was on their trail and moved swiftly with a pack of white-hairs to reverse the pallet’s path. The supplies had all been scooped up, and the fights were dying down.

  “Scraps!” David called out, his hands raised victoriously in the air. “Let’s roll!”

  As David turned toward the southern exit, he saw Sam tromping toward him, his heavy steel chain dangling from his hand. David knelt down to pick up a bat that had been lost by a Varsity. He took a wide stance and dug in.

  Sam was closing in fast. Scraps, eager to prove themselves to David, stepped into Sam’s path to stop him. Each one received a vicious slap of chain for their trouble. But they still piled in.

  Five feet from David, Sam was consumed by vengeful Scraps.

  They hated Sam. They fought each other for the privilege of hitting him. They kicked his face, they pounded his ribs, they tore at his skin. They were going to kill him. David caught glimpses of Sam’s face through the writhing heap. Sam was in agony. He met David’s gaze. Sam was scared. Truly, honestly scared.

  “Get off him!” David shouted.

  No one listened.

  “I said stop!”

  The mob backed off, leaving Sam on his back, bloody and limp. David stood over him. Seeing the tyrant who had tormented him for a year lying broken on the ground in front of him was better than any trophy he could ever win. David walked away. Varsity members swooped in fast and carried Sam off.

  David led his gang off the quad. No one blocked their path.

  He saw awestruck grins and nods of begrudging respect from the other gangs. If it was a show they were looking for, David had delivered. David’s gang regrouped near the foyer. The initial nine were now nearly a hundred, their faces blood-streaked and smiling. Each one had their arms full with food.

  “Let’s go eat,” David said.

  David walked toward the West Wing with an army in his wake.

  15

  Three food drops had passed. David

  stood in front of a metal door, with twenty-two of his gang members behind him. They all wore makeshift armor and carried weapons. They called themselves the Loners now. Ritchie and Gonzalo flanked David. David held a machete he’d made by hammering a radiator cover flat. The hallway had no func-tional ventilation, so the air had a dead, dusty quality that made David feel like he was inhaling someone else’s exhale.

  David pounded on the wide metal door with three solid knocks, then dragged the tip of his machete across the width of the door. The Loners behind him clutched their weapons tight and kept their eyes on the hallway behind.

  The door opened a crack, still fastened shut by a heavy chain on the inside. Leonard looked out.

  “Welcome back,” Leonard said, but the rest was too quiet to hear. He still lost heart midway through sentences, but Leonard was coming out of his shell bit by bit, now that he worked the door.

  Leonard pulled the door open. The twenty-two Loners followed David into their home, a three-story stairwell they had dubbed the Stairs.

  David hung his machete up in the armory, a triangular alcove under the bottom flight of stairs. The others did the same, adding their armor and weapons to the piles.

  With the door locked behind them, David felt safe. It was a feeling he was still getting used to. He took to the first flight of stairs. About fifteen of the now ninety-four Loners were hanging on those steps, talking quietly and playing games.

  Being in a gang was an adjustment for all of them, and they still had their Scrap instincts. They flinched at any sudden noise; they still ate the bare minimum of their food and saved the rest, unsure whether this new, steady flow of nourishment could last. They were still learning to trust each other, but they seemed to trust David, and that was a start. Each of the fifteen lit up as David walked by. The girls reached out and touched him with affection. He smiled.

  David heard a rumbling of anticipation up the stairs.

  People knew he was coming, and he felt like a celebrity. He reached the first landing of the staircase. It was packed with

  white-headed Loners eating dinner. They stood, clustered onto the twenty-by-thirteen-foot space that served as the gang’s food storage and kitchen. More sat on the next flight of stairs up, chatting and chowing. Nelson doled out rations of canned mandarin oranges and cold hot dogs. David could already taste the mouthwatering combination of salt and the syrup on his tongue. Nelson waved to him. He was the ideal choice to put in charge of splitting up the food equally, mainly because he never heard anyone’s complaints.

  “Everybody, huddle up!” David said as he stepped onto the landing. They stopped eating and looked to him. He couldn’t help but love that feeling, the respect they showed him, the gratitude.

  “So, we just got back from a meeting with the Sluts. I got some pretty good news. As of today, if any Loner runs into trouble on the east side of school, you can go to the cafeteria, and the Sluts will take you in until backup arrives.” The Loners cheered through mouths clogged with food.

  “But I’m talking about serious, end-of-the-world stuff here, guys. Please don’t go knocking on their door just because you want to use their bathroom, okay?”

  There was a smattering of laughter. He’d caught them at the right time. Food always put people in a good mood.

  “I don’t know,” Ritchie said. “They do keep those bathrooms spotless.”

