Mercury Boys

by Chandra Prasad

  “It’s not nonsense. Good airflow, fresh water, clean clothes and sheets—that’s Health Care 101.”

  The nurse assessed her with a combination of confusion, ire, and annoyance. “Now you listen to me, young lady. You have no right to speak to me in this manner. If you continue, I’ll be forced to . . .”

  “To what? Fire me? With all these men on your hands? You wouldn’t dare.”

  The nurse pursed her lips. “There are other volunteers. And Eliza will recover, surely.”

  Adrienne wished suddenly that Paige were there. She would know how to negotiate with Nurse Reynolds. She would know how to twist her arm, flatter her, bribe her. To do whatever it took to get her on Adrienne’s side. But Adrienne was on her own. Now that the nurse had called her bluff, she had no idea how to proceed.

  Still protecting the open barn door, she realized her best bet might be humility.

  “Nurse Reynolds,” she began, “with your permission, I’d like to make a few changes around here. If you let me, I’ll do whatever you need me to do, whenever you need me to do it. Promise.” She uncrossed her arms. “Please?” she pleaded.

  The nurse pursed her lips again. She took her time responding. Every second left Adrienne more on edge. There was a very real possibility that Nurse Reynolds would tell her to leave and never return.

  “Open the barn doors if you must,” she said finally. “And fetch the water upstream. But after that, I need you to do a different task.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll find a shovel behind the barn. Walk fifty paces from the tents and start digging. We need a new latrine.”

  Grimacing, Adrienne nodded. She understood that this was the best compromise she was going to get. At least for now.

  She would be patient.

  During the next few days, the boy’s health greatly improved. His stump was healing rapidly. He was eating—not a lot, but some. His hellish fevers had ceased. He was even walking a little.

  Best of all, he was talking. In bits and pieces, he told her Adrienne all about himself. His name was Emery Westervelt. He was nineteen years old and from Ipswich, Massachusetts. He was a printer’s apprentice and wanted to own his own newspaper someday. He had a twin brother who had been killed weeks earlier by a short cannon called a Howitzer. Emery had been nearby when it happened. He told Adrienne how the Howitzer had looked brand-new, its smoking bronze tube still gleaming bright and beautiful as his brother fell in a heap to the ground.

  Emery asked about her, too, but she hadn’t been able to answer many of his questions. How could she? She needed time—and courage. Only then could she explain the odd circumstances that had brought them together, and what her real life was like.

  On a routine visit, she ventured carefully through the barn, which was dark in the early evening hours. She walked toward his cot by the thin light of a kerosene lantern and saw that he was sleeping.

  Though it was hard to tell through the murky light, Adrienne thought his color looked unusually good. She changed his bandage gingerly, not wanting to wake him. Almost no fluid drained from the stump now, and what little there was ran clear.

  She wouldn’t let herself feel relief—it was too soon for that. But she was cautiously optimistic. Before wrapping the stump in a new bandage, she poured another glug of alcohol over the healing stitches. This no longer caused him to recoil in pain, or even to awaken.

  “What are you doing?” hissed a voice from behind her. She jumped when she saw an elongated shadow against the wall of the barn. Nurse Reynolds. Adrienne had thought she was sleeping. The older woman gaped at Adrienne. “So you’re the one wasting it all! I thought it was the doctor tippling. We’re down to a few drops,” she groused.

  Adrienne stepped away from the boy. “I’m not wasting it,” she whispered. “It’s an antiseptic. Haven’t you noticed we haven’t had a single infection this last week? It’s because of this.”

  As she shook the corked bottle for emphasis, she realized the nurse was right: there was barely any alcohol left. With a long sigh, Adrienne rubbed her face. She hadn’t glanced in a mirror for a while, but she was certain she looked awful. She was stressed out every minute of every hour at the field hospital. At the same time, when she wasn’t there, she longed to be.

  “Now I suppose you’ll tell me about germs again?” the nurse asked. “Whatever your faults, you do have a gift for newfangled words.”

