Then I opened the curtains. It was raining.
Surrounded by narrow beds of plants that sprouted crazily, there was a little square of grass outside; “the front lawn,” Simon called it. He mowed it, lugging the mower up the garden from the shed and through the house—dropping grass cuttings everywhere—for the two and a half seconds it took to cut the patch. Then he lugged the mower back through the house—dropping grass cuttings everywhere—and back down the garden to the shed. My mom said the front lawn wasn’t worth the trouble—the grass didn’t even grow properly, the way the shrubs muscled in on it—but Simon did it anyway.
If I felt anything about it, I felt that front lawn was Simon. The order in the chaos, something like that.
The front lawn, that small, tidy square of mown green, was muddy, torn up—clawed up, like an animal had been at it.
Mrs. Fitch was lying on it. She had her back to me. The box of tablets lay next to her.
It was raining hard. It was raining on Mrs. Fitch. Mrs. Fitch wasn’t moving. I watched. Mrs. Fitch didn’t seem to be breathing.
You know what? Even then I thought… I dunno, that she had stayed out in the rain too long or something? That she was old anyway, so she could have just had a heart attack. Died of hypothermia. Or had a stroke, like Grandpa Hollis.
I drew the curtains shut. I’d never seen a dead body before, and I didn’t ever want to see another one. It was horrible, just horrible…and the curtains weren’t enough. I shut ten thousand doors in my head and even then I couldn’t keep it out. I had no words to say to myself to make it OK; instead, it was my body that started to shout. I’m thirsty! I’m thirsty, and I’m hungry, and I feel really grubby and…I am so not going to poop in a bucket. I want breakfast. I want a shower. I want my cell phone. I want OUT.
Before I said anything, I turned the handle of the door because you just would, wouldn’t you? The door opened.
“Simon?” I called softly. You see, the house was quiet, and I didn’t want to wake Henry. Come to think about it, the world was quiet. I could hear a few stupid alarms still, but no sirens, no car horns, no shouts—or shouts that could have been screams. That was all I could hear: a few stupid alarms. And the rain.
I listened hard.
“Simon?” I whispered.
Henry had to be asleep. I peeked my head around the door. The door to the living room was open. The TV was still on, sound down. You could see the reflection of it in the glass of all the family photos on the windowsill—Grandma Hollis, smiling, TV flickers on her face.
Maybe Simon was crashed out in front of the TV?
“Simon?! ” I hissed.
I tiptoed a few steps down the hall, tiptoed to not to wake Henry. I knew I wasn’t sick like killer-rain sick, so I kind of felt OK about it. Only, actually, I wasn’t that sure that I wasn’t killer-rain sick. I wasn’t all covered in blood and groaning, but I knew how much I definitely didn’t feel right. I felt really, really thirsty, and my head hurt. I was hungry too, but I felt sick at the same time—and a little dizzy. Not good…but I couldn’t be sick that way. Surely? Could I be? No. Maybe. No.
The maybe made me scared.
“Simon?” I whisper-called.
Yeah. My head felt really swimmy and swirly.
I tiptoed further down the hall. I stood at the bottom of the stairs; I listened.
It was so, so, so quiet.
I peeped round the corner. There was no one in the living room, but for a moment the TV caught me there because I saw the pictures for the words I’d heard the night before. Now there were no words, but because I had heard them already, I thought I knew what they would be. I thought I knew what they’d be saying. The pictures… These, I had not expected. Not even because of what they showed, but because, well, it just wasn’t how they do stuff on TV, not even when something really serious is happening and they’re probably all freaked out. It was amateur. You know what it reminded me of? When me, Lee, Ronnie, and Molly had done our media studies project together: a news report on a zombie outbreak. We should have given it to Zak to edit, but Ronnie insisted. The costumes, the makeup, the location—the woods at Zak’s place—were awesome. The edit was crap.
