Dan laughs and sticks his finger into a pot of soil. “And Meghan can talk.”
“She’s very chipper.”
“She’s extremely chipper.” Dan looks at me sideways. “I’m all for being a morning person, but she takes it to another level.”
“Yeah.” I chew on my lip, not sure if this conversation means we’re friends again.
“I’m sorry,” Dan says quickly.
“You don’t have to apologize.”
“Yeah, I do. You told me what you wanted. You never promised me anything. It wasn’t fair of me to get angry. It’s just that you put me in the friend zone, and I didn’t like it.”
“The friend zone?”
“As opposed to the boyfriend zone.”
“Right,” I say. “I like having you in my friend zone, you know.”
“I like being there.”
“So stay and help me?”
He takes the watering can and looks to me for instructions. Things still feel strained, and I don’t want them to be.
“Can you sing?” I ask, because there’s no better way to break the ice than a sing-along, except maybe a dance party. But Dan might not be up for a dance party first thing in the morning.
“What? Um, I’m okay, I guess. Why?”
“Because we sing to the plants here. What song do you want to sing?”
He laughs, but when he sees I’m dead serious, he thinks and says, “You like Radiohead, right?”
“Is it possible to only like Radiohead? Name a song.”
“ ’No Surprises,’ ” Dan says.
“That’s the perfect song for our lives.”
Dan knocks on his forehead. “It’s been in my head for a year.”
“Not only is it perfect, but it’s one I have.” I reach in my pocket and pull out Adrian’s phone.
“I’m actually going to get to hear it?”
I scroll through and press play. The lullaby-like beginning of the song starts. Dan closes his eyes. “Shit,” he says.
We go through all of OK Computer, The Bends and Amnesiac. The plants have long been watered, and we sit against the bench, phone balanced on my knee, when the battery finally dies.
“These were some of the best hours of my life,” Dan says. “This, right here. Thanks.”
It was up there, in terms of finding something beautiful, something you’d never thought you’d have again. A few hours where the old world was so close you could almost believe it still existed.
“Thank you. It’s better to listen with someone who loves it as much as I do.”
“I could go all day,” he says wistfully.
“Well, we’re not done. We still have more albums and the B sides. I can charge it now so we can listen later.”
“Yeah?”
“If you want.” I stare out the glass and feel stupid for being presumptuous. We might be friends, but that doesn’t mean he wants to hang out with me; there are other girls he could play Parcheesi with.
“I want,” he says.
His answer makes me happier than I’d anticipated. I push his leg with mine. “See? The friend zone isn’t all bad.”
Dan pushes me back. “Dingbat.”
It’s dark when I announce myself at Dan’s tent. He looks up from where he sits on the bed, a board game covered with colorful squares and circles in front of him.
“Parcheesi,” he says with an impish grin. “For real. I found it in the game stuff.”
I laugh. “Do you even know how to play?”
“Nope. But we’re gonna learn.”
I plug the phone into the tiny speakers I found in Adrian’s things and set it on the bed. “Sounds good. But I suck at every board game but Scrabble. I lose Monopoly one hundred percent of the time. Seriously, I never, ever win.”
“You let people live rent-free, don’t you?” Dan asks.
“I feel bad when they don’t have enough money. How’d you know?”
“I knew it the moment I saw you, when you all pulled up in the VW last year. You had your hair in buns and that green shirt with the gloves pulled up—”
“I don’t even remember what I was wearing. How do you remember that?”
Dan looks at me like I should already know the answer. “Because every guy my age has a thing for Princess Leia. So, anyway, I thought, ‘That girl right there is a terrible capitalist.’ ”
“That’s the first thing you thought?”
“That’s what I always think of the first time I see a pretty girl—economic systems.”
“And you say I’m weird.” He laughs when I toss a piece of the game at him. “Okay, deal me in or whatever one does in this game.”
