H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  Honestly, what is it about songs, even crappy songs you wouldn’t normally bother to listen to, that makes you hear every EXCRUCIATING word when you most don’t want to?

  But it gave me a brilliant idea. A Ruby genius idea.

  “I hear, with my little ear, something people won’t be able to sing about anymore,” I said.

  “Well, what does it begin with?” the Spratt asked.

  “I dunno,” I said, “but there’s bound to be one.”

  The Spratt, I noticed, got a little less loungey. I could see his toes tensing. In the rearview mirror I saw the kid perk up, listening.

  (More than that, I’d see her poke Darius a couple times, when a word was coming up. It turned out the Princess knew some of those songs.)

  “LB! LASER BEAMS!” I shrieked.

  I skipped forward.

  “Why can’t we listen to the rest of it?” cried Darius.

  “Too bad!” I said. “Winner chooses!”

  “Game on,” said Darius, sitting up.

  It was hilarious. It actually really was—once I’d carefully explained to Darius that it didn’t even matter whether stuff still existed or not; it was just stuff that would OBVIOUSLY never be the same again. (“Look, it’s really simple, dummy! No one’s gonna sing about it being hot in the city again, are they, you idiot? It doesn’t mean ‘hot’ hot, as in ‘ooo, isn’t it warm?’ It means exciting hot. So: HITC—point to me—next track, loser!”

  CB (cocktail bar!). M (money!). ST (steam train!). T (telephone!). PR (phone rings!). E (electric!).

  Darius got grumpy about the electric one. Even though I was prepared to admit that you’d still be able to get electricity from batteries and generators and whatnot, I decided it was perfectly allowable because it was perfectly obvious when people sang about electricity they didn’t mean electricity that came from batteries and generators and whatnot.

  It came up loads of times, electric. Those ’80s people were obsessed with that kind of thing too: electricity, atomic stuff, nuclear stuff… N (neutron!).

  D (dime!). D (dollar!). I (industry!). T (tickets!). R (rent!)

  We got silly (J! Jam! It doesn’t mean that kind of jam! It’s not about fruit!); we got picky (P! You can’t have phone again—you just had phone!). We had this mind-boggling fight about whether FAM (four a.m.!) would still exist if all the clocks ran out or were busted, and people couldn’t make clocks anymore and didn’t care what time it was anyway because it wouldn’t be like they had to go to school or work or anything, would it, and—anyway—what exactly is time?

  (In a closet, at a swimming pool, it had ceased to exist.)

  I.e., we had pretty much the kind of argument you’d have to go to Wikipedia to solve. Only we didn’t have Wikipedia, did we? I (Internet!) never came up in any of those ’80s songs. Not much of the stuff that was really important in our lives did. That’s why it was fun, I guess… I mean, even though it was terrible, it wasn’t really exactly completely now, was it?

  “M!” shouted Darius. “Medicine!”

  After a sec, he skipped to the next track, as the winner was allowed to do.

  I had this thought. This thought about Darius and medicine and…

  “So how long will those tablets last you?” I asked.

  “Shut up, Ru,” Darius said.

  He laid his head against the window. OK, so everything had gotten weird. OK, so better not to ask.

  “Hey,” I said. I reached out and poked him. I should have just said sorry.

  “B,” he said.

  “B?”

  He didn’t even look at me; he just said it: “Braces.”

  My braces aren’t the kind that come out. They’re glued onto my teeth. How would I ever get them off now? I was going to be wearing braces for the rest of my life. I was going to be sitting in an old people’s home eating canned fruit, fretting about the weather, and…still wearing TRAIN TRACKS.

  “Sorry,” said Darius. “I’m sorry.”

  Some band squawked on about lurve.

  “This is crap,” I muttered, trying to eject the CD; the car swerved.

  “I’ll get it,” said Darius. He took the CD out. “What do you want to listen to?”

  “Not that.”

  “This?” said Darius, holding up some best-of classical music thing.

