“They can’t stop everything,” her dad said. “He’d hate us if he knew we were talking about him like this.”
She didn’t want to get sidetracked with the conversation topics that her father was bringing up. There was something else at the core of his uneasiness, and Becca wanted to know what it was.
“How was work?” she said.
“Fine,” he said in a face that was not fine. “They rejected animal trials.”
Robbie had been hoping to get to the animal trials by the end of the week, at the latest. Who the hell would care about a few mice having nanite clusters injected into them? People fed mice to African bullfrogs or snakes for fun, so who the hell would really care about scientific trials on them?
“But they rejected it,” Robbie McCarthy said, his words sounding deflated.
“Why?”
“Said I needed more research, more time to think things through . . . time.”
He laughed at that, watching his hand shake beneath him. “Funny for them to talk about time, as though I have a lot of it left. And your mother . . ..”
Becca walked over and put her hand on his shoulder.
“She doesn’t have a lot of time,” Robbie said, his words coming out in chokes.
Her mother had been ill a lot of the last couple of years, and Becca had gotten used to it. She didn’t want to be, but she was all the same. Life didn’t exactly ask for your permission.
“Oh God, what am I saying?” Robbie said. He dropped the cigarette. “You don’t need to worry about any of that. Go back upstairs and teach Kent algebra.”
A car drove onto their gravel driveway.
“They’re back,” Robbie said.
But only one car door slammed shut, and it was much too loud to be any of Matt’s gang. Becca’s heart started to flutter in her chest.
“Why is he here now?” Robbie said, walking past her and back into the house. Becca didn’t follow. Nigel was never happy whenever he came unannounced. And besides, seeing Becca was always something that could drive Nigel up a wall. So she walked in, turned the corner, and went up the stairs. She got to the top and waited. Kent was waiting for her, but whenever Nigel came, Becca liked to overhear.
****
“Where is he?” Nigel said, walking into the house. Back before the Parkinson’s, her dad would have been able to put a hand up and stop the man from entering. Not anymore, though, and Becca hated it as much as she was sure her father did as well.
Becca heard the man’s loud footsteps as he walked into the living room.
“He’s at the fair?” Robbie said.
“By himself!” Nigel said.
“No, he’s with his friends.”
“Friends, right,” Nigel said. “I would never let Matt hang out with them. They probably left him in the car the entire time . . . do I smell cigarette smoke?”
Robbie stayed silent.
“Jesus Christ, Robbie,” Nigel said. “Your wife’s got cancer, and you’re off smoking. Probably smoking right in front of her, aren’t you? Probably wishing that—”
Becca rolled her eyes. Nigel had a habit of talking like this whenever he came over. She hoped that Matt and his friends wouldn’t get home until after Nigel left. Much easier to diffuse a situation when there weren’t bombs everywhere.
I’m running out of time. Her father had said, and Becca believed him.
You don’t need any more time, she thought. She wanted to see her mom but going down there and seeing her, would set Nigel into a whole fit of rage. While it wouldn’t be justified, it would still be hurtful, and Becca didn’t feel like dealing with that at the moment.
Her mother was sitting/creeping in a hospital bed in their living room. The woman had stage four cancer of the throat and brain. She could no longer speak, but Becca hoped dearly that the woman could still think.
There had been a time before all of this, before the sickness and the fighting. It was a good time, and she wished she could go back to it.
But the future was ahead of them, and the past was weighing them down at the moment.
Her father wouldn’t react well to Carol’s secret. Not well, not well at all, but that would only be natural. He most likely wouldn’t believe her. How could he?
Who would want to believe that their wife wants to die?
Or rather wanted to die, much earlier, before cancer had taken away her ability to speak coherently. Becca had no idea what her mother was thinking about at the moment, and she almost didn’t want to.