A while later we’re tied 2-2, and I can’t stop yawning. Dan packs Parcheesi in its box and sets it on the floor. “The meteor showers are over, but you can still see a lot this time of year.”
“I know. I’ve been watching.”
“You have? Do you want to watch now? You can sleep here if you want—friend zone only, I promise. I’d like it…”
He trails off and picks at a thread on his jeans while I ruminate on his invitation. I should probably go home. We made up hours ago and already I’m having a sleepover. But I want to watch the stars and fall asleep under his blankets. I just don’t want to give him the wrong idea.
“Forget it,” he says, at the same time as I say, “Okay.”
“But,” I continue, “since it’s a friend zone sleepover, does that mean we do facials and paint each other’s nails?”
“I had two bossy older sisters. I’ve done it all. I can give a pedicure like nobody’s business.”
“I’m filing that away for future reference. Bits is asleep, but I’ll just sneak in and grab my stuff.”
When I get back from washing up and changing into pajamas, he’s already in bed with the lantern off. I get under the covers. “Do I still get to put my feet on you?”
“Nope. That’s a boyfriend zone perk.”
I shake my head and smile up at the stars, but he moves his leg so I can tuck my feet under anyway.
“Maybe you’ll watch the Leonid meteor shower with me,” Dan says.
“When’s that?”
“Mid-November. Sometimes, when the moon is bright, you have to wait for it to set before you can see them. My dad used to wake us before dawn. We’d bundle up and drink hot chocolate while we watched.”
November’s months away. Maybe he’s asking if I’ll still be here. I jiggle my toes under his thigh. “That sounds fun. Bits would love that. If there’s hot chocolate involved, she’s there.”
“It’s a date.” There’s a drawn-out pause, and then he says, “Sort of.”
He quizzes me on the constellations until we’re too tired to keep our eyes open. I turn on my side and drift off, feet pressed against his leg. I may be using Dan as a heater, but I’m not using him for anything else—I want to be here.
67
The next morning, we wake to loud voices and footsteps. Outside, we follow the people walking hurriedly toward the orchard. I hear the Lexers before I see them—a cacophony of hissing and grunts, followed by thuds. There must be a hundred already in the trench, with another couple hundred bringing up the rear. They stagger forward and fall in, then rise and wander the hole, looking for a way out.
Thank God for the trench. If three hundred Lexers focused all their energy on one section of the fence, we might not have time to kill them before it caved. The trench may be a savior, but killing all these Lexers is going to suck. I mentally cross off all the things I’ve planned for my free afternoon.
“Wow,” Bits says. She sidles up and takes my hand in hers. “That’s a lot of Lexers!”
“Bits, go back to school!” I say. “Why are you here?”
“I had to go to the bathroom. I wanted to see what was going on.”
“Okay, you saw. Now, c’mon, let’s go back.”
She plants her feet apart and stares, but she looks more intrigued than terrified. “Wait a second. I
’m getting some good ideas for the comic.”
“Bits, as much as I love for art to imitate life, you shouldn’t be here.”
Dan picks up Bits and swings her around. “You need to be in school, kiddo.”
Her peals of laughter cause the Lexers in the trench to move to our side and howl. They may be stuck in a hole thirty feet from the fence line, but Bits’s cheeks lose some of their color. I’m glad—a little frightened is good. Toby and Caleb weren’t frightened enough, and look what happened.
“Okay,” Bits says, “but I want Dan to walk me.”
She bats her big blue eyes at him, and he gives her his full-wattage grin. I swear she swoons. I don’t care, as long as it gets her away from the fence. We drop her at school, and Dan walks me to my cabin.
“I had fun last night,” I say. “Thanks.”
“So did I. I’m glad you stayed.”
“Me, too. I’ll see you in the trenches. Literally.”
Dan groans but walks away laughing.