  I thought he was just joking, so I said yes to annoy him.

  He wasn’t joking.

  Actually, it was better not to hear people singing about stuff (like LURVE, for example), and the swoopy, sad violin music was a much better soundtrack for my mood, which had returned, completely, to deeply brooding and tragic.

  And then I screamed.

  I screamed because a car zipped past us. A little red sports car, traveling so fast I never even saw who was in it.

  After that, I was too nervous to be tragic. I kept looking in the rearview mirror. Over the next hour, there were three more cars. I saw two of them coming. The first one, a silver car, tooted as it cruised past, a guy in it, alone.

  “Honk back!” said Darius, craning out of his window.

  I hesitated, then I honked. I don’t know whether he would have heard. He didn’t stop.

  Some way past the Chippenham turn-off, I saw another car gaining on us from behind. This one didn’t zoom past; it came up steadily.

  “Look,” I said.

  “At what?” said Darius.

  “That car. Behind us.”

  He turned.

  “Hn,” he said, sitting back round.

  Hn?! We were being followed! I glanced at Darius. Another penny dropped with a massive clunk.

  “Where are your glasses?” I asked.

  “Polytunnel,” he said.

  “Oh my . Can you actually see anything?”

  “A little. Not much. Look—I can see things close up. I can see you, all right, so stop making that face. It’s not my fault, is it?”

  “I Spy!” I squealed. “No wonder you didn’t want to play I Spy!”

  “Nothing I can do about it, is there? I can’t just walk into an optician’s and get a new pair, can I?”

  “Can’t you?”

  “No! They’re prescription glasses.”

  “What? Are your eyes sick too?”

  “No! It just means you need someone who knows what they’re doing—just like you and your braces!”

  Tchuh! No wonder he wanted to stay at that farm! He’d have made us all hang around there until he got the guts to go back into that polytunnel and get them! No wonder he wanted to hang around in Bristol! If he was as blind as a bat he could hardly roam around, could he? But he had, hadn’t he? He’d roamed around with me! He’d put ME in danger!

  “Get the crowbar,” I said.

  “Ru—”

  “Just get it.”

  Darius sighed and took off his seat belt.

  “Don’t crash,” he said to me as he clambered into the back.

  “Yeah, and don’t call me Ru. Do NOT call me Ru,” I said. “Not ever.”

  Uh. I realized he had to be rummaging through a ton of my underwear to find that crowbar. I had no time to be mortified. That car grew larger in my rearview. Darius clambered back, brandishing the crowbar.

  “Don’t let them see it,” I said… Then, “No, do.”

  That car, it came right up behind us. Then it swerved right to overtake…but they didn’t overtake; they came up alongside.

  , I thought. !

  Darius leaned across me—he squinted, then he waved. I looked over…There was a family in that car: a mom; a dad driving; two kids in the back, a girl, a boy…all of them waving like crazy—and smiling. Smiling!

  “Honk the horn!” said Darius. “Honk it!”

  I honked.

  “Pull over!” said Darius.

  M
y heart was in my mouth, but I did it. I pulled over and I stopped.

  They pulled up ahead of us and reversed.

  They got out. The mom did, and then the dad. You could see the kids in the back, unbuckled and leaning over the backseat to see us.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  Me, I got out and sauntered to the front of the car like one of Dan’s carjacker characters. A real tough guy. Was deeply annoyed that Darius got out too—and without the crowbar. The Princess got out of the back, Darling in her arms. See how much authority I had?

  The mom stepped forward; the dad held her back.

  “Are you OK?” said the dad. Accent…Welsh?

  Are you OK? That could mean a lot of things under the circumstances—like, Are you sick? Or, What the are you doing driving a car? Or, How come you’re just a bunch of kids on your own? Basically, it was probably pretty hard to believe that we were OK.

  “Yeah, we’re fine,” I shouted. No need to shout—we were on the world’s quietest highway—but somehow my voice came out like that.

