by Mary Gray
Placing something on my desk, he said, “I made this for you.”
Startled, I looked down to find a single CD in a slim case. Nobody gives CDs anymore, so I stared at it, confused. A lesson for trigonometry? Or maybe a precursor to calculus. I glanced around to see if the others had them, but their desks were empty except for their textbooks and spiral notebooks.
When I looked over to ask Teo what exactly he meant, he was already on the other side of the room. My gut told me he didn’t want the other students knowing about his gift, so I quietly slipped the CD inside my bag, intrigued.
That night, when I played the CD on my computer, I discovered a collection of music, songs all containing my name. With a name like Cheyenne, I was startled whenever I came across a single one, but he’d found three. And when the Cheyenne songs ended, there were songs about my middle name, Clarissa, the name I’d gotten from my mom. At first, I was shocked that he would know my middle name, but it must have been on one of the rolls from school. And once I got past the surprise that he had made me a CD in the first place, along with the fact that he had bothered to seek out songs containing my name, I decided that he was the single most thoughtful person in school. I had thought myself invisible, someone no one cared to know. But he cared. So I treasured the gift, marveled over the fact that he had given it to me.
I have since played that music so many times I know each song word for word. I never said much about the gift, but when I began to participate more in class, I knew he understood my thanks.
Teo’s eyes are closed beside me now. I listen to his steady breathing and study the black stubble of his beard, happy that together we can enjoy this peace—even if I am seeking answers, because somehow I know with Teo there will always be answers to be found. He always has a plan.
After a few minutes pass, Teo breathes in deeply. I expect him to comment on the air freshener, too, when he says, “Aren’t you rather dirty? You need a bath.”
The blood rushes to my cheeks and I tilt my head down. It’s silly—if anyone else had said such a thing, I would tell them where to go. But no one is perfect; even my Teo has his faults. He can be coarse, insulting even, but his innate goodness is why we are tied to one another. Plus, only the best of people can understand what it means to savor Milton, Chaucer, or Frost.
Feeling the blood ease away from my cheeks, I lift my head, fix my gaze on the oversized bookcases flanking two of the walls. A couple hundred books might be packed into this room. It makes me wonder if the other rooms have more, and if the other homes in the community are the same way. It impresses me that Teo loves books as much as me.
But I’m ready for answers: why he brought me here, and what he plans to do next. If anything, he could introduce me to the other people and let me know when he plans to take me home.
Teo sighs, moving to his feet. “While your transparency becomes you, my dear, answers will come very soon. Shower, and when I return I’ll offer more answers in conjunction with your second task.”
Second task. I look down, crushed that he found the need for another one. I wish he’d let these tasks go, see how worn-out I am. That I want to be with him, that I want things to be the way they were—where we could discuss literature. And kiss.
Teo cups the side of my face and my cheek twitches hungrily beneath his hand.
“Have no fear, my dear,” he says. “You shall feel much better once you are clean.” And it’s true. I want him to find me beautiful, let me again feel those soft lips. I can’t expect him to want me looking like this. Especially in a neighborhood with someone like Cleo.
I nod and move across the room toward the hall, and blindly follow the painted cracks on the walls that seem to lead me right to the bathroom. I spy the large mirrors, the marbled floors, and the ivory porcelain sink when Teo calls, “You should curl your hair. That is how I like it best.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, I’m shined up like Mom’s collection of antique glass figurines. A black, silken robe hangs on the shower door, and since I don’t want to put my dirty clothes on again, I slip it on, making me feel like I’m at a resort. Hopefully the girl who lives here won’t be annoyed that I’m wearing her robe, not to mention using her makeup and her curling iron, but I’m not entirely sure what choice I have. Maybe I can do something to make it up to her later. Maybe Teo will have some ideas on what to do. He always does—like when everyone kept freaking out about a return of the Living Rot. Calm yourselves, he’d said. Emotional outbursts offer little help.
