H2O

by Virginia Bergin

  “Luckily, I found Darius!” she trilled. The way she said it reminded me of that American Mom character she’d played in their spoof washing-detergent ad. Perky? Super-perky!

  She slipped her arm through his.

  “We’re engaged,” she said.

  This explosion of a laugh filled my cheeks and half spat out through my lips.

  It was a joke, right? It had to be a joke.

  Like her arm was a hook, the Spratt-fish dangled limp on the end of it.

  I couldn’t help myself; I looked at Darius Spratt. This weird, wobbly, pleading smile slunk onto his face.

  “Ruby,” he whispered, staring straight back at me.

  What had happened in the spongy-snake closet was not staying in the spongy-snake closet; it was flashing before my eyes.

  My brain could not process the unimaginableness—the unimaginable, unbelievable, outrageous, horrific horribleness—of such a thing. My jaw dropped open from the weight of the words of horror and disbelief that filled it. YOU WHAT?! I wanted to shriek. AS IF! I wanted to shriek. I could have shrieked those words and about a trillion other things, none of them nice. I spoke one. One word.

  Oh, I am so proud of myself for that one word. I—truly—am RUBY the GENIUS.

  “Congratulations,” I said.

  “Ru!” whispered Saskia, almost managing a giggle. “It’s not, like, for real or anything. We totally just had to! They keep kicking people out of here and—” She gasped then. She actually gasped. “Ru-by!” she shrieked. “Do you, like, LIKE him?”

  The quiet soldier lost it. “Come on!” he said. He sighed… Like this, the most mortifying and appalling and…soul-wounding situation on Earth was the most boring situation on Earth. He grabbed my arm and he pulled me back to the bus. I did not resist. Someone had to stop it. Someone had to stop…all that.

  I don’t mean that, about the soul wounding. It just felt like it was at the time. It was an extreme time. During which extreme things happened. I was very traumatized and confused.

  “My dad is alive,” I shouted over my shoulder at Saskia, and at Darius Spratt. “MY—DAD—IS—ALIVE.”

  Saying that? It was better than swearing. It was the best and the most triumphant thing I could say, the best and most triumphant thing anyone could ever say: YOU ARE WRONG AND I AM RIGHT.

  It’s the best feeling in the world, isn’t it? Being right.

  “Where are they taking you?” Darius shouted.

  I didn’t answer. I shook the quiet soldier’s hand off my arm, and I walked with dignity. I didn’t answer because I didn’t know. I didn’t answer because it was an outrage that he should even—

  “You take care, Ru!” he shouted. “You take care!”

  OK. That was too much. Don’t call me Ru. Do NOT call me Ru. I turned, I grabbed hold of every swear word I ever could have thought of, and I—

  “Come on,” said the SIT-DOWN! soldier, pulling me onto the bus before I could lash the Spratt with my burning rage.

  As I made my way to my seat, I noticed something. Those other people on that bus, they looked at me funny. They looked at me funny as if…they felt sorry for me? They thought I was stupid? Surely not that they—seriously—thought a girl like me would ever have ANYTHING to do with a boy like Darius Spratt.

  I did an emergency rummage in my head.

  “That boy,” I announced to them all, “is a lousy kisser.”

  “SIT DOWN!” yelled the SIT-DOWN! soldier.

  I glared at them all and sat down.

  My heart—bristling, bleeding, bruised, confused, messed up good and proper—shut itself up, tight…and right.

  I checked my makeup. It was pretty bad, unfortunately. Worse than I had thought. Amid the swipe and smudge marks, mascara run-off streaks fell like black rain from my eyes.

  We passed other gates to other camps. I was so busy fixing my makeup (it’s a very calming activity, I find) I hardly noticed much, but some didn’t even look like they were army bases how you’d think they’d be; they just looked like housing developments behind high fences—you even saw people there, with kids…out playing, because it was sunny and dry.

  “House like that’ll do me,” said the woman who’d been rude, loudly.

  “Probably have to share it,” said a guy.

  “No way,” said another woman.

  But that wasn’t where we were going.

  When we finally stopped, it was getting dark.

  We pulled up in the middle of this pretty little village.