There are a couple of bright spots to spending your afternoon killing three hundred Lexers. The first is that it makes three hundred fewer Lexers in the world. The second is that we’ve seen the black moss on almost all of them. Most have a small patch or two, but some are half-covered, and a very few drag themselves along the ground like snails, leaving a trail of slimy flesh juice. The last take almost no killing; they separate from the bone like pulled pork.
A few people use arrows, but no one here is particularly skilled in archery, and most of the arrows glance off skulls and onto the ground. The crossbow bolts we have are shorter, which makes them difficult to remove from a brain cavity for cleaning. Ana and I sit close enough to the edge to pierce them in the eye with one of the longer spikes. By number twenty it’s become routine. By number forty my arm is numb and my mouth tastes rotten from the stench. Finally, they all lay motionless in the trench, and we sit against the fence and guzzle water.
“What are we going to do with all these bodies?” I ask John.
“We’ll cart them down to the field, same as always,” John says. “We might need a new one soon, the way things are going.”
We can’t let them stay here. Not only do they take up too much room, but they also stink to high heaven. And that’s not going to get better before it gets much, much worse. I pull my gloves back on. The trench doesn’t span the whole farm; areas like the driveway before the first gate and a few other places were left as solid ground to drive machinery through. It’s in one of these spots that we lower a metal ramp for John to back the first trailer down.
Even with using every truck, it’s almost dark by the time we’ve removed the bodies and tossed them into the field that’s become our graveyard. My muscles ache from swinging dead weight around. I rest my head on the pickup’s seat and close my eyes.
“I’m guessing you’re not in the mood for Parcheesi,” Dan says, after we’ve driven through the gate for the final time.
“Shower. Sleep. I need to make sure Bits is okay. I want to stay with her tonight.”
“Yeah, of course,” he says, but I can tell he’s disappointed.
Dan’s heading to his empty tent after this long and discouraging day, while I’ll be in a cabin filled with warmth and company. He has friends, but not ones like I do—people I knew before all of this, whose companionship I’d choose even if the world hadn’t ended. I’ve been holding him at arm’s length. If we’re going to be friends, I’m going to have to let him in.
“Why don’t you come to the cabin for a little while? Hang out with Bits while I shower. I told Ana and Peter I’d grab food from the kitchen. Mikayla saved dinner for us.”
He pulls the truck into its spot. Someone else is going to clean it out; we’ve done enough for one day. “I’ll clean up and be there in ten.”
By the time I’ve showered and brought back pasta and bread, Dan and Bits are deep in conversation at the table. Sparky sits in his lap and pushes against his hand while he rubs the magic spot behind her ears. Ana and Peter shoot me amused glances from the loveseat.
“Cassie,” Bits says with a frown, “Dan told me you don’t like him.”
I set down the bowls and bread basket. “What? I like Dan.”
“No, like like. I asked him who he likes, and he said you. And that you don’t like him back, but it’s okay because you’re friends.”
My own words are coming back to haunt me. Next she’ll be asking me about bases. Dan stands to help me dish out the food.
“Hey, she asked,” he says. “I wasn’t going to lie.” I could be irritated he’s telling Bits this stuff, but Dan makes it hard to be angry with him.
“Well, now that you’ve answered one question, get ready for the third degree,” I say. “You deserve it.”
“Bring it on.”
Ana takes a bite of her pasta salad and says, “There’s ham in here. Who are we eating?”
“Gus,” I answer.
She puts down her bowl with a grimace. “I liked Gus. He was cute.”
“Ana won’t have anything to do with the butchering,” Peter explains to Dan. “She cries whenever they kill one of the animals.”
“I do not cry!”
“No, she just leaks water from her eyes,” I say. “She spends butchering day on the other side of the farm with her fingers in her ears.”
“Who knew the Queen of Death had a soft spot?” Dan says. Ana smiles and rips into a piece of bread.
Bits shoves a bite in her mouth and grins. “Mm, Gus!”
“Bits, on the other hand, has absolutely no problem with it,” Peter says.
