Storm

by Virginia Bergin

  I stopped myself. Though the spirit of yee-haa (saddling up my high horse for a fight!) rose like a dear, stroppy old friend, and though there was something really heartwarming about realizing I could still feel like that, I did stop myself. It wasn’t just that Saskia now appeared to be the only real, human “friend” I had in the world; it wasn’t even that I wanted to find out what she was doing here; and it certainly wasn’t because I wanted to know a single thing about Darius Spratt. (NO INDEED!) It was because…honestly, I didn’t know if I was really up to it. My body hurt a lot, but I could feel my mind hurt too.

  I felt so tired.

  Dog tired. Dead tired.

  If Saskia hadn’t been there, it would have been one of those moments when I’d just crawl off for a nap—and the urge to sleep right then was so bad I’d have suggested it, but somehow I didn’t think Sask would be happy touching anything in the house, much less sleeping in it. (Though there could hardly be worse diseases lurking inside than the one that was outside.)

  “Yeah, well…” I muttered. “It’s not like I’m going to stay here. I was just going to leave, anyway. Today.”

  “Where are you going to go?” Saskia blurted, looking scared.

  OH NO: THE QUESTION OF QUESTIONS.

  That’s what it was, and my brain wasn’t remotely ready for it, so I came out with the thing I’d been thinking for weeks (months? What date was it anyway?), the thing I’d told myself I’d do, but when it came down to it, I was too scared to go and do it.

  “I’m gonna look for my dad,” I said, like it was obvious.

  I watched her mouth tighten.

  No, I thought, no. You don’t get to do that. Don’t you do that.

  “Look, he came here,” I said, pointing at the wall where he had written.

  RUBY—WHERE ARE YOU? That’s what the message said. WE ARE GOING TO GET GRANDMA. STAY HERE! BACK SOON! LOVE DAD AND DAN. The smiley face after Dan’s name. The trail of kisses.

  “That’s my stepbrother, see?” I told her, stroking Dan’s scrawled name. “That’s my stepbrother.”

  Through Saskia’s eyes, I saw the trail of desperation that followed, the hundred and one explanations of where I had gone.

  Her mouth—it screwed up tighter.

  Yeah, that’s right, I thought. Don’t you say that thing. Don’t you dare say ANYthing.

  But then her mouth opened a little and I was worried she was going to say it, so I tried to say it for her—or at least the version I could cope with.

  “I mean, I know it’s…” I trailed off. I couldn’t say the words that probably ought to come after that, which would be: VERY, VERY UNLIKELY INDEED THAT MY DAD AND MY BROTHER WILL STILL BE ALIVE. “I’m just going to go and look,” I said.

  “Where?” said Saskia quietly.

  “Loads of places.”

  On the kitchen table, my mom’s address book sat in its own special clear patch. I laid my hand on it. I picked up the piece of paper with the scrawled list I’d worked out weeks (months?) ago.

  “These places,” I said.

  Grandma’s, obviously. The aunts and the uncles and the cousins. That lady my mom called “Auntie” but wasn’t an aunt at all—my dad had always liked her.

  Though I couldn’t even think about why my dad wouldn’t have come back when he said he would, if he had gone anywhere else, these were the places he would have gone to. In my mind’s eye, I’d already been to these places and looked. I’d already seen the bodies and the empty houses. But it was all I had.

  “Can I come too?” said Sask.

  Coils of confusion tangled in my head. See, really, this whole conversation was…OK, it was what you’d call hypothetical. Don’t get me wrong, part of me would have searched to the very ends of the Earth for my dad, but part of me…kind of hoped that Saskia would know about a place we could go, just for now, from where I could set out on my epic quest…sometime when I wasn’t feeling quite so scared and so tired.

  “What about the army base?” I blurted—like, surely, whatever had gone on with her and the Spratt (which didn’t bear thinking about), her being back here in Dartbridge must mean she’d come to say it was OK and that the army could squeeze me in now, even though I was officially designated as “useless.”

  “I had to leave.”

  Huh?! But—

  “I’m not going back there.” She looked out the window. “I really haven’t got anywhere else to go, Ruby,” she said.

  She glanced at me—then she looked back out of the window. Either that menthol was really kicking in or… Was Saskia Miller…crying?

  “Let me come with you,” she said. “Please…”

  Was Saskia Miller…pleading…WITH ME?

  “Yeah, sure, you can come,” I said.

  During an apocalypse-type situation, it is very rude to say no to any reasonable request, even if it relates to what my grandma would have called a cockamamy plan (usually something my dad had suggested), and even if it comes from someone you’ve recently remembered you’re not that keen on.

  “Do you want help packing?” Saskia asked. (A little reluctantly, I thought. It would involve touching things.)

  WHAT?! ARE WE ACTUALLY, LIKE, GOING TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW?! COULDN’T WE WAIT A FEW DAYS? GET A FEW MORE NAPS IN? shrieked the pain and the tiredness and the fear inside me.

  “I don’t think I’ll bother taking much,” I said, grabbing the marker pen and picking my way across the kitchen. I crouched down to make a start on a list on the door for my dad, and my chest hurt so much I gasped, but I carried on. The first stroke of the first letter of the first word came shaking out onto the door like a frightened black snake.