  Adrienne wanted to groan. She was too tired for another cynical lecture. Fortunately, Nurse Reynolds had softened since their first meeting, having realized that Adrienne, for all her idiosyncrasies and stubbornness, was an asset.

  “We need more whiskey,” Adrienne said. “Or else the infections will come back. It’s really important.”

  “It’s true that we haven’t had a death this week,” the nurse acknowledged. “You really think it’s because of this antiseptic notion?”

  Adrienne tried not to show her surprise. Normally Nurse Reynolds didn’t take her seriously. “Yes! And the rags. There’s a reason I boil them so much. We can’t reuse the dirty ones till they’ve been sanitized.” She nodded toward the nurse’s soiled hands. “And those—you have to wash your hands really well, with plenty of soap, every time you handle a patient. Dirty hands spread disease.”

  Adrienne’s own hands were peeling and calloused. She’d never realized how hard life had been before the advent of the washing machine. It was exhausting to spend a whole day washing clothes with nothing but a scrubbing board, boiling kettle, and boar-bristle brush.

  “I suppose that’s why we’re running low on soap, too,” the nurse mused. “Still, I’ll admit the boys are doing better. I didn’t believe you about the ‘circulating air.’ Or the clean sheets and water. But if our patients are healing, then maybe your notions aren’t so queer after all.”

  Adrienne tried to keep from smiling.

  “I have two more bottles of whiskey hidden in the cabin,” the nurse continued. “You may use them.”

  “Oh, that’s awesome!”

  Nurse Reynolds stared at her curiously. “Miss Arch, where did you say you are from?”

  “Oh, far. Really far, actually.”

  The nurse nodded, though she didn’t look entirely satisfied with that answer.

  Sometimes it was best to leave well enough alone. Especially in a place like this, where well enough was all you could ask for. “If you’re hungry, Miss Arch, I left your rations in the cabin. I’ll care for the men for the rest of the night if you return at dawn.”

  Adrienne thought about the food awaiting her. How the biscuits could double as paperweights. How the meat was all gristle and bone. Then she glanced back at her boy, who still slept soundly in the shadows. “No, thanks,” she replied. “I’d rather stay.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “I’m not gonna name names,” Paige said during another nightly meeting of the Mercury Boys Club. “But it has come to my attention that someone might have seen her ex-boyfriend recently.” Her eyes scanned the girls, not settling on anybody in particular.

  In the candlelight under the giant tree, Saskia shifted uncomfortably. Just a minute ago the members of the Mercury Boys Club had been laughing, talking about their itchy, still-healing tattoos. Paige had been poking fun at Jimmy, joking that he was probably still in the back room looking for her and her sister. Now her stare was icy—and the rest of the girls were trying to avoid it.

  “Hold up. What are you saying?” Lila asked. Saskia looked at her with a mixture of wonder and concern. Paige didn’t hold any power over Lila like she did over Saskia. It was like Lila’s innate sensibleness and aversion to drama made her immune.

  “What I’m saying is what I’ve said all along. We have to have rules. And we have to enforce them.” Paige looked askance at Adrienne. “Otherwise, cheaters are gonna cheat.”

  Saskia was beginning to get a bad feel
ing. A very bad feeling. She was surprised by how quickly Paige’s mood had shifted; she’d gone from friendly to accusatory in under a minute.

  “All we did was get ice cream,” Adrienne blubbered suddenly. “And we went so I could tell him about Emery!”

  “You can never be friends with an ex,” replied Paige. “It’s impossible. I should know.”

  “But it was totally innocent. There was nothing romantic, nothing at all.”

  “Then why the need to meet with him?”

  “I told you—to tell him about Emery. About how we’re together now.”

  “There shouldn’t be a need to explain that to an ex-boyfriend.”

  Adrienne scratched fretfully at the tattoo on her bicep. It just about leaped off her fair, freckly skin. “Well, Benjamin’s sensitive, you know? I just wanted him to understand. He can be . . . emotional.”

  “You know he’s still into you. So why go for ice cream? Why not just text him?” Paige demanded.

  “You’re leading him on,” added Sara Beth.

