Anna nodded.
“I should warn you: don’t go into Ms. Lee’s private club.”
“Yeah… too late.”
Cole cringed. “Why did you come here?”
“I was on my way home to see if I could find my husband but wanted to stop by here first.”
“Husband? I’d say you’re about my age… give or take a few years… that doesn’t make any sense. I was 7 when everything fell apart. You said you don’t remember anything?”
“Nope.”
“Not the virus or the riots or fires or anything?”
“No.” She regretted how sharp her tone sounded. “I mean… maybe I do and I just can’t remember?”
“I’d love to forget some stuff too. I once read in a book where this boy saw something really terrible and he completely blocked it all out. Maybe that’s what you’re doing?”
“You said you read it in a book? What book?”
He laughed. “I don’t know. I’ve read a lot of books. And I mean a lot. When there’s no TV or video games... all there is to do is read books.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.” Anna smiled.
“Sometimes it just makes me miss the way things used to be. There’s no one left to write about the world we are living in now.”
“You could.”
He laughed. “I hope there are better candidates out there to write the tales of today than me. I finished half of third grade… and even then, Mrs. Klein called my parents in a few times to talk about my poor grades.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Up in Cleveland. Shaker Heights Elementary. I would love to see what it looks like now. Well… no, I probably wouldn’t want to know what it looks like now. Cleveland got hit pretty bad. After I escaped I just kept running until the world looked a little less scary.”
“You mean this isn’t that bad?”
“Heck no. Some of the neighborhoods that I saw were completely wiped out. There’s no place to even stay. But here… it might be a little roughed up but you can sleep inside the houses.”
“And the whole time you’ve been here you never saw anyone? Not even once?”
He stared her square in the eyes and answered. “I have not.”
She wondered if he was telling the truth. “Really?”
“I found you, does that count?”
“No, it doesn’t. I was just wondering… because… well… my husband.”
“I figure if there are people left they’re living in an underground bunker or something. At least, that’s what I try and convince myself. The idea of being the only one left on such a big planet is kind of an overwhelming feeling.”
“You don’t speak like someone who has a 3rd grade education.”
Cole seemed genuinely hurt that Anna was becoming suspicious of him. “There’s no one to talk to and a million books to read. It’s like… the world is a puzzle. And the only thing I can do… the only thing that I have been doing for the past 25 years or so… is to piece it back together. And the only way to do that is through books.”
Anna doubted that the overly friendly man was telling the truth. “I’ve been here longer than I intended. It was nice to meet you, Cole.” Anna turned to walk back through the double doors.
“What?” Cole exclaimed from behind her and flung his body against the door. “You can’t just leave me! I’ve dreamt of the day that I find a friend. I have had long conversations with tables and lamps and fire hydrants and soccer balls… I’ve started to forget what other people actually look like. You can’t just leave. You can’t leave me here!”
“I’m not about to let some strange guy I met in a school playground get into my car.”
Cole’s eyes widened. “I’m not a strange guy--- I’m the only guy! I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“I never said anything about you hurting me.” Anna’s eyes narrowed.
“I just figured that’s why you wouldn’t let me get in the car with you.”
“Look, I’m sorry that you’re lonely but I’m going home to my husband and I’m not walking up to the door with you with me. Now please move.”
Cole stepped to the side and let Anna pass. “He’s not going to be there.” He said as she walked away.
Chapter 5
It felt like it had only been a few hours since she was home last. She could remember so clearly double checking to make sure she blew out the candle that sat on the coffee table before they left for the hospital, and groaning about the peeling aluminum siding as they pulled out of the driveway. As she pulled down her street, many of the smaller houses were almost completely intact. The lawns were all overgrown and most of the windows were boarded- with the exception of her house. The front lawn was badly overgrown, and the peeling aluminum siding had fallen off completely, but her old curtains were still in the windows.
Anna parked the truck in the middle of the street and walked up her old familiar driveway like she had many times before.
“Christmas?” she said noticing the strands of unlit lights wrapped around the aluminum beams on the front porch and the red and green wreath hanging on the door.
Rick’s car was parked along the side of the garage. Anna peered into the garage window and saw her car, her favorite car, right where it belonged without so much as a scratch on it.
The side door was locked, but she used the spare key that they hid under the welcome mat. “That’s a terrible place to hide it,” Rick used to tell her.
The bells on the ‘Season’s Greetings’ snowman jingled as she opened the side door and was hit by that old familiar smell of her house at Christmas time. It was a cross between dust, weathered cardboard and cinnamon. Everything was surprisingly clean and in order and did not coordinate with the chaos she had seen. Her favorite coffee mug sat in the sink along with some silverware and cereal bowls. The kitchen table was set exactly how she used to set it in the past. Her red table cloth was beginning to look a little worn and the red wine stain from the previous New Year's Eve looked like it had never quite washed out. There were jars of candy and half-burned red and green candles and even the creepy Mr. and Mrs. Claus (the ones with the “little too realistic” eyes and teeth) that Rick had inherited from his mother.
