H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  “No…” I said. “Diana?”

  “Yah?”

  “My dad’s there. At the army place.”

  She fixed me with her fairy-godmother gaze, magicking everything.

  “I’m sure it’s all perfectly charming,” she said. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine.”

  “I will say one thing, though, sweetie,” she added, examining a crocodile-skin-look red ankle boot. In spite of the magicking, I kind of wished she wouldn’t say another word, but she chucked the boot aside and advanced on me. “I think we need to do something with your hair.”

  Huh?! One minute we were discussing the hideous mess the world was in, and now the hideous mess of my hair.

  “I mean, if you’re going to do red—and, frankly, I think you may need to have a rethink on that…” she said sternly. “Do you mind?” she asked, and before I could say that, yes, actually, I did mind, she’d liberated my hair from its elastic band. “IF you are going to DO red, you need to DO red.”

  Before I could protest, she mussed up my hair and steered me to a mirror.

  “Uh,” she sighed, gazing at me with me. “What DO they teach you in—where is it you said you were from?”

  “Dartbridge,” I said. “It’s a little town in—”

  “Shh! Sweetie! Concentrate! Absorb!”

  Diana dumped a ton of stuff from her handbag and did stuff to my hair.

  I really, seriously, did not recognize myself. I’d already tinkered about with makeup so my face didn’t look so scratched-up-with-hints-of-orange, and now, there I was, in an amazing dress, with amazing hair, looking amazing.

  “Shoes,” muttered Diana. “You need the right shoes.”

  I had quite a fantastic pair of platform sneakers on already.

  “I should go,” I said.

  “What are you?” asked Diana. “A four?”

  “Five,” I said. “But—”

  “Wait!” commanded Diana, stalking dramatically back into the land of shoes.

  She found what she was looking for and put the box in a bag for me.

  “They’ll be perfect,” she said and air kissed me. “Mwah! Mwah! Go knock ’em dead, sweetie.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “De rien!” said Diana. “De rien!”

  “Thank you,” I said again. I didn’t know what else to say, so I kissed her—for real—on the cheek…because she was beautiful, because she had made me look amazing, and because, if I could ever have a fairy godmother, I would wish for one who looked just like her. Just looked, mind; the general somewhat bossy attitude was a little too much. My fairy godmother would have to dote on me, be forever gentle and kind.

  “You take care, girlfriend,” she whispered.

  A big, fat tear slid down her beautiful cheek, right through the lipstick mark I’d left where I’d kissed her.

  I left. I wasn’t going to cry and wreck two hundred dollars’ worth of makeup. I had no reason to cry anyway. I was going to see my dad.

  In the next ten minutes, when I stepped out from designer world and crunched back down Oxford Street into real life, I went from feeling like I looked a million dollars to feeling like I looked like kind of a twit. Kind of a Darius Spratt. Glamour plus army does not go.

  There was this makeshift, razor-wired army post and polytunnel-type space tent in the middle of the park. Men in white bio-suits, masks, guns. No one shouted; no one waved. They couldn’t not have seen me. I waddled up to them in my dress, weighed down with bags.

  “All right, love?” said one of the men.

  He opened the wire, and I went into their compound.

  “I need to get to Salisbury,” I said.

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place then,” he said. “Take a seat.”

  There was a handful of other people like me there too, sitting on plastic sheets on the grass. Most looked like they’d also got side-tracked on Oxford Street, dressed up to the nines in whatever took their fancy, surrounded by millions of shopping bags. One woman wore a ton of diamonds. I mean, I really think those might have been real diamonds—they kind of looked different from the bling I’d picked up—and she kept clutching her neck, checking her ears.

  A few of those people nodded vaguely at me. Mainly they just stared at the floor or at the sky, waiting.

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I did what they were doing. I waited. I’m going to see my dad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Me and my two million bags of designer loot sat in front of them, this woman and this man—in normal clothes—sitting behind a desk. The woman had a notepad. The man had a laptop. The army had electricity.

  I waited for a while while the woman muttered stuff to the guy and folded her notepad so she had a clean sheet of paper.

  I didn’t mind waiting. I’m going to see my dad.

  The first helicopter ride I ever had didn’t lasted very long. We got dumped in another park—somewhere beyond the traffic jams, I suppose—put onto a bus, then dumped in this stinky hangar with a ton of other people, where everyone had spent hours and hours shuffling forward and backward in this long (stinky) zigzag line. Reason for the shuffling about was quite sweet, really; every time a new bunch of people arrived, those in line already let anyone who was old or sick or had little kids go to the front. Quite sweet—and totally rage-making. Some people lost it; some people shouted—or muttered to anyone they thought might listen—about who they were and why they were there and why they should be at the front of the line. I kept my cool though. I’m going to see my dad.

  When it really was my turn, the door slid open, and I stepped out into the light. It was blinding, dazzling, after the darkness of the hangar, and it wasn’t even proper daylight; it was plastickly blurred through some kind of army polytunnel that led from one building to the next.

