by Anna Abner
Except I’d never been to a slumber party where I woke in the morning next to a cute boy.
I giggled, couldn’t help it.
Ben frowned. “What’s funny?”
There was no way I was admitting my thoughts, so I smiled up into his eyes, the beautiful red and magenta eyes I could get lost in, and said, “Thanks for letting me sleep down here last night.”
“No problem.” Acting slightly embarrassed, he climbed out of bed and headed for the kitchen. I scrambled after him.
The pantry was stocked with snacks, juice, soda, and water.
“Oh, sandwich spread.” Ben grabbed some chicken spread, a bag of corn chips, and a pouch of pre-cooked, microwavable rice and plopped right there on the pantry floor.
I watched with a smile as he tore into the food, mixing the creamy white chicken spread into the rice pouch and spooning it up with the chips. It looked so good, I went around him and grabbed a can of honey flavored baked beans, opened it, and ate it straight from the can.
“I miss food,” I mumbled around a mouthful. “Good food. Grilled cheese sandwiches and fries and ice cream.” I moaned at the memory. I hadn’t been allowed to eat junk food, so the rare occasions I had eaten it stuck out in my mind. “I’d give anything right now for ice cream.”
“I can’t really remember,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t like it.”
“Maybe you’re lactose intolerant,” I said, scooting beside him with my bounty. “Because I'm pretty sure if you had ice cream before all this you would remember it. It’s heaven in a bowl. Chocolate brownie. Cookie dough. Red Velvet.” I swallowed another mouthful of beans, which had begun to taste sour after talking about sweeter flavors. “My favorite though was mint chocolate chip. Do you remember that?”
Ben shook his head. “I do remember potato chips, though.” He scooped a giant glob of chicken and rice onto a corn chip and ate it. “Those really spicy ones.”
“Too hot for me,” I said. “Mason liked them.” At the mention of my brother, the atmosphere shifted. That same old sadness crept over me. I was suddenly not hungry anymore and stared at the last half of the can of beans as if it were refuse.
“I remember him pretty well,” Ben said, as if the conversation wasn’t awkward at all. “He looked a lot like you. But something about him was off.”
“He was schizophrenic,” I said, exposing the secret my family had tried so hard to gloss over. Add to his wild and unpredictable mood swings a crush on a girl and Mason was a nuclear blast waiting to go off. “And if he stopped taking his meds or even if they weren’t calibrated correctly, he acted like a complete lunatic.” I lowered my head. It hurt, even now.
“But you don’t act that way.”
“Nope.” Even though we were twins we hadn’t inherited identical genes. “Not yet, anyway.” There was always the chance I could develop a mental illness later in life.
“You won’t ever,” he assured. He finished his rice and chicken concoction and upended the chip bag into his mouth.
I was curious why he was so sure about it. I wasn’t sure at all. In fact, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that I could, at any point, become a crazy-eyed monster.
“How do you know?” I asked, a little harsher than I’d meant it.
“You’re nothing like Mason.” Ben stood up and offered me a hand.
After a brief hesitation I accepted his help, and he pulled me to my feet. His palm was warm and rough, but I felt the bones and tendons through his skin. He was too skinny.
I grabbed a can of mandarin oranges and a pouch of fruit punch. “Please eat these,” I said to him.
“Maya, I’m stuffed.”
I gave him a stern look. “Buddy, you’re wasting away. Drink.” I lifted the juice to his lips. “Seriously.”
He took a sip, and then set it down.
“No, no, no. All of it.”
Grimacing, he swallowed most of it, and then devoured the orange slices while I watched. His poor tummy distended beneath his shirt. But it would help fatten him up. I wanted to see him clean and healthy. The way he must have looked before the plague.
“You know there’s a pool in the backyard,” I said, the most brilliant idea of all time occurring to me. “It’s covered.” He didn’t follow, so I added, “It’s clean water. Clean enough to bathe in.”
Ben’s eyes lit up. “I haven’t heard anything moving around out there all night.”
