H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  Where we’d come up, the other side of the pool, there was some big woman lying groaning, and behind her was this door with no little white cartoon man running, but it was a door, so I yanked it open—never mind the poor woman, not even thinking “the poor woman”—just enough so I could drag Darius in and what we got into was a closet—it was just a closet, a stupid closet full of kids’ pool toys—and the door shut and it was pitch-black.

  Other hands yanked at the handle and me and Darius Spratt, we pulled back on it as though our lives depended on it, which they did.

  I thought I was going to die. That was it, plain and simple: I thought I was going to die.

  I said my dad’s address over and over and over again. Making Darius repeat it, over and over and over.

  “If you get out of here, you go find my dad and you tell him.”

  Tell him what? That I had died in a closet full of floaty spongy pool snakes?

  “Tell him I love him,” I sobbed and made Darius say the address again. And again. And again.

  “OK—your turn,” I told him.

  “You gotta take care of Princess,” he said.

  Ouph! I hadn’t even thought about the kid once since things had kicked off.

  “And,” he added.

  Whoa! A last request is a last request, right? It’s not a last to-do list!

  He spouted numbers. I was so terrified I didn’t even realize to start with that it was a date of birth. His date of birth.

  “Got it?”

  “Yeah!” I said, even though it had gone straight out of my terrified head.

  “I want you to find my mom.”

  “But—” He’d said his whole family was dead…

  “My birth mother.”

  Someone yanked on the door, hard; we yanked it back.

  “I was gonna find her, after our exams, and—”

  The door got yanked again—before we got it shut, I saw his face for a moment in the light, and I saw that he was crying too, and when we got the door shut, the tiny pea-sized piece of brain in my head that still had any thoughts at all said, “You’re adopted?”

  “YES,” said Darius.

  I didn’t know what say, so I said the numbers again.

  “That’s wrong!” cried Darius. “Look, you don’t even have to remember it. Just go to the school, get it from my records.”

  “And then?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he said. “You need to find the adoption certificate.”

  “Oh,” I said, already the pea in my head thinking that, as last requests go, it all seemed kind of tricky. “How would I do that?”

  Someone thumped against the door, and we tightened our grips.

  “I don’t know how it works,” blurted Darius Spratt. “I was gonna do it all online.”

  Our hands were locked together, straining on that handle.

  “You can find out, can’t you? You can try?” pleaded Darius.

  “Yes!” I cried.

  It was pretty much the world’s worst and most complicated and most impossible last request—and I knew it…and he knew it. I knew he knew it. I knew he knew I knew it.

  It was bad, what you could hear going on out there. It was very, very bad.

  “Darius, if I couldn’t do that,” I said. “Let’s just say if for some reason I couldn’t do that…”

  Someone yanked on the handle; our knot of hands held it shut.

  LIKE WE’RE BOTH GONNA DIE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, IN THIS CLOSET, I thought.

  “Is there something else I could do?”

  AND MAKE IT EASY! I thought.

  Darius Spratt was silent for a moment.

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  THE CHAPTER OF SHAME—TO BE DELETED

  I kissed the Spratt. We were in a closet. I thought I was going to die.

  So I did the deed. He asked me to kiss him, so I kissed him.

  I took one hand off the door handle. I grabbed his head for the purposes of ensuring a quick delivery, and I mashed my lips against his—like BOMF!—in the dark.

  There. I had fulfilled his last request.

  End of.

  ONLY IT WASN’T!

  OH, WHO CARES IF I TELL THE HORRIBLE TRUTH?

  ME! I DO!

  Someone yanked on the door; light flooded in for a sec, for long enough for me to see his face looked sad and grim and scared and weeping…and not at all how it was supposed to look (GRATEFUL) when I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed him.

  “You could say thank you,” I said when the door yanker gave up.

  “Oh, yeah, thanks,” said Darius.

  Thanks? I thought. Thanks?!

  “I just kissed you!” I blurted…meaning I, me, Ruby Morris had just kissed…a SUB nerd.

  “Yeah,” said Darius. “Thanks. Or whatever.”

  WHOA. OH WOW. OH MY .

  “Or whatever?!”

  “I mean, you know, thanks. It was OK,” said Darius.

  “OK?!”

  “Yeah…it was OK.”

  “OK?!”

  “Yeah, Andrew Difford said you were an OK kisser.”

  “WHAT?!”

  “Get over it, Ru. Now would be a really good time to just…get over stuff.”

  “WHAT?! WHAT?!”

  “Actually he said you were lousy.”

  “Andrew Difford said that…”

  “Yeah…he told everyone.”

  “He told everyone… He’s a jerk; he’s a total jerk. He’s a gutless, lying, lowdown, blabber-mouthed, gossiping…a lousy kisser! He’s a lousy kisser!”

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m a wonderful kisser!”

  “Hn.”

  “I AM a wonderful kisser!”

  “Prove it to me, Ruby Morris,” said Darius.

  Someone yanked on the door. In the flood of light I saw his face, like mine: the fear and the hopelessness. The door slammed shut.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  I took one hand off the door handle again.

