“Fine,” Lucy tore off her shirt, exposing a thin white camisole beneath. She balled it up tightly and then tossed it into the sink. Bending down she held the heels of her swollen canvas sneakers and slipped out of them too, picking each one up individually and throwing them over to the wall. One hit the wall and bounced back, and it landed on its side, empty and ownerless.
Then she walked right past them, while Salem buried her head into Grant’s armpit and cowered as if she were expecting Lucy to hit her, and stormed out into the empty hallway.
Waddling, Lucy walked to her locker and opened it without taking her ears off of the hum, which was now some bizarre arrangement of a familiar Mozart Waltz, and as she approached it, her eyes zeroed in on the camera—the red light was still blinking, but the angle of its lens was abandoned in the other direction. She knew that the cameras were live-feed only. There was a master record of the camera feed, but it was a convoluted series of tapes and buttons and memory cards. Spencer would figure out how to watch the recordings eventually, but they were safe for a small, limited, finite amount of time.
She knew about the camera’s issues with recording because last year she had been an unwitting helper in Anna’s quest to recover a stolen cell phone. Over an hour she wasted in that tiny security office, the bumbling men scrambling over the camera system struggling to locate the right disk that recorded the right hallway during the right time. It was a total mess and eventually the effort and Anna’s prized possession were relegated to paperwork and nothing more.
Lucy knew that an old pair of yoga pants and a tight leopard print exercise shirt, from her first semester PE class and purchased by her mother, who had no sense of style, were stuffed down under the weight of unused textbooks and discarded papers. When she felt the soft fabric hit her fingers, she grabbed and yanked, sliding them out, and catching anything that fell in the process. Her eyes scanned the hall. Grant and Salem were still holed up in the bathroom, no doubt discussing her septic state. Grant, perhaps, bringing up his undead theory to her and bravely volunteering to be the one to attack Lucy with the wire cutters from metal shop if the need arose.
Maybe turning into a flesh-eating monster wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. For a juicy moment she realized the idea of attacking her friend and burying her teeth into her arm or leg sounded deliciously evil. She wondered if Grant and Salem really were going to avoid her until they knew if she was infected. It seemed childish and born of irrational fear. Or maybe it was rational fear; maybe their decision was smart and cautious. Either way, it hurt. Then she let the thoughts slip away and slammed her locker shut, the echo bouncing down the hallway. Arguments between close friends were always riddled with personal hurt. Salem, out of all of them, probably had the most exposure to the virus—she arrived from a diseased house and was outside among the infected. Those barbs could have stung, and she wanted them to sting, but she would have never said it out loud to her friend. What good would it have done?
Living would have to be her giant middle finger to them both.
With the clothes in her hand, Lucy walked slowly back to the journalism room and once she was alone, she shed her jeans and her underwear, and pulled the stretchy black fabric of the pants over and up her legs. She took off her bra for good measure and put on the tank top. Then she sat with her back against the couch, her knees drawn up to her chest, and waited. Goosebumps prickled her skin.
Her toes were cool on the tile.
She concentrated on her body. Did she feel sick? What would it feel like? Did people know they were about to die or did it just happen suddenly? If it happened to her, would she have time to say goodbye?
Lucy found a discarded hoodie with their school mascot on it and used it as a blanket. She stretched along the couch and listened to the background noise of the office. She felt her brain pulling her body toward sleep and she resisted. The room was getting darker and she realized she didn’t even know what time it was now. Her phone was still in her jeans pocket and it was possibly wet and beyond repair. While her thoughts spun with worry, all her energy left her body and Lucy couldn’t even bring herself to check if the phone had survived the flood.
She closed her eyes. Her body sunk into the cushions of the couch.
Sleep claimed her.
* *
Her eyes snapped open.
The room was bright and light.
Lucy tried to sit up, but her body resisted, pulling her back down into the comfort of the fabric. The inside of her mouth was dry and she smacked her lips together and swallowed. It hurt to swallow and she needed water.