Deep down, both Robbie and Nigel knew that Carol was a lost cause, no matter what miracle cure Robbie was trying to come up with. Even without animal testing, it wouldn’t work. Becca didn’t understand the science of it, and she didn’t want to. She knew that she didn’t want those things to move around in her mother’s body.
Becca hadn’t accepted that for certain until her mother told her what she wanted.
“Not now, of course,” her mother had said, the machines around her buzzing. It had been almost a year before this night. Robbie was off somewhere else at the time, one of the few times that Becca was actually alone with her mother for a stretch of time. Matt had been off with his friends.
Becca felt the words she wanted to say get caught in her throat and choke her slightly. Was she hallucinating? Did she have a tumor in her brain like her mother, and this was how it was going to manifest itself, through hallucinations of her mother telling her that she wanted to die?
That had been a long time ago, and Carol McCarthy said almost nothing anymore, and whenever she did, her words were slurred. Becca heard her mother talking slowly now, but her words most likely didn’t mean anything. She was trying to defend Robbie, but Becca didn’t know that for sure.
Instead, Becca turned away from the stairs and headed back to her room.
Kent was bent over, looking at his paper. The problem looked as if it was solved correctly, but Becca couldn’t muster an ounce of care for it at all.
“Hey,” Kent said.
Becca turned to him, seeming to not even realize that there was someone else besides her.
“I’m sorry that all of this happened to you,” he said. He looked back down at his Regent’s prep book and continued drawing. Downstairs, the men were yelling at one another again.
“Yeah,” Becca said, “me too.”
****
Chapter Seven
Of all of the NaUs, Danni is an interesting one. The girl was gifted with incredible strength. She can lift cars and topple mountains if she wished. However, there is a rage at the center of all of it. A wave of anger I can sense under the surface. The anger was there before and now has only intensified into someone dangerous.
-Robbie’s Journal
“You alright, Matt?” Peter said.
Danni swerved a little in the road, trying to avoid a rabbit. All four of them were jam-packed in Danni’s car, all still smelling like the Washington County Fair.
“I’m fine guys, really,” Matt said, looking out the window. “We didn’t have to leave.”
A look from Jolie in the rearview mirror said to Danni that, yes, they needed to leave.
“It’s alright, Matt,” Peter said. “It was getting late anyway. We wanted to avoid the traffic.”
Danni already knew Matt’s response, and it made her roll her eyes slightly in advance.
“You guys didn’t need to take a car,” Matt said. “I could have come along fine. It’s only a few miles.”
Matt was wearing his undershirt. His sweatshirt had been covered with red drool that started to turn brown and crystalize to the cotton exterior. Jolie took it off of him before his inner shirt could get as ruined as the exterior one.
“It was a small attack,” Matt said. “I got excited. That’s all.”
The car was silent; the only sound came from the air being whipped into the car as they drove. The McCarthy’s lived on the edge of town, if one were to even call Greendale a town. They had moved into an old barn house that Dan
ni thought might have been owned by Matt’s mother and father a long time ago. Back then, Nigel hadn’t been so much of a hard-ass. Back then, they might have been happy.
Not anymore.
Danni pulled up to the house and saw two cars in the driveway. Matt saw them too.
“No, please,” Matt said, his voice getting higher in pitch. “Please don’t take me home.”
Danni pursed her lips. He didn’t need to look into the back of the car to feel Jolie’s eyes on the back of her head.
“You need to go home,” Danni said, pulling up to the house.
“He’s here,” Matt said. “I can’t see him like this . . . please no, please no.”
Nigel being here only made things worse. Matt’s old man was a prick. Seeing his father right now would be the last thing that Matt would want. The plan was to take Matt home and let Doctor Rob see what was up with him. No hospitals or anything else. Besides, these sorts of events were becoming more common than anyone involved in them would prefer them to be. For all Danni knew, Matt might have inherited more aspects of his biology from his mother then the same eye color.
