The Indifferent Children of the Earth

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 27, Monday 26 September

  I pulled up in front of Olivia’s house; she hadn’t been at school, and Mr. Wood had let me go early from work. In spite of the dark circles under his eyes, he had been grinning.

  Mr. Wood. Grinning.

  He closed the shop early that day because Melanie was awake and being released from the hospital. I honestly think Mr. Wood was so happy that he forgot he didn’t like me. At least for the moment.

  His sister was awake; that meant that my attempts to stop her had been pointless. Whether it was because Mr. Wood was a grower as well, or just because Melanie had been strong enough to overcome the poison, I didn’t know. All I knew is that, if the sprawls had been bad while she was in a coma, they would be twice as bad now, and that meant that time for Mike to learn how to be a quickener was running out.

  Worse, I was probably in danger—after all, who was the most likely person for Melanie to suspect once she regained her strength? The grandson of the last quickener to live in town would probably be at the top of the list.

  I started up the path to Olivia’s house. Mr. Green stood, cracking his back, and smiling at me from a line of rosebushes. His sunburn had faded completely; his skin was smooth and tanned, and he seemed like he was doing better than ever. Looked thinner, more energetic. Mom had showed a similar energy that afternoon, digging franticly in the garden, as though she had uncovered something valuable and secret in our yard. I guess the upcoming competition had them both excited. I waved back at Mr. Green, glad that he didn’t come over to talk to me, and trotted up the stairs to Olivia’s door.

  When the door opened, Cheryl stood there in a bathrobe—no make-up, hair frazzled. To be honest, she looked awful. A Kleenex pressed against her nose, she let out a tremendous sneeze and stepped away from the door.

  “Come in,” she said, her voice cracking. “Come in, Alex. I won’t shake your hand—we’ve all got the same bug, I’m afraid. Olivia’s upstairs, she’s been doing much better this afternoon. Just head right on up.”

  “And Mr. Weir?” I said. “How’s he doing?”

  “Better,” Cheryl said. “Most days, better. The doctor thinks it might be mono, although none of us have any idea how he might have gotten it.”

  “Isn’t mono the kissing sickness?” I said. A moment later I realized what I had said and turned red.

  Cheryl, even sick and probably feeling miserable, was kind enough to laugh. “I think that’s right,” she said. “I’ll ask him who he’s been kissing. Careful you don’t catch it yourself.”

  If I’d been blushing before, my face was on fire now.

  “Go on up,” Cheryl said. “Shane’s at work, but I’m going to be in my bedroom if you need anything.”

  I went up to Olivia’s room, knocked on her door. She opened it a moment later; I tried to mask my surprise. I hadn’t seen her in almost five days, but the changes had been drastic. Her skin was pale and tight, her hair sweat-damp against her scalp. She looked ill. Seriously ill. But when she saw me, she broke into a smile, and suddenly everything seemed normal. That was where her greatest beauty lay—in the curve of those lips, in the light of her eyes, in the way her posture changed, ever slightly, inviting me in with her body and her heart at the same time.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said, stretching up to kiss me. I set my hand against her cheek, kissing her back, grateful for the taste of her again, the feel of her.

  “You too,” I said. She pulled me into the room; it was cluttered with rolled up posters, flyers, loose papers, and stacks of photos. The bed was made, but that was the only sign of the previously well-ordered room I had been familiar with. Glancing about, I said, “Wow.”

  “I know,” she said, “it’s a mess. Sit down.”

  I sat down on the bed, my back against the wall, where I usually sat. Olivia knelt and shuffled through a stack of cardboard tubes.

  “So how are you doing?” I said.

  Still searching, she answered, “Well, staying at home for five days was a little overkill. I’m feeling a lot better, it was just a nasty flu bug.” She stood up with one of the tubes. “But it gave me time to finish my project. Well, to be honest, I finished it a little while ago. I was waiting before I showed it to you.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  She came over and sat down next to me, and again that clean, shampoo-y smell of her hair washed over me. The heat of her body threatened to burn me. “Do you have a fever?” I asked.

  With a shrug, Olivia passed me the tube. “I told you, I feel fine. Open it.”