Movement in the mirror tells me I’m not alone. Teo, still in his black suit, has joined me in the bathroom. “For you,” he says, flinging a white dress at me, which brushes past the side of my face. When it lands on the counter in front of where I sit, I manage to grasp it just in time before it slinks to the ground.
He’s giving me a dress. For keeps?
Teo sets an enormous arrangement of calla lilies on the counter, which makes me blush because it reminds me of a questionnaire I once filled out in school for prom décor. Preferred flowers? I had written calla lilies, my favorite. I love that Teo knows. And I love how he never skimps on anything.
“Cheyenne,” Teo says, inching toward me, the tails of his suit jacket flapping up as he walks. He brushes those warm, familiar hands on my trembling jaw and cheeks, the movement so unexpected I’m not sure how to respond at first. He’s wrapping me in his arms and pulling my weary head into his chest. I close my eyes, disbelieving the embrace. Calculus is so far away. Then, it was them and us. Now, it’s me and Teo and his familiar scent: Listerine and tobacco. The first time he wrapped his arms around me, I was surprised to find how he smelled, the lingering scent of tobacco on his clothes, until he showed me how he keeps unused cigars in his suit as a tribute to his deceased dad. Rather sentimental of me, he’d said, but that’s what I love about Teo. At the right times, he knows how to reminisce over the past. At the right times, like now, he knows how to drape his arms around me like a warm, smooth cloak.
I want to kiss him again, feel that sensation of his mouth over mine, but I’m missing the final piece of information. I need to know why he’s brought me here. We’ve danced around the issue for far too long. “Teo?” I ask. “What is this place?”
He holds me closer, breathing in the scent of my hair. I hope he likes the cucumber-melon shampoo I used. I don’t think he’s ever mentioned not liking cucumbers or melons, so I think it should be okay.
“Why, Miss Laurent,” Teo’s voice comes out muffled through my hair, “I have built our ideal world.”
He’s not telling me something. Heart rate picking up in speed, I push away from him. “But what about the old one?” There can’t be something wrong with the world, with my family.
Teo’s olive-toned cheeks flatten. His entire body sags as if in defeat. Holding his hands out to me, he says, “That is what I must show you. I am sorry, but you would have found out soon enough.”
He’s talking about the Living Rot. But it can’t have returned. We were vaccinated, supposed to be safe. The mirrors swirl about me and I can’t seem to find the right way to hold my head. I grab the counter to steady myself, and Teo supports me by slipping his strong arm around my waist.
The stubble of his beard bristles slightly against my quivering cheek. “Let us walk,” he says. “Fresh air might do you some good.”
But walking is the last thing I can do right now. My heart pounds in my chest and my fingers twitch. I shake my head, but he stops it from moving by placing a gentle hand on my trembling face.
I draw in a breath. Teo’s reassuring touch is the only thing I need. The warmth of his palms, his slender fingertips. If I close my eyes and freeze time, then we can kiss again, and everything Teo’s hinting at might go away. But he reaches into his suit coat pocket and pulls out a single vial with a clear liquid inside—and I’m so not ready to accept the fact that I need a vaccine.
My illogical impulse is to grab the flask and fling it on the ceramic tile,
because in my mind not seeing a vial lets me keep lying to myself. It means the Living Rot hasn’t come back.
“It has happened before,” Teo whispers, stroking the hair above my ear, “and it was only a matter of time before it happened again.” My nerves crackle, but not just because we’re skin to skin. It can’t be a repeat of Beijing. The Living Rot is in the past.
I watch our reflection: his black suit against my white dress, unable to believe our time together is because of this. This cannot be what has happened. They told us it was over. They told us we were safe, that the cause of the Living Rot was buried as deeply as the core of the earth. They said life would resume as normal. Teo can’t be right.
3
Steering me from the bathroom and down the scorching street, Teo murmurs velvet-tinged words, but they bounce off my ears, my cheeks. I’m not really sure why, but I feel like I’m holding up a shield, blocking out anything that needs a vaccine. A sickness that causes people to eat other people? They promised it would be scoured from the earth. They said everything regarding the sickness was burned. Of course, it is possible for new viruses to be created or found, but our planet has already learned the horrific outcome of the disease.