Anna walked into the living room to find it just as organized and tidy as the kitchen. The tree was centered in the middle of the front window and hung on the branches were all of Rick’s inherited and mismatched ornaments.
“Why these?” she groaned, plucking a hand painted bulb off of the tree and examining it. First Christmas, 1983. It was the ornament that belonged to Rick’s mother that she hung the year that Rick was born. The first year that Anna and Rick spent together as husband and wife, she had put every ugly and old sentimental ornament on their Christmas tree. In the years that followed, she experimented with different tree themes. There was the teddy bear tree where she bought teddy bear themed ornaments and used one of her childhood teddy bears as a tree topper. And then there was the year with the snowmen, and the year with the red and green bulbs. And the year with the birds. Why were all the old ornaments on the Christmas tree? She didn’t remember hanging them. Besides, she hated them because they were all Rick’s and none of them were hers.
She investigated the other rooms to find they looked exactly like she had left them the morning she had went to the hospital- with the exception of all the Christmas decorations. The bed was made in the bedroom, the bathroom hamper was full, and various hair tools sat on the counter top. Even her desk was clear of all paper work for the exception of:
“My journal!” She leaped into the room and plucked it out of a stack of books and yellow legal pads. Before she began to leaf through it, she opened the bottom drawer to her desk and lifted a stack of textbooks and sat them on the floor. She pulled out a small grey change purse and unzipped it. It held a pack of cigarettes and a little yellow lighter. The pack only had 5 cigarettes left and they smelled very stale. She opened the window next to her desk and
a warm, humid breeze began to fill the room. It proved an unusual juxtaposition against the red and green Christmas decorations. With her journal in her lap she lit a cigarette and took a long drag and immediately began to cough violently.
“I guess it’s just been too long since I’ve had one of these.” She examined the glowing ember and tried to take another drag. Again, she coughed. Disappointed that it did not soothe her the way it once did, she lifted the screen and threw it out onto the lawn and then shifted her focus back to her journal.
The first page was dated July 29th, 2010. Anna smiled, thinking back on the very reason she bought the journal in the first place. Getting married and moving into Rick’s bachelor pad was a difficult transition for her, and her best friend suggested she try writing down her thoughts.
7-29-10. I guess Jack is getting tired of hearing me complain about moving in with Rick. Her asked me to start a journal… so here I am. So… ummm... Should I have started out “Dear Diary?” Am I already doing this wrong, too? Because Rick seems to think I do everything wrong. He told me I made my meatloaf wrong? His mother doesn’t put ketchup on hers. I know I should pick my battles carefully but I couldn’t help myself at that moment. I mean, here I am cooking dinner for this dude and he tells me how I cooked it wrong? I told him he could just drive over to his mother’s house and eat dinner with her. He didn’t like that too much. It’s weird how much little stupid things can drive me so insane. I think I’m just bitter that we couldn’t move into my apartment. It was on a better part of town and it had such an amazing view… but he has a mortgage. So, it makes sense I move in here… but I don’t feel like this is my house. And it’s hard… coming home after a long day to a place that doesn’t feel like home.
Anna flipped ahead a few more pages, because she remembered quite clearly all of the angry journal entries she made during that transitional period.
6/01/2011 Sometimes I get fed up with the monotony of it all. It’s like every new class of students is the same group as the one before... only I’m tasked with learning a new set of dumb names all over again. (Who the hell names their kid Cage and spells it Kaege?) There’s always the creepy quiet kid who goes home to God knows what, and the attention whore, the kid who can’t take anything seriously, the kid who squirms in his desk all day like he’s perpetually holding in a fart… and the kid who just farts all the freakin time. I’d like to think that I’m making a difference… but no one remembers their 3rd grade teacher. They remember the first and they remember their last teacher in elementary school. Meh, I’m just being bitter. But then I come home and Rick offers to make me dinner. I thanked him for the offer but declined because Rick doesn’t know how to cook and I don’t want to die.
11/14/2012 The calling hours were tonight. I’ve buried a few family members in my day, and it’s always gut wrenchingly hard. But I don’t know… watching the man you love tear himself apart as he buries his mom is a new form of grief that I’ve never felt. It’s easy to be the griever- you cry, and you reflect, and you just deal. But what do you do when you know someone you love is going through that? I’m a fixer, it’s what I do. If a kid is struggling, I’ll stay after school to help them improve. When Jack lost his job, I brought over a 6 pack and helped him polish his resume and ultimately got him that job at the post office. But what do I do here? It’s so hard to watch when you know there’s nothing you can do except physically be there. Words mean nothing at a time like this. Maybe if I bought him a big boat it would get his mind off things. But I can’t afford a big boat. I hope he can get past this… I hope it doesn’t change him forever. Does that sound selfish? This whole deal makes me hate the tradition of the funeral. It says it’s supposed to give the living closure… but all it does is torture everyone. When I die, there isn’t going to be any funeral. You can shoot me off into space like Spock and throw a big party with an open bar where everyone gets drunk and remembers all the good times in their loudest, drunkest bar voices. Hmm. That sounds like a really fun party. Maybe I should throw it before I die so I can drink with everyone. I hate the fact that one day I’m going to die. I don’t want to die... and miss out on all the cool parties. Bah. I got to get to bed. Funeral is at 8 in the morning. Or, rather, 8 in the mourning. Haha. I’m a little drunk.