  David grinned. He slapped Ritchie on the shoulder.

  “This guy took a cast iron dump in there. Almost ruined the whole deal.”

  The crowd broke out in real laughter this time. David always ragged on Ritchie in his speeches. It was becoming a popular routine.

  “Seriously, Ritchie, we eat the same food. How does your ass smell like that?”

  More laughs. Ritchie hung his head, playing along as usual.

  As David scanned the jubilant faces of his gang, their laughter filled him with purpose. He wanted to do right by them.

  Everything that happened before was worth it for this feeling. He punched Ritchie playfully on the arm. Having Ritchie and Gonzalo around was great. He’d forgotten what it was l
ike to have solid people with him that he could count on.

  They knew what it meant to be part of a team.

  Will walked down the stairs, through the crowd, shirtless.

  David’s smile faded. Will paid no attention to David, didn’t even look at him. He maneuvered through the crowd of attentive listeners, grabbed his share of dinner, then tromped back up the stairs. David forced a smile for his audience.

  “Anyway, the point is, we’ve got friends on that side of school now, and we’re gonna do the same for any of Violent’s girls who come to us for help. Sound good?” They cheered in response.

  “Solid. Have a great dinner, everybody,” David said, and he

  made his way to the second flight, through back pats and high fives. He took his tin-can dinner from Nelson and headed up.

  He had one thing on his mind: crashing. Two more flights and he could fall face-first onto the sofa cushions in the corner of his room and check out completely. It’d been a long day.

  Running the Loners had been a privilege so far, but it left him exhausted.

  “David?”

  David turned to see Dorothy. Her greasy,white hair hung to one side, her shirt was wrinkled, and she had ink stains on her fingers.

  “Oh, hey, what’s up?” David said.

  She held out her hand to reveal a perfect paper square with a tiny portrait on it. She placed it in David’s hand.

  “It’s you,” she said.

  “Hey . . . cool. I love it. Thank you.”

  She had been giving him tiny homemade gifts every couple days. He was starting to feel she did it out of guilt.

  “Listen, Dorothy, I just want you to know that no matter what went down with the drop, it’s in the past. You’re a Loner now—”

  A look of horror twisted Dorothy’s face and had gotten worse with each word David said. She turned and bolted down the stairs.

  “Okay,” David said.

  He studied the miniature portrait. The lines were light and

  wobbly. The look on his face was stern, and he stared off into the distance. What was he supposed to do with these things?

  He tucked it in his jeans pocket and rounded the banister to the second-floor landing, the lounge.

  Ten class chairs sat in an imperfect semicircle; piles of library books on loan from the Nerds were scattered around the room. Mort sat on one of the piles, reading a paperback, probably staining the pages with sweaty fingers. Belinda was checking her hair growth in the gang’s only mirror, mounted on the wall. There were a dozen Loners crowded together in the corner watching one cell phone screen. They leaned forward in a huddle to hear the audio from its little speaker. It was one of three phones in the whole gang. By now, it was hard not to know every song and every video on those three phones by heart, but they listened anyway.

  Will came bounding down the stairs into the lounge.

  “Boom,” Will said. He held out a double-wide power strip with four phone chargers plugged into it, their cords draping off like dead snakes.

  “How sweet is this?” Will said.

  The dozen cell phone watchers nodded and ooh’d.

  “Where’d you get those?” David asked.

  Will’s face grayed at the sight of David.

  “Don’t you worry about it, boss. All you need to know is they’re ours now,” Will said.

  Boss. The word dripped with sarcasm. He’d given Will

  plenty of space since the gang formed; he wanted things to cool down between them. He thought a little time apart and the camaraderie of a gang would dull Will’s anger. No such luck.

  “Four chargers. Kinda seems like overkill, doesn’t it?” David said.

  “Yeah, now. But if we wanna be legit, we’re gonna need a phone for every Loner.”

  David saw the faces of all the kids in the huddle bloom with hope.

  “C’mere,” David said to Will with a hook of his finger. Will followed him to the barricaded entrance to the second floor.

  David cleared his throat and dug in with a hard whisper.

  “We’re barely getting by as it is, don’t put pipe dreams into people’s heads about personal phones.”

  “We’re all cooped up in this staircase with nothing to do. We need somethin’. Just food and a place to sleep isn’t enough.”

  “So, hang out. Tell stories. Sing your camping songs, I don’t know. But don’t say ‘phones for everybody.’ You say it, and then I gotta deliver. You get that? You’re not the one who has to answer for it. They’re all looking at me.”

  “Yeah, and you just hate that, don’t you?” Will was always going to act like a little shit to him, no matter what David provided for him.

