I push and hold the phone’s startup button. For a moment nothing happens, and then the familiar startup icon flashes to life on the screen. I wasn’t expected that. Kate shut off her phone and put it in her nightstand drawer. Why? If she’d been sick, wouldn’t she have been desperate for communication? Kept home from school, away from her friends and by extension her identity, texting and IMing even as what she thought was the flu was turning her insides to liquid. The phone flashes and tries to make its connection to the outside world. First a cell tower, then a WiFi network. It finds neither. The screen changes to a photo of long, narrow painted toes in front of the ocean. I recognize the view. Kate sits on the deck outside the house. I’ve sat in that same chair, too.
Today is November fifteenth. It’s eleven twenty-two in the morning. My phone doesn’t keep track of the date and time. Once the battery died, so did its memory. Kate’s phone knows the day and the time. I draw in a sharp breath. Feel a weight slam down on me. For a moment, I want to throw the phone against the wall. Time has caught up with me. It didn’t occur to me that turning on the phone would bring time back. But there it is, as clear and undeniable as fact.
Is it better to know? What purpose does it serve? I have nowhere to be. And yet as my heart begins to calm, I realize I’ve missed knowing. Time is the measurement of passing. It’s a way to saddle the wild stallion whose galloping hoofbeats try so hard to slip away. It’s November fifteenth. After so many months at sea, I’m once again ashore.
DECEMBER
A Girl Named Kate
Recovering time makes me obligated to hold onto it. I even started up one of the generators in the rain in order to fully charge Kate’s stupid phone. So far it’s taken nearly two hours. I pace the house while I wait. The rain continues to pelt the windows. Oliver and I got soaked when we went outside to pee.
“Maybe I need to rediscover indoor plumbing. Not that it would helpyou much, would it?”
The phone’s battery icon nudges glacially toward full. I go back upstairs to Kate’s room. Sort through Kate’s clothes. There are a bunch of things I like. They’re all too big, but their size gives me a sense of security. I fish out a pair of terrycloth pajama pants and a sweatshirt with “SOUTH CHARLESTON HIGH SCHOOL CHEER” emblazoned on it in puffy letters. I need to roll up the sleeves. Oliver cocks his head.
“I know, cheerleader clothes, right? Don’t judge. You still wear fur.”
The phone is finally charged. I disconnect it and then run out through the crowded garage to turn off the generator. The rain is picking up. Freaks me out. The hurricane’s memory is still fresh.
I feed and water Oliver, stoke the fire and curl up on the couch with Kate Moynihan’s smart phone and her diary.
Kate had intense blue eyes. That’s the first thing I notice as I scroll through the photos on the dead girl’s phone. Kate has dark blonde hair. Had. She most often keeps it tied back in a ponytail. Her teeth are straight and white. In a few of the older pictures, I notice braces on her teeth. I like that. It means that Kate isn’t as perfect as she appears. In the majority of the most recent photos, Kate is with a group of other girls, sometimes in cheerleader uniforms, other times in the same sweatshirt that I’m wearing now. Most of the photos are selfies. There are a few of Kate’s freshly-painted fingernails, some of her toes. Blonde, blue-eyed all-American Kate Moynihan.
Kate’s musical taste was as popular as it got. There are a few bands I only recognize by the posters in Kate’s bedroom. I hit “SHUFFLE”. Try not to cringe. Fail miserably. The music is acidic and burns my eardrums. Total crap.
“You couldn’t have been going through a retro phase at the end, could you?”
I let the music disappear into the background. Maybe later I’ll start up the generator again and listen to some of thereal music I picked up at Best Buy.
I pry Kate’s diary open with a kitchen knife. The fact that these types of diaries have a lock makes me giggle. A quick swipe with a nail file is all it took to get into Grace’s.
Leaf through the pages. The same looping, popular-girl handwriting fills them. Sometimes the gel pen color is green, sometimes pink, other times blue.
Even as I start reading it, I don’t know why I’m doing so. To invade the privacy of a dead girl? To learn the innermost thoughts of someone I’ll never meet, and probably never would’vewanted to? The whole thing seems morbid. Even for me. And yet I’m still reading.