(For your information: We got a B. Zak and Saskia teamed up with some of the others and got an A+ for a spoof washing-detergent ad. Zak was supposed to be the producer, but somehow Saskia seemed to end up doing most of that and most of everything else (voiceover; lead role glamorous housewife; bespectacled-but-hot washing-detergent scientist), but, still, can you believe it? Wasn’t the whole zombie thing, even with a edit, a whole lot more creative? Ronnie said they didn’t care about that, and that’s pretty much what the teacher said too—but I ask you, which project turned out to be more relevant, huh? How to survive a disaster situation versus how detergent gets sold? I’m regrading us to an A+.)
Anyway, the TV. They were cutting in and out of a studio, where a woman behind a desk was talking to two men on screens behind her; it said they were in Manchester and Edinburgh. In between, they cut to stuff they’d filmed earlier—a hospital; a corridor filled with people, bloody, writhing, groaning. You didn’t have to hear it to know, just like Caspar. Back to Studio Woman. Then shots of lines of cars. Back to Manchester Man. Then a clip of a politician. OK, I’m not all that up on political stuff, but it could have been the prime minister; it was some man in a suit, trying to look like he really, really meant what he was saying and totally looking like he didn’t. Then a clip of the American president—him I knew—doing the same thing. Then back to the studio.
And then a graphics thing—a lousy graphics thing—of the world. As it rotated, weird red raindrops splopped onto countries until it went back to the Europe part—splops already in place—and zoomed in on Britain. Splop, splop, splop. The whole of the southwest got covered in one big, red tear-shaped splop.
Underneath, a stream of words said nothing much different from what I had heard the night before: STATE OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY DECLARED…PUBLIC ADVISED TO REMAIN INDOORS…DO NOT CALL 911…NO TREATMENT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE…
You know how normally when they do that ticker-tape stream of headlines along the bottom of the screen, they move from one subject to another? They didn’t. Same subject, it just kept coming and coming, on and on…
…SCIENTISTS CLAIM BACTERIUM IN RAIN IS CAUSE…SYMPTOMS INCLUDE BLEEDING, SEVERE PAIN, NAUSEA…
And then they showed it: the thing. They put up this picture of this microscopic thing. This thing that looked so pretty: a little round sun with these wiggly rays—a little blob of a thing with squirming tentacles.
I had felt sick before; I felt even sicker now. I didn’t want to look at it. I wanted a cup of tea.
I went into the kitchen.
The house was so quiet I didn’t expect anyone to be there. Simon was at the table. Except for the stove and the table, every surface in that kitchen—and some of the floor—was covered with some kind of container, all of them filled with water. That was weird, but I didn’t want to go there. I saw; I did not want to discuss.
When I walked in, he lifted his head up. His face…it was not normal. It was not stiff or shaky either. It looked all collapsed.
“Hey,” he said really quietly.
He looked at me. Whoa! That look! What was that?!
It was too weird and intense—and I guess it was for him too, because he went back to his list. Yes, he was writing a list. That would have been a bad sign on any normal day—plus he’d never, ever said “hey” to me in his life, so that was pretty weird as well. But from the way he looked, you could tell he must have been up all night, so his brain was probably completely scrambled. That’s what I decided to think; Simon had been up all night (with Henry!), so I’d better be careful because, as well as the list, the laptop was on the table. If I could just get him to let me use it, just for a second…
“Hey,” I replied, ready to be t
old to get back in my cell. “I called—”
“Yeah,” said Simon.
“Um…Mrs. Fitch is—”
“I know,” said Simon. “Try not to look.”
“It’s horrible,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Simon, can I please just use the bathroom? And then please could I get some breakfast? And…” I stopped, thinking now didn’t seem like quite the right time to raise the cell phone thing. I’d have to work up to it—plus there was the laptop. I wanted to ask about the Internet, but I couldn’t without revealing I’d already been on the other computer without permission. (That’s how strict he was.)
“I’m really sorry about last night,” I said, thinking that might get me one step closer to my phone, to my friends, to normal. To the things that counted.
“It’s OK,” he said.
Huh?!
“You don’t have to stay in the den anymore,” he said.