Lucy was totally disoriented, forgetting where she was and what had happened to her in the past twenty-four hours. She reached out to silence her alarm clock and felt nothing but air where her bedside table was supposed to be. She tried to tug her comforter around her body, but the fabric slid off and wouldn’t cover her shoulders or reach her feet.
“Mom?” she called and then she cleared her throat and sat up. Rubbing her eyes, she looked around and recognized the journalism room and her brain began to make sense of their surroundings. Tossing the flimsy Spartan-themed sweatshirt to the floor, she put her feet on the tile. For a moment she sat with her head in her hands as her stomach growled, and she put her hand over it to silence it.
It didn’t take long to reconnect to her reality. She was in the journalism lab at school and she had been sleeping on the couch, there was a hole in the roof, and outside the world was dying. She was cold and shivering, hungry and confused, and to make matters worse, she was alone.
Grant and Salem were not asleep in a corner of the room and they were not awake and waiting for her. If they even came back to the room that evening and had seen her sleeping, she didn’t know, but they weren’t there now and the anxiousness and heaviness in her chest felt oppressive and unmanageable. The terror of day two was here and Lucy woke up abandoned.
Lucy stood up and stretched. For good measure, she walked to the computer and tried to refresh the Internet pages, check on the status of the world, but it was futile. Not only would the news pages not refresh, they simply did not exist.
They were off the grid.
She tried to check her feed. Nothing. In that moment, more than any other, Lucy felt her brain grow fuzzy from the realization that she was cut-off. There was no way to connect with the outside world and without the news, status updates, feeds, her endless salvo of human contact would come to an end. Now she realized how much she needed Salem and Grant, without them she would be left with only her overactive brain.
She hurried back over to her pants and found her phone in working order, but empty. Void and lifeless. Not a message, not single a notification. And to top everything off, her battery life was diminishing fast. With a fast-building fury, Lucy tossed the phone to the couch and let out a primal growl.
It was then she heard the journalism door slide open. In the silence of the morning, it was impossible to disguise the subtle squeak and she spun her head toward the sound and eyed a tentative Salem poking her head through the doorway, the rest of her body planted in the hallway. Salem’s eyes were wide with worry, but Lucy recognized the look—it was not the fearful expression of someone expecting to find a dead body, but the hesitant mien of someone who was guilty and afraid of being yelled at.
“Good morning,” Lucy said, her words clipped and dripping with as much sarcasm as she could muster. She would not yell at Salem, but she didn’t feel like acting particularly warm toward her either. Salem looked behind her, nodded to an unseen lurker and then ventured inside—she was frowning as she walked back over to the couch. Her clothes were wrinkled and her hair matted in the back; her lips were void of her trademark lip-gloss. Salem collapsed upon the couch and leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her hand found an errant thread, and she began to pull at it mindlessly.
“I’m alive,” Lucy said. “Not what you were expecting?”
Salem’s face collapsed and she tipped her body over
on the couch and she let out a giant, far-reaching wail. Lucy rushed over and sat herself down beside her and stroked her hair. All her plans for stoic and coldhearted responses leaked out of her and Lucy felt only compassion for her crying friend. It was, she supposed, a consistent reaction based on the last few days; there was comfort in knowing what was expected of her.
“Lo siento. Lo siento,” Salem said over and over. She sat up and her eyes were bright red, a thin stream of snot dripped from her right nostril and she let it fall until it passed her lip. “Forgive me. Please?”
Lucy looked down. Then she took Salem’s hand and held it. “I didn’t leave this school for you. I stayed with you.”
“I know, I know,” Salem said. “I was afraid. I can’t lose you Lucy don’t you see? I’ve got nothing else.”
She sat up. She had wrapped the thread around her index finger until the skin around it turned white.
“Yesterday, when I woke up, my dad was just hovering over my mom. He was just screaming at me and screaming and I didn’t understand. And I ran to call 9-1-1 and the recording said that the hold time was over an hour to reach a dispatcher,” Salem looked at Lucy, pleading. “He wouldn’t let me near her. All I wanted to do was just touch her…feel her for myself. But he just grabbed me and shoved me.”
