by RJ Crayton
That was weird. Elaan turned her head and saw Gemma Jackson now sitting with Nina and the kids, and Mrs. Jackson was, just like Josh said, giving them a complete death ray glare. Usually, Gemma was a friendly sort. She had short black hair and an angular face that could look hostile without trying, but Gemma seemed to realize this and typically made an effort to smile. But not tonight. Tonight, Gemma was anything but friendly. Elaan smiled at Gemma and then the woman’s mouth dropped open, like she was shocked that Elaan would have the gall to do so. Elaan turned back to Joshua. “Whoa! You’re right,” she said. “I have no idea what that’s about.”
It was odd. While Josh had asked Elaan if she knew of anything he’d done to offend Gemma, she was beginning to wonder if Gemma was mad at Josh at all. That side-eye Gemma was throwing seemed squarely directed upon Elaan. Was she mad about the sitting services? But it wasn’t Elaan who canceled. It was Nina and Gemma.
“Earth to Elaan,” Josh said.
She looked up from the soup. “Sorry,” she said. “Just wondering what is going on there.”
Josh waved his hand. “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “You and I have a movie to watch.”
Elaan grinned. “Yeah,” she said. She loved The Princess Bride. They ate quietly, then cleared their dishes and took them to the kitchen area. Due to the fact that the compound was a quarantine area, there was no maintenance staff on hand. Everyone who lived in the compound had to chip in. Responsibilities were divvied up and everyone had different days they had to help out. Elaan actually had kitchen duty the day after tomorrow, which meant she’d be responsible for making and serving any hot foods, as well as storage of leftovers. Mr. Davis, who was in charge tonight, had a slight limp from an injury in Iraq. He asked Josh to give him a hand moving a heavy box, so Josh agreed and left Elaan standing there near the kitchen door.
As she was waiting, she noticed Gemma stand up and stare right at her, a glare that would have killed if looks could kill. Elaan turned away, peeking into the kitchen area to see if Josh was almost done. They had gone further back than Elaan could see, so she glanced back at the dining area and saw Gemma approaching her, a walking ball of hostility. Elaan saw Nina, who was wiping something off of Brad’s shirt, raise her head, horror struck, just as Gemma arrived.
Gemma pointed an accusing finger at Elaan and said, “You know, if you’re going to cancel on someone, it’s nice to give more notice, and at the very least, tell the truth about it.”
Elaan was confused. She didn’t cancel on them, and she certainly didn’t lie about anything. “I didn’t lie—” Elaan started to say, when Nina came up.
Nina grabbed her friend’s arm, and the woman turned to see who’d just latched onto her. “Gemma,” Nina said harshly. “I asked you not to say anything.” Then, Nina looked right at Elaan, raising her eyebrows, trying to will her to understand some silent message. Perhaps to be quiet.
Gemma eyed Nina. “You said she was sick. She doesn’t seem sick to me.”
“Even sick people have to eat, Gemma,” Nina said. “There’s no food in the rooms. Now let her be, please.” Nina turned back to Elaan and mouthed the word, PLEASE.
Please. Please what? Go along with this lie. Why? Elaan was not a liar, and she would never back out at the last minute and lie about being sick. She stared at Nina. What the hell was going on?
Josh came out, his eyes darting between Gemma, Nina, and Elaan for a second. Seeming to sense the tension in the air, he offered Elaan an escape route. “You ready?”
Elaan saw Nina’s pleading face, Gemma’s angry one, and Josh’s waiting one. She decided she’d let Nina have her way, rather than contradict her right now. She would go with Josh and figure this out later. “Yeah,” Elaan said to Josh. “I’m ready.”
She turned and walked away from the women without another word.
Elaan and Josh walked a minute or so in silence. Once they were out of earshot of the dining area, Josh asked, “What was that about?”
Elaan shook her head. “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “Nina told me she didn’t need a sitter, but Gemma was under the impression that I canceled on them and lied about my reasons.”
