“I told you babies stink,” Ty called from the adjoining room.
Jay came back a few minutes later and handed me a pale blue hoodie with the Chef Adventure TV logo across the chest.
“Can you take him?” I held out TK.
I expected him to hesitate, but he seemed to know what to do and the baby snuggled against him. It made me respect Jay a tiny bit more. Of course, he still talked too much. But he had a responsible, take-charge attitude that was endearing. Ethan had stopped by once when I babysat, and he wouldn’t even hold the baby so I could take a bathroom break. Jay seemed older, more mature than the other guys in our grade.
Is that what attracted Megs to him? Knowing how she liked him made me feel more dirty than the spit-up did. Here I was, eating dinner with him while she was dead. It seemed all wrong. And if there was anything between him and Kayla now . . .
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” he said.
After changing, I rolled up the filthy shirt and stuffed it in the diaper bag. When I came out, TK slept soundly in Jay’s arms.
Jay nodded toward my new outfit. “I’ve never seen you in anything but black.”
I raised my eyebrows, not in the mood to discuss my fashion sense. Jay hadn’t known me before, when I wore pretty skirts and had two best friends and a sense of optimism.
“I mean, blue looks good on you.”
“Thanks,” I said with more politeness than gratitude. I sat across from Jay, too weary for small talk, watching TK nestled against him. His compliment had shifted the friendship balance and an awkward tension filled the air. I jiggled my leg under the table.
“You seem nervous. If you’re worried about food, you can take some of ours to last you through tomorrow.”
“I’m fine for a little while. And you’ve got Ty to feed. But thank you.” I glanced at the microwave clock. “It’s late. I should go.”
Jay moved TK to the stroller without waking him. When he tucked the blanket tenderly around him, it made my heart lurch.
No. I could not be falling for this guy, for Megs’s guy. She adored him, was so excited to meet him the night she became ill. I couldn’t betray her. I couldn’t even think about it. Jay wasn’t meant to be anything more than a neighbor to me.
“Ty, it’s time for me to walk Lil home.”
“Me, too!”
Jay pushed the stroller and Ty told jokes on the way to my house. Having Ty there seemed to ease the tension between us.
“Why was six afraid of seven?” he asked. “Because seven ate nine! Get it? Eight sounds like ate, A-T-E.”
I laughed. “Good one.”
“I have one,” Jay said. “What’s brown and sticky?”
Ty practically bounced along beside the stroller. “I give up.”
“A stick.”
Ty giggled. “That’s pretty good. Do you know any, Lil?”
I had to dig deep, back into my silly innocent years. “Hmm. What do you call cheese that’s not yours?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Nacho cheese.”
As we rounded the curve in the street, Ty’s happy laughter floated through the air. My house was visible ahead.
I stopped short, breathing in sharply.
A red convertible blocked my driveway: Mr. B’s.
CHAPTER 16
Since the East Coast outbreaks, the Blue Flu is hopscotching across America with no rhyme or reason. Some towns are hit hard; others are spared. There’s no correlation to geography, climate, or economic status. While we’d all love an answer, there doesn’t seem to be a scientific one.
—Blue Flu interview, award-winning scientist
At the sight of Mr. B’s car in my driveway, my stomach dropped like it does on an airplane during turbulence. Jay, Ty, and I stood a few houses away from my own, but I wouldn’t move any closer.
“What’s the matter?” Jay asked.
I swayed and he reached out to steady me.
“That car . . . I can’t go home.” I pulled the hood up over my hair and then grabbed the stroller, turning it in the opposite direction. Without another word, I raced TK down the street.
Ty and Jay moved to either side of me, practically jogging to catch up.
He’s at my home. He’s at my home.
“What’s the matter?” Ty asked, and I realized too late that I’d been speaking aloud.
“I can’t talk about it.”
“We can go back to our house,” Jay said.
“Too far. He could spot me any minute.”