  “I’m not leading him on,” said Adrienne.

  “Getting ice cream with a boy is a date,” said Paige.

  Adrienne’s bottom lip quivered. She looked close to tears. Saskia felt sorry for her—Paige was definitely going after her hard. Too hard. At the same time, Saskia could understand why Paige was so angry. As the de facto leader of their group, Paige needed to keep order and maintain discipline.

  “But I didn’t mean it to be!” Adrienne proclaimed. “Honest! Maybe he did think it was a date. And maybe I did make a mistake. But it’s not like you’ve never made one before.”

  “Number one,” Paige snapped, “we’re talking about you, so stop trying to deflect blame. And number two, I haven’t dated another guy since meeting Samuel, and I’m not going to.”

  “Okay, Miss Perfect.”

  Saskia was shocked—she had never heard Adrienne talk back to Paige before. She wouldn’t have thought Adrienne had the nerve. In fact, if Saskia looked up to Paige, Adrienne practically worshipped her.

  “So that’s what you’re going to do? Call me names? What are you, four?” Paige asked.

  Adrienne flinched.

  “Let’s take a vote,” Paige said, addressing the group. “Raise your hand if you think it’s okay to have a boyfriend and still go out on a date with your ex-boyfriend.”

  Adrienne shook her head. “But that’s not . . .”

  “You just admitted he thought it was a date.”

  It was beginning to feel a little too hot and oppressive under the tree for Saskia’s comfort. The dangling branches that encircled them suddenly felt constraining. She shifted uncomfortably, thinking that watching Paige and Adrienne go at it was a lot like watching Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat and waiting for the next poor soul to get thrown overboard.

  “But you and Sara Beth almost hooked up with that tattoo guy. Jimmy!” Adrienne spat out the name like it had a bad taste. “How’s that okay, but talking with Benjamin is not?”

  Paige laughed. “You’re so naive. Hooking up with that walking billboard for opioid addiction was never going to happen. We’re way too smart for that.”

  “And frankly, I find the comparison between our situation and yours insulting,” added Sara Beth.

  “What I find even more insulting,” said Paige to Adrienne, “is your ingratitude. We only pulled off that stunt so that you wouldn’t have to pay for the tattoo. So that you could get it for free. Four hundred bucks is nothing for us.”

  Red-faced, Adrienne looked at Saskia imploringly, but Saskia didn’t meet her eyes. She felt sorry for Adrienne, who just wasn’t in the sisters’ league in terms of smarts, savvy, or—as Paige had crudely pointed out—money. Paige’s last comment was an especially low blow. The Sampras sisters were rich, yes, but their privilege didn’t make them superior, especially considering that none of other girls could have afforded the tattoos.

  Still, if Saskia were forced to pick a side, she would have picked Paige’s. Paige was simply a better friend, and Saskia had more of an allegiance to her. Plus, she agreed with Paige on principle: Adrienne had broken the trust of their sisterhood by having another boyfriend.

  Finally, there was another reason for Saskia to keep her mouth shut—one that she didn’t really want to admit even to herself. Paige was beginning to scare her.

  “Can we take this down a notch?” Lila asked calmly. “Adrienne made a mistake. She said she’s sorry. Let it go.”

  Saskia took a deep breath. Thank god for Lila, honestly.

  “I wish I could,” Paige replied. “But if it happens once, it could happen again.”

  “So what do you want to do?” Lila asked impatiently.

  “I told you: make rules,” Paige replied. In a snap she jumped to her feet. Saskia half-expected her to kick Adrienne, but instead she exited the canopy.

  Saskia exchanged a disbelieving look with Lila. WTF just happened?

  Slowly, warily, the rest of the gang made their way out from under the tree. They found Paige inside the house, sitting on the floor of the den and typing on a laptop.

  Judging by how quickly and decisively her fingers tapped the keyboard, Saskia could tell that Paige was sure of what she wanted to say. Maybe she’d already planned it out in her head.