  “This way,” said a soldier, and I followed his voice, blinking, into the next building, into a room—the room where the woman and the man sat. Two soldiers stood at the back—but slouching, like they’d had a long wait too.

  “Do you want a drink?” the woman behind the desk asked.

  There was one small plastic cup of water on that table.

  “No thanks,” I said, even though I was dying of thirst. I’m going to see my dad.

  The woman asked questions; the man typed my answers into the laptop. It went OK at first: name and address. I got my own date of birth wrong first time they asked—not because I was so impatient and excited, which I was, but because I went into fib autopilot. It’s just what you do, isn’t it, when someone in authority (like the shopkeeper you’re trying to buy beer from) asks you to confirm the date on the fake ID that’s not even yours. (Lee, darling, will it even matter now if I say it belonged to you?)

  I corrected myself, and they carried on.

  Was I accompanied? Did I have a parent or other relative with me?

  “No,” I said. “But I think my dad’s here.”

  “And your mother?” the woman asked.

  They made me tell them; they made me give the names and dates of birth of my mom, of Henry, of Simon. Of the “members of my immediate family” I knew for sure were dead. Henry’s date of birth, I knew. Mom? Simon? I couldn’t get it right; I knew when their birthdays were—the dates and months—but which year? I had to tell them how old they were and let them work it out.

  “Sorry, I’m no good at math,” I said.

  That woman, she sort of smiled at me.

  “So, you’re not good at math…but are you good at other things in school”—she glanced down at her notepad—“Ruby?”

  I shrugged. I couldn’t think why she’d be asking something like that. What did that matter?

  “You just need to answer honestly,” she said. “This isn’t a test.”

  Funny thing was that that was exactly what it felt like.
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br />   “I do OK,” I said. “I mean, I’m not all that good at that much. I do OK in English. I like art.”

  “And outside school? What do you like to do?”

  Why was she asking me this stuff?

  “Same like anyone,” I said. “Just hang out with my friends, I guess.”

  “No hobbies?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said. I definitely didn’t want her asking about those guitar lessons.

  And then she asked a bunch of other questions. These got really specific. Had I come into contact with any infected water? Had I come into contact with anyone who had come into contact with infected water? Had I eaten any fresh fruit or vegetables? Had I drunk any fresh milk? Eaten any fresh meat?

  “No,” I said. Confidently. I wasn’t stupid, was I?

  The man hit a key on the laptop, like he’d been hitting a single key on the laptop for the last ten minutes. All those questions and he hadn’t typed anything I’d said in; he’d just hit a key.

  “Thank you, Ruby,” said the woman. “You can go.”

  All the way through that test they said wasn’t a test, I’d held on to my shopping bags. I stood up.

  “Can I see my dad now?” I asked.

  “He’s not here,” said the woman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Short chapter, that one was. Short and bitter. Bitter like the acidy stuff you throw up from your stomach when there’s nothing left inside you to throw up.

  I was led out into another room. They fingerprinted me; they photographed me. I’d seen that stuff too, on TV. The flash of the camera made me snap out of it a little, and I tried to ask about Dan, about Grandma Hollis, about Nana and Gramps, about Auntie Kate about Uncle James…about the Spratt.

  “They’re not here,” said a soldier.

  “Turn,” said the photographer.

  “But—” I said.

  “Turn!” barked the soldier.

  The photographer glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “Turn,” the photographer said, more softly.

  I turned; he snapped my picture.

  “But—”

  “You’re all done,” the photographer sighed.

  I’d heard them. I heard them like I heard Darius say my dad was dead. I heard them and I refused to believe. All dead? Not all dead. All done? Not all done.

  • • •

  They led me out into another yard through another army polytunnel and dumped me on another bus.

  “You took your time,” said some rude woman as I plunked myself and my bags down in the first free seat.

  I was numb. I couldn’t think where my dad could be. I don’t mean that I was actually thinking about that, about where he could be; I mean I just couldn’t think. I couldn’t think, and I felt as if I could hardly move.

  I only remember two other things about that wait on the bus. Two other things:

  1. We were there so long people chatted to the soldiers on the coach—who weren’t real soldiers, it turned out, but “reserves”: people who were soldiers on the weekend and stuff, for a hobby; people who were maybe accountants like Simon the rest of the time. (Can you imagine? Surrender or I’ll miscalculate your taxes! Sorry, Sarge, but we’ve had to cancel the invasion because someone has spotted a rare species of bird nesting on the battlefield, etc., etc.)

  2. Looked to me like those army people had taken all the water. Trucks pulled up, supplies got unloaded into a hangar. Food—yes—and about a million bottles of water, and a truckload of huge plastic tanks in which yet more water sloshed. One plastic cup, they’d offered me, one measly plastic cup. I bet it was the army that had cleared out the supermarket in Dartbridge. I bet it was.

