The Rest of Us Just Live Here

by Patrick Ness

  I pick Meredith up immediately, knocking her hat to the floor. She’s so scared, she doesn’t even mention it. I’m so scared, I don’t even notice my ribs. Mel presses herself against us, arms wrapping around me and Meredith.

  “What was that?!?” Mel screams.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” I scream back.

  “They’re coming!” Meredith yells and we turn down to the rows in front of us.

  A tidal wave of panicked parents and panicked little girls is flowing over the seats up the wall of the amphitheatre.

  Coming right at us.

  There’s no time to even think. I turn with Meredith in my arms, and we run. I climb up over row after row, the seats above us quickly vacating, thank God. Mel is behind us, shielding Meredith from any more debris. I see a few bloody faces as we rush on and I can only wonder if there’s anyone really badly hurt, but there’s no time for that as I keep climbing.

  We get stuck behind a frantic mom, trying to herd three girls in front of her. Without breaking stride, Mel picks one of the girls up. The mom, with what seems to be superhuman strength, picks up the other two and we all climb together, as that’s still faster than the clogged aisles. We’re lucky by a factor of a thousand that the biggest exits are at the back of the amphitheatre, wide staircases heading down into the green fields of the fairgrounds. Me and Mel and the woman reach the top of one and scramble down the steps, only just barely able to stay standing in the rush of people.

  “There!” Mel yells and starts heading towards a bit of the fairgrounds that have been left wooded, with a clearing in the middle for picnics and barbecues. Most of the crowd pour out past the confused news crews to the parking lot, but we swerve to the side with some others, finally stopping in the trees, huddling together. Mel puts down the girl she picked up and the mom hugs her in with the other two, saying, “Thank you thank you thank you thank you,” to Mel.

  I set Meredith down, and she instantly throws up. My adrenaline is so high my hands are shaking uncontrollably, but I do my best to rub her on the back. “It’s okay, Meredith, we’re out and we’re going home right now.”

  “Mikey,” Mel says. “Look.”

  Hovering over the amphitheatre, against the now-setting sun, a pillar of blue light is disappearing from where the explosion was.

  “It wasn’t a bomb,” Mel says. “It was them. Whoever the hell they are.”

  In the past, there’s been collateral damage from whatever the indie kids are involved in. But it’s hard to think of “collateral damage” when it’s me and Mel and freakin’ Meredith and almost two thousand little girls.

  Whatever it is has just gotten worse. A lot, lot worse.

  “Aren’t you Alice Mitchell’s daughter?” we hear.

  Cynthia, the bitter little blogger who’s always attacking my mother and who tried to drag Mel’s past into the press conference, is standing in the clearing, pad in her hand, filming us. “You are, aren’t you? The anorexic one.”

  Another camera crew from the big city affiliate has seen her and is rushing over to us as well, trying to find someone who’ll tell them what happened.

  “Where’s your mother?” Cynthia sneers at my sister. “Why isn’t she here to protect her children?”

  Mel barely hesitates. She steps forward, snatches the pad out of Cynthia’s hands, and punches her right across the face.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH, in which the Prince explains to Satchel that the Immortal Crux, which allows passage between worlds, depends on the amulets; the one she wears is missing from it, and though it protects her, its absence is causing holes to rip in the boundaries between the Immortals’ world and hers; the life force – “you would see it as a kind of blue light, but it would burn you, Satchel, it would burn you right through” – is spilling out and causing damage, including the accident at the amphitheatre which killed Satchel’s friend Madison; “Should I give it back?” Satchel asks, wanting to save lives, but giving it back would fully power the Immortal Crux and only make the march of the Immortals into her world unstoppable; it’s an impossible dilemma.

  The police are saying a gas main exploded.

  A gas main.

  The only person who died was an indie kid called Madison who was in Calc with me and Jared. I spoke to her a bunch of times in class. She was definitely not stupid, but they say she was smoking outside the amphitheatre after dropping off her sister at the concert and it ignited a leaky gas main.

  Bullshit.

  First of all, why does a teeny tiny amphitheatre in the middle of a field at the state’s smallest county fair have a gas main running right behind its only stage?

  Second of all, Madison used an inhaler so totally didn’t smoke.

  Third of all, bull and shit.

  Lots of people were hurt, including Bolts of Fire – so the rest of the entire world hates our little town now – plus Carly’s mom and nurse. No one very badly, though. Four of five Bolts of Fire still performed “bravely” the next night in the big city while the blond one got his front teeth replaced. Carly didn’t get hurt at all, which is one small blessing. One very small blessing if that’s all you’ve got when you have terminal cancer and the concert of your dreams is blown up.

  Meredith got treated for shock at the scene by Call Me Steve, who was the first person Mel phoned. He showed up in an ambulance, saw to Meredith, kissed Mel really hard, then ran off to help other people.

  I like him.

  Our mom just cried. Genuinely, I’ll give her that, and for all of us, too, not just Meredith. “That someone could do this,” she choked out, in front of a bunch of journalists when people still thought it was a bomb, “in a place where my children are…”

  But she hugged us. I thought she’d never stop. “You’re sure you’re not hurt. You’re sure?”