Josh stopped in his tracks. “What?” he said. “That’s crazy.”
“I know,” she said, stopping, too.
“Did you correct her?”
“No,” Elaan said, sighing. “I was going to, but Nina kept giving me this pleading look like she didn’t want me to explain, and then you came out, so I just left.”
He stared at her a moment, then shrugged and started walking again.
Elaan followed suit, walking beside him. After a moment of silence, she said, “What is it? You seem like you want to say something.”
“No,” he said, pausing. “It’s just. Well, I’m just surprised you didn’t say something more.”
She looked up at him, smirked. “Well, I just figured that maybe it was something she needed to keep secret, and I was practicing exercising a lack of curiosity about other people’s secrets.”
“How’s that going for you?”
“Not terribly well,” she admitted. “But, at least I’m trying.”
He stopped again, then pulled her to him and kissed her. It caught her off guard, but she didn’t mind that he wanted to kiss her. She leaned into him, enjoying the feel of his mouth on hers, but then she pulled back. She didn’t want someone to walk by and see them.
Josh looked a little hurt that she’d pulled away, but she just took his hand in hers and said, “It’d be weird if my dad or someone walked by.”
He nodded and they walked to his apartment. Once they were inside, he offered her a seat on the sofa. “You want something to drink, some water?”
Elaan stared at him a moment. “You have water?”
His face colored slightly and he nodded. “Yeah, but don’t tell anyone. My dad managed to get us a secret stash, and it’s mainly just water, but, you know, if you’re thirsty.”
Elaan shook her head. “I’m good,” she said. “But thanks for the offer.”
He stood awkwardly for a moment, then said, “My laptop’s in my room. I can get it and bring it out here, or we can watch in there, if you want.”
Elaan had just settled in on the sofa, and something about heading to his bedroom to watch the movie seemed like it would send signals she wasn’t sure she wanted to send. “In here, seems good.”
Josh left the room and came back a minute later, setting the laptop on the coffee table in front of the sofa. He also had a small plastic water bottle in his pocket. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a quick sip,” he said, sitting beside her.
She shrugged. She didn’t care. But she was curious. “So your dad doesn’t care that we’re not supposed to hoard supplies in our rooms.”
Josh laughed a little, a dull sound that seemed unlike him. “I guess he doesn’t,” he said. “My dad has always lived by his own set of rules, always said that if you want something in this world you have to reach out and take it. I know that’s why people don’t like him, why they think he’s a jerk, and it is a jerky attitude. But, he’s my dad, and he loves me. He’d do anything for me, and as much as what he does bothers me sometimes, I could never hate him, not when he’s done so much for me.”
Elaan reached out, put her hand on his shoulder. “No one expects you to hate your father,” she said, gently rubbing his shoulder. “And you don’t have to stick up for him or defend him. You and he are different people, and no one judges you based on him.”
Josh shook his head. “People don’t judge me based on him, but they do give me those ‘Oh, poor Josh’ looks, like it must completely suck to be his son. But it doesn’t.” He paused, swallowed, and looked at Elaan. “My dad isn’t the best with people he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t care as much about people in general. I admit he’s different that way. Normal people probably care more about interacting with people. My dad is into his work and he cares about that. But the people in his life, the people he loves, he
goes all out for them. He’s the reason we’re here, you know.”
Elaan raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“The government wanted the scientists to come here, but they didn’t want the families initially. They said no when my father asked if I could come, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He rallied all the invited scientists to refuse to come without their families. Your dad wanted to do the ethical thing, the right thing, but my dad wanted me safe and sound and here with him.”
Elaan tried not to look as doubtful as she felt. “You’re immune. You would have been safe in the uptop,” she said.
