Storm

by Virginia Bergin

  “You’re upset…”

  GET IT TOGETHER, RU—that’s what I tell myself. I hear the rain laugh: Yeah, freak.

  “Look, Dilly—”

  “Tilly.”

  “There’s really no need to get my dad up. It was just a bad dream and… I’m…just so happy to be here, that’s all.”

  There is a pause. Oh yes there is. During which she looks at me and I don’t look at her.

  “That’s not really true, is it?” she says, and before I can go on about how it is true, she carries on. “It’s OK. I get it. You’d rather I weren’t here, right?”

  I look at her. Lady…of course I’d rather you weren’t here. But—trust me—you are pretty much the least of my problems.

  She sighs. She looks out at the rain (does it speak to her too?!). She looks back at me. “But here we all are,” she says.

  There is another almighty pause. I look at Tilly; I don’t like her any more than I did before, but I do get that maybe stuff has happened to her like it happened to me.

  “That’s what I was crying about,” I tell her.

  “Yup. You and me both,” she says…and that’s when I notice Tilly—so why was she up so early?—has been crying too.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to get your dad?” she asks.

  I shake my head. She looks doubtful; she’s going to get him, isn’t she?

  “I can deal with this,” I tell her.

  “Me too,” she says—after a moment.

  Any other adult I have ever known would give me a kiss or a hug right now. Tilly doesn’t; she just flashes a twisty smile at me and leaves.

  The door closes. I flump back down on the bed. I close my eyes. I just want to sleep. Oh, I just want to sleep.

  Freak, the rain whispers at me.

  I want to ask it to let me forget. I already know it is never going to let me forget.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  It’s late when I wake up. I know that even before I see a clock. I know it because I know about days now in a way that I never used to. I feel time—not in a seconds-and-hours way, but in what I suppose is an animally way; how many hours of light are left, what kind of sky there is. Even before I look.

  Today there is late September heat and sun streaming in through the window…same way it used to stream in through the window when you were at school, going, “Hey! Sorry I missed the summer and all—but ain’t I just lovely now?”

  The sun; it always comes too late.

  And it is late—in the day. Couldn’t put a number on it, but I know it’s afternoon.

  I get up. I go and pee in the chemical toilet in the bathroom. It stinks. I sniff my pits; so do I. Uh! What does it matter? I’ll sort it out later.

  I feel thoroughly depressed already…but also, weirdly, thoroughly determined. I will eat some breakfast; then I will wash; then I will start to sort this whole mess out. I can’t even be bothered to clean my teeth, or—I glance in the mirror—even clean my smudgy, tired face.

  I plod downstairs. I am in my (BIG, BAGGY, FLOWERY) hospital-issue underwear and skanky PE teacher’s T-shirt. I have not washed since I got here. I care not. Why would I? This is my family. We’re in an apocalypse.

  “Oh, and here she is,” I hear my dad start as I slouch straight for the kettle.

  Aw, shuddup, I want to tell him. I’m gonna save you, all right?

  But not right now. All I want right now is a big fat cup of tea, and then I’ll start.

  “Nice underwear,” Dan snickers.

  “Shut it, weasel face,” I tell him.

  I check that there’s water in the kettle; I shove it on the stove. I grab a cup, drop a tea bag into it. There’s a carton of creamer there. I pick it up, shake it. It’s empty. Uh. Gonna have to speak to people.

  “So is there any more milk?” I ask, turning around.

  They’re all there, eating lunch. There’s my Dad. There’s Tilly. There’s Dan, grinning his head off. There’s the Princess. There’s Darius Spratt…

  D-A-R-I-U-S S-P-R-A-T-T

  I can’t breathe.

  “Hi, Ruby,” he says. That’s a perfectly normal thing to say, but the voice he says it in is NOT normal; it shakes about all over the place.

  Oh . Oh my . Oh my .

  I feel like I could faint on the spot.

  And then I do breathe, mainly for the purpose of sucking air in so I can screech. I am in underwear. Like, basically, I am naked. I screech. I screech and—I run.

  Tilly runs after me, comes busting into the bathroom.

  “Is he your—?”

  “NO!” I shout at her, pacing, scrubbing my face with a baby wipe. That teacher’s mascara? Not waterproof. (Why would it be? They don’t cry! They only make kids like me cry!) Yet again, we have a classic zombie look.