“You want to?” I couldn’t stop the smile creeping over my face. I desperately wanted to scrub the blood and dirt off.
“What about your liquid sutures?” he asked.
“I’ll keep my right arm out of the water.” Easy.
“Get the soap. I’ll get the towels.”
I helped Ben tear away the pool cover without getting too many leaves in the fresh water beneath. I didn’t think much about privacy. I was too excited at the prospect of washing the gore off my arms and back. So, I stood there with my hands on the hem of my shirt, not sure whether to strip quickly and submerge myself in water or wait and take a bath in private when he was finished.
“I’ll turn away.” And he did.
I ripped the clothes from my body, except for my bra and panties, and then eased in at the shallow end. Cold water rushed up my bare legs. My toes bumped rough concrete and I bounced a couple steps.
“Does it feel good?” he asked.
“Amazing.”
Ben stripped to his boxers and perched on the lip of the pool at the deep end before popping into the water, disappearing under the surface. And though nothing happened, exactly, something made me reach for his arm and help him find the surface.
“You okay?” I asked.
He splashed to the edge and held on. “I got dizzy for a sec.”
“The change in altitude.” Maybe this wasn’t a good idea after all. “Let’s go back inside.”
“No.” He took a couple deep, chest-swelling breaths. “I’m okay.” He smiled to prove it and pushed off the edge, treading water.
“Cool.” I smiled, too. “’Cause this feels so good I might stay in all day.”
He laughed at that, but he must’ve been excited too because we washed like two people who’d never known soap before. By the time we were done the entire pool was cloudy with bubbles and dirt and sloughed skin cells.
“I’ve missed baths,” I mused, washing my newly shortened hair one-handed for the second time, stepping into water up to my belly button. “Don’t you? And showers. And clean clothes.”
“Clean clothes, yeah.” He flipped onto his back in the middle of the pool and floated. I could see a whole lot of his chest, and my fingers stilled in my hair. It was a nice chest. Wide. Thickly muscled. The tiniest bit of hair.
“I like clean things,” he admitted.
I jumped, rushing through the rinsing, afraid he’d caught me staring.
“Me, too. My dad was a neat freak.”
“I wish we could do laundry,” he continued. “The way we did before. I don’t feel right unless my clothes are cleaned and pressed.”
I ducked my head, rinsed the shampoo, and then applied conditioner. “Have you always been like that?” I asked. “Or just since the plague?”
“I think of it like: my life before Dogwood and my life after Dogwood.”
I didn’t know what he meant. “How so?”
“Before I got arrested,” Ben said, splashing a little, making mini waves that swelled over the edge of the pool, “I didn’t care about anything. Not even myself. But in lockup I decided I wanted to be a better person. Your picture was part of it. When I got home I started to care whether my clothes were clean or my hair was combed. Or a bunch of other things.” He stopped playing to look at me. “It matters to me.”
“I get that.” I cared about cleanliness, which was sort of the same thing, but I understood, for him, his appearance was a carefully constructed image, a prop to help him be whatever a good man looked like in his mind.
I washed my hair once mor
e with lots of conditioner. And the lady who used to live there had great taste. The stuff ran smooth as silk through my fingers and smelled of rich coconut. Then I scrubbed my body all over again with soap and a washcloth.
Ben snapped his chin up, tilting his ear toward the far hedge. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” My hands stilled.
“Animals.”
Oh, no. I rinsed myself super fast and leapt for the edge of the pool. He was faster and he propelled me up onto the concrete lip. I climbed to my hands and knees and reached for him, helping him to his feet as an immense white dog burst through the once neatly trimmed hedges followed by at least eight other canines of various shapes and sizes. They trampled my traps, obliterating all my hard work in a matter of moments.
I turned to run, but Ben sank down to one knee and grabbed his stomach.
“What’s wrong?” I screeched. And then I knew. The quick change in altitude.
“Go, I’m fine.”
