by Sands, Samie
“Hey, Zac.” I lift up my hand in a half-hearted gesture. “Hi everyone.”
Eyes come from every angle, everyone is looking at me like I’m an alien creature who needs to be dissected and turned inside out. I fold my arms self-consciously across my body, my face heating up as I realize that I’m not enough, that I don’t look good enough, that I don’t have anything interesting to say…if these people are expecting the new girl to be fun, then I’m going to be a massive letdown.
“Oh right.” Zac suddenly leaps into action. “This is Tom, Mary, Jaz, Ellis, James...”
The names go around and round in my brain, but none of them settle. I should try and remember them to give me a head start when school begins, but my mind has more important things to focus on. For starters, this strange situation and Zac’s games, but also the bite. That’s firmly stuck in my mind’s eye, that one isn’t going anywhere.
There are many times when I want to leave the party, but I make myself stay. Well, fear makes me stay, but after what feels like hours of listening to supposedly funny ‘you-really-had-to-be-there’ stories and inside jokes, I can’t stand it anymore. A lot of these people are loud and obnoxious, not the sort of friends I’d choose to surround myself with. They’re giving me a headache, I can’t stick it out any longer.
“I have to go.” I touched Zac’s arm gently as I spoke. “I don’t feel so good.”
“Oh no, I…” he flickers his eyes left and right, looking for an escape. It seems that I’m not getting an offer of an escort home tonight! “Are you alright? Did you have fun? I thought it might be good for you to meet everyone.”
I nod slowly, accepting my fate. This guy is a lot more of what Emma told me he would be, so I need to put the fantasy to bed. “Sure, it’s been nice. Your friends are…nice.” The lie’s so obvious, I can’t even think up a decent second word for it. “Thank you, but I’m going to take off.”
I spin on my heels, refusing to suffer the indignity of him making up a reason to stay. If this is where he needs to be, then so be it. At least I know better now. My heart my hurt, my stomach may be twisting up in knots, but I’m aware. There’s time for damage control now.
I keep my eyes fixed on my feet all the way home, just circling thoughts around my brain, so it isn’t until I crash through the front door to my house that I’m snapped back into the present moment.
“Rachael, you idiot!” My mom screams at top note. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I…” I wait for the argument to brew, some snarky comment that she hasn’t been paying attention to me, and that it’s my life anyway and I’m almost an adult—the usual rubbish—but this time nothing comes. Maybe her fears about this virus aren’t so farfetched after all, it might be time for me to respect the rules for once in my life. “I’m sorry,” I end up saying meekly instead.
“I just can’t stop worrying that something’s going to happen to you. You know I’m a worrier, and what with all this news stuff…” She stops herself in her tracks and pulls me in for a hug. “Anyway, I’m just glad that you’re okay.”
I lean into her, inhaling her familiar floral scent, feeling like a little girl in need of some parental comfort for the first time in years. But I’m not small anymore, I can see right over her shoulder, and something unusual has caught my eye, something that had my heart beating a whole lot faster all over again.
“Dad?”
Ten
I feel utterly frozen to the spot while I look over Mom’s shoulder at the man who I know so well, but who’s also just become a stranger to me. I can’t explain it, maybe it’s the shock from what I’ve seen today, but he just looks…wrong. The man who raised me, who I adored my whole life until he dragged me away from home very recently, the man who I always assumed would just be there, in the background of my life, now looks like a completely different person.
He’s sickly, pale, almost green, and his face is covered in a thick sheen of sweat. I want to reach out and touch him, just to see how gross it feels, but I’m too disgusted to actually act upon that urge.
“Dad?” I ask cautiously, slowly sliding my arms back down to my side. “What’s going on? You look…ill.”
I glance towards Mom who instantly averts her eyes away from me, which only freaks me out even more. She’s been so anal when it comes to everything sickness-related recently, what with all that talk on the news, but now she’s looking as innocent as she can manage, as if she knows nothing about it. Now that something could potentially be happening under her own roof, she’s turning a blind eye!
“It’s nothing, sweetie,” Dad does his best to reassure me, in among his coughing fit. “There’s a bug going around at work, everyone’s had it. It’d one of those twenty-four-hour things, so it’ll be gone soon enough.”
“Right,” I drawl, wondering whether or not I should call him out on this lie. But what if I yelled, and it turned out he was telling the truth? The last thing I need to do right now is cause an argument at home. “Okay, well I’m off to bed.” I point my thumb towards the stairs, making the adult decision to give him some time to prove himself honest. “I’ll see you guys in the morning.”
With a chorus of ‘goodnights’ ringing out behind me, I thunder up the stairs, shaking my head to myself. I’ve always mocked Mom for her tendency to jump to the worst conclusion without any solid evidence, but it appears that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree after all. Right now, I’m doing exactly the same.
I slam my bedroom door shut behind me, and press my weary body up against it for a moment, allowing my eyes to slide shut just long enough to block the outside world out. I feel like I need a reset button, that I want a second chance to start again, but of course, that isn’t possible. This might all be really confusing, I might feel like I’ve been plonked right in the middle of the ocean without any aides to help me swim, and that the water’s filling up my lungs faster than I can kick my legs…but I’m strong, right? I’ll be able to find a way out of this?