  “Just a little freaked out,” Mel said. “More than a little, actually.”

  And our mom hugged us again. She didn’t even yell at us for not letting her come along to the concert to be exploded herself.

  Quite a few news crews ended up getting footage of Mel attacking Cynthia. So far, it’s actually helped my mom’s campaign. “I thought it was a terrorist attack,” Mel told the cameras, keeping a straight face that I’ll remember with joy until I die. “And suddenly here was someone identifying me as a politician’s daughter. I thought I was a target, so I protected my younger brother and sister.”

  There will be no charges filed, not even for the pad Cynthia was using, which Mel, perhaps unnecessarily, broke in two by stomping on it. Cynthia blogged about it all. I don’t think anyone cared.

  “Bet that was pretty awful, huh, Merde Breath?” Jared says, squeezing the life out of her, her little bare feet a metre off the ground.

  “Uh-huh,” Meredith says, muffled, into his neck. “And don’t call me that.”

  He sets her down, hands on her shoulders, and looks her in the eye. They just stare at each other for a minute, then she smiles. “Your hands are getting hot,” she says. “But I’m okay.”

  He smiles back at her. “You sure?”

  She nods. “But show me the lights anyway.”

  He checks to make sure my parents aren’t watching – which is for show, as we all know they’re both out of the house or he wouldn’t even be here – then pulls his hands slightly away, casting a light down her arms from the palms of his hands. She giggles and throws her arms around his enormous legs in a last hug. She’s slept in Mel’s bed the past two nights since the explosion. I can’t blame her, and I don’t think Mel’s in any hurry to get her out either. None of us have been back to school yet, but I think today is pushing it. It’s not actually that much fun missing school when there’s so little of it left.

  “Did you actually do anything for her?” I ask, as Meredith heads into the kitchen to make herself a snack, always keeping us in sight.

  “I don’t know,” Jared says. “I was feeling all these good things for her, all my hopes that she wasn’t hurt.” He flexes his ha
nds. “Maybe some of that got into her.”

  “Are you getting more powerful?” I ask. “Is that … something that would even happen?”

  He just frowns and flops down on the sofa. Mary Magdalene sits on the arm of it, watching him, purring and kneading her paws into the fabric. “You take good care of Meredith, okay?” Jared whispers to her, touching her lightly on the nose. The cat immediately jumps off the couch and starts following Meredith around the kitchen.

  “Gas main, huh?” he says to me.

  “Don’t get me started,” I say, sitting down next to him. “The question is, what are we going to do about it?”

  “What can we do about it? We don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Come on, Jared, surely the Gods must know something–”

  “Mikey, it doesn’t work like that. Don’t you think I’d be finding out if I could?”

  “Finding out what?” Meredith says, scooching up on the couch next to Jared with a plate of cheese and crackers, Mary Magdalene sitting firmly on her feet.

  “Finding out what’s really going on, Bite Size,” Jared says, not lying to her either.

  Meredith nods seriously. “There’s still hardly anything on the internet. Rumours and theories and indie kids disappearing, but mostly it’s just people monstering other people for thinking it’s vampires again or for not thinking it’s vampires again. Everyone thinks they know better. Everyone.” She eats a cracker. “I think I’m going to give away all my Bolts of Fire stuff.”

  “I think I’d want to, too,” Jared says.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?” he asks me later, driving us to work after Mel came home from her day out with Call Me Steve. I could have called in sick, but I was getting antsy just sitting around the house. It felt like I was waiting for something to happen. Which has to be the worst part of being young. So many of your decisions aren’t yours; they’re made by other people. Sometimes they’re made badly by other people. Sometimes they’re made by other people who have no idea what the consequences of those decisions might be. The bastards.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “You’re not.”

  “I spent an hour brushing my teeth this morning because every time felt like I hadn’t done it right. Mel finally noticed and got me out of it.”

  “See?”

  “Jared, we have to do something. Make the indie kids tell us what they know. Or Nathan–”

  “Jesus, Mike, would you leave him alone? I told you, he was with me and Henna at the movies.”

  “He could still have some part in it. I don’t trust him. Why was he in the Field that time? What’s he doing hanging around my house in the dark?”

  “His mom is like the saddest person in the world. I told him we hung around the Field, so maybe he just needed a place to get away. You’re getting obsessive.”

  “Of course I am! Have you met me? They could have killed my sisters, Jared. It could have happened right there in front of me.”

  “And you,” Jared says, more softly. “They could have killed you, too.”

  I look at him, then back out the windshield of his tiny car. “Thanks, man.”

  “Look, what do we know?” he says. “We know that only one person died.”

  “An indie kid.”

  “Yes, an indie kid. A nice one. Who was smart and good at math. She didn’t deserve that. None of them did.”

  “Unless they’re the ones who stirred all this up.”

  “Even then,” Jared says, sternly. “And come on, have you seen them lately? They’re even more scared than the rest of us. And with good reason.”

  I don’t say anything, but he’s probably right about that.

  “And what I did find out from my grandmother–”

  “You talked to your grandmother? I thought she was off in her realms, unreachable.”