“I am sorry to tell you like this,” Teo says as he steers me past the third or fourth house, “but I need to bring you up to speed. The other couples know. It’s the first thing I showed them when they arrived.”
Vaccine. Couples. Rot. I can only think in one-word sentences, walking down the length of Elysian Fields as the sun over the horizon winks. Evening. Night. Lies.
Teo turns at the fifth or sixth mailbox. “Cleo has the footage,” Teo is saying. “You know how I avoid watching TV.” It’s true. The only one at his house was in Marcus’s room because, according to Teo, Marcus had a death-grip on his shows.
Somehow, Teo manages to pull me through Cleo’s house, which I suppose is Egyptian-themed. Gold-painted baseboards, peach-painted walls, floor to ceiling statues of some Egyptian god—my stomach lurches. Whatever happened to beige? Even her couches are over-the-top with tassels and leopard prints.
Part of me acknowledges Teo pushing me up another curved, wrought iron staircase, and the other part of me trembles at the thought of everyone I know becoming sick. My mom. Mayor Tydal. Serenity and Josie, the other kids at school. Instead of peach walls everything would be broken, and the world would be colored in the stench of so much red.
Upstairs, Teo sits me down gently on a hieroglyphic-patterned bed, the foreign sprawl of symbols looking much like what’s going on in my head—chaos and an inability to accept. The Living Rot, returned? But God would never again sour the earth.
Plucking up a remote, Teo clicks on the TV, and I don’t want to look. Because real footage would show me the Living Rot must be accepted as the truth.
I train my eyes on the gold fabric of the bed, grit my teeth because I can’t bear to see. But Teo’s hand gently cups my chin and, with only a bit of resistance, I allow him to move my face up. Because maybe, just maybe, I can accept whatever it is with Teo holding me.
A cameraman we can’t see is fleeing. The screen is bouncing and not quite up and down. The subject of the screen is a person, but gray, decaying, and diseased. It’s a little girl. An orange dress hangs on her withered frame, and she’s clutching a dismembered arm. She takes a bite from the wrist of the limb. The Living Rot, just like in Beijing.
“It’s not over,” the reporter shouts from off the bouncing screen. He yells and we see the reason for the yell—several arms are stretching toward him from the windows of a parked yellow car. And while only a low groan comes from the cars, the sound slices into my chest and curls up my spine. “There’s nowhere safe anymore!” the cameraman shouts. Gasping for breath, he adds, “Protect yourselves!” The screen bounces, like the cameraman’s just made a leap, and he curses before the screen crashes and goes black.
Teo clicks the TV off. “I wanted to spare you from that, but you gave me little choice. The epidemic leaked out, a mutated form this time. And when I got word from my contacts that the scientists already had a new vaccine, Jonas and I retrieved it from the hospital just in time. They were planning on giving it to government officials, scientists—people like that—but we knew those weren’t the only people who we should protect. You should have seen it.” He flashes a shy smile. “Jonas stood watch while I snuck inside.”
Stroking my cheek, he bores his eyes into mine. “Do you see what I have given you? An asylum from the Living Rot.”
My knees tremble where I sit, and I suddenly don’t know what to do with my hands. Grab onto Teo? Hold him tight? Thank God the both of us are okay. Those groans were not human—at least, not anymore. What do you do with people like that? I’m not even sure they can be killed or how far the Rot has spread. I choke—on vomit or spit, I don’t know—but what Teo has showed me has really taken place. The Living Rot has returned, and there’s no telling how far it has spread.
Teo sits beside me on the bed. “I had to protect you. Your life means more than my own.”
Teo’s simple words make my panic still. It’s somehow become a glorious moment knowing that, despite everything, he’s unveiling how he feels.