MAY 7TH
Finally got my braces off. The steel bear trap is gone. LOL. Becky says I can finally kiss Travis without him chewing what I had for dinner last night. Gross. Chewing my brace food AND kissing Travis. He’d prob like it. Perv.
JULY 12th
OMG. Becky is a total skank. She totally made out in her mom’s basement with Bryce Williams. I mean, come on. She’s already going with Darren Page. They already even did it. Kind of. And the worst part, she made me cover for her. Seriously. Darren is sooooooo much hotter. Bryce looks like Mr. Spock. The old one, not the hot new one.
AUGUST 4TH
Cheer camp ran late. Practicing the pyramid. Carrie Weltz keeps shaking when she’s on our shoulders. Coach keeps wanting to check her blood sugar. Weltz isn’t even diabetic. Just scared of heights. I wish I was smaller. I’d nail that shit.
AUGUST 7TH
Back to school. Travis Linton has gotten soooo HOT over the summer. He said he spent the summer in France and that he met a girl there. I’m jealous. I wish we’d hooked up when he wasn’t hot. Teach that French skank a lesson.
AUGUST 22ND
A bunch of people are out of school with the flu. Hope it’s not contagious. We have our first game on Friday. Maybe Travis will notice me. I look super cute in my cheer uniform.
AUGUST 24TH
Darren Page died. I mean, how does that happen? Becky is a total wreck, even though she and Darren already broke up. She’s milking sympathy for all it’s worth. Darren hated her after he found out about Bryce. I can’t even listen to Becky anymore. It’s always about her. The rest of us are grieving, too, bitch. Gawd.
AUGUST 26TH
They cancelled our first game. Too many players out sick. With Darren dying of the flu, everybody’s freaking out. They’re even talking about closing school. Lindsay Frisch said they’re calling it General Tsao. She didn’t know why. Makes me not want to eat Chinese again. Darren’s funeral’s tomorrow. I wish I had somethingcute to wear.
SEPTEMBER 1st
They cancelled Labor Day. I mean, who does that? First they close school, and now we can’t even have barbecues? This is all the worst. This is AMERICA, like that guy on TV said. This sucks.
SEPTEMBER 2ND
Snuck out last night. Met up with Travis and a few of his friends on some beach I’d never been to. They were all drinking beer (which tastes GROSS) and talking about the end of the world. Someone said they heard they quarantined LA and Dallas, and that a bunch of people in North Charleston were getting sick, too. Travis and I made out. It kinda’ seemed inappropriate. Travis said if it’s the end of the world, what’s the difference? I let him feel me up under my shirt. It felt like I was getting frisked at airport security.
SEPTEMBER 9TH
The power keeps going out. Dad tried to call the power company but the phones don’t work properly, either. When I can get online, all anyone’s talking about is the flu. It’s just the stupid flu. Take some pills and stay in bed. What’s the big deal? I haven’t seen Travis or anyone in a few days. He won’t answer my texts or DMs. Mom’s keeping me locked up in this stupid house.
SEPTEMBER 11TH
It’s official. I’m sick. Started with a headache but I ended up spending last night puking in the toilet. This totally sucks. Mom says at least I’ll lose some weight now. Who knows, maybe after this is all over I’ll be skinny enough to be the top of the pyramid. I wish Travis would come over. Sneak in through my bedroom window. I’d make it worth his while.
SEPTEMBER 12TH
So weak. Mom says if I’m not b
etter today, we’ll take our chances and go to the hospital. Phones are out, power’s out, water’s out. We’re like those Amish people on TV now. I just want to feel better. I miss it. I miss them, Travis and Becky and everyone else. What’s wrong with me?”
I close the diary. That’s the last entry, but I know how it ends. I’ve seen its ending a thousand times over. I kneel down in front of the fire and add another log. The flames dance across the dry wood.
What’s the point of reading the diary? Was it to find the answer to a question I already knew? Kate Moynihan is as dead as everyone else. She hasn’t left me any clues to some secret quarantine zone or given me anything I hadn’t already learned herself. And right up until the last entry, Kate the cheerleader had been entirely consumed with herself. The same with Grace. The same with everyone I’d interacted with every day.