  “Why don’t I do that?” said Sask, taking the pen out of my hand. “While you…er…freshen up?”

  “OK…” I said. Freshen up?! Anything involving makeup felt like it’d be too much of a challenge right now, but I supposed I probably ought to at least put some deodorant on or something. Maybe push the boat out and go for a change of underwear? But that would involve more painful bending… Already my body was saying no.

  “Ruby,” said Saskia, laying her hand on mine as I clung onto the door to haul myself up. “What did happen to you?”

  THE SAME THING THAT HAPPENED TO EVERYONE ELSE, the yee-haa spirit in me wanted to point out, but all I said was, “Nothing.” I even shrugged. That hurt too.

  For the sake of decency, which I had forgotten existed, I grabbed wet wipes and stuff and headed upstairs…to the bathroom, which I avoided going anywhere near because the whole “It’s in the taps! It’s in the toilet! It’s lurking under the plughole!” thing made me freak out.

  I dumped my stuff on the floor.

  I looked in the mirror.

  I did, actually, scream.

  “Ruby?! Ruby, are you OK?!” Saskia shouted.

  I heard her blundering in panic across the treacherous margins of the swamp.

  “I’m OK! Sorry! Just got a fright!… Spider!” I added.

  It was the only normal scary thing I could think of.

  I heard Sask tread her way more carefully back to the kitchen through the swamp of me.

  And I stared at myself in the mirror.

  Oh my word. Oh my word.

  Filthy hands with chewed, chocolate-spread encrusted nails pawed at my reflection. I had two black eyes. Two black eyes under a stubble of black-tipped shaved hair.

  I looked like a panda. I looked like a lovely, cute…endangered species. With a root regrowth problem.

  The panda started crying.

  “Stop it,” I told it. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Still it sniveled.

  “You need to remember that,” I told it. “You need to remain positive, just like the SAS told you.”

  The panda forced a grin.

  OH MY !

  I
was missing a tooth. How could I not notice a TOOTH FALLING OUT? I did this crazy thing, scanning the sink, the floor, patting down my clothes, to find it… And like, what if I actually found it? Was I going to put it back?!

  I pulled up my lip; yup, my braces sailed over the space where a tooth should be. What the …

  The gappy-toothed panda stared back at me, forlorn.

  “You crashed a Ferrari,” I reminded it. “Not every panda can say that.”

  I did what I needed to. I cleaned myself. I put on less stinky clothes. I popped the last of the painkillers I had and swallowed them with cola, then cleaned my teeth with the rest of it.

  I spat brown spearmint gunk into the sink, watched it slip down the plughole.

  “Enjoy, you ,” I whispered at it, at the thing down the drain.

  “Are you ready, Ruby?” Sask was yelling.

  “Yeah! Nearly! Yeah!” I shouted.

  “The sky’s looking bad,” she yelled.

  I glanced out of the window. “Nah, it’s OK,” I shouted.

  It was OK—just the same messy stratiformis thing working out what to do.

  I heard her stagger, tripping on knows what, to get to the bottom of the stairs.

  “But I think we should just get going,” she shouted.

  Hello?! You are not my parent, I thought, peering at my panda self in the mirror and wondering if there was even a cover-stick product in the universe that could do anything about the black-eye situation. We are not late for school.

  “Ruby, really!” she shouted. “We should get going!”

  I heard her take a step up onto the stairs.

  I realized a couple of things pretty quickly:

  1. I did not want Saskia coming any farther up the stairs. Because I felt:

  2. I did not want her anywhere near the family tomb…my mom’s bedroom, where she and my stepdad, Simon, and my babiest brother-brat still lay. My babiest brother-brat, darlingest beloved: Henry, boy sweetest. One year old.

  The family tomb—door sealed with masking tape and kisses.

  I did not want comments or questions about that. That was private.

  “Just coming!” I bellowed to keep Saskia at bay.

  And I realized a third thing: Sask wouldn’t come any farther up those stairs because she was grossed out by the smell and—I realized a fourth thing: Saskia was scared.

  I tried a concealer stick on one of my eyes—it slid on a tear and the pressure caused instant pain. Nothing to be done about it then. Nothing to do but go.

  I looked out the window again, thought of all the times the rain had kept me trapped here. The one time I wanted it to trap me, just for a while, just so I could sleep for a bit, the rain was a no-show.

  So also, number five, I realized Saskia knew nothing about clouds.

  And that there was going to be no time for a proper good-bye.

  Mom, Simon…Henry…babiest brother-brat beloved. I went to your door. I felt so bad about the dried-out flowers sitting there in a dried-out vase. I kissed your door. Taped up because this girl wanted to stop the smell of your deadness. Not taped up because I wanted to stop remembering you. I will never stop remembering you.

  And then I walked away from them. Ruby Morris: alive.

  Still breathing, Mom. Still breathing.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “OK?” Sask asked as I crunched into the kitchen.

  I knew how I looked to her now, and believe me, it was NOT as bad as I looked to myself.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  But, honestly, it was pretty obvious neither of us were OK.

  “I wrote it all down,” she said.