“I know where to hide,” Ty said. He steered me toward one of the neighbor’s houses that Jay had said was empty. In the front yard, a short Japanese maple tree fanned out into a dense canopy.
“Here.” Ty took my hand and pulled me under the branches. Jay ducked in with the stroller. The hanging boughs blocked the street from sight.
“It’s a tree-cave,” Ty whispered. “A great hiding spot.”
No hiding spot is safe enough, I thought. Never safe enough.
We sat quietly until Mr. B’s car passed by. I trembled as he drove away.
“Was that a looter?” Ty asked.
“Shh,” Jay said.
Hugging my knees to my chest, I tried to slow my breathing. Rock back and forth, back and forth, inhale. Back and forth, back and forth, exhale. I breathed in the smell of earth and leaves, my eyes closed, until TK started to fuss. Jay unstrapped him from the stroller and I held my arms out, comforted by the weight of him against me.
“What’s green and red and goes 100 miles per hour?” Ty asked.
“Now’s not the—” Jay started.
“It’s OK,” I said. “Tell me, Ty. I give up.”
“A frog in a blender!”
I forced a grin. “Good joke.” The street was quiet since the car had passed. “I can go home soon. I want to wait a few more minutes to be sure.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be alone tonight.” Jay blushed. “That doesn’t sound right. I mean—”
“It’s all right. I know what you mean.”
“You won’t get any sleep home alone, worrying,” he said. “You should stay with us.”
Ty jumped up, nearly hitting his head on a branch. “Like a sleepover!”
It felt reassuring to know I wasn’t completely isolated, that Jay and Ty would look out for me. But even though it was tempting, staying at their house would never work, not with TK.
“Thanks, but it’s hard with the baby.” I thought about the long night ahead of me in my empty, just-looted home, clutching the hornet spray, terrified that Mr. B would return. He’d written in the note that he wanted to talk. I guess he meant sooner rather than later.
“Maybe . . . you could stay at my house?” I said. “Both of you. We have a guest room. Would your aunt mind?”
“She’ll be fine with it,” Jay said. “Let’s get Ty’s pjs and stuff, and then we’ll be all set.”
“And my joke book!” Ty said as he bolted from the shelter of the tree’s branches.
An hour later, we sat in my family room watching Funniest Family Videos in our sleepwear: Jay in flannel pants and a navy T-shirt, Ty in dinosaur pajamas, and me in black yoga pants and a charcoal Henley. It was the only suitable outfit I could come up with for a boy-girl sleepover.
When the doorbell rang, Jay, Ty and I sat motionless on the couch. I sucked in my breath, deciding whether to open it.
“I have to see who it is,” I finally said. It was better to know if it was Mr. B, if he would return every few hours. Then I could prepare myself for the next time. Reluctantly, I stood, not quite ready to face my nightmare.
“I’ll come with you,” Jay said.
Easing up to the side window, I peeked out. A delivery truck idled in the driveway.
“It’s TK’s food! I ordered it online.” Relief flowed through me.
We opened the door. The delivery man wore a mask over his nose and mouth. “Sign here,” he said, before handing us two large boxes.
I loc
ked the door behind him, then washed my hands after touching his pen. Jay and Ty helped me unload the baby food.
“I can’t believe his food actually came. That’s one less thing to worry about.”
“TK’s a lucky little guy.”
“Do you think it’s safe to store it in the pantry?” I asked. “What if the looters come back?”
“We could set traps!” Ty said. “Like in that movie where the boy gets left home alone!”
“Um, that might get messy,” Jay said. “Maybe we should just hide the food.”
The jars were small enough to fit under the couch, so we slid them there. I placed the canisters of formula under the kitchen sink.
“At least TK will have enough to eat for now. If I get desperate, I can try his mixed vegetables in a jar,” I said, half joking.
“Did you try the online grocery stores?” Jay asked.
“Yeah, but the order wouldn’t go through.”