  I laid my hand, trembling with fright, on his face.

  He took one hand off the door handle. He put his hand on my hand. Our fingers linked, steadying each other. He turned his head and, softly, kissed my palm. We stayed like that, for a moment. His lips, so still. The terror and the grief flowing between us. The power in our hands. Like we could make it all stop. No. Like this was all we had. All we would ever have. Our fingers squeezed.

  His hand left mine. I grieved for it, instantly, in the darkness and the emptiness.

  Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.

  His hand came gently to my face, fear shaking in our fingertips, tracing tears.

  It wasn’t like the Caspar hot-tub thing. There was no BOMF. In the darkness, there was a kiss. There was a first kiss.

  And because we might have had no time at all in the world, it seemed as if we had all the time in the world. We had all the time there ever was and ever will be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  You wanna know how I know the thing about no one living for longer than three hours?

  That’s how long we were in that closet for.

  After a while, people stopped trying to get in, but we didn’t come out until the whole world was silent, until all those people were dead.

  We wouldn’t have dared to…apart from anything else.

  We shoved open the door. It would have been hard to have gotten out of there without stepping in pools of gore, but there were a ton of those little elastic blue plastic-bag things they make the swimming teachers and visitors wear over their shoes. We even put them on our hands, in case we had to touch anything, and we crackled out along the poolside, picking our way really, really slowly and really, really carefully through the hideousness.

&nbs
p; All around us, inside that pool and outside, it was a scene of appalling horror. You really didn’t want to look at it.

  I also really didn’t want to look at Darius Spratt’s face. Further appalling horror.

  Yup. I wasn’t imagining it; in the middle of the nightmare of where we were and what was, this funny little goofy smile kept sneaking on to his face.

  “Stop it!” I snapped.

  “What?” he said.

  Yup, there it was again.

  Oh my . I was DYING from the sheer mind-melting horror of it. (I have to say that, the dying part.) (It’s fully necessary and justified.)

  “That!” I snapped.

  What happened in the spongy-snake closet stays in the spongy-snake closet, that’s what I thought.

  I had this dreadful, dreadful feeling like somehow I’d been tricked, only I couldn’t have been tricked, could I? He’d said kiss me, and I’d…

  Oh my !!! It was too awful to think about…and in a way, it was just as well. Pretty much everyone at school must be dead because if what had happened in the spongy-snake closet ever got out, my life wouldn’t be worth living.

  I do realize that could sound terrible, but it is also true.

  At least he wouldn’t be able to say it was lousy. He wouldn’t be able to say that.

  I blasted the goofy smile off the Spratt’s face with the mother of all death-ray “say one word and I’ll kill you” stares and flounced off around the fire engine to get to the car. (The flouncing part wasn’t easy; there was a lot of water and gore about.) Darius trailed after me.

  The smile, which had crept back onto his face, melted away all on its own when he saw the kid. Princess was still in the car, sitting there, rigid. Darling was asleep on the driver’s seat, so that seemed not right; the kid never seemed to want to let her go. I unlocked the trunk to let Whitby out—oh man! There was a stink!—and Darius opened the kid’s door. She lurched out at him.

  Kids—like Dan, when he was little—fling themselves at you, but I’ve never seen a kid do anything quite like that. She sprang at him like a wild animal, and she would not let go.

  Meanwhile the bad things Whitby’s butt had foretold came to pass…and were still passing. Set free, Whitby had a poop-fest.

  “We could just stay here,” said Darius, the silent kid fastened onto him.

  The day so beautifully warm. Little cumulus humulis, still drifting about on high, making the world look storybook simple.

  “We could go back into Bristol. We could find someplace. Just for tonight,” he said.

  Part of me really did just want to stop and rest. But in those storybook stories, in fairy tales, that’s when it all goes horribly wrong, doesn’t it? I had a quest on my hands; I had a place I needed to get to. It’s important not to forget what you’re supposed to be doing, isn’t it? It’s important not to let yourself get sidetracked and distracted. It is important not to give up or give in. It is important to be strong, even if you have never felt so weak and so tired and so sick of being afraid. Isn’t it?

  It was getting late, but there had to be hours left until night.

  “I’m going to London,” I said. “You two can do what you like.”

  Please don’t leave me.

  “It was just an idea,” he said, prying the kid off him and practically forcing her into the back of the car.

  “Yeah, well, I’ve had enough of you and your bright ideas,” I grumbled. I handed him Darling, and he handed Darling to the kid and shut the door.

  “Ru,” he said.

  I don’t know what else he was planning on saying. I didn’t want to know.

  “Just get in the car, would you?” I snapped.

  I opened my mouth to call for Whitby and got as far as “WHI–” before I saw him. He was guzzling water from a puddle near the fire engine.

  Me and Darius Spratt, we looked at each other.

  Now it seems so obvious, that the dogs were a risk. And not just a little risk but a MASSIVE risk. Even when I’d seen Whitby chowing down on dead people, I’d just thought, Urgh! I hadn’t thought… And nor had Darius; you could tell by the look on his face.

  “We’ve gotta get rid of him,” said Darius.