The steering wheel vibrated under her hands as Danni looked up at the house. It was a big house, at least by Greendale standards, and perhaps it had been pretty once. She looked back in the rearview mirror at Matt.
He was leaning up against the window. His skin was pale and seemed to hug his bones.
“I’m sorry,” Danni said, “but you have to go home.”
“Can’t you at least wait until he leaves?” Matt said. “He’s probably drunk and won’t be here long.”
He started coughing again. A few splatters of blood landed on the back of Danni’s neck.
“No, you’re going home,” she said, pulling ahead. As much as she wanted to bring Matt to Pete’s house and the three of them could have an impromptu sleepover (anytime Danni could sleepover with Pete was a good night, at least in her opinion) she couldn’t risk Matt’s safety. If he was sick then, putting him through this ordeal would be worse for him then a mental beating from his father.
Besides, it’s not like Nigel could hit him with the belt anymore. The man was harsh, but he wasn’t ruthless, and if there was one good thing about being in a wheelchair, it was that your alcoholic father might hesitate before hitting you.
She pulled into the driveway and turned the car off.
Jolie was out of the car and heading to the back. Pete started to take his seatbelt off, but Danni stopped him. He shook his head. Jolie opened Matt’s side of the door and helped the boy into his wheelchair.
“Have a good night, Matt,” Danni said. Pete moved to get out again, and Danni likewise stopped him again.
Nigel was known for having pretty bad beliefs when it came to people like Danni and Peter, and seeing the two of them with his son, given how bad his son currently looked, wouldn’t help any of the people involved. Peter let go of Danni’s hand and opened the door.
“I need some air,” he said. Danni undid her seatbelt and followed suit.
The air outside was humid and filled with the sounds of chirpers and cicadas. Danni thought she heard a fisher cat in the distance, screaming its high yell for all to hear. The fisher wouldn’t get close, though, unless it was full of rabies. Danni and her older brothers used to hunt the creatures. They were easy enough to find if someone knew where to look.
“I hate those things,” Peter said. He took out a cigarette and lit it.
Pete wasn’t like any of the other kids in Greendale, and the boy knew it. His mother was a librarian up in Argyle, and his father was an assistant professor at Adirondack Community College, the Wilton branch. He was smart, compassionate, and above all else, not the sort of kid you might see in a town like Greendale. His parents were both doctorate holders, while Danni’s own had been nothing more than farmers. Still, though, the boy had made the stupid decision to smoke.
“Those things are going to kill you,” Danni said.
Pete smiled. His white teeth that would turn yellow if he kept smoking shined in the pale moonlight.
“If anything, I think you’re going to kill me.”
“That so?” Danni said. She walked around the car and stood next to Peter. Danni thought about grabbing Pete’s cigarette, and either throwing it into the woods or taking a whiff of it herself. He had never smoked in his life, but she knew it was a destination he would eventually reach. Everyone in Greendale smoked, and the only ones who didn’t had either lung cancer or they chewed their tobacco. Danni’s own grandmother had died of cancer. Even after having both breasts removed and part of her liver, the woman couldn’t quit. She didn’t like it when Danni pestered her about it. When you’re on death’s door and so mangled like that, well, who was Danni to deny the woman her pleasure?
“What’s going to happen to him?” Peter said, looking straight out into the woods in front of them.
Peter always liked to play the hero, always wanting to be the good guy, the kind of guy who would build a campfire and have everyone make s’mores and talk about their feelings. It was charming, but also infuriating. Matt wasn’t going to get better by people feeling sorry for him. If anything, it would do the reverse of what people wanted, and then they would pat themselves on the back while the person they “helped” was either in the same shape or worse for wear then before.
“He’ll be fine,” Danni said, hoping her voice sounded a tad bit more assertive then she felt.
A truck drove by. Danni didn’t recognize who it was, but it was from out of the county. Most of the people driving through Greendale were driving through.
Like Peter.