“From the virus,” Josh said, but then shivered. “From rioting mobs, from hunger, from any of the other problems that come when people are scared to leave their homes but have to in order to get supplies. The cities are worse because you can’t grow food in an apartment. But, it’s almost October now. Fall is here and plants are going to start to die and things are going to get desperate in the food situation if growers are dying of the virus and people lack the ability to grow stuff themselves. I’m nineteen and I’m an adult, but I’m only ready to take care of myself in the old world. I’m not sure I’m ready to do it in this new world, where everything is haywire. I’m glad to be down here, and I’m glad my dad fought for me.”
Elaan nodded. He was right. Kingston Wells, as much of a jackass as he was to everyone else, seemed to love Josh. “Yeah, he’s a good father,” she said.
Josh nodded. “Yeah, and he’s taken a liking to Lijah, too,” he said. “When we were quarantined, he’d always take time to stop over and say hi to Lijah, and when he had time, he’d play chess with him.”
Elaan sat up straighter, her hackles raised. “What did you mean when you said, ‘we were quarantined’? You made it sound like you and Lijah were quarantined in the same room.”
Josh froze, then bit his lower lip as he watched Elaan. “Look,” he said, finally. “I’m not supposed to tell you, or anyone, but Lijah and I didn’t go to the normal quarantine facility.”
Elaan stared at his guilty face, his eyes avoiding hers. What was he talking about – they didn’t go to the normal quarantine? “Where did you go?”
His eyes found hers again, and he chewed his bottom lip before speaking. “We spent two days in the regular facility, you know the one with the padded rooms and the tiny window, sort of like a cell.”
Elaan nodded. She remembered all too well the claustrophobic miserableness of it. She’d been alone for practically three weeks. She had an e-reader with books, a television with DVR, and that was it. She was stuck in that room, and given the indignity of a chamber pot that the hazmat-wearing people would come and take out three times a day. It was an awful, awful place. And Josh was saying he got something different. “You left the padded rooms?” Her voice had sounded harsher than she’d intended.
Josh nodded. “My mother got sick right around the time they had what they thought was the breakthrough on the Alpha team in Palo Alto. The Alpha team was working on the cure, while our dads’ team, the Beta team, was working on a vaccine. My dad asked the Alpha team to send him a sample of their drug, and he wanted to test it on my mother. I mean, the virus was almost always a death sentence, so no matter what the side effect, it couldn’t have been worse than the disease running its course.”
That was for damn sure, Elaan thought. “So, did he test it on her?”
Josh frowned. “I wish,” he said. “They wouldn’t give Alpha team permission to send it, saying it didn’t meet the protocol requirements. Of course, she didn’t make it.” Elaan slipped her hand around Josh’s and gave it a gentle squeeze. She knew too well how it felt to lose your mother.
“Well,” Josh said. “After that, after she was gone, Rick Shepherd, who headed Alpha team, felt bad and sent my dad the information he needed to create their attempted cure. So, my dad pulled me from the regular quarantine and brought me to quarantine in his lab. If I did get sick, he wanted to be able to treat me without prying eyes, and without asking for permission. To make it look like what he was doing was something normal, something more than him doing something strange with his son, he moved one more patient from regular quarantine to his lab: Lijah.”
Elaan tried to keep her face neutral, but she felt a pang of jealousy. Left out again. Lijah was the loved child who got special treatment, quarantine in the lab, and part of the lab-smart special people who got to hang out and play chess while she was squatting on a chamber pot.
“He would have moved you, too, but you’re seventeen,” Josh said, as if that was some sort of proper explanation. When Elaan’s expression did not change, he seemed to realize that didn’t explain enough. “He asked to move you and Lijah, but they wouldn’t move you without parental permission because you’re a minor. Lijah’s nineteen, so he just signed a release saying he was willing to go, but you couldn’t be moved without your father’s permission.”
“And he wouldn’t give it?” Elaan asked, a bit offended.
“Your father was gone when my dad did it,” Josh said. “As the chief of the project, he had gone to some high-level meetings. They generally did them at the Pentagon, and they spent a couple of days before the meeting doing advanced-level testing to make sure no one had gotten sick prior to attending. He was out for five days.”