  Sweet little cottages crowded around a sweet little village green filled with sweet little dead people. And a maypole, around which pretty ribbons fluttered in the breeze.

  “This ain’t right,” the rude woman said.

  “Shut up,” said another guy. “They know what they’re doing.”

  They did know what they were doing. I’d been dumped so many times that day I should have known too. I was being dumped. Again.

  They herded us out.

  “What the is this?” said the rude woman.

  They got that girl’s wheelchair out of the bus; I remember how cool it looked, decorated with a million stickers. Her dad carried her off the bus and put her in it.

  “Now what?!” demanded a guy.

  The SIT-DOWN! soldier cocked his rifle again. Didn’t he just love doing that?

  This bawly brat in his mother’s arms started to cry.

  “The army is not able to accommodate everyone at this time,” announced SIT-DOWN! soldier.

  I saw then that maybe he wasn’t so tough; I saw his fingers all nervous on that gun. It looked like maybe he was going to say something else; maybe he was supposed to say something else, but, really, what else was there to say?

  “You have got to be kidding me!” said a guy.

  “You are NOT leaving us here,” said the rude woman.

  “You s!” screamed the woman with the bawling kid as the soldiers got back on board.

  They hadn’t switched off the engine; they were positioned just right to go.

  The abandoned (half) busload of people didn’t even try to get back on board. The soldiers got back on, and they pulled away.

  All day long, I hadn’t looked at the sky. I hadn’t needed to; it had been sunny, and then I’d been at the army place, and I didn’t think—for one moment—that I’d get dumped… The wind had picked up, and it looked crappy: a jumbled altocumulus sky, the kind that changes every two seconds and is almost impossible to read. It’s the kind of sky you only go out under if you have to, and you’d better be quick about it.

  Like going on about dead bodies—which, incidentally, do NOT go zombie gray when they start to go off. They go GREEN; they go GREEN with white mold spots, and their lips shrivel, and their mouths rot so everyone looks like LIPLESS MAGGOTTY-MOUTHED SPOTTY ZOMBIE ELVES. BUT NORMAL-SIZED. PEOPLE DON’T SHRINK. THEY JUST GO GREEN. GREEN! Yes, like not going on about that, I also do not want to go on about the way people behaved—I just want to say that I was brought up to think that if something awful happened, PEOPLE WERE SUPPOSED TO HELP EACH OTHER, NOT GRAB ALL THE BEST SUPPLIES, THREATEN PEOPLE WITH GUNS, MURDER PEOPLE, CHASE PEOPLE, ATTACK THEM WITH POISONED WATER, OR…OR GO OFF WITH PEOPLE THEY WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO GO OFF WITH.

  OR DUMP PEOPLE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE WHEN IT’S OBVIOUSLY JUST ABOUT TO RAIN. PROBABLY.

  “STOP!” STOP!” I yelled, chasing after that bus.

  Amazingly, they did stop.

  Look charming, look contrite, look…desperate. That’s how I felt: desperate.

  “Please!” I said, grabbing at the open door. “There’s been a mistake!”

  I didn’t know what the mistake was, but I knew there must have been one. (And not mine, surely!)

  That soldier, that SIT-DOWN! soldier, he came down to that door, and he looked at me; I
looked at him. I thought I saw a flicker of something human in his eye. Something human, but maybe only some flicker of shame. And so he should be ashamed for what he was doing.

  “Go to Salisbury,” he whispered.

  Was that supposed to be some kind of joke?!

  “I’VE-JUST-BEEN-THERE,” I hissed. Maximum cobra-strike sarcasm.

  I’ll remember you, I thought, staring him straight in the eyes. I’ll remember you.

  “To the cathedral?” he whispered, like I was stupid or something.

  I felt like I was stupid or something. “What?!” I said.

  “GO-TO-SALISBURY-CATHEDRAL-IN-THE-CITY-OF-SALISBURY,” he said.

  He definitely thought I was some kind of an idiot.

  And then they shut the doors. And then they drove off. Yeah, they left us.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I would have just gone straight home; I wanted to just go straight home.