I take a bite; Gus really is tasty. Dan leans back with his bowl in his hand, completely at ease. He drops a piece of ham for Barnaby, who gobbles it up, and then feeds Sparky one.
“So, do you like dogs or cats better?” Bits asks Dan.
“Both. I like cats because they’re easy, but they have personality. I like dogs because they’re goofy and loyal.”
“Barn’s really goofy,” Bits says, and rubs Barn’s back with her foot. “But we love him anyway. What’s your favorite color?”
“Green.”
“What’s the worst thing that ever happened to you? Besides zombies.”
Dan looks at me. “You weren’t kidding. Um, when my aunt died.”
“Best thing?”
“When I was seven and my brother broke my collarbone while we were wrestling.”
“What?” Bits asks, mouth open. “How could that be the best thing?”
“I was in Little League, which meant I had games and practice on the weekends. I liked playing, but my brother got to stay home and watch cartoons.”
“Why didn’t he have to play?” Bits asks.
“Because Mike was older. He’d already played for a few years. Anyway, on the same weekend as what was going to be the biggest Little League game of the year, my dad got invited to Fenway Park before it opened. That’s the Red Sox stadium.”
“I know,” Bits says. “My dad loved the Red Sox.”
“I knew I liked you,” Dan says, and Bits grins. “Well, I got to go instead of Mike because he’d broken my collarbone and I didn’t have the game. It was first thing in the morning. I got to stand on the field. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life. I got to touch the Green Monster.”
Bits and Peter nod like they have any idea what he’s talking about. It sounds vaguely indecent to me. I ask, “What the heck is the Green Monster and why did you want to touch it?”
“The scoreboard,” Dan says. “It’s a huge wooden board, painted green. It’s still changed by hand. It’s amazing. It was one of the best days of my life.”
I shake my head. “The scoreboard has a name? Who gives a scoreboard a name? I’ll never understand sports.”
“How many years of watching the Super Bowl did it take for you to realize they didn’t always start in the middle?” Peter asks. He was never much of a sports watcher, but he laughed at me the whole night when I
finally figured that out.
“Twenty-eight,” I say proudly. “And that’s because I see the Super Bowl as a food and drink event with annoying noise playing in the background.”
“That doesn’t surprise me,” Dan says, and eyes my second helping of pasta. Like he should talk: he’s on bowl three. “So that’s why it was the best thing. I also got to choose which cartoons we watched that whole spring. All I had to do was pretend to be upset about missing baseball.”
Bits leans across the table with shifty eyes. “That was kind of sneaky.”
“I know,” Dan says with conspiratorial wink.
Bits sighs, probably because she would give anything for some Saturday morning cartoons, of anyone’s choosing. So would I. We eat by the light of the lantern while Bits interrogates him more. He asks her a million questions, and only after she’s run through every one of her likes and dislikes does he stand.
“I should go,” he says. “It’s been a long day.”
Bits hangs around Dan’s neck until Peter tickles her off. I follow Dan into the night and stand on the bottom step. “You have a not-so-secret admirer.”
“She reminds me of you, you know,” Dan says. “Down to the freckles.”
“I wish I still had face freckles. They’re pretty much gone, except for the gazillion on the rest of me.”
“You’re perfect.”
My stomach churns at the affection in his voice. I’m so far from perfect it’s not funny. “Please don’t say stuff like that. It’s not true, first of all, and it makes me feel weird.”
“Isn’t that what you once said? That the other person should be perfect for you?” I focus my gaze on the neighboring cabin, and he turns my chin back his way. “Sorry. I won’t say it again. Okay?”
“Okay.”
The smile that’s probably won more women than I can count spreads across his face. “But I’m gonna wear you down one of these days.”
I turn to the door to hide my own smile. “Goodnight, Danny.”
“Goodnight, Dingbat.”
His footsteps crunch toward his tent. I wouldn’t mind being worn down by Dan and almost dared him to try. I don’t think it’s possible, but he’d be my first choice.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 71