  “Did you steal them?” David asked.

  “What, like that’s a sin? Don’t pull the whole golden boy 1

  thing with me, man. I know you.”

  Will was baiting him. He wanted David to flip out in front of everybody.

  “No phones,” David barked, loud enough that the whole landing heard him. They groaned. He wasn’t going to deal with this now. He left Will by the door and charged up the next flight. Only one more set of stairs after that, and he’d be home.

  He high-stepped it across made and unmade beds on the next landing. This was where most of the gang slept. It was first come, first served for floor space, the rest had to take a stair. The stairs were only a foot and a quarter wide and weren’t comfortable to sleep on, but you could fit.

  On the last flight up, a lot of Loners were working hard.

  They stacked wooden planks, salvaged from food-drop pallets, onto each stair until it was flush with the stair above. It effectively doubled the width of each stair. Eventually, with enough planks, the whole gang could have a double-wide stair to sleep on. Lucy was on her hands and knees, helping place planks. He climbed the steps up to her.

  “Hi, David,” she said. Her voice gave him a surprising little rush.

  “Hey.”

  She stood and dusted off her hands, her brown eyes as big and hypnotizing as ever. The blonde was long gone from her hair now; it was a shining white. The tips of it stroked her

  soft freckled shoulders. She wore a new dress he’d never seen before. It was white, and somehow she’d kept it impossibly clean while doing this manual labor project.

  “Did, um . . . did Dorothy find you? She was looking for you,” Lucy said, stepping after him and letting her hand slide along the banister behind her.

  David pulled the hand-drawn portrait from his pocket.

  He’d given Lucy a glimpse of Dorothy’s other gifts in the past.

  Lucy covered her mouth with a little gasp, and her eyebrows parted sympathetically. “She loves you,” Lucy said.

  “Oh, God, don’t say that,” he said.

  “But it’s so sweet. I hope you’re keeping them safe.” David nodded, but he didn’t know what he’d done with the last couple pieces—the paper-clip medal and the index-card diorama.

  “I wish I could make things like that. I’m just not creative,” Lucy said.

  “That’s not true,” David said, pointing to the wooden bunks,.

  “You’re doing a great job here.”

  Lucy flitted her big eyes in that pretty-girl way that reminded David of Hilary.

  “David,” she said, “industrious is not the same as creative.” And then, when she said something like that, David remembered how little Lucy was like Hilary. That seemed like the kind of worldly wisdom a grandmother might’ve wielded.

  David had been learning a lot about Lucy over the past few

  weeks. She wasn’t just the delicate flower he’d thought she was when he saw her by the graduation booth.

  “Oh! So I figured it out!” Lucy said as she stretched her arm up the railing and behind David’s thigh.

  “What?”

  “What we were saying this morning . . . best slope in the Rockies? It’s Point Peak. Hands down.”

  In a gang of snowboarders, Lucy had discovered that she and David were t
he only skiers. David agreed, but he squinted his eyes and faked uncertainty. Her jaw dropped.

  “Oh, my God!” Lucy said. “I can’t believe you even have to think about it! I’m right. You know I’m right.”

  “Maybe.”

  Lucy punched David in the chest, her mouth still agape. He nearly fell backward.

  “Maybe?”

  David laughed, “Easy! I gotta weigh all the factors. Besides, a guy’s entitled to his opinion, isn’t he?”

  “Not when you’re wrong! David, even if there’s a double black diamond like it, nothing beats that view of the mountains. Nothing.” Then her eyes went wide, suddenly inspired.

  “That’s where I’m going to visit tonight.”

  “Visit?”

  “Yeah, right when I close my eyes to go to sleep, I pick a place or a memory, and I try to hold on to it as long as I can.” Lucy closed her eyes and moved up another step, getting

  close to David. “I walk through every part of it. I look at every little detail. Until I fall asleep.”

  She opened her eyes and breathed in. “It helps keep away the nightmares.”

  The air between them felt hot. David’s room was only few stairs away. He had the third-floor landing all to himself, closed off from everyone by a pair of heavy blanket curtains.

  Once he was behind those curtains, no one could see him. He could bring Lucy in there, and they would have total privacy to do whatever they wanted.

  Will’s laugh echoed up from the stairs below. It was sharp and had a malicious edge to it.

  “I should . . . ,” David said, pointing back toward his room.

  “Oh,” Lucy said, looking down. “Right.”

  David didn’t look away though. He knew Will had a thing for her. But she was the hottest girl in the gang, and she wanted to flirt with him. How much could it hurt? He’d saved her life.

  “I’ll see you on the slopes,” he said.

  “I’ll wear something hot,” Lucy said.