Hardly. As the pack of dogs bolted across the back lawn, I forced him to his feet, and we ran for the sliding glass door. We tumbled into the house, slinging water everywhere, and whipped the door shut. The alpha stopped just in time, but two of his pals slammed into the glass, smearing it with doggy drool, muddy paw prints, and wiry hair.
I screamed, falling onto my butt.
Something primal awoke inside me, a reaction beyond my control. The sight of so many barking, snarling beasts scared me just as badly as facing a red zombie did.
The dogs yowled and yipped, loud enough for any Reds nearby to notice.
“I have to shut them up.” I scampered into the kitchen and searched the fridge. It was full of sour dairy and rotting meat. I grabbed plastic-wrapped chicken legs and slimy ground beef in a bowl, doing my best to keep the icky bacteria-laden goo off my hands. I opened the slider a crack and tossed the food onto the patio, then locked the door shut, and closed the vertical blinds. That ought to do it.
I stood there, listening for every sound, waiting to see if the dogs would leave, waiting to see if anyone or anything else would join them.
Water dripped from my hair onto my shoulders, confusing me for a sec. Why was I wet? Leaning closer, his eyes on the closed slider, Ben’s fingers brushed the small of my back in a reassuring gesture. My bare back.
Oh, crap, I was in my underwear. Luckily, I was a fast runner. I was up the stairs and in the master bedroom in seconds.
“Changing,” I called down to Ben. “Give me a couple minutes.”
I raided the walk-in closet, feeling only slightly guilty about liberating a person’s personal belongings. I reminded myself that the woman who owned those clothes and shoes was probably dead. Or infected. And never coming back.
After towel drying my hair I went through the clothes on hangers. Except all the clothes were too big. The long pants would never fit me. Not without a heavy belt. Too bad, because the lady had some really cute stuff.
As I turned to leave, the husband’s side of the closet caught my attention. For some reason, I couldn’t look away from a row of suit jackets and a rotating tie rack. Just like Dad’s.
And just like Dad, these people were dead and gone.
I hurried into the next bedroom. A boy’s room. A little boy’s room. Judging by the tiny PJs on the floor I wasn’t going to fit into his clothes either.
The room reminded me of Mason’s when he was a boy. I got a twisty ache inside. It only got worse when I moved on to the last bedroom. Also a boy’s, but he must have been a teen. Lots of concert posters and black clothes wadded on the carpet.
He and Mason would’ve been great friends. They both had empty cases for video games all over the place and UFC magazines on the floor. It was like stepping back in time, and for a moment I stood in the doorway, frozen, half expecting Mason to come around a corner.
But my brother was gone. Completely, irrevocably, unquestionably gone.
And I had never said good-bye.
I snatched a pair of clean blue jeans and a striped tank top out of the dresser, and ran downstairs like I was being chased.
Ben surprised me by appearing at the bottom of the stairs with his hair combed and wearing perfectly tidy pants, a tucked shirt, and newly shined boots. On top of that, he carried two plates and a bottle of juice under his arm.
“It’s weird, but I’m hungry again. You?” He smirked as he caught me staring. “You look nice.” He showed me a plate of food. “I made you a snack,” he said, settling at the bar in the kitchen. “Crackers, Vienna sausages, and apple juice.”
“Okay,” I said, joining Ben at the island.
His gaze fell to my exposed arms. “Are you cold? I can—”
“No.” I laughed, shifting and accidentally bumping his knee with mine. “Stop being such a gentleman. I’m starving.” Grabbing a handful of crackers, I ate quickly. “You need to eat more than I do. Go ahead.” I pushed the plate nearer his side of the table. “Did the dogs go away?”
“Once you shut the blinds they sniffed around a bit, but then they left.”
“Good.”
I layered a piece of sausage between two wheat crackers and shoved the whole thing in my mouth. Eating more daintily, Ben chewed on a cracker and passed me the juice.
“I feel a lot better since the bath,” he said, arranging our snacks into rows. “And I found some clean clothes.”
Swallowing, I took a swig of juice and slid it back to him. “Me, too.”