As I collapse onto the bed, without even bothering to change my clothes, I’m not so sure…
***
I’m pleased to see Dad looking much better as I join him at the breakfast table the following morning. He even manages to smile brightly at me, which has to be the first genuine one I’ve had off of him for ages. This fills me with a warmth, an intense happiness, the sense that maybe impending doom isn’t creeping over my shoulders after all.
“You look better already, Dad,” I smirk, patting his arm. “You’ll be back to your usual self in no time.”
But he doesn’t answer me, he simply gives me a weird look instead, one that I can’t quite interpret. I cock my head to one side and eye him curiously, but I get nothing back.
Well, until he lifts up his arm, as if it’s an action just for me. I glance downwards, my heart racing frantically in my chest, my brain freaking right out, and that’s when I see it, sitting on his hip.
A black, pussing bite wound.
“What the…?” I gasp, scraping my chair back noisily, but Dad presses his finger up to his lip to silence me. He doesn’t want Mom to know, and to be honest while I’m processing all of this I don’t either. It might be mental, knowing what’s going on in my own home and keeping it to myself, but it’s also really hard to accept that my dad is…is…
Well, I can’t even think it, never mind say it aloud, so instead, I spin on my heels and I race to my room, with one fat tear splashing down my cheek.
Eleven
“See that?” I ask casually, pointing towards the television set. “They’ve set up specialist medical facilities for people who’re unwell.”
I’m trying desperately to get through to Dad, to make him get help before things get too bad, but now he won’t even meet my eye. I don’t feel like I can just outwardly address it when he utterly refuses to, but I’m starting to feel like I might actually have to say something, however, much it scares me to do so.
I glance my eyes towards Mom
, but she quickly averts her gaze when she sees me looking. “So, that boy you’ve had over seems pretty nice,” she changes the subject quickly, hoping to distract me.
The sad thing is it actually works.
“Oh, yeah, Zac, he’s…he’s okay…”
The weird thing is, the more time I spend with him, the more confused I become. He’s shown up twice, uninvited, and both times have left me all churned up inside. I haven’t mentioned the party, nor has he, I don’t discuss the rumors, and we haven’t kissed again either. It’s been more like an odd friendship with something constantly buzzing under the surface.
We talk, we laugh, we chat about the prospect of school not opening when it’s supposed to…but that’s it. I spend most of my time gazing into his eyes, trying to read his facial expression and body language, trying to work out how he might be feeling, but nothing makes much sense. My lack of experience with boys is a constant problem for me.
“He’s going to be in your class then, is he?”
“Yes, if the quarantine doesn’t kick in before then.” I’m trying to rile her now, to get her to talk about her new favorite subject, but she says nothing. She simply nods silently and fixes her eyes back on the screen.
Frustration balls in my chest, I want to scream and shout, to get some sort of reaction from someone, but what would be the point? Things are so fraught, so uncomfortable already, and now this situation is hanging over us like a guillotine. I don’t want to make things harder than they already are.
“…the level of fatalities is at an all-time high…”
Mom chokes back a loud sob, proving what I already suspected. She’s either seen the bite wound, or she’s taking note of Dad’s graying skin, the thick sheen of sweat covering his face, the way that he can barely breathe he’s in so much pain.
We share a look, both of us knowing, neither of us able to accept the inevitable. Both of us want to push Dad towards help, but we’re too afraid to actually take that step because of what could come afterwards. There’s no naivety here, we’re both acutely aware of what could come.
Then, I stand up and I snake out of the room, feeling my childhood die. Maybe it’s taken me longer than others to grow up, because I’ve never been desperate to do so, not like other girls I know. But now I’m going to have to anyway, I’ll have to accept adulthood as it looms towards me along with grief, because it doesn’t matter how much I don’t want it to happen, soon or later I could very easily lose my father.
Twelve
Why is it just when you think things can’t get any worse, they instantly do?
I finally had a lightbulb moment and realized the best thing I could do was talk to Emma. She seems to have a lot of knowledge on both the subjects of my problems—Zac and the virus—and I think we’re friends, right? If anyone can help me right now, it’s her.
Luckily, she’s easy to find on Facebook, and also free to meet up for a chat, which puts my mind at ease.
“So,” she peers at me curiously after we’ve been doing the whole ‘small talk’ thing for ten minutes. “What’s going on with you? I get the impression that there’s something you wish to discuss.”
I sigh deeply, knowing that there’s no point in arguing when she’s right, and I launch into my issues, tackling the easiest one first. “Well, I know you told me to avoid Zac because he’s a player, but it’s been really difficult because he keeps showing up at my house.” I blush as she gives me a knowing look. “But the weird thing is it hasn’t even been like that really. I mean, we kissed once, but it’s been more of a strange friendship thing.”
“Hmm, that is weird,” she muses. “I don’t know what to say about that. Of all the things I know about Zac, I’ve never known him be friends with a girl.” She taps her chin as she thinks this through. “He usually kisses, then moves on without looking back.”