  I wished I’d drunk that measly plastic cup of water because that bus was only half full, and it seemed like it’d be days before they filled it up. It was an age before the next person got on—the next two people: this girl in a headscarf who was lifted out of her wheelchair and carried on to the bus by this guy. This guy who was her dad. I’d felt sorry for her the second I saw her, not because she was in a wheelchair but because her dad looked like some kind of religious type, beardy and serious and smocked. (There was a girl in my class at school whose dad was a pastor, beardy and serious and smocked, and she got no end of teasing and hassle for it.) I’d heard them in the line, a couple people behind me, the dad going on in some foreign language and the girl getting so annoyed with him she burst out in English, “Dad! Abo! Please! It’s not as though I’m sick, is it? Please don’t make a fuss!”

  Me and my bags shifted back a seat before the dad could ask me to and the girl could tell him again not to make a fuss. I did not want to hear that.

  Do I even need to say how much I wished my dad was there, making a fuss?

  After that, they seemed to decide that was enough people, even though the bus was only half full. One of the soldiers did a head count like it was a school trip or something, and they shut the doors. Then they opened them again to let this other guy on board—a doctor, must have been; white jacket and stethoscope and a look on his face like he’d just had to tell someone they had a week to live.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, flashing an ID at them. He said “Hey, guys” like Simon would say it. I’m just like you, really I am.

  We drove out through a different exit, a different set of gates. There was another small gathering of people outside them, like there had been when we arrived. They were angry; they were shouting—I couldn’t hear what. I didn’t much care. Same as when we’d arrived, soldiers in bio-suits cocked rifles at those people so they could get the gates open. This time it was to let the bus out.

  We went down a road; we went down another road. We stopped outside another camp. The doors opened.

  “Cheers, guys,” said the doctor-man again as he got off.

  I looked out the window. There, lining up outside a building in the camp, I saw Darius Spratt.

  I didn’t want to punch him.

  “DARIUS!” I screamed, hammering at the window. “DARIUS!”

  I saw him turn. I saw him look. I saw him not see a thing.

  “DARIUS! DARIUS! DAAAAAAAAAA-RIUS!” I tried to storm off the bus, but the two soldiers blocked my path.

  One shook his head at me.

  “Please!” I shouted at them. “That’s my friend! Please!”

  That’s how desperate I was; I called Darius Spratt my friend.

  Second time—AND LAST.

  Their faces were stone.

  “He can’t see me! He can’t see a thing! He’s lost his glasses!”

  “Just sit down, love,” said the other soldier.

  “Please!”

  “For ’s sake,” said the woman who’d been rude to me, standing up…but she wasn’t saying it at me—she was saying it at the soldiers.

  “Come on, buddy,” said a guy, getting out of his seat. “Show the girl some pity.”

  “Yeah,” said another guy, standing, “show some pity!”

  That soldier, the one who’d told me to sit down, he cocked his rifle.

  “SIT DOWN!” he said.

  And that’s what everyone did. Everyone. You don’t argue with a gun, do you?

  I sat there shaking—with rage, I think. I wished I had a bucket full of pee to chuck in their faces. I wished my Halloween Bad Dolly self would come. I wished I could be Saskia; a girl like Saskia would know what to do.

  “What’s your name?” asked the SIT-DOWN! one.

  “Ruby,” I said.

  The other, quiet soldier muttered something and went out and said something to the ones guarding the gate.

  They looked at me, my hands pressed to the window mouthing, Please, please, please!

  Eyes got rolled, but one of the guards sauntered across the yard, got blind Darius, and brought him to the gate.

 
The SIT-DOWN! soldier nodded at me over his gun—I sprang up out of my seat, down the steps, and “Darius!” I screamed, and I ran for that gate and flung myself at it:

  BOMF!

  He was there. He was right there. My hands panicked. They sort of grabbed through that gate at Darius—and his hands, Darius Spratt’s hands, they panicked back.

  I felt tears sting at my eyes and Nerd Boy went all blurry.

  And I thought…and I thought…that Darius was all I had left. And that was how it was now. That was just how it was.

  “Ruby!” he gasped, all choky-throated, like maybe that’s how it was for him too.

  “Darius!” I sobbed. I couldn’t help myself—no more than I could help how my hands grabbed. I was ready to talk now; I was ready to tell him how it had been. That it had been bad, Darius. And I would hear—and I would listen—to how bad it had been for him. I would listen. We were all we had left.

  “Hey, Ru!” said a familiar voice.

  BOMF!

  My hands fell away from Darius Spratt.

  “Hey, Sask,” I said.

  There she was, looking just fresh and perky and as if everything was normal.

  “You look amazing!” she said. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah…yeah…I’m fine,” I said, swiping tears off my face.

  I couldn’t have looked that amazing because I saw, on the back of my hand, that my tears were mascara black. I had to look better than her though. I had to.

  “Oh my ! It’s just been so totally awful, hasn’t it?” gushed Saskia.

  “Yeah,” I said, smoothing my hair, smoothing my dress, smoothing myself.

  “Is your family—”

  “Yeah,” I said, before she could go on about it.

  “Mine too,” said Saskia.

  There was an awkward moment, during which I could have said I knew that, about Saskia’s family, because I’d seen them spread around the back garden with the guacamole, and that—by the way—I’d broken into her house and seen the photos in her bedroom and taken her mom’s dog, which she had cruelly abandoned, etc., etc.