  “It wasn’t easy, in fact it was a huge giant pain in my ass, but what I did find out is that, when it happened before – because she was there once, remember? – this kind of big public thing meant the beginning of the end.”

  I wait for him to continue. “What end?”

  He shrugs. “However it’s going to be solved. However the indie kids are going to solve it.”

  “If they solve it.”

  “They always have.”

  “Doesn’t mean they always will. Doesn’t mean people won’t get hurt before they do. Doesn’t mean more people won’t die.”

  Jared pulls into a spot in the Grillers parking lot. “We may never find out what’s actually going on, Mike. It may all end with us not seeing anything else–”

  “But Jared–”

  “Listen to me,” he says, sounding angry. “We’ve got prom, we’ve got graduation, we’ve got the summer. Then everything changes. Are you going to live all that time until we go afraid?”

  “Probably.”

  “Please don’t.” He’s still weirdly angry. “Not everyone has to be the Chosen One. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great for them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people properly. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyway.”

  He’s gripping the steering wheel, hard, and I can see light flashing from his palms. “What aren’t you telling me?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

  He just sighs and the light dims. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know about the cops or the pillars of light or what the indie kids have got themselves mixed up in, but I do know this: one, they better not blow up the high school before we graduate, and two” – he holds up his palms again, they flash a little with faint light – “if anyone I care about is put in harm’s way again, there’s going to be holy hell to pay. Literally.”

  And that makes me feel a little bit better.

  Our shift is crazy. Tina has to be out on the floor full-time, waiting tables herself, even on what should be a slow week night. It’s like the town knows something’s happening and doesn’t want to be alone either. Mel and Henna bring in Meredith, who sits in my section this time. I take them enough cheesy toast to feed a cheesy-toast-loving sperm whale.

  “How’s the tat?” I ask Henna, who answers by hugging me.

  “It itches,” she says in my ear, then she leans back and looks at me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Just you. Saving people.”

  “So you’re not mad at me any more?”

  “Who cares about mad?” she says.

  “No Nathan tonight?” I can’t help myself from asking.

  She frowns and slides in next to Meredith, who’s already got cheesy-toast butter on her face. We’re so busy, that’s all I can really talk to them right then. I bring cheeseburgers for Henna and Meredith and a chicken salad for Mel, who digs in like she’s famished. I notice slightly too long. She makes a face.

  They’re still there half an hour later when something completely unexpected happens for the second time this week. It’s not a bomb this time, even if it might as well be.

  My dad shows up.

  “Dad?” I say, so surprised I stop right there, at the entrance where Tina is wrangling with menus and trying to seat people. There’s a line of customers waiting to get in, which usually only happens on Sunday mornings after all the churches let out. My dad’s at the front of the line, looking around, slightly stunned, but not smelling of booze that I can tell.

  “Busy tonight, huh?” he says.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He fingers his collar, only catching my eye in brief little glances. “Meeting your mother. Is she here?”

  “You’re meeting her here? At the restaurant?”

  My surprise must finally sink in because he stops, seeming confused. “I think so,” he says, and it’s almost a question.

  “Uh,” I say, because I really don’t know what else to say.

  Tina finally can’t ta
ke it any more. “Are you busy?” she says to me, eyes wide, voice high. “Because I am!”

  I snap out of it. “Dad, Mel and Meredith are sitting over there with Henna.” I point. Three astonished, frozen faces stare back at us from their booth. “Why don’t you … you know … sit with them?”

  My dad nods, but doesn’t head over to the booth. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” he asks me.

  Without even looking at her, I hand the coffee pots I’m holding to a really-very-angry-now Tina and follow my dad out into the parking lot. It’s only just getting dark. The rain let off the week before the Bolts of Fire concert and you can tell that summer might actually be on the way. If we live to see it.

  My dad scrunches up his face like his mind’s elsewhere and pulls again at his collar. “Why don’t you take your tie off?” I ask.

  “Hmm?” he says. He doesn’t touch the tie. He looks at the moon, up already, only about half-full. “When I was your age, we really did think we’d be living up there by now.”

  I wait. He doesn’t continue. “I’m kinda busy, Dad. What’s up?”

  He scratches his ear. I think for a second that he’s not steady on his feet, but then I realize he’s just shuffling around, not staying still. I lean in and smell him again. He gives me a small grin. “Nope,” he says. “Sober.”

  “Well,” I say. “That’s good.”

  “Listen,” he starts, but again doesn’t finish.

  “Dad, seriously, I–”

  “I’m going to go into rehab.”

  He stops because a family has come out of the restaurant. Tina leans out the door behind them, looking at me with furious eyes. I flash a “one minute” index finger at her and she goes back inside.

  “That’s, um,” I say, “that’s great, Dad. I–”

  “Not until after the election. But I’m going to go.”

  I frown. “I think you’re a bit more important than–”

  “Not her idea. Though she’s been asking for years, hasn’t she?”

  “I wouldn’t know, Dad, but even so, I think she’d probably–”

  “Don’t want to ruin her big moment.” He fidgets some more, catching my eye and looking away. I lean closer.