My eyes sting—tears gather in the corners. But they’re the best tears I’ve ever felt. And it simultaneously makes me feel guilty. How can I be glad that I’m cherished when everything about the world is at the cusp of so much death?
“So, you appreciate me?” Teo says, and I somehow want to laugh.
“Yes, Teo. Of course I do.” Because we’re together and he loves me and I love him and—
Dear God, how could the Rot be back?
Little finite details seem to shimmer in place. Now that I know how Teo feels, I need to know why he made this place. And how did he know about the Living Rot to make it in time? I know he is brilliant, but how would he have the connections to know something like that?
Teo moves away from me on the bed and starts pacing about the room. Even his walk has my attention fastened in place. His long, powerful legs only need two or three strides to make it across the room. “It was only a matter of time before something happened again,” Teo says from across the room. “After Beijing, I knew I had to make a safety net, bring in friends in the prime of their youth.”
Teo’s comment jars me. It’s silly, but I mostly think of us as the same age. True, he’s twenty-four, but I don’t think about it much. I’ve seen Cleo and Marcus, and I guess the others are my age, too. How did he pick us?
He takes another step toward me, an ebony fire simmering in his gaze. “There’s something else,” he says as he loops a finger through one of my curls, sending a current of longing crackling down my neck. “I wanted to tell you before, but I needed you to have the motivation to consent.”
The word “consent” reminds me of my mom. That’s the word she uses to remind me that she is the one who rules in our home. I require her “consent” for just about anything—visiting a friend’s house, ordering pizza. But even with her strict rules, I’m horrified I haven’t thought earlier about my mom. He showed me a clip where animalistic humans soured the earth, and I hadn’t thought about the safety of my mom, even if she does always tend to get a little crazy with the idea of “consent.”
I can’t stand the idea of her hurting, so I have to ask. “Have you heard from my mom?” I have to push aside the image of her cowering behind her bed—practically my twin, if you add a few sunspots to my face. Everyone says we look the same.
Teo’s face grows cold, that spark of fire suddenly gone. “You are not listening! The Living Rot is already here.” He clicks on the TV once again, and then points at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen where it reads, “Live in Austin.” I look closer at the screen. Sam’s Ice Cream Shoppe. The park with the old lady and the shop that sells handmade hair barrettes. This is all of Sixth Street, right downtown. Where I live.
I can’t believe this has happened, can’t believe this is my home. Where the
street was once filled with bright memories, it’s been poisoned by the worst kind of death. My home, those people, all of them gone. And not just the barrette store lady, but my mom. One of the Clarissa songs Teo recorded for me reels through my mind. I can’t help her. I’ve been whisked away.
The inside of my chest withers; my fingers twitch on my lap. To calm them, I shove them under my legs, and force my face not to twitch, too. Because I know what happens when my face starts twitching. I cry. And the last thing I want is for Teo to see me emotional again.
Staring at my lap as I try to calm my twitching hands, I feel the bed shift next to me, and one of the hands I’ve come to love reaches over and pats my knee. “I do not mean to be unfeeling,” Teo says. “I suppose I’ve had more time to digest the truth. But if you ever feel like you need time to consider all the ramifications, just ask.”
Almost any other time I would appreciate Teo’s offer to help me mull over the facts, but right now I can’t help feeling like he’s sweeping the world’s greatest nightmare under the rug. Doesn’t he know that eventually the mess leaks out?
But I’m wrong in my dismissal of Teo’s offering. He’s the one who’s provided help. It’s his foresight and careful planning that have allowed any sort of asylum from the monsters outside.
I take a deep breath and push my worries away. Sometimes it is better to hide away our hesitations and trust in those we love.
“And now,” Teo says, moving to his feet and extending a confident hand, “allow me to introduce you to everyone. They are ever so eager to meet you.” He tugs my hand and pulls me toward the door, and as we exit the bedroom, a soft ballad wafts up Cleo’s sprawling stairs; I’m suddenly not so sure I want to be introduced. What if it’s like junior year all over again, where everyone already has their friends and sees no need to make more?