  Sara Beth sat down next to her. A wan and worried-looking Adrienne kept to the corner of the room. Saskia clenched Lila’s arm as she watched Paige furiously pound the keys.

  The Mercury Boys Club

  OFFICIAL RULES OF MEMBERSHIP

  Mercury Boys Club members must attend all meetings of the MBC.

  Becoming a member of the MBC is a lifetime commitment.

  MBC members must pledge their love and devotion to their Forever Boyfriends.

  MBC members must visit their Forever Boyfriends at least once a week (preferably every night!!!).

  MBC members must get the official MBC tattoo.

  MBC members must obtain and share all necessities (mercury, etc.).

  Membership to the MBC is top secret and must be kept strictly confidential. Revealing information about the MBC to outsiders is a PUNISHABLE OFFENSE.

  Damaging or losing a Forever Boyfriend daguerreotype is a PUNISHABLE OFFENSE.

  If a member wants to leave, the group must vote on the issue. Majority wins. It is a PUNISHABLE OFFENSE for an MBC member to leave the club without permission!!!

  MBC members get to decide all forms of punishment!!!

  If an MBC member wants to break up with her Forever Boyfriend, she must seek permission from the club.

  MBC members must support their club sisters and help them remain HONEST.

  MBC members must abstain from dates with boys other than their Forever Boyfriends.

  When visiting their Forever Boyfriends, MBC members must wear APPROPRIATE CLOTHING.

  MBC members will meet body and soul with their Forever Boyfriends in death!!!

  Saskia felt faint. The little letters on Paige’s screen were wiggling and dancing. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Some of the rules weren’t surprising, while others were so hard-core and unexpected she got chills. Seeing them laid out and official made Saskia realize the significance of what they were doing. They made her feel both scared and proud, like she was embarking on a critical mission—a mission she wasn’t entirely sure she could handle.

  Saskia realized Lila, Paige, Sara Beth, and Adrienne were connected to her now, emotionally and physically, bound externally by their shared tattoos and internally by their common commitment to the Mercury Boys. The gravity of what they were collectively experiencing—their sisterly bond, the boys they were visiting, the fact that they knew a secret the rest of the world didn’t—all of it felt extremely important in light of the rules Paige had written. Like nothing before mattered as much as what was happening
right now.

  “Paige, you’re going too far . . .” Lila said incredulously.

  Paige appraised her for several seconds. “You’re wrong. These rules are exactly far enough.”

  “But we’re sixteen,” said Lila. “Do you honestly think we’re ready for a ‘lifetime commitment’?”

  Paige slowly removed her fingers from the keyboard. Again, she waited a beat before answering. “Look, I’m not a very spiritual person, but I believe that fate led us to our Forever Boyfriends. And I believe we need to guard them.”

  “‘MBC members will meet body and soul with their Forever Boyfriends in death,’” Lila quoted. “That is going too far. We’re just teenagers!”

  “When Samuel was alive, the average age of death was thirty-nine. Back then, we’d probably be married by now, with kids. Sixteen is not that young.”

  Saskia found herself agreeing with Paige. She wished Lila would stop having doubts. Couldn’t she see that something momentous was happening?

  As if echoing her thoughts, Paige said, “Lila, you don’t get how big this. When we see our boys, we bend time. We bring them back to life! It’s like . . .”

  “A miracle,” said Sara Beth.

  “Yes,” agreed Paige.

  But Lila’s cautious expression made it clear she didn’t necessarily agree.

  “The mercury and the way we see our boyfriends—it’s like nothing that’s ever happened before,” continued Paige. “If our secret got out, everything would be ruined. We’d get reporters, paparazzi, scientists swarming our houses!”

  “The whole world would change!” added Sara Beth. “That’s why we have to keep this on the down-low.”

  “Forever,” Paige concluded.

  “Well, I don’t know if I’m ready for forever,” answered Lila.

  “Then walk away,” Paige said evenly. “Right now. Because later it will be harder—I can promise you that.”

  Once again, Saskia found herself siding with Paige and fervently wishing Lila would, too.

  “Maybe I should leave.” Lila sighed. “I don’t know.”