When I’d gotten to the Convention Centre, I’d apologized to Punum for being such a shit. She’d shrugged. “At least you’re here to help,” she’d said. I didn’t feel forgiven, just . . . tolerated. She and Glory had only met each other hours before, with the other volunteers, but they were carrying on like they were already best friends. Every time I tried to talk to Glory, she’d be all like, “Did you know Punum writes her own lyrics?” or “Punum says . . .” Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Glory beamed at Punum. “Thank you,” she said shyly, as she took the bottle.
“No problem at all.” Hard to tell beneath that deep brown skin, but it looked like Punum was blushing. “I’m your relief,” she said, her cheeks flushing even more. “I mean, we are. Jim and Bo Yih and me. For all of you. Lunch break.” She stuttered to a halt with a goofy grin on her face.
“Yeah,” said Bo Yih. “Go before there’re no more sandwiches.” She and Jim and Punum took our places.
The little boy I’d given the two water bottles to was still standing there. He said to Jim, “Mom says to say she needs milk for my baby sister. The water came into our house and the wall came down and Mom grabbed my sister and my dad grabbed me, but nobody grabbed the milk, and now Emily’s hungry.”
As the three of us walked away, I heard Jim asking, “Where’s your mom, son? The lady in the green dress? That’s your mom?”
“God,” said Ben, “I can’t even imagine what this is like for little kids.”
I shivered, suddenly chilly. A bedraggled woman carrying a wide-eyed brown tabby in her arms had pushed open one of the big glass doors to the Convention Centre, and a bit of cool air had blown in. Had she brought her dog, too? A black shadow had come in with them. It dashed into a dark corner between some lockers and was gone. The woman looked around, a lost look on her face. I’d seen that look a lot today. I was probably wearing it, too. She saw the bunch of cafeteria-style folding tables laid out end to end. Someone had handwritten NEED HELP? in black marker on a big sheet of paper and taped it so that it hung off the front edge of the tables. The woman headed that way. She was limping.
The clock tower toilet stalls bellowed, “SUNNY DAYS . . . ,” one right after the other, like they were singing a round. Ben winced.
Glory said, “This is all so nuts. On the way over here, while my mom’s car was stopped at a red light, I saw a tiny cow with wings. It flew over our car and pooped right on the windshield. Then this little thing that looked like Tinker Bell, only with fangs, flew down, scooped the poop up, and flew around throwing it at people’s heads and laughing an insane little Tinker Bell laugh.”
Ben burst out laughing. He’d stopped acting all weird and suspicious. I was relieved. People get nervous if black guys act too twitchy. There were all these tweets online about mobs beating up anyone who acted funny, like they might be one of the monsters roaming around.
We went over to the closest of the hand sanitizer stations that had been set up all over the main hall of the Convention Centre. Shane, the guy supervising our team of volunteers, had told us to clean our hands often. “Last thing we want is some kind of infection spreading through this crowd,” he’d said.
Was this thing growing on me contagious? The doctors had said no. But that’s when it’d been just a little spot here and there, a lifetime ago in a world before this one, where things that had been harmless the day before could come alive and kill you today. Man, if I could go back to then and all I had to worry about was a spot or two, that would be so nice. I wouldn’t freak out whenever a new one showed up. I’d just get it lasered away.
Well, I could at least keep my hands clean. I let the cool sanitizer gel glop onto my hands and rubbed them together until it evaporated. It was drying my hands out. Ordinarily, the itchiness of dry hands made me crazy. But here, with blankets to hand out and cots to set up and lost children to help find their families, it really wasn’t bugging me much at all. If I just concentrated on doing the job in front of me, I could keep my mind off everything else, just for a little while. I bet my folks would be home soon. I wouldn’t have to tell them I’d gone with Rich to a bar. They’d find him, wherever he was. My mom would make a few calls, and probably he’d be unconscious in a hospital somewhere, and they’d fix him up, and everything would be fine.