  There were a few really ugly few minutes when everyone who’d been thrown off the bus stood in the middle of that pretty little village and raged. That wasn’t the ugly part: the ugly part was when people realized there was no point raging. Then people just split. Some went for houses, some for cars; some teamed up and some headed off alone. A kind guy helped the woman with the bawling kid. The rude woman, amazingly, went off with this frail old lady—but probably only because she seemed to be deaf and could put up with the rudeness. That left me, some guy with Down’s syndrome (like Ronnie’s brother had), another old lady, the wheelchair girl, and her dad standing on the pavement.

  I split.

  Ten minutes later, I was back with a car. Think that’s because I’m a nice person? It’s not. I’m the kind of person who leaves a hamster in a car, who forgets to feed guinea pigs—every day, for two years. Why I went back wasn’t really because I couldn’t ignore them (like I’d ignored Melissa, the Girl Guide girl). It wasn’t even that the thought of those people left there would chew deep into—and feast upon!—the massive guilt I already felt about a whole load of things I couldn’t even exactly name because I couldn’t even exactly think about them (like Melissa). Those people left on the pavement, they probably would have been OK. I’m sure they would. Why I went back, really, was because some creepy guy from the bus who said he was an artist had been following me around, trying to get me to go with him.

  Safety in numbers, that’s what I thought, as I hammered on the horn to summon my new passengers.

  That girl, she smiled when she saw me; her face lit up and she grinned at me like I was her best friend.

  Please, please DON’T, I thought.

  “Hello! I’m Sagal!” she said, beaming at me as her dad helped her into the passenger seat.

  “I’m Ruby,” I said in a dead voice.

  The dad, who had climbed into the back with the others, asked Sagal a question; she said “Ruby” and he gabbled on again. The only word I understood was when he repeated my name.

  “Abo—my dad says to say thank you and to tell you that you are not useless after all,” said Sagal.

  Whoa. From somewhere deep inside me the spirit of yee-haa arose.

  “YOU WHAT?!” I said.

  Before I could stop her, Sagal translated that.

  It seemed to be an accurate translation—even the tone of her voice and the steely gaze matched—and her dad, looking fairly cross, launched into a long speech.

  She grinned apologetically at me as her dad droned on.

  “Does he want to drive?” I whispered.

  “He’d love to, but he has no UK license,” she whispered back. “It’s against the law.”

  Oh, for crying out loud…

  It’s international, I guess, cranky parents droning on. What’s less widespread as far as I know is us actually bothering to listen. Even though Sagal had to translate, she asked questions too; we both did. You kind of didn’t want to believe it, and at the same time…you totally could. And you weren’t really allowed not to, because everything the dad said, the old lady (Margaret) agreed with. Even the guy with Down’s Syndrome—his name was Peter—agreed: “Listen to what you’re told, Ruby!” he said to me.

  (And how the had Peter ever made it to the army place on his own?)

  (And ! I hate that I can even remember these people’s names! I hate that.)

  So, the Ruby Morris Summary of this one would be:

  It wasn’t as simple as people being old or disabled or having screaming kids, for example. Plenty of people who were old or disabled or who had screaming kids hadn’t been put on the bus and dumped. And plenty of people who weren’t any of those things had been put on that bus (like me). What we all had in common—and this is the horrible part—was we had no skill that the army wanted; we weren’t even the daughters or the sons or the husbands or the wives or the grandmas or the grandpas of people with skills that the army wanted. Or the fiancées.

  Oh yeah, I got that part. I swerved about when I did. Then I composed myself.

  Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? But you couldn’t argue with it. (Sagal and me, we did try: “Yes but,” we said. “Yes but.”) Yes but…I’d spent so long waiting in that hangar I practically knew the whole life stories of the people who’d shuffled back and forth around me: a blind man who spoke Russian; a nasty, shouty man who was an electrician and his nasty, shouty wife and nasty, shouty kids; this weeping and wailing woman who was a chemistry teacher. None of them were on that bus, were they?

  Nerd Boy. They’d definitely have wanted to keep Nerd Boy. If they’d had any sense, they would have wanted to keep Saskia too—not even just because she was pretty darn bright, which she was, but because she had a skill I was starting to realize was essential in this new world. She was…devious, that’s the word. She was a human polyextremophile.