  I have come to realize…that when I get stressed, I get shouty. I was like that before all this happened, a little, but after the rain fell…I suppose I got a lot more like that. I do know that about myself. I do. I just can’t help it.

  “We’re going to Salisbury,” said the Dad. Welsh, definitely Welsh.

  So?! I shouted in my head.

  “What’s in Salisbury?” asked Darius.

  “There are big army bases there,” explained the mom. “There’s help.”

  She looked at the dad, who nodded.

  “Do you want to come with us?” she asked.

  This wasn’t like being invited along by King Xar’s court. I felt this pang, this serious owwwww ache for my mother. This ache to be taken care of, to not have to worry about another thing.

  “We’re fine,” I said. Another tsunami, held back.

  “Ru—” said Darius.

  “You can go with them if you want to,” I said.

  Please don’t leave me.

  “It’s OK,” Darius told them.

  Could he make it sound a little less like he was being abducted against his will?!

  “We’re going to London,” I said.

  “To find her dad,” Darius added.

  Oh! You could see just what a good idea they thought that was. And how likely they thought it was that my dad would be alive.

  The mom looked at the dad, her face full of worry.

  “If you change your mind,” said the dad, “you’ll need to turn off at Swindon. There’ll be a sign.”

  “Your dad might be there already,” said the mom. “It’s where everyone will go.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “He’d have come for me first.”

  The dad nodded. Kind of sadly, maybe, but definitely like if he was my dad that was what he’d do…only…somewhere deep inside me a little voice said, But your dad didn’t come for you, did he? So what do you think that means, Ruby Morris?

  “I’m Sandra,” said the mom.

  Then she really did rush forward. I think she wanted to hug me, but I kind of stepped back, so she grabbed my hand instead and shook it. There were tears in her eyes.

  “I’m Ruby,” I said. Her hand was warm and soft, and I didn’t want to let it go. “This is Darius,” I said—the dad was already shaking Darius’s hand.

  “Dar-ius,” said the mom, shaking Darius’s hand next, while the dad, Mike, shook mine. “That’s unusual,” she said. She turned toward the kid…who stood there, clutching Darling. “Hello, lovely,” she said. “And what’s your name?”

  The kid just stood there.

  “This is Princess,” I said. “And Darling, my dog.”

  My dog. That’s MY dog. That’s MY dog, I thought. And I knew it wasn’t anymore. I knew that kid needed that dog more than I did. And I needed Darling a lot.

  “Princess, is it?” said the mom, crouching down to try to coax a smile from her.

  “We don’t know her real name,” Darius cut in. “We found her.”

  “She found him,” I said. “She doesn’t speak.”

  “Oh! You’re a shy princess,” crooned the mom, and you know what? The kid let her stroke her cheek. “That’s Ethan and Holly,” the mom went on, putting her arm round Princess and waving at her own kids. Ethan and Holly waved back.

  The mom gave Princess a squeeze and stood; the tears that had been in her eyes escaped down her cheeks, and she wiped them away.

  “Well,” said the dad, putting his arm round the mom, “we should get going…”

  With his gaze, he pointed out why. I spy with my little eye something beginning with C. The cutesy little cumulus humilis clouds were running, chased by their bigger, meaner brothers and sisters. Fatter clouds, puffed up with death. I’m not great at telling them apart, cumulus mediocris and cumulus congestus—which is a shame, because one can suddenly pour down; the other just looks like it might.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” the mom asked. She looked at the dad.

  “We could just take the little one if you liked,” said the dad gently.

  AAAA-OOOO!

  Inside, I howled like Whitby. I howled like Whitby…because I felt like I was a little one. I felt like I wanted them to take ME.

  “Do you want to go with them?” Darius asked the kid.

  The kid looked at him.

  “She’s not sure,” said Darius.

  “She should,” I said quietly, to Darius.