She grabbed her shirt and lowered it over her shoulder, exposing her collarbone, where a deep purple bruise in an abstract shape materialized. When she was sure Lucy had seen it, she pulled her shirt back up, hiding the pain. Knife wounds, colorful bruises: Salem’s adventures seemed so violent compared to her own. Here was her friend and every comfort in her life had been violated.
“Whatever happened to you yesterday…you didn’t see your own parent scared, Lucy. I could just see it all over his face, this fear…this total fear. And I said, ‘Papa, que pasa? Que pasa?’ And he just sat down. In the middle of the floor. Sat down. He sobbed and sobbed because she was already gone…Lucy…there was nothing we could do. She was gone and he thought I was next. But dear God, I wasn’t next. And there’s no way you can understand that.”
From somewhere outside, they heard a crash and a boom. The boom shook the school and the leftover plastic on the skylight rattled.
The girls jumped. Lucy picked the sweatshirt up off the ground and wrapped it around Salem.
“I was afraid.”
“I know,” Lucy answered.
“Don’t let me watch you die.”
“That’s out of my control.” Lucy didn’t say it meanly, but she realized as the words left her mouth that it was the truth. Nothing was safe.
“I can’t watch you die,” Salem said and she grabbed Lucy’s hands.
“I’m not going to die,” she said and she smiled to help cover the unease she felt in saying it out loud. She wondered if it was like birthday wishes: Saying it out loud ruined the chance of it happening.
“It’s just us now,” Salem continued. “It’s always been us and now it’s just us.” Then she looked over to the wall and smiled. “Well, us and Grant Trotter.”
Lucy leaned her head back. “Strange,” she muttered. “Grant Trotter.”
“Strange,” Salem echoed.
In a swift motion, Salem tucked her feet up under Lucy, connecting their bodies in a tangle of limbs.
It was an apology.
Lucy accepted and she reciprocated by lifting her right leg and laying it over Salem’s body. She reached over and tried to untangle a mass of her hair with her fingers, but she didn’t get very far; her fingers latched themselves into Salem’s waves and got stuck, so she released her grip and then tried to smooth her own hair instead.
“And where is Grant?” Lucy asked. “And how long did I sleep? Did I miss anything?”
Salem gave a half-chuckle and closed her eyes. “Did you miss anything?” She repeated the phrase, amused. “Let’s see…Kelsey asked Domo to the prom and that made Kevin Yourn, you know, from ninth grade bio, really mad because he’d been planning to ask Kelsey. Made a video to put online. But she jumped the gun…poor Kevin.”
“You don’t say.”
“Mercedes works at Safeway and told me that she ran into Mr. Russo there and he had Magnum extra large condoms in his cart.”
“That’s really gross.”
“And…I know this is going to come as a huge shock,” Salem said in a calm voice, “but I spent the night with someone last night.”
“I’m riveted.” Lucy didn’t even blink.
“It’s not what you think,” Salem continued with a sly smile.
“It never is.”
“Lucy,” Salem said, her voice changing—softening, switching, allowing the genuine to poke through. “I think I could like him someday. When everything calms down. When I can get my head straight, you know?”
“Sal—”
“No. I’m just saying it out loud. I know it doesn’t mean anything.” She closed her eyes and put her head against the back of the couch. “I think he’s a good guy.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lucy answered and grabbed Salem’s hand. “So, if you two didn’t come back here last night…where’d you go?”
Salem’s eyes opened. “You know that little teacher lounge across the hallway from here? The not-so-secret secret one?”
Lucy nodded.
“Unlocked. And there are couches and a mini-fridge. Bottled water in there too. Not much. We worked for a bit last night trying to get it situated as a more permanent hideout. Even started the morning with coffee and some stale crackers.”