Me, I was looking forward to taking the weight off my feet, even for a few minutes. The blemish had spread to my left foot and leg all the way to my hips. Both my boots were too tight now. The blemish was continuing to move up my body, too. It was almost at my navel. It was making my tight jeans even tighter. I was chafing like you wouldn’t believe. Ah, well. Think about something else. “So what’s with you and Punum?” I asked Glory.
Too casually, she flicked her hair out of her eyes, pulled it back, and refastened her ponytail. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Like hell she didn’t. I knew her too well.
Ben chortled, “You can’t hide anything from me and Scotch! You two are totally flirting with each other.”
“We are not! She’s just, you know, sweet. And she’s really interesting to talk to.”
That stung. “I’m interesting to talk to!”
“Yeah, about some things. Not about everything.”
I sighed and rolled my eyes; one of my trusty comebacks for when I didn’t know what to say. “You don’t even like girls. So don’t play her, okay?”
“Jeez, I won’t! Just leave it alone, already!”
“Wow, okay! Sorry I asked.”
Glory looked contrite. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just tired.”
Ben and I had gotten to the Convention Centre and discovered that Glory and her folks were there volunteering. They’d all been in bed and asleep when the world had gone insane. They hadn’t even felt the tremors much up where they lived. The first thing they’d known about it was when they’d woken up this morning to find that their lawn was now made of cheese. Gloria thought maybe it was Havarti, but her sister Joey was sure it was Edam. Her dad said he was just thankful it wasn’t blue cheese.
I smiled at Glory. “Apology accepted.” I caught a glimpse of a shadow disappearing behind a Johnny on the Spot. Somebody’d better get that lady’s dog into a cage. It could bite someone. “So, Ben.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “My turn now, I see.”
“You feeling better?”
“Yeah,” he said, sticking his hands under a pump, “I’m kinda getting used to it.”
Glory asked, “To everything that’s going on?”
“No. Stuff’s still freaking me out, big-time. I mean, my cousin’s family in Bolton are probably all dead! No, I’m getting used to Junior here.” With his chin, he pointed to his side. He smiled down at empty air. “Aren’t I, you little brat?”
The skin of my scalp prickled. Glory and I exchanged looks.
“Ben,” I said, “there’s no one there.”
He was rubbing his hands dry. “You’re right,” he replied cheerfully, “there isn’t. Only there kinda is something there. I can sorta glimpse it, only not with my eyes, exactly. It tastes like candlelight and looks like the day after next Tuesday. It’s feeling sad, but sometimes I can make it smile like lemon drops. It’s been following me since the world went crazy.”
Glory was looking at Ben like he’d grown another nose. “You’re creeping me out,” she said.
“Don’t worry, he’s only little, whatever he is. I think he’s scared. I told him he could stick around with me for a while. You guys coming to eat?”
We followed him as he headed for the volunteers’ room. “But shouldn’t you tell someone?” I asked him. “Someone adult?”
He cut his eyes at me. “You the same Scotch who’s always telling me she’s grown-up now, right? I’m gonna deal with this on my own.”
Glory grabbed his arm to stop him. “She’s right! Something could be wrong with you.”
I said, “You might be going crazy.”
Glory said, “Some kind of super poison gas
might have gotten released by accident. You might have breathed it in.”
“Or maybe you are going to turn into some kind of monster thing, and there’s a way to stop it.”
Gloria blurted out, “It might be aliens!”
Ben folded his arms and looked at us.
“I haven’t the faintest idea what it is. But poison gas doesn’t make a volcano grow overnight, and that volcano is real. Just ask all these people whose homes are underwater. And Gloria, don’t even get me started on that ‘aliens’ business.”
I asked him, “How about the thing where you might be going nuts, then?”
Four Horseless Head Men swirled past us, giggling. Ben watched them go, then turned back to me. “Look around you, girl. Everything is nuts. I always carry on like I have an audience watching every move I make, and now”—he blew a kiss at the invisible thing at his side—“I do. Glory’s always going on about how boring her family is, and now they have a lawn made of cheese. And you; I bet you some weird secret desire of yours turned into something real. You going to tell us about it?”
That did it. “So Rich always wanted to fall into a hole and disappear? Or maybe I wanted him gone? Is that you trying to tell me?”