  And so she had.

  On the door, in her incredibly neat handwriting, there was my list.

  Only it wasn’t my list.

  “I sort of reorganized it a little.”

  My panda eyes gazed at her.

  “It makes better sense this way,” she said.

  My panda eyes studied the door.

  “It’s more geographical?” she said.

  My panda eyes flicked back at Sask.

  “If I were your dad, this is the route I would have taken.”

  The panda, who had very little knowledge of geography, nodded.

  One more thing puzzled it, though: the date Saskia had written.

  “It’s September…” I said.

  That’s what it said on the door: Sept. 3rd.

  “Yeah?” said Saskia.

  It wasn’t so much the fact that I had been there, waiting, for more than three months; it was the fact that I was pretty sure… That is to say, I was vaguely sure… That is to say—look, I think it was August when the car crash happened.

  “Ruby?” she said, anxious to go.

  “You know, I think I might have been in some kind of coma,” I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t. I just took the pen off her, bent down—it hurt—and scrawled kisses.

  Then we left the house. I took nothing with me, only the list of addresses—my list, in my order—shoved in my pocket.

  The next part of this story—my story—is one I can only stretch out so far. And that is an outrageous shame because it is really fairly, utterly, completely, and totally brilliant. So it is the worst kind of crying shame indeed that I cannot make this stretch out further.

  READ YOU THIS:

  From my SAS days, I had a bunch of cars parked, waiting and ready, supplies stacked in trunks. These were my getaway cars, which I’d acquired weeks (months?) ago in a state of paranoia about what I’d do if someone-anyone who wasn’t my dad turned up at the house.

  Anyway, none of them would start, except the one that had hardly any gas in it because I might have used it for other activities—looting expeditions and the like.

  Ha HA! Luckily this had happened to me before, cars mysteriously not starting, and it was what had forced me to study car maintenance. Apparently, like phones, cars have batteries; apparently, like phones, car batteries run down.

  “Are you sure about this?” Saskia asked as I popped hoods.

  HA HA HA! Sure I was sure!

  I jump-started the car.

  That’s it. That’s my moment of triumph.

  Once you’ve jump-started, you do not stop. You need to charge up the battery of the car you’re in, so you need to keep going.

  There is no point crying about whether you’re doing the right thing. Or just plain crying for what you’re leaving behind. You just have to go.

  I cranked up that motor and speed-wove out of Dartbridge, but I could feel my head and my heart were still at home. Sask was also quiet, and it made me think of something.

  “Hey, do you need to go and get stuff from your place?” I asked her.

  “What’s the point?” she said.

  I got what she meant—or at least I thought I did. I felt like…it was just too sad and awful having anything that reminded you of the past when your head was already stuffed full of it. There was this silence for a few minutes.

  “I just feel like…like it’s contaminated or something,” she said.

  Huh? I thought and glanced at her, worried she might not be as un-crazy as she looked and that this would pile even more pressure on me to pull myself together.

  “My house. Some broke in,” she said. “Can you believe that?! Some broke in.”

  For the benefit of those of you who have not come across my first journal, which is placed in a prominent position on the “THIS MONTH’S HOT READS” shelves in Dartbridge Public Library (in fact, after I did some rearranging, it is now the only item on the “THIS MONTH’S HOT READS” shelves of Dartbridge Public Library), I should tell you that the in question was me. I broke into her house and stole her mom’s dog.

  It was a bit of an awkward moment. Until—Hold on a minute, I thought. And what left swe
et little Darling the Chihuahua locked inside?

  “Maybe they were trying to get your dog out,” I blurted.

  “What?” said Saskia.

  “Your dog…you had a dog, didn’t you? I mean, maybe someone saw it and—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Saskia. “Who in their right mind would have bothered about a dog?!”

  “Well…” Me. I bothered. I bothered a lot about a lot of dogs.

  “…the cat flap,” Saskia was saying.

  “Sorry, what?”

  “The cat flap. It’s in the wall, like, right next to the kitchen door? I mean, if the dog was even still there, they could have just opened that up and coaxed her out, but no… Ruby, someone smashed in through the patio doors.”

  I could feel this nervous, guilty sweat between my palms and the steering wheel.

  “They went into the house. They touched stuff. My stuff. I never want to go back there,” she said. “Never.”

  I tried to shift up a gear and went down one instead.

  “Do you want me to drive?” she said. “I’m useless, but I will if you want.”

  “It’s OK,” I said.

  I definitely felt like I needed to be doing something because it seemed to me that this was going to be a very, very long journey indeed. Every which way the conversation could go, something unpleasant lurked. It was the sitting-room swamp of conversations—and you know what? It had barely started.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  I couldn’t particularly think what she might be sorry about. That was OK. I just left it there. No need for details.

  She gave details.

  “I wasn’t, like, criticizing you or anything. You’re a really good driver.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Dar said you were good.”

  DAR?! EXCUSE ME: DAR?! SINCE WHEN DID YOU CALL—

  Oh . This was it, wasn’t it? We were here already, at a treacherous fork on the treacherous path through the treacherous swamp—with both possible routes ending in yet more treacherousness, I had no doubt.