  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. That doesn’t leave much, does it, Saskia Miller?

  Sagal was just a schoolgirl, year below me. Know what she was good at? Cooking! Her dad was a community worker of some sort. Know what he was good at? Talking to people…in Somali! Margaret was just a nice old lady who said she didn’t get out much, but seemed to get out and do more than I did, and Peter said he liked techno music and swimming.

  We were not worth saving. We were no use to anyone. We were useless.

  I said something pretty bad about the army that Sagal didn’t translate.

  “It won’t be their fault, dear,” said Margaret. “They’ll just be doing what they’ve been told. It’ll be that man’s fault. I wish I’d never voted for him. I’ll not be doing it again. I only hope the Queen’s all right.”

  Once we’d hit a main road, it was OK getting to Salisbury (THE-CITY-OF-SALISBURY), just the usual avoiding smashed-up and abandoned cars, dead bodies, that kind of thing. Yes, the driving was OK; I was not. Once I’d realized what Sagal’s dad was saying was true, I pretended I had to really concentrate on what I was doing so I didn’t have to speak. My head felt in as much of a mess as the sky: raggedy thoughts forming, changing, swirling about, bumping into other thoughts, getting mixed up with each other; new thoughts splitting off, puffing up, turning darker and darker. Thoughts infested with wriggly little space bugs, tentacles waving.

  I didn’t know how I’d find the cathedral when we got there. I didn’t need to know. On the outskirts of the city, there were signs. Signs saying “welcome.” Signs written on bedsheets like people do for crummy village festival…then a trail of balloons to follow. Bunches of balloons tied to lampposts. This way to the party!

  Sagal’s dad started singing—not loud, party singing, but some soft warbling song that sounded so sad I was glad I couldn’t understand the words to it.

  “That’s lovely, that is,” said Margaret. She caught the tune and hummed along a little. Peter added some pretty impressive beatboxing.

  Sagal rolled her eyes at me, giggling, but you could tell she was exci
ted too.

  “That way, Ruby!” she shouted every time she saw another bunch of balloons. “Over there!”

  That was how we found our way to the giant parking lot that surrounded Salisbury Cathedral. Basically, it was like how a shopping mall is just before Christmas. A sea of cars packed around it. Only it’s enormous, Salisbury Cathedral, isn’t it? It’s taller than any shopping mall (but with less stuff to buy). Light—lovely electric light—shone out from huge windows.

  “Stop!” yelled Sagal’s dad as Peter stepped straight out of the car.

  I peered out through the windows. I got out too. I waved my hand up at the sky: a raggedy mess of sunset orange and black clouds, above us one small gap in which the sky looked an unpleasant shade of green. (Like…you know.)

  Truth? I hadn’t known for sure that it would be OK when I stepped out.

  “It’s OK,” I shouted. “It’s OK.”

  Now see, what you must have realized and what I didn’t even get was that as well as the mess in my head, I was whacked out from tiredness and half nuts from thirst.

  “It’s OK!” I shouted. I really wasn’t.

  I don’t want to make a habit out of fainting. Before the whole global meltdown end-of-the-world thing, I hadn’t fainted once, not in my entire life—and there had been plenty of times when I could have (kissing Caspar McCloud, for example). I didn’t faint outside that cathedral, not exactly. I just went really weird and dizzy. Sagal’s dad got the wheelchair out, shoved Sagal in it, and shoved me on top of her, and bumped us along between cars and across grass to the doors of the cathedral.

  Some lady shoved a bottle of water into my hands.

  The next thing I can truly say that I clearly remember was me sitting in a pew, looking at the great ribby stone bones of the ceiling, having some crazy thought that I’d been swallowed by a great ribby stone beast, and then realizing I hadn’t and that Sagal was next to me in her wheelchair, holding my hand while someplace nearby this candlelit choir of the useless droned out “Amazing Grace.”

  There were groups of people dotted around all over the place, talking, sorting stuff, ladies taking down names, people handing out survival goodie bags, people handing out blankets, people handing out maps of the city.