“Uh, I didn’t mean—”
“All these people here always wanted to lose everything they own? That guy on that cot over there always wanted to turn into a giant cockroach in his sleep? Never mind, maybe he did. But you really telling me that your cousin’s family always wanted what happened to them?”
His face fell. “I don’t know! I’m just saying, people are crazy. We make the world a crazy place. Maybe some of it is that our crazy isn’t invisible anymore.”
We were not going to talk about my crazy again. “Let’s just go eat,” I said coldly. “We only have half an hour.”
In the volunteers’ room, people moved over at one of the tables so that we could all sit together. Tafari came over and joined us. I blew a kiss down the table at him. There were a couple of cardboard flats on the table, already half-emptied of sandwiches.
“Two kinds,” said the woman beside me. She was kinda old, white, with short pink hair and piercings. I think her name was Helen. “Ham on whole wheat, and cheese on white. That’s as vegetarian as it gets. And be careful; some of them bite.”
She was right; the first sandwich I took the plastic wrap off opened like a mouth at me and tried to nip at my fingers. The group around the table laughed when they saw my face. Helen said, “They aren’t all like that. If you don’t want that one, just keep opening them till you find one that’s just a sandwich.”
“Is it cheese?” asked Lenny from across the table.
I nodded.
Lenny held a hand out. “Give it here.” Lenny was short and muscular with olive skin, an amazing nose, and short, straight black hair with a streak of silver in it, even though Lenny didn’t look old enough to be going gray. I hadn’t decided whether Lenny was a girl or a boy. I was waiting to hear someone use either a “he” or a “she” to talk about Lenny.
I handed the mouth sandwich over. Lenny made a kissy face at it. Its sandwich-crust lips made a growling motion back. Lenny bit into it. I eeped in alarm. Through a mouthful of sandwich, Lenny said, “What? It’s not like they really bite. They’re soft and they don’t have teeth. I already ate one. Two, in fact. And I’m fine. Except for, you know, eating dairy.”
“You should be careful, Lenny.” That was Sita, a tall, plump dark woman with a long ponytail of straight black hair. “You don’t know what’s in them, what effect they might have on you later.”
“Please. Have you looked around you? As of today, I don’t know what effect my next breath will have on me. None of us does. You can’t count on anything being the way it used to be.”
“Whatever,” said Glory. “I’m hungry.” She grabbed a sandwich and unwrapped it without looking at it. She took vicious little bites out of it as she ate.
Those sandwiches were the closest thing I’d had to a meal since the doughnut and juice Punum had bought me this morning. I ate the one I had unwrapped. Then another. Then I started on a third one. I was ignoring Ben. I was still feeling hurt by the stuff he’d said. Glory and Helen were talking about the best kind of bread for open-face toasted cheese sandwiches. Hidden by the table, I slipped my fingers under the bottom of my blouse and touched my stomach. I could feel the blemish, raised and ever so slightly sticky. It had filled in my belly button. I didn’t even have a freaking belly button anymore. I kept breathing. In. Out. Kept on doing it, at normal speed. Things would be all right. Maybe tomorrow the hospitals wouldn’t be as busy, and someone would be able to see me. They probably had some killer app you couldn’t just go and buy in a store, right? Some kind of major blemish dissolver/exfoliant ray, or something. T’aint no big thing, I kept telling myself, like Mom would say. T’aint no big thing.
“Scotch, what’re you doing?” Gloria’s voice cut through the chatter at the table. Everyone turned to look at me. Guiltily, I pulled my hand out of my blouse. But Glory was looking at the table in front of me.
I’d eaten most of the plastic wrap that had been around my sandwiches. It’d tasted good, too. Kinda like fruit leather, only stretchier. “Uh . . .” I said, trying to think up an explanation.
Bo Yih ran in through the doorway. “Somebody come quick! Some guy’s cot just turned into a giant feather duster and attacked him!”
While everyone was rushing to take care of that, I snuck quietly out of the lunchroom and found a quiet alcove. I called Rich’s line. The metallic lady voice said, “There is no one here to answer your call at this moment. Please leave a message after the tone.” Then there was a beep.