  I undid the stopper and pulled out the rolled canvas inside. When I had it free, I tossed aside the tube and glanced at Olivia. A nervous smile was her only answer, and I was struck again by how pretty she was. I suppressed the thought that told me to run my hand up her thigh right then—she was sick, after all. My pulse still increased a little bit, and I tried not to think about how close we were, about the sudden tightness in my throat.

  “Open it,” she insisted, her smile still anxious.

  With an answering grin, I unrolled the canvas. When I saw the painting, it took a moment for me to breathe. It was a version of what we had both painted on that hill in the cemetery, but larger, more detailed. The easy, quick strokes of watercolor were more careful here, more deliberate—in places thick and textured, in others barely coating the surface of the canvas. The hill falling way before us, the river, the sunset-fire moving across the bowing lines of wheat, she had captured them all perfectly, the way the light moved on them, the play of shadow. It was the sunset, though, and the sky that captured me. They were deep, stretching out past the canvas. Reaching across them, like a dying man grasping at help, were the branches of the grower’s tree, black and solid against the fluidity, the eternal flight of the rest of the scene. In its expansiveness, in the way the painting threatened to roll off the canvas and stretch out forever, it bespoke a terrible loneliness, broken only by the shadow of the tree. It called to me, resonated within me. It was as though she had painted my soul.

  Attached to the bottom was a blue ribbon with a small gold medal that read, ‘First Prize.’

  I touched it, my fingers trembling—whether from the effect of the painting, or my excitement at being next to Olivia, or something else, I wasn’t sure. “What’s this?” My voice didn’t sound right in my ears.

  “I won first prize!” Olivia squealed. I’d never seen her so excited, never really even heard her raise her voice. But I found myself grinning in response, her happiness contagious. “I kept going back to that place you showed me, working on this, because I wanted to give it to you. But then I realized I wasn’t grateful to you for showing me that spot; I was grateful for you because you helped me start showing people my art again. So I decided to take the next step, and I submitted it to the Spinner County arts competition. And I won!”

  I leaned over, kissed her. It just happened, before I realized what I was doing, but a distant part of me remembered the painting I held in one hand, so fragile between my fingers. And then the kiss was turning into something more, a well of something inside me—passion, pent-up desire, frustration—reaching a head and bursting forth. The painting tumbled from my hand, and suddenly I had my arms around Olivia, pressing her close. I forgot she was sick; God, the girl didn’t kiss like she was sick. She slid one hand up under my shirt, drawing me in, and there was nothing but our twinned breathing.

  A footstep downstairs brought me back to myself; with an almost physical agony, disappointed and frustrated, I pulled away. The sound of the front door closing reached us, and then, “I’m home,” from her dad.

  I still lay halfway on Olivia, and she smiled up at me. Then she started coughing—a wet, rattling sound. I moved to one side, helping her sit up, running hand along her back. Reality hit me like a slap.

  “You ok?” I said.

  She nodded, but it took a long time for the coughing to stop. When it did, she gave me a weak smile. “Guess I’m not quite back to my
old self.”

  If it had been anyone else, I might have felt a bit grossed out—I had just made out with a sick girl. But it was Olivia—my Olivia, the girl I loved. And besides, she really didn’t kiss like a sick girl, so that part at least had been normal.

  “I should get going,” I said. “You need to rest.”

  To my surprise, she didn’t contradict me; she must have been sicker than I realized. I carefully rolled up the canvas and slid it into the tube. “You need to get this framed,” I said. “It’s amazing.”

  “It’s for you,” she said.

  “I can’t take this; this is the big prize-winner.”

  “I made it for you,” she said. “I want you to have it.”

  “Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say, but I didn’t feel like I needed to say anything else. That nice, familiar quiet, the quiet of unspoken, shared love, tied us together better than words.

  I kissed her goodbye and headed home, the tube carefully tucked under one arm. In bed, slowing sliding into that warm haze before sleep, a thought struck me, dragging me back to panicked consciousness. Olivia had been working on the painting in the cemetery for a long time. She had been spending a lot of time there. And now she was sick. Seriously sick. Traced against the inside of my eyes, I could see that black, sharp-edged grower’s tree, threatening to devour the sunset and the eternity of sky that had brought us together.

  It was the tree; that was what was making Olivia sick. And her dad. That’s why Melanie had recovered. She had stolen life from them, her tree was draining them of life and giving it to her.

  And I didn’t know what would happen next.