HUH?! That was tricky, because I knew I didn’t feel OK even if I didn’t feel that not OK, but I knew I didn’t want another zillion hours waiting on my own with Mrs. Fitch dead outside, and…then I thought about my mom and Henry. I couldn’t make them sick.
“I don’t really feel OK,” I blurted. “I don’t feel bad bad, not like…you know. I just feel a little bad.”
“Ru?” he said. He looked at me, worried, freaking me out. “What feels wrong?”
I told him. It annoyed me that he smiled when I said it. He smiled—not some massive grin, but a definite flicker of a tired, “oh you, you’re so young (and stupid)” smile. Only it was sad-looking somehow too—and not the usual, “I’m so disappointed in you (oh you, you’re so young and stupid)” sad look.
“What did you drink at Zak’s?” he said.
Yee-haa! I was just about to saddle up in outrage, deny I’d had a thing to drink and yell at Simon for even thinking such a thing, when—
“Zak made some punch,” I said. Double blurt. At least I wasn’t to blame.
“Punch? Oh dear! What was in it?” he asked.
He was really weirding me out now, because normally if he even slightly suspected illicit activities, he’d flip out, and that’d be it: me grounded and scraping poop, pee, woodchips, and hay out of the guinea-pig hutch. I could just see it… Except I’d actually confessed, and he wasn’t going ballistic. Weird.
“I dunno,” I said. “Cider?”
He was looking at me so strangely I voluntarily blurted out more truth.
“And gin,” I said.
Quadruple confession. (A record!) Any minute now, I’d be telling him I’d tried pot, had lied about the babysitting, and was in love with Caspar McCloud, so I searched my brain for something that would make it sound like I wasn’t as bad as some people.
“Molly got sick from it,” I said.
Sorry, Mol. Normally that would have been a great rage-deflection tactic, but Simon didn’t seem to care.
“I think you’ve probably just got a hangover, don’t you?” he said, super calm and gentle. “You need to rehydrate—and eat.”
On that, we agreed. I grabbed the kettle. It didn’t seem like there was enough water in it for the eight hundred cups of tea I was needing, so I turned to the sink.
“Stop,” he said before my hand was on the tap.
I looked around at him.
“I don’t think we should use the water anymore,” he said.
I looked at the tap—dripping like it had been for weeks, waiting for Simon to fix it—and then at the thousands of containers full of water all over the kitchen.
“Not those either,” he said. “You’ll have to get by with what’s left in the kettle. There’s orange juice and milk in the fridge.”
I put the kettle back. I kind of stared at it and then the tap, and then the sea of containers. What?! Was that disgusting little tentacle-y space thing in the house?!
“Don’t touch any of that water,” said Simon. “I’ll get rid of it.”
I was too thirsty and muddled to start thinking. I flicked the kettle on, poured myself a glass of orange juice, and glugged it down. My stomach gurgled horribly.
“I’m just gonna go to the bathroom,” I mumbled.
“You’ll have to use the bucket,” said Simon, staring at his list.
“What?! ” I said, but not a yee-haa “What?! ” It was just a “What?! ” kind of what, the kind of “What?! ” that comes out of your mouth when your brain doesn’t get it.
“We don’t know whether the water’s OK anymore. It’s too risky.”
“But…I need to…” I wasn’t going to put my rear end in the toilet, just on it.
“Sorry, Ru. Use the bucket.” He added something to the list then.
I pooped in the bucket (too much information?). I thought I wouldn’t be able to, but I was desperate, and anyway I told myself it was just like one of the terrible camping trips Simon took us on before Henry came along: rain pouring down, squatting on a plastic toilet thing. (We didn’t go to the kind of campsites where there were showers and toilets and swimming pools and entertainment. Or even other people. We went to cold, windy fields in the middle of nowhere.) I piled layers of toilet paper on top of my poo, and even though it was my own—and you can’t smell your own like you can smell other people’s, can you?—I felt so embarrassed. I felt…so…humiliated. Like it was so unfair—for me.
Bristling—that’s what you call it, when you’re trying to not be angry even though you’re furious—I went back to the kitchen. Simon was making scrambled eggs.