“We can check again later.”
It was ten o’clock before TK and Ty were both asleep. Jay and I moved upstairs to Dad’s office so we could use the computer. Jay sat at the wooden desk, checking stores online. I perched on the arm of a leather chair nearby.
“You know I’m a good listener, right?” he said.
“Um, yeah,” I said, confused.
He kept his eyes on the computer screen. “Are you going to talk about the car in the driveway then?”
I averted my eyes. What could I possibly say? My brain fumbled for a plausible story, something believable that wouldn’t give me away. I stared at the ceiling, waiting for inspiration to hit.
Tell the truth, the voice in my head whispered.
Could I actually tell Jay about Mr. B? I considered it. Jay seemed nonjudgmental. But was he completely trustworthy? I had trusted Kayla, too, and she couldn’t understand after being my friend for years. How would Jay react?
I took a deep breath, trying to form the first sentence. But when I tried to speak, my chest tightened, the familiar band of tension compressing my insides. Suddenly describing what happened, finding the words . . . it was too much.
“I . . . um. . . .”
Jay paused from typing, looked at me with sincere eyes.
“I can’t.”
“OK then.”
The room was silent except for his typing. Regret seeped through me. Jay had been honest about his mother’s death, which couldn’t have been easy for him. Now I had thrown this barrier between us by not telling him about Mr. B.
I sighed. “Principal Fryman would use the cliché, ‘honesty’s the best policy,’” I said. “But it’s not always that easy.”
Jay smiled and I relaxed a little. Maybe we were still good.
“We can talk another time if you want,” he said. “So, this site has limited supplies and there’s a seventy dollar delivery fee.”
“Order the max. I’ll charge it to my dad’s card. Aren’t you worried about food, too?”
“A little. I have restaurant friends from writing reviews, but the businesses have all closed, so that’s not much help. The hospital’s been good about feeding my aunt, so she brings home what she can for me and Ty. Plus she’s been able to get stuff on the black market.”
“There’s a black market?” I was shocked.
He nodded. “The people who robbed you probably weren’t hungry. It’s more likely they were looking to make a profit. Portico will be a different place for a while. Do you want to check this before I submit the order?”
I read the screen over his shoulder, trying not to get my hopes up that it would work this time.
“Looks fine to me.”
He clicked the “confirm order” button. The website froze.
My shoulders slumped. Empty grocery stores, closed restaurants, inundated websites. All my careful planning was thwarted. I didn’t even have that much cash to buy food on the black market, wherever that was. And anything worth selling, the looters had taken with them.
Except the medicine. I could get a lot of money for that. But not yet. Selling that would be like giving up on Mom and Dad’s return.
“Don’t worry,” Jay said. “We’ll figure something out. Let’s try a different site.”
The next one didn’t work either.
“Maybe if we wait, it will be less busy later,” he said. “Mind if I check my blog?”
“Sure.” After grabbing a pen and paper, I curled up in the chair to make a new meal chart with my dwindling supplies.
“Holy Jesus,” Jay said.
“What?”
“Look at all these postings!”
I stood to peer over his shoulder. He scrolled through the comments section.
Please add James Mass to your memorial page. 7:14 pm
David Pymann is sick. Say a prayer! 8:21 pm
Karen Krozynski died today. 9:34 pm
The list went on for several pages.
“What if we’re the only ones left?” I asked.
“We can’t be. Someone from school typed the names on my blog. So there have to be others still alive,” Jay said.
I imagined other kids isolated in their homes like me, each grieving the death of a friend alone.
Jay must have been thinking the same thing. “Maybe we should try to get the survivors together,” he said.
“Sure, if we weren’t in the middle of a contagious epidemic. Getting together with a germy group of people doesn’t sound appealing.”
“But we might be able to help each other. Maybe they have food to share and you have something, like blankets, to give them.”
“All I have is a giant headache.”