“Rich? I guess you’re not around. I really hope you’re okay.” I took a deep breath. “So here’s the thing, Bro; I was the one who tattled on you to Mom and Dad. I told them you had weed in your room. Mom and Dad had been making me crazy, hounding me because my grades had slipped. But anybody’s grades would slip, if their lives were like mine! I was slowly being covered in sticky black blemishes, and you were pissed at me because you’d had to move to our new school too, even though you hadn’t been the one in trouble. Though maybe if you had stood up for me at LeBrun, we wouldn’t have had to move, you know? You ever think about that? Then to make it worse, a guy I used to know from LeBrun High had just been transferred to our school, and I just knew that Tafari, who was always mad at me anyway because I didn’t dare tell our folks we were dating, was going to hear from the new guy that everyone used to call me a skank at LeBrun High, and then Tafari would get that sneery look and he’d stop hanging out with me and he’d start spreading lies about me around this school, too, and pretty soon people would be sneaking rotten sandwiches into my knapsack again. Because, Rich, once people decide you’re the school slut, it sticks. It gets tangled up in you like the chewed-up gum in your hair. It’s like you’re wearing a big S on your forehead, and no matter how much foundation you put on over it, eventually it shows through. Eventually somebody’ll look at you a certain way, or a bunch of girls will laugh as they walk past you, and even if that look doesn’t mean anything and those girls aren’t laughing at you, in your mind you’ll be the school slut all over again, with girls calling you skank and saying that you stole their boyfriends. In your mind you’ll be sure that it’s going to happen again. You’ll be sure that a bunch of girls will corner you in the parking lot after school one day and hold you down and scream names at you and spit on you and take the gum they’ve been chewing all day just so they could have it for this out of their mouths and smoosh so much of it into your hair that your mom will have to cut all your hair off with a pair of scissors and your dad will be mad and say that you must have done something to deserve this, that girls are gentle and wouldn’t do something this awful unless you’d done something to make them mad.
So Mom and Dad were on my case, and I was jumpy at school all the time and snapping at Tafari even though I wasn’t mad at him, I just wanted him to
break up with me and get it over with. And I wanted to take some of the pressure off at home. I wanted to show Mom and Dad that I was still their good little girl. So I told them about you, and they freaked out and called the cops. And then I kinda went nuts, but all inside, where no one else could see it. I told Tafari I wanted to stop seeing him. I got tired of always being scared that he was going to break up with me, so I did it first. And you were in jail and everything had gone to shit and it was all my fault. And Rich, I’m so, so sorry. I really suck. But please be okay. Please come back, even if you never talk to me again. You shouldn’t ever talk to me again. I wouldn’t.”
I hung up.
“SWEEPING THE CLOUDS AWAY . . .” bellowed the clock towers. Clearing the air seemed like a good idea. There was more weird going on than I could deal with all at once. Best not to think about how plastic wrap suddenly was tasting good. There were boxes of donations at the loading dock; blankets and clothing waiting to be carried upstairs, sorted, and distributed to people who needed them. I could keep busy. I grabbed a box and started climbing the stairs to the level above. It was safer than taking the escalator, which had developed a habit of asking people who rode on it riddles about quantum physics, and if they gave the wrong answer, it would loop them round and round like in an Escher drawing, never reaching the top or the bottom, until they got dizzy and fell off. Made you dizzy to look at, too. The laws of physics just weren’t supposed to work like that.
Tafari came up the stairs beside me. He was carrying two cardboard boxes of donations. “I could have carried that for you, you know.”
“What, and carry yours at the same time?”
He nodded. “I could do it.”
“You know I like to do things like this myself if I can. If something’s too heavy for me, I’ll ask you, okay?”
He nodded agreeably. Well, that was a change. Tafari was the arguingest guy I knew. He’d fought with me for days over the breakup, trying to convince me of all the reasons it made more sense to stay with him. Now it looked like he’d finally accepted it. I had something to accept, too.
The Chaos Page 13