He drank from the bottle.
“We could, uh,” he sent me an uncertain glance, his red eyes seeming to glow in the fading sunlight from the window, “stay here another night.” He took another drink, and then offered it to me. “It’s a safe house. Untouched. We could leave for D.C. in the morning.”
I drank to avoid answering right away.
Staying would mean another day of travel lost, and I worried about what had happened to Pollard, Juliet, and Hunny, but it wasn’t a bad idea. After all the wandering we’d already done, and the mess at Camp Carson, it sounded nice to rest and re-organize ourselves. A soft bed. Clean clothes. New shoes. Maybe another bath. And all the food we could eat.
Though Ben was doing much better, there were still shadows under both his eyes. He needed the comfort of a home for at least one more night.
“Okay, but I have one condition.”
He glanced up, worried. “What is it?”
“Jenga. Best three out of five.”
Chapter Twelve
Ben was really good at Jenga. He had steady hands and a lot of patience. He won almost every game, but we played all the way to ten, just for the fun of it. When I got bored of playing by the rules, I took the tower apart and with the wooden blocks built a corral for invisible toy horses.
Dinner was a hodgepodge spread of pretzels, strawberry breakfast tarts, and cold canned stew. With a full tummy, I took my guitar into the den and carefully tuned each string. Even after spending a lot of time with Ben, being silly and having fun, I couldn’t shake the sadness inside me at seeing the family’s forgotten things in the upstairs bedrooms.
I imagined the family was safe and happy in a walled compound west, in the mountains. It was better than picturing the more likely reality that they’d all been infected with 212R and were wandering the streets, a pack of monsters.
At dusk Ben chased away gray shadows by lighting a cluster of candles on a side table and casting the room is warm, golden light. Flickering flames momentarily transported me into the chapel where Mom’s funeral had taken place. There had been candles there, too. Lots and lots of candles.
Dad and Mason had never even had that much of a sendoff. No one had lit a single candle for either of them.
“I never got to say goodbye,” I whispered, blinking away stinging tears.
“What did you say?” Ben set the lighter down and studied my face. “Are you okay?”
I cleared my throat, and said, “I never got to say goodbye to my dad or my brother. They were just gone.”<
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He frowned as if he didn’t understand. “How would you say goodbye if they’re dead?”
“It’s something Pollard taught me.”
“Pollard.”
There was a hint of irritation in his voice, but I didn’t dwell on it. “It’s like a memorial service. Ben, did you get to say goodbye to your family?”
“No.”
“When someone dies,” I continued, trying to find the right words, “they deserve some kind of funeral.” But memorials weren’t for the deceased. Not really. They were for us. I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “I want to say goodbye to Dad and Mason. For good.”
Standing to his full height, he dusted his hands on his pants. “What do you need?”
I thought back to the makeshift funeral I’d witnessed as the truck stop. “More candles would be nice. And flowers, if we can find them.”
“I saw fake flowers,” he said. “Are those good?”
“Yeah. I’ll look for more candles.” We split up, and when we regrouped a few minutes later he stood in the den clutching a bouquet of silk sunflowers and I carried two apple-pie-scented candles.
I sank to the floor, arranging one candle in front of the other with the pretty yellow flowers between. “Do you want to go first?” I asked, but Ben shook his head, looking uncertain.
I lit both candles and sickly sweet smoke made my eyes tear up. And then my mind went blank. All the eloquent, poetic words I planned to say vanished right out of my head.
Clearing my throat, I began simply. “My dad and my brother…” The moment I started talking, memories and feelings came flooding back. So many I could hardly sort them. The way my dad had looked on the last day I’d ever seen him. Family movie nights when I was a kid. Mason hogging the TV remote.
“I miss them,” I said. I may be incredibly disappointed and angry at Mason for taking Mom away, but he was still my brother, and when I thought of all the good times we’d had as kids, I did miss him. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to him. I sincerely hoped he, no both of them, hadn’t suffered in the end. I wanted them to be at peace, whatever that meant.