“I suppose I can’t even wash my hands,” I said, bristling, as I sat down at the table and poured out the last of the orange juice.
“Or have a shower,” Simon said, pointing at a pack of Henry’s baby wipes across the table.
NO SHOWER?! ARE YOU KIDDING?!
Cell phone, friends, Caspar. Priorities, Ruby, I thought, priorities. I wiped my hands, bristling.
Simon put a pile of toast and eggs in front of me, plus butter and jam and the secret stash of peanut butter. He’d also made a cup of tea.
“Last cup in the kettle,” he said as I slurped.
“Thanks,” I mumbled, feeling totally, bristlingly depressed.
Simon didn’t eat. He just kept staring at his stupid list. He didn’t add anything to it; he just kept looking at it.
When I had finished, I got a glass of milk.
“Feel better?” he asked.
It was harder to bristle; I did feel better.
“Yes. Thanks,” I said.
“Good,” he said.
I glugged down the last of the milk—well, almost. I did what you always do, which is leave this little bit in the bottom of the carton so you’re not forced to rinse it out and put it in the recycling. I felt about ready to tackle it: how I was going to get Simon to take me to Zak’s—though I figured it would be pretty hard to persuade him until the rain stopped. I looked out the window; it was coming down in sheets, pouring down, from the kind of low, gray sky that’s got no hope of sun in it.
That’s nimbostratus; I know that now. I didn’t then. All I knew was it looked like the kind of gloomy total cloud-out that means: forget it, you’re going nowhere.
But I could in a car. If we could just get into the car without getting wet—like if we took that huge umbrella my mom used to keep her and Henry in his stroller dry—and then we could just drive into the carport at Zak’s place…but maybe I should try for the laptop first, check email, and see what had been going on and—
“Ruby,” said Simon. “I need to talk to you.”
CHAPTER SIX
Here we go. Now I’m gonna get it.
That’s what I thought, you see. The whole world was in some kind of hideous death-fest space-bug meltdown, and I was still on the page before, still stuck in yesterday. I still thought… I
dunno what I thought! That everything—well, if it wasn’t exactly the same right now, that it would still be the same…later? Tomorrow?
I’m not stupid; I knew something really bad was happening, but at that moment in time, I just wanted to see my friends. I wanted my cell phone back so I could call Caspar, which I’d never actually done before—we’d just texted and done the whole virtual flirtation thing a little—but felt I could do now on account of the kissing and the suffering. I just wanted to call him, almost as much as I wanted to call Lee…but did Caspar even have his phone, or had he left it at Zak’s? I could get it and take it to him and—
“Ruby! You need to pay attention,” said Simon.
I sure did! I was going to have to charm my way out of there. I helpfully grabbed my plate and had my hand on the tap before—
“No!” Simon bellowed. “Don’t use the faucet!”
I sat back down with my plate and smiled sweetly at Simon. Look contrite, I thought—which means looking really sorry, even if you’re not. He sighed—not in a nasty way, in a sad way—and pulled his chair around next to mine.
“I need you to really listen,” he said.
OK, I thought, humor him. I nodded contritely.
“No one really knows what’s going on,” he said. “Not for sure. But until we know, we need to stick to these rules.”
That’s when the list came out. It was basically a to-do list from hell. A hideous, death-fest mega-crisis do-this-do-that checklist, only it was all don’ts and no dos. You can imagine what was on it: all the stuff that had been on the radio. All the stuff I’d been trying to block out, plus a few things I hadn’t even remembered hearing and that, later on, I realized was stuff Simon must have thought of.
DON’T GO OUT IN THE RAIN.
(Duh! I thought.)
DON’T TOUCH ANYONE WHO’S TOUCHED ANY WATER. OR ANY ANIMAL. OR ANYTHING. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING THAT’S TOUCHED ANY WATER.
It felt like his list was already losing it a little, but I did get what he meant. I could imagine that horrible microscopic bug thing creeping about everywhere.
H2O Page 5