What did I hope to glean from reading the diary? It was the first human connection I’ve had since before my family died. Everything else I’ve seen and done and interacted with, it’s all just the leftover stuff that the dead left behind. The dead. As if the bodies and the stench have suddenly become something other than people. Theywerepeople, arestillpeople, nothad been people. This diary, as silly and self-involved as it is, it’s another human voice.
I sit on the floor and hold the diary to my chest. Wearing Kate’s clothes, listening to her music, reading her words, it’s all about feeling connected. I don’t know Kate. I never will. Back in the world, I would’ve detested her. But as tiny as the pieces are, as inanimate the relationship, Ineed Kate.
Radio Free Nowhere
There are Christmas decorations in some of the same garages in which I found fuel. It’s December nineteenth. Time matters again. And it’s Christmas time.
The air has warmed up again. During the day, jeans and a T-shirt are all I need. I feel a rush of fresh energy. Oliver and I start walking along the beach again.
The radio is on a shelf in a garage in a house near the marina. I’d seen them advertised on TV, with a hand crank on one side that powers the thing. No batteries. No electricity.
The cranking takes a long time. Eventually the thing is powered and I turn it on. Sit at the kitchen table and slowly rotate the dial. Static. Not that I expect anything else.
The tone of the static varies as I slowly rotate the dial. Switch from AM to FM, then shortwave, then marine band, whatever that is. The hissing gets louder and then falls away to a hushed crackle. Dad told me once that static on empty radio frequencies is actually the sound of outer space. As I gently adjust the dial, I imagine gamma rays and coronal mass ejections from the sun whispering to me through the radio static.
Oliver and I tried sleeping in a few of the bedrooms, but the absence of heat at night makes it a frigid experience. We stay downstairs, on the sofa in front of the perpetual fire. I sleep fitfully. Oliver wakes up whenever I do, but falls back to sleep when he assesses there’s no danger. And no food.
I stoke the fire and sit down in one of the armchairs. Hold the radio in my hand. The sound of the static is comforting. Don’t know why. Something about the hiss soothes me.
Run my fingers slowly over the dial, up, down, up again. The static has a depth. The sound feels like a deep, hollow chamber. Some of the static is toward the top, some much farther down. I close my eyes.
“… hissss… hisssss… hissss…”
The noise is another voice in the room. Its language is otherworldly but I savor its warm resonance. It feels like a distant lighthouse, calling out to me through the fog.
“… hisssss… hiss… anyone hearing…”
What the fuck?
Sit bolt upright. Scramble to avoid dropping the radio. Heart leaps into my throat.
Those were words. Human words.English words. My hand is shaking. I steady myself and slowly rotate the dial backwards. Crane my neck to listen through the static. The voice is gone.
“You heard it, didn’t you?” Oliver cocks his head.
“He said ‘anyone hearing’. That was a voice, Oliver, a voice!”
As hours and then days pass, I remain hunched over the radio. Move the dial as slowly as I can. The static that had lulled me is now a goddam annoyance.
“I heard it. I know I did.”
But I don’t hear it again. Eventually I stop cranking the radio altogether. Those two words — “anyone hearing” — they’re the first words I’ve heard in almost a year. I dearly hope they’re real. And I dearly hope they aren’t.
Christmas
A part of me still hopes. As sunrise touches my sleeping cheek, I believe for one monumental moment in a miracle.
I haven’t for a long time. Grace saw to that. But Mom and Dad guarded Gabe’s belief fiercely. They likely threatened to take Grace’s phone away permanently if she told him.
It’s Christmas morning. The tree stands dark and decorated in the corner. Sunlight glints off the glass ornaments. I lie on the couch. As long as I lie here, as long as I don’t see, I can still believe. Maybe all myths are possible. Santa, the Easter Bunny, Bigfoot. Maybe with all the selfish noise gone, magic can thrive again.