Jay crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m surprised, Lil. You seem like the kind of person who would worry about the greater good.”
“Yeah, until my house got looted and all my food was stolen. And . . .” I thought about the note, the visit from Mr. B. “And I have all kinds of stuff to worry about.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“I did have an idea about helping orphans in the neighborhood, but now . . . everything feels too hard.”
“What was your orphan idea?”
Reluctantly, I told him.
“That’s a decent plan. Maybe we should get the other high school kids together, canvass the neighborhood for babies in trouble.”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t help? Didn’t you used to be the Community Service Queen? I seem to remember Ethan bragging about an award you won.”
Yeah, and look what that got me. Nothing but trouble and an emotional crisis.
“Maybe the town’s already doing something,” I said. “We can’t be the first ones to think of this.”
“Maybe not.” Jay typed something on the computer, then pulled up an article criticizing the town for its lack of action. “This article says, ‘Portico’s using a triage system to deal with the ill but the town’s overwhelmed by the number of deaths. Healthy people are expected to care for themselves until officials can organize an outreach effort to help the living.’”
“Really?”
“That’s what it says. So it looks like we could do something useful. I’m going to post something on my blog.”
“Like what?”
“I’ll set up a meeting for tomorrow. We can sit outside in my backyard, with fresh air and hand sanitizer.”
“What about Ty? You’d risk exposing him?”
Jay glowered at me.
I ignored him and checked my phone. There were three brief messages from Dad and one from Mom, saying the airport situation was crazy but that she should know her travel schedule tomorrow. When I finished responding, I realized that Jay was uncharacteristically quiet.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to upset you about Ty.”
“It’s OK. It’s just that when my mom was sick, she begged me to always take care of him. She asked me, not my sisters. Ty’s the youngest, the baby, and I promised her he’d be safe.” He twisted s
ide to side in my dad’s swivel chair. “He can stay in the house. I would never put him at risk.”
“I know you’ll be careful. I was being mean. You made me feel bad because I don’t want to help.”
“During Mom’s illness, we would have fallen apart if so many people didn’t help us—neighbors, friends, even strangers.”
“Cancer isn’t contagious, though. Those people could be involved without any personal risk.”
“It’s good karma, Lil. What goes around comes around.”
“You sound like Fryman. And I don’t believe in karma.”
“Anyway, I’ve made some changes to the site. I’m waiting for them to upload,” he said.
The computer dinged.
“It’s finished.” He twisted the screen so I could see. “I posted a note saying healthy kids from school should contact me. We’ll meet at three o’clock tomorrow outside at my house. Got plans?”
His eyes had a soft pleading look. Anxiety welled up inside of me, making it hard to breathe. The looters, Mr. B, the germs—danger hovered everywhere. I couldn’t do it. Jay had good intentions, but I needed to protect myself.
“Sorry,” I said. “I just can’t.”
CHAPTER 17
Pandemic phases 1 to 3 are like the pre-ignition of a fire. Phase 4 is like combustion—you’ve got dangerous flames. In phases 5 and 6, wind spreads the embers and the fire grows uncontrollably. So the official upgrade to phase 6 means major trouble.
—Blue Flu interview, Colorado Emergency Medical Technician
TK was still in blissful baby sleep and there was no sign of Jay and Ty being up when I awoke. My stomach grumbled for breakfast. Ignoring it, I showered and braided my hair in a loose plait, then surveyed my clothes. I reached for a striped black T-shirt and hesitated. Jay had complimented me on wearing blue. Did I care, though? Sighing, I pulled the striped one off the hanger.
For breakfast, Jay and Ty ate dried Captain Crunch cereal that Jay had brought over. TK gobbled pureed pears and baby rice cereal. I opened and closed the pantry, trying to overlook my hunger. I needed to stretch my food supply as long as possible.
“What’s the matter?” Jay asked.
Was I that transparent? It was almost scary how well he could read me.
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