She’d seen her father the first day of quarantine. He’d been in the hazmat suit and had said he wouldn’t be there for a few days, that he had to deal with their mother’s funeral and estate, but that he’d be back. Apparently, he’d gone to some high-level meetings and hadn’t told her. She sighed. She supposed she felt less abandoned thinking he was doing something related to their mother, rather than leaving her for work. But the work he was doing was important, so she tried not to feel bothered by this new revelation.
Josh was staring at her. She nodded for him to continue, and he added, “I don’t think you would have liked it in the lab. We still had to be quarantined. We were basically in glass cages, the same areas that had previously been used for the experimental chimpanzees. It had been disinfected and cleaned, but it was still a cage. At least in the original quarantine, you felt like there was privacy. In the lab, there was always someone watching. Lijah and I were both guys, but you might have felt awkward there, caged and watched by my dad, your brother, and me.”
Well, yeah, Elaan thought. Perhaps just this once, being left behind hadn’t been so bad. She missed a couple of weeks staring at Josh behind glass. Well, actually, that might have been nice. But chess — a game she was horrible at — with Kingston would have been miserable. She’d only missed out because she needed parental consent. But her dad hadn’t been there to give it. “My dad had no idea your father was going to take Lijah out of quarantine?”
“Not until after it happened,” Josh said. “And then he was so angry. He came in just screaming at my dad, wanting to know why my dad had brought his son down here. My dad told your dad about his plan, and all your dad kept saying was that it wasn’t fair, that my dad shouldn’t have pulled us out with the intention of treating us on the sly, if it came to that.”
That sounded like her dad. He was also somewhat of an expert on medical ethics, and even lectured on the subject sometimes. It wasn’t right to have pulled Lijah and Josh from quarantine.
“And he was worried that you might get sick; what was he to do if Lijah came down with nothing and you got sick up there in the quarantine and died?”
Elaan couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to hear that her father cared about her, cared that she hadn’t been treated the same as Lijah or Josh. In the end, though, it hadn’t mattered. “I guess that’s irony for you,” she said. Josh looked at her, confused. “My father was worried about me and your father was worried about you, but we’re both immune. The only person who probably needed that quarantine was Lijah, and in the end, he was fine.”
Elaan was smiling, but Josh still looked severe and grim. And probably appropriately so. The quarantine, the virus, they were
nothing to smile about, even if there had been irony in the situation. She tried to straighten up her face and think of something to say, something that more matched his face, when he smiled and said, “We still haven’t even started the movie.”
She laughed. “You’re right,” she said. “We got side-tracked.”
“On a topic unbecoming a date,” he said, and Elaan couldn’t help but smile at his use of that word. A date. They’d watched movies together before, but this was the first time there was officially something more between them.
He lifted the laptop screen and slid the DVD into the slot on the machine. A moment later, the movie started. They’d both seen it before, so they spouted lines to each other as the movie progressed. They’d just reached the Cliffs of Insanity when there was a knock on the apartment door. Josh paused the film and walked over to answer it.
When Josh opened the door, Elaan heard her brother’s voice. “Hey, man,” Lijah said, as he looked inside the apartment, and noticed Elaan on the sofa.
Chapter 9
Lijah gave his sister serious side-eye upon seeing her there.
Guilt reared in Elaan’s gut. Was Lijah into Josh? Was she creeping on her brother’s crush? She’d never do this to Priya, her best friend from her life before all this. If Priya was into a guy, even if the guy wasn’t necessarily into Priya, then Elaan would never ever ever do anything with that guy. The image from the movie was frozen on the screen.
“What did you need?” Josh asked.
Lijah paused, then said, “Umm, your dad asked me to come down here and grab you. He wants you up in the lab ASAP. He said it’s important.”
Elaan looked up. What in the world could be important now? She checked her watch. It was almost 8 o’clock. Why was Kingston even still up there? She hadn’t seen him at dinner, and she wondered if he had a stash of food in the lab, too. She hated that guy and his attitude that the rules didn’t apply to him.