The news that Grant and Salem had let her sleep in a cold drafty room while they waited for her imminent demise by equipping a more suitable living space across the hall created a heavy cold ball in the bottom of her stomach. She tried to look excited, but she could tell her mouth was drawing into an inadvertent frown. Salem noticed.
“We thought we’d let you sleep. I didn’t think it would be all night,” she replied in a quiet voice.
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. She gave up the moodiness as quickly as it had arrived. There was no way it would do them any good.
“We should’ve come to get you.” She untangled her feet and swung them to the floor. “I was a jerk,” Salem leaned her head against Lucy’s shoulder. “Lo siento, por favor perdóname mi amiga.”
“No, really. It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t have to be…and it’s my fault too. Grant asked if we should go get you like a million times—”
“Stop,” Lucy said and put her hand up. “It’s over.”
Salem let out a long sigh. “Then I propose breakfast as a peace-offering.”
* *
The crackers were stale and mushy, but Lucy ate them ravenously, shoving one after another into her mouth and swallowing them without tasting. She had not had a bite to eat yesterday and Lucy couldn’t remember what they had eaten for dinner the night before; something frozen and overly processed—not because her mother didn’t care about her health or about their rapidly-disappearing family dinners, but because trip preparations and concern over dead dogs consumed their evening instead.
She longed for her mother’s sweet and sour meatloaf and goat cheese mashed potatoes, honey-drizzled asparagus spears. It was the dish, along with a smooth as silk lemon-lime cheesecake, Lucy requested for her birthday dinner every year. With six children, birthdays were not large-scale affairs. Instead, every child received a dinner menu of their choice, without snarky side comments from siblings and the fear of complaining.
A lump formed in Lucy’s throat and she bit back tears. She would not cry over eating mushy crackers and drinking cold instant coffee made from bottled water because she did not want to appear ungrateful.
The room was a find. Windowless with a thick wooden door that blocked out most of the speaker sound, which was currently broadcasting Principal Spencer’s throaty snoring, emanating through the speakers in evenly paced intervals, interrupted by jolts of snorts, then settling back down, consistent as clockwork.
The walls
were decorated with tacky inspirational posters. A scared looking teacher holding a math book, the message below: Teachers are people too. A young girl with tears in her eyes holding out the remains of a broken vase: Take RESPONSIBILITY for your actions. Another one reading: Effort, not excuses, is the key to success.
Lucy rose from the one of the couches, it smelled vaguely of citrus scented air freshener, and walked over to the first poster. She examined it and then yanked it down off the wall, and the loud rip filled the small space with a big sound. Then she tore each one down, ripping the paper at the corners, leaving little remnants stuck under the imbedded staples.
“There,” she said. “Better.”
No one replied. Spencer’s snores still persisted.
“How can he sleep like that?” Grant asked and he rubbed his eyes, which still looked heavy from sleep, with bags forming in the sockets, the skin tinted black and blue like bruises. “I didn’t sleep at all last night.” He looked over at Lucy with a questioning gaze.
“I can sleep anywhere,” she replied. “It’s a defense mechanism. When my grandma died, they found me asleep in the back seat of our van. I had just crawled there and fallen asleep…”
“I couldn’t shut off my brain,” he said and closed his eyes. “Wondering if I made the right decision.”
“About?” Salem questioned, taking a sip of their cold coffee and grimacing as she swallowed it down.
“About what’s going on out there,” he said. “Maybe I should go home.”
“No!” Salem looked stricken. “We decided to stay. Together.”
“Salem—” Grant started, but he stopped himself. He walked to the door of the room and opened it a bit, peering out into the hallway. “Have you thought that maybe we’re just taking longer…to die.”
“That’s an awful thing to say,” Salem said softly.
“It’s what I’ve been thinking about all night.”
Lucy ate another cracker. She had thought the same thing, but she abstained from entering the argument. Grant’s decision to stay or go was his own, and she could not begrudge him his desire to leave. They were relegated to eating leftover teacher food in a glorified closet while a principal with a gun lurked nearby. It was far from ideal.
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