  I’ve got to tell you that I felt pretty awful right then. I thought it would be best if the kid went with them, and I pretty much figured the kid wouldn’t want to leave Darius, and—groan—truth was I didn’t want Darius to leave me. I mean, I did, and I didn’t. Mainly I didn’t. Groan. Yeurch. Groan.

  “Why don’t you think about it?” said the dad. “We’ll drive with you as far as Swindon, eh? See how you feel then?”

  I looked at Darius. He shrugged. He looked as cut up about it all as me.

  “OK,” I said.

  • • •

  We got back into the car, and we drove on. That mom and dad and kids stayed in front. Me and Darius, we didn’t speak until I turned around to just look-see how the kid was doing.

  “She’s thinking about it,” said Darius.

  And that was it; that was all anyone had to say.

  I was middle lane, just following the mom and dad, when—whoa! The last car that passed, the one I didn’t see coming because I was so gloomed out, appeared from the opposite direction—fast lane, our side of the highway. They were zooming, flashed their lights, tooted and slowed down…but we had already passed. I didn’t stop and back up; the mom and dad didn’t either. They slowed for a moment, as though they were thinking about it, so I did too. Then we went on.

  That’s how it is, isn’t it? Every time you see another person, you’ve got a choice: run or talk. Unless the fear decides for you. We’ll never know what those people wanted to say to us, what they might have wanted to tell us. With the next people we met, there was no choice.

  I was lost in a trance of gloom when the kid—the kid!—leaned forward and jabbed me. I whipped around in shock—the car swerved—the kid was pointing. I looked. On a bridge over the highway, there were two men in white onesie suits and masks and sunglasses. Both held massive guns—machine guns? One held a walkie-talkie.

  “Darius?” I breathed.

  Urh. Dur. He couldn’t see, could he?

  “There’re men on the bridge,” I whispered.

  One of them waved us on. We zipped beneath them.

  “What kind of men?” asked Darius.

  “I don’t know, do I?” I hissed—as if they could hear.

  He made me describe what I’d seen and insisted they had to be army. They were
wearing bio-suits, he said. I knew that; I’d seen crime things on TV, on the news and on drama stuff—also on the Web, when Ronnie had shown us “real footage” from an alien spaceship crash. I’d just never seen people in bio-suits carrying guns. Clipboards, maybe, but not great big machine guns. Even as I told him he couldn’t possibly know that, that they had to be the army, the cones began to herd us in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The whole world has gone crazy, and still…you follow a bunch of cones.

  The cones said No, you can’t leave here, at every exit we came to. And we obeyed. Cones mean order. Cones mean someone is in charge. But who?

  Then the cones appeared on the road too; they funneled us in…in and in and in until we were squeezed into the middle of the road. The highway that was supposed to take me to London stopped right there. Up ahead, they’d set up camp under the bridge, blocking the whole road, both sides.

  They were waiting to greet us: four, five, six, seven men in those same white suits and masks, all carrying…machine guns.

  “Hallelujah!” said Darius, squinting through the windshield.

  That isn’t what I was thinking. I was thinking, Oh my God…

  Sorry, Mom…but this thought, this one thought, I won’t replace with a . I can’t; if I did, you might think I mean some other word. In most cases that wouldn’t matter; in this case I feel it does. I thought it not because I believe in God (I don’t, I think, not after all this), but because what was inside me was such a jumble, it sort of made me wish there was something outside me that could help. So it wasn’t even swearing, really; it was for real. An instant jumble of fear and shock; that’s what I felt. Let me name the parts of it:

  1. I truly had not believed that there would be anyone. I had not thought that there could be any sort of serious organization, any real order, left. (Apart from Girl Guides.) That shocked me.

  2. Though I got why those men would be wearing bio-suits, that shocked me too, and it was frightening.

  3. But it wasn’t as frightening as those men having guns.

  4. A little like a teacher catching you outside the gates during school hours, I also immediately thought—and no kind of about it—that somehow these people would not just let me go on my way.