She wanted to ask him then. How could anyone want to ask that, to have the future crystallized and outlined before them, all of it already cased in stone?
Peter seemed to read Danni’s mind, though. He took his cigarette and threw it on the ground. Then he turned and looked at Danni, his gray eyes bright in the night.
“Last year,” he said.
High school seemed to fly right by, and it was only yesterday that the two of them started ninth grade together. Of course, back then, they had been friends, and most of the people at school still thought of them as such. They had been younger then, with hopes and dreams that seemed as boundless and free as anything that had ever existed.
But that time was coming to a close.
After this year, everything was going to change. High school was easy in retrospect compared to what came after. Danni wished it were darker out, that a cloud could cover Peter’s face when the two of them talked. Maybe then the conversation wouldn’t be real.
“You’re leaving,” Danni said.
“Greendale isn’t my town,” Peter said. “It never was.”
“Then what does that make me?” she said.
Something flashed across Peter’s face, and Danni immediately had thought to hit him right then and there. It wasn’t fair! None of it was fair. Who the hell did he think he was? Just because his parents weren’t farmers didn’t mean that he could come into someone’s life and then leave them when the time became opportunistic!
“Hey, lovebirds.”
Danni turned.
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” she said.
Becca walked over to them. She must’ve come out of her fire escape.
Her conversation with Peter could go on hold. Hell, it might be able to go on hold for the whole senior year, and who knew how much longer after. Danni had a year to convince the boy to stay in Greendale, and Peter had a year to convince her to leave.
“How was he tonight?” she said.
It was never good to lie, in Danni’s mind, at least.
“He was fine,” Peter said.
Danni rolled her eyes.
“He had an attack,” Danni said. “I’m sure you’ll hear about it at church this weekend.”
Becca had expected as much. Danni could feel Peter’s eyes in the back of her head, but it didn’t bother her. If she couldn’t see him, then was he
really mad? And for what? Telling the truth?
“How’s your mother?” Danni said, knowing full well that Peter was freaking out behind her.
“The same,” Becca said, in the nonchalant way that only people who have their own people dying near them could speak. “My dad’s getting antsy, though.”
Anything would have been a step up from Nigel.
But Dr. McCarthy seemed to have been bitten by the same bug of compassion that had gone up and infected Peter. Sure, Robbie had a bit more vested interest in wanting to save people, considering who his wife and his wife’s son were. But it was all that same bird of the same feather. Danni felt bad for all parties involved, but there wasn’t any way for her to make it better, so she kept quiet on the issues.
Peter didn’t.
“Well, I’m sure he’ll come up with something,” Peter said. “He seems like a resourceful guy.”
“Were you guys smoking?” she asked.
“Nope,” Danni said. “And even if we were, we wouldn’t give you any. You’re too young for that.”
She was too young for a lot of this.
“Fine,” she said. “How was the fair, at least?”
“Same as it is every year,” Peter said.
“So it was great,” Danni said, not stealing a glance behind her.
A few more fisher cats yelled out in the night.
“They get close to the house,” Peter said.
“They won’t do anything, though,” Becca said. “They just watch.”
Animals were fine if they didn’t feel threatened, didn’t feel desperate. It was only then that a cute little animal in a Disney movie might go off and end up doing something malicious.
“Oh, before we forget,” Pete said.
Pete opened the back of the car and brought out the giant green lizard that Danni had bought.
“Your brother won this,” Peter said, “and I think . . ..”
“We can give it to him another time,” Danni said. “The last thing I’m sure Becca here wants to do is walk into the house with that.”
There was yelling coming from inside the house. The hair on the back of Danni’s neck stood up, and her heart started to beat faster. Becca was already running back up to the house. Peter rushed past Danni, who didn’t bother to stop him. There was something off about the yelling, something unnatural. Danni thought about staying by the car, standing alone in the darkness amidst the trees, the chirpers, and the fishers watching her from afar.
The Keeper Page 6