The rest of that page was filled with doodles, mostly of 3 dimensional boxes and triforces. Anna flipped through until she got to the last page that she had remembered writing.
10/28/2015 I always assumed if I were to get cancer, I wouldn’t know it. Because I don’t want to know. I never want to have to deal with the thoughts of someone who has cancer. I would prefer dying with my last dying thoughts ‘I wonder what it is that killed me!? Oh well I’m dead now so who cares’ Yeah, I know, it sounds stupid… but I see the way people treat cancer patients. They pity them. It’s almost like they’re not even human anymore. But because of good old Rick, I’m not going to get the luxury of not knowing what terrible sickness I will inevitably die from. He won… I broke down and agreed to get a CAT scan to see what the cause of these migraines are. I told him I already know the reason- I have a parasite in my brain from that one time he made hot dogs for dinner. Needless to say, he was not amused. I just don’t want tonight to be the last night I go to bed as relatively healthy woman. I know if it is cancer… there are ways of beating it. But the people who beat cancer are badasses… and that’s not me. I’m just a third-grade teacher who sometimes buys a sheet birthday cake for dinner when things get to hard. And I’ll be the first to admit… I don’t have a very hard life. If I have to buy a birthday cake to drown my sorrows because little Mackayla Peters puked in line for recess… I would hate to think about what I would do if they found a big dumb tumor growing in my brain. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
Anna sat back in her office chair and reflected back on the night that she wrote that entry. To her, it had been less than 24 hours since she wrote it. She had the window opened much like it had been at that moment, but there was a cool, dry October breeze that filled the room. It smelled of wet leaves and bonfires. Her leg itched and felt slimy and sweaty from her cast, and Rick was watching Seinfeld reruns in the next room. It might have felt like it was only last night that she wrote that last page… but it clearly wasn’t.
She flipped over to the next page and her heart sank. In her handwriting was the date 10/29/2015 followed by a block of text. It was written in the same pen and in the same carefully spaced block letters.
It’s not a tumah! Haha, that joke will get old eventually… but not today. It’s a pretty good feeling not having cancer. And knowing for a fact that I don’t have cancer. I told Rick after Christmas I’m going to take the rest of the school year off and we’re going to spend it on the beach in Hilton Head. But eff that- I’m calling Principal Duggar tomorrow morning and telling him I'm going to take off the rest of the year starting right now. Not sure what reason I’ll give him… but I’m sure I’ll think of something. Maggie texted me today and told me that Jack has a pretty terrible bug and she’s thinking about admitting him to the hospital. Maybe I’ll use Jack as an excuse- I’ll tell Duggar that I have to take care of my sick brother. If I know Maggie, she’s making a mountain out of a molehill, and Jack just has the flu. I’ll probably give him a call tomorrow and see if he needs me to bring him anything.
‘What…” Anna said under her breath as she read the entry over again. She didn’t remember writing any of it. She never heard from Maggie or that her brother was sick. Why couldn’t she remember? Her heart raced and her face felt hot as she flipped through the few remaining pages.
11/15/2015 Jack’s dead and I don’t know how I feel about that. It doesn’t feel real. He was laying in the hospital bed, heaving blood into a trashcan, and freaking out over his loss of sight. The doctors all stood around like idiots… like it was their first day of summer camp. I trusted that doctors knew more than we did… but they just kept repeating ‘we don’t know’ over and over and over… I wanted to punch them all in
the face. Then he had a seizure and they rushed us all out of the room. When they met us in the waiting room they told us that he was dead. When we walked back in the room he was laying there with his jaw hanging loose and his eyes opened. I don’t know why the doctors let us back in to see that… how am I supposed to remember the best parts of my brother when that image has been burned into my brain? I guess we have to organize a funeral, but they won’t release his body. Rick asked when they would be able to and they said ‘not in the foreseeable future, we have a lot to learn and Jack is going to be a tremendous help in saving other people’. I say bullshit. I think they’re just a bunch of idiots trying to skirt a lawsuit because they couldn’t save him.
11/29/2015 Rick isn’t feeling too swell. Mother fucker. It’s all like a really long and terrible nightmare. This journal started as a way for me vent my frustrations and ease into marriage. Now I’m writing in it to document the things that are happening in this world. Is this really the end of humanity? Am I one of the select few who get to watch humanity wither up and die? I can’t watch Rick die the way I watched Jack die. I can’t. I can’t. I got an emergency alert on my phone yesterday that implored people who were sick to steer clear of the hospitals. They claim that because they don’t have any information on the virus, they put all hospitals on quarantine. That’s just great that they’re deciding this now after Rick and I visited Jack at the hospital. And now Rick is going to die here at home. With me.
Rubber City Ruins Page 4