  “No!” I said, but more from the horror of the realizing it.

  Whitby raised his head up, water dribbling from his chops.

  “OK,” I said.

  Seeing us looking at him, Whitby bounded toward us. We both dived into the driver’s seat and slammed the door.

  “Get over on your own side!” I shouted into Darius Spratt’s face.

  He extracted himself and clambered into the passenger seat.

  Whitby, the big dear darling old dope, didn’t get it; why was the door shut? He shrugged his doggy shoulders and loped around the car, tail wagging, looking for a way in. He barked at us: Hey, come on! Let me in!

  I burst into tears—then caught Darius Spratt eyeing Darling. Princess clutched her even more tightly and I spoke. I spoke for Darling, for me…and for the kid, I suppose.

  “No!” I gasped. “Darling’s fine! She’s fine and we’ll be careful!”

  That Princess kid, she swung it all on her own. She looked at Darius with those big, solemn eyes, and she nodded. She actually nodded.

  Seemed like that nod came out louder than anything I could have shouted.

  The Spratt caved.

  “Hn,” said Darius. “OK.”

  It’s not YOUR decision, I wanted to shout at Darius. Whitby, outside, had started to whimper…and the sound of his crying, it was awful, and I could feel I was about ready to totally yee-haa…and then…something kicked in, just for a second, about how… I dunno. How it’s so hard now to work things out, it’s maybe be easier to work them out with other people, but how being with other people is dangerous as well as safer…because you have to agree all the time…because if you don’t sort it out and you don’t agree, a lot of things can go wrong. Basically, people can die.

  I didn’t think that then. Back then it was…so who did Darius think he was and he should just shut up because I’d gotten them out of Dartbridge, hadn’t I? But he’d stopped me from going out into the rain to get my stuff, even though it hadn’t really been about to rain or anything. And I’d gotten them out of that polytunnel and we’d helped each other out of that pool…so…it all seemed so complicated, and like I should just shut up.

  My eyes were so tear-blurry I could hardly even see Whitby running after the car, barking. Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me.

  I could hardly even see him until he was just a tiny dot, sitting in the middle of the highway, howling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  As we zoomed toward London, Darius fiddled with the radio, skipping through miles of hiss in between repeats of the broadcasts that had not changed: “Stay home. Remain calm.”

  Yeah right. Someone needed to tell them that advice really wasn’t working.

  “Can you turn that off now?” I asked.

  I asked it nicely the first time; the second time, because he’d ignored me, I said it not so nicely.

  “Just a sec,” he said, skimming through again.

  So, third time: “TURN IT OFF!” I snarled and death-rayed him.

  “So how come you don’t want to know what’s going on in the world?” he said, putting his naked feet up on the dashboard. Evening sunlight caught the hair sprouting on his toes. He’d used his window to hang his socks and mine out to dry. They flapped about together as we zoomed—with our clothes, still pool damp, drying on our bodies.

  “I don’t want to not know,” I said, “I’ve just heard all that stuff before, right? What’s the point?”

  I wasn’t exactly comfortable—in my clothes or in my head. I kept shifting about.

  “Because they might be saying new stuff.”
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br />   “Err. Hello? Hello? Who might? Have you not noticed? Everyone is dead.”

  The second I said it, I was waiting for him to DARE say something about my dad, but he didn’t. No need. I was thinking it anyway.

  I felt sick and like I needed air; I hit the wrong window button and our socks left us. I hit the right window button and stared out the window for a dangerously long time, breathing. Just breathing.

  After that, we bickered about what music to listen to. The music collection in that car was a best-ofs bonanza (but at least it didn’t include The Carpenters), and I’ve noticed that in a lot of cars. It kind of supports my theory about how stressful driving is; you couldn’t cope with listening to anything interesting at the same time. I made him put some retro Best of the ’80s CD on, and it flustered me instantly because every single song seemed to be about LURVE and kissing and such, but luckily I discovered I had an executive control switch on the stick you would have thought would be for the windshield wipers, so I kept skipping anything that sounded like it might be too slushy, which annoyed the Spratt.

  “Oh, come on!” he whined when I did it yet again. “I was listening to that!”

  He actually leaned forward and did a manual override on the CD player, skipping back to the lovey-dovey ballad. And he sang! The Spratt sang! And the worst and most annoying thing about the Spratt’s singing was that the Spratt’s singing was good. Not better than Caspar good; I will never say that.

  “I don’t like it,” I said, skipping forward again.

  “Why’s it got to be what you want all the time?”

  “Because,” I said. “I’m the driver.”

  “So?”

  The Spratt skipped back; I skipped forward.

  “So we listen to what I want,” I said. “Or we could always turn it off and play I Spy… That’d be fun, wouldn’t it? I spy with my little eye something beginning with DB.”

  The Spratt looked confused.

  “Dead body?” I said. “Or maybe CC? Crashed car! Oh look! It’s another DB!”

  The Spratt went quiet. I felt mean, so I even though I wanted to skip the current track too because it seemed to be all about SEX (what was wrong with those ’80s people?! They were obsessed!), I let it play. The Spratt lounged sulkily in his seat.