My belly churns, I can feel bile rising in my throat, I don’t know what she’s going to say next and that scares the living hell out of me.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but I think he might actually like you,” she eventually stuns me to my core by answering. “I can’t think why else he wouldn’t be able to let you go, and why he’d always be making the first moves.”
My heart flutters, a happiness swirled around in my chest, I can stop my lips from twisting up into a grin. Much as everything else sucks, at least this is good news.
“Yeah, yeah,” I do my best to act like I’m not getting my hopes up too high. “Maybe you’re right.”
We walk in silence for a few moments, both of us lost in our own thoughts, so much so that it actually takes me a while to recall the other issue I need Emma’s opinion on. The one I really don’t want to talk about, but that I have to.
“So, there is something else,” I admit cautiously. “And I would love it if you’d keep an open mind while I tell you about it.”
“Sure, anything you say.” She gives me a smile that’s so reassuring, I have to continue.
“Well, it’s…erm, my dad. He…he isn’t himself.” My face flames, my heart aches, my mouth runs dry with terror. “I think he might be sick. Like really sick.”
At first Emma gasps loudly, then the color totally drains from her cheeks and she begins panting. I want to reach out and touch her, to try and calm her down but that’s impossible when I’m such a hot mess myself. “He…he’s sick. Like, virus sick?” I can only nod to that as my eyes brim with tears. “But the quarantine. That’ll happen soon, really soon. Why haven’t you sent him to a hospital yet? If he doesn’t go, if he changes while you’re locked in the house with him, then…then…”
She doesn’t need to finish that sentence, I already know where she’s headed with it. “I know, but I’m scared. What if he has to go through horrible tests? What if he doesn’t make it out alive?”
Emma grabs onto my arms and stares deeply into my eyes. “Rae, if you don’t, he could very well kill you, your mom too. This isn’t a case of being sensitive, its life or death.”
Life and death…what could be more dramatic than that?
Thirteen
I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep again with this huge decision weighing over my head. I haven’t even bothered attempting to get into bed yet, despite the very late hour because I know that the second I close my eyes all I’ll be able to see is horrendous visions of death. The sort of sights no one my age should have to see, never mind in relation to their parent.
In the end, I feel compelled leave the sanctuary of my room for a few moments, purely because I’m desperately thirsty, and the second I make it to the stairs I find myself faced with the reality I’ve been trying to avoid.
“D…dad?” I stammer, to the hunched over figure sitting in the middle of the staircase. As I lean over to look at his trembling shoulder, my heart thumps so hard it’s as if someone has their hand wrapped around it and is squeezing unnecessarily for me. “Dad, are you okay?”
He glances up at me, and despite the thick black shadows hanging over the room, I can see a sparkling wetness in his eyes. I’ve seen my dad mad before, stressed too, even incredibly happy every now and again, but not once since I’ve been alive have I seen my father cry. I know I should feel emotion welling up in my chest as I look upon his devastated face, I even try to muster it up, but there’s nothing there.
I’m numb, hollow, empty.
“What am I going to do, Rachael?” he begs me, asking me the same question I’ve been torturing myself with all night long. “I can’t ignore this forever, I can’t shy away and act like this won’t come back around to kill us all. I’m infected with the AM13 virus, I got bit just outside my new office, and now…well, now I’m changing. I’m becoming the things we fear, the beasts the media are describing. I want to stop it, but I can’t. It’s coming for me regardless.”
I open and close my mouth a few times, trying to find the right words, but there’s nothing there. I don’t even know what he expects me to say to that.
“I think…”
he continues, talking over my thick silence. “I think I should go to one of the hospitals, don’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I rasp back, unable to make myself sound normal.
“I think it’s the right thing to do, but your mother doesn’t agree.”
“What…what does she say about it all?” My voice cracks, the emotion pours through. It takes all that I have not for an ice cold, still numb tear to roll down my cheek. “What has Mom said?”
“She’s gotten this funny idea that the hospitals are a bad place.” I suck in a deep breath, wondering what the hell Mom’s gotten her brain into now. She never seems to stop and recognize how her mad ideas impact upon everyone else. “She thinks that it’s more of a slaughter house, that the only way to stop this virus from spreading is to kill everyone that has it.”
I can no longer breathe. During that comment, a thick ball lodged itself in my windpipe, and now I’m afraid that I might die myself. Dad wraps his equally slick fingers around mine, and we have a moment of bonding, a second where we’re both silent, lost in the magnitude of what this means for our future. There is no happy end with this story, only heartache and misery from every damn angle.
If only we hadn’t moved.
If only I was around more.
If only Dad wasn’t stood in that exact position when he was bitten.
If only…
“I’m too tired and confused to make the right choice.” Dad shatters my terrified thoughts with his own. “What should I do for the best? I mean, this isn’t going anywhere…”
He lifts up his top to show me the bite once more. It’s even worse than before now, stick, coagulating, brown. The smell is so pungent it sticks in my throat, and as I inhale once more the tears start flowing.
The sound I make with my howling sobs aren’t buried into my father’s bear hug enough to stop Mom from overhearing. Her bedroom door clicks open, and I spin around to see her bright red face, her puffy eyes, and the sheer exhaustion dripping from every limb.