I know it can’t. Or maybe it’s my certainty that prevents it. If I imagine the possibility, doesn’t that make the possibility possible? Close my eyes. I’m six years old. A different sunrise, a different place. Snow on the ground, the house huddled in anxious silence. I dreamed back then, gargantuan dreams of mythic proportions. Whatever I dreamed was possible, because I didn’t know anything else. And Santa, he’s real. He isn’t some questionable old geezer at the mall, he’s the monumental myth of my long lost hope. The anticipation is almost too much to bear. Mommy and Daddy warn me not to go downstairs until everyone else is awake. Time stretches out as far as it can go, a string of taffy pulled paper-thin. And then it’s time, the raucous roar of the Christmas house, with new gifts under the tree and the milk and cookies and carrots all gone, and heis real, he’s been to our house and all the sacrifices I made, being good for goodness sake, I’m rewarded with a pile of intricately wrapped presents. It doesn’t matter what the presents are, they’re secondary anyway. He’s real, and he’s been here.
Grief again, that dodgy adversary, rolls up that happiest of happy memories until all that’s left are the crumbs and dirt that have been swept underneath it. That time is gone. That person, the one who hoped and dreamed gargantuan dreams, she’s as dead as everyone else in that Christmas morning room.
We sit on the deck outside. I’m crying. I miss them all so horribly. It’s Christmas morning. I should be six years old. They all should be sitting around the tree drinking cocoa and laughing and playing games and instead I’m not six years old. I didn’t know that six led to seven, and that time doesn’t stretch out like taffy.
Time is the problem. If I didn’t rediscover it, then Christmas would never have come. Today would be just another in the endless sameness of walking and firewood and the sound of the crashing surf. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have to feel.
Wipe my eyes. I don’thave to know. That’s my choice. I was ignorant of it before. It’s as simple as turning off the phone. Time disappears back into the shadows.
But I know I can’t do that. And that becomes my choice. Knowledge over ignorance. The pain of memory over forgetting’s abyss.
It’s Christmas Day. But it’s only a day. Tomorrow it’ll stop being this day. And days after, distance will separate me from it. Maybe I’m allowed to grieve. Maybe grief isn’t my enemy. Maybe it sits down beside me for a reason.
Auld Lang Syne
It’s the endof a lot of things. The year’s end is just one of them. Mostly, it’s the end of dreams. I used to dream. My entire world was full of fantasy. Elaborate illusions woven into words on a page, incredible journeys I’d never take but, dammit, I believed Icould take them. What has any of it gotten me? Fantasies are for kids. Now all that fantasy does is make me hear voices on the radio and see lights on the water. The lights and the voices and the words on the pages, they’r
e all part of the same lie.
I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Haven’t slept dependably in a week, and my eyes have sunk deep into my face. Dark circles ring them. I try to sleep, but vivid nightmares tear sleep away from me. And now I’m just wandering, a half-dead zombie girl, just sinking deeper and deeper into myself.
There isn’t any definable reason for it. God knows I’ve seen enough terrifying shit to keep anyone awake for a lifetime. So why now? Why the flood of graphic horror the moment I close my eyes?
My dreams always began with Kate Moynihan. Bouncy, selfish, trendy Kate and her desperately blue eyes, hyper-aware of her new straight teeth, the final imperfection fading away into distant memory, her athletic body effortlessly doing backflips and locked-arm dance moves, the princess of her own pretend kingdom. Life works out for her. Kate’s problems are like barnacles clinging to the side of her hull, easily scraped away. Life is effortless.
The dreams abruptly change. I’m standing next to Kate’s hospital bed. Kate’s eyes have faded, her eyelids red and her skin gray. And then Kate is Grace, and then Gabe, and with each transition there’s less and less of them there. They’re rotting in front of me, as if only I can see the passage of decomposition. And as I watch them, they watch me. Their eyes are accusatory. Why did you live when I didn’t? What makesyouspecial? I’m desperate to explain. It’s not my fault, I don’t know why I’m alive. I don’t know why I’m special. I’mnot special.
And then I’m standing on the southern edge of Charleston, my back to the water staring at the empty city. As I stand there the city itself disintegrates, crumbling in on itself as if time has accelerated and then I’m alone, truly alone, a solitary silhouette standing on top of the ashes of everything.
The First Year Page 20