  I don’t even know what I’m doing; the Spratt has seen me in a million worse states, I’m sure, but I’m on some kind of weird autopilot—I think that’s what it is. That if I can just manage to look normal, I’ll feel normal. Having some clothes on would be a start. I don’t really care about what clothes, just as long as I am wearing some… But not that! I shake my head at some offering from Tilly’s wardrobe. Or that! Another wardrobe offering.

  I dive for my room and pull my teacher’s tracksuit bottoms back on.

  Tilly flings down a pair of underwear—WUUERH! “They are clean,” she says.

  She looks the other way as I put on used but clean underwear. Tilly holds out a T-shirt; it is white, plain white—not like mine, which is apocalypse gray. I put that on too.

  I return to the kitchen…but I am not composed. Nor is Darius; he looks all red and flustered and nervous and emotional. I need to be alone with him, immediately. I need to speak to him. That earthquake fault-line in my head? It’s shuddering again; it’s closing, and the two great lumps of me—the past me and the rain me—are smashing up against each other. It feels fairly overwhelming.

  Because I am having difficulty standing, I sit down at the table—where a cup of tea and a hideous lunch are waiting for me. My idiot brother is grinning his head off at me. Even the Princess looks ever-so-slightly amused. My idiot father appears to be… URGH! What is that look? Is that…fatherly concern?! HE HAS GOT SOME NERVE. Sheesh!

  “So, well done, Darius, eh?” my dad says in a weird, stern kind of voice. “He’s managed to track you down, Ruby.”

  “Yeah,” I breathe. I am guessing Dar has had the sense not to mention that the last time he saw me, I was standing, crying in the pouring rain, or surely Father Dearest would have a few questions to ask about that.

  “Would you prefer some cereal, Ruby?” Tilly asks after I’ve inhaled the stink of garlic coming off the lunch and shoved my plate away from me. I find I’m grateful she’s there, because she’s the only one who’s actually behaving like people are supposed to behave.

  “Um, yeah, sure, thanks,” I manage to say, even though I’m pretty sure I couldn’t eat a thing. I pick up my tea, attempt to slurp it. “Ah !” I swear.

  I look up. Why are they all looking at me? Why can’t they just talk among themselves?

  “So you were saying, Mr. Morris?” says Darius Spratt.

  This is marvelous, because (1) it indicates that all that has gone on is my dad going on, and (2) it’s going to take the heat off me—but REALLY! Could he PUL-EEEESE just sound a little less like some sort of creepy prospective boyfriend-type person?!

  Tilly puts a bowl of cereal down in front of me, and I ladle a comforting spoonful into my mouth, dagger-eyeballing the sniggering brother-brat and even giving a quick mini-eyeball stab to the Princess, who’s definitely SMIRKING.

  I hear my dad telling his version of how come he ditched out of the army base. His version sounds like a reasonable, well-thought-out explanation—the kind of thing you’d get an A+ for in school. “Well
, it just seemed to me to be somewhat oppressive,” he says. “Undemocratic,” he says. Then he uses words like “Orwellian” and “fascistic.” At one point, he even comes out with “Kafkaesque.”

  I’m not really listening. Dan already told me Dad went AWOL from the army camp because he hooked up with Tilly in the hangar line waiting to be processed—I mean, really!—and when he realized he was going to have to get up even earlier than he did pre-apocalypse, and work harder and not go out for long lunches and not be able to “do things” (Dan-speak) with Tilly because there was a shortage of family accommodation, so they were all crammed into the same room, he did a runner.

  I slurp in spoonfuls of breakfast cereal, waiting for the moment I can extract myself and Darius from this hideous situation.

  “So you said you were at an army base,” my dad says finally, after he’s finished going on about totalitarianism.

  “Um, yeah,” the Spratt says. “I guess I’m quite good at math and stuff.”

  I could kiss him for being so vague. For sounding so dumb. I pounce.

  “So, come on, Darius,” I say brightly, in a voice that comes straight out of some wholesome family TV show and sounds weird and strange to me and must sound utterly bonkers to my family. “Let me show you around.”

  I scrape back my chair, pick up my unfinished breakfast, and scurry into the kitchen area. Dan scurries after me, no doubt outraged by the thought that it’s only his stuff there is to show.

  “Oh, Ruby, dearest, let me help you with that,” he says, trying to grab the bowl off me. “Ruby’s got a boyfriend, Ruby’s got a boyfriend,” he whispers at me as we do tug-of-war over the bowl in the kitchen area. I win: I let go right at the perfect second; milk sloshes over him.

  “Shuddup,” I growl at him.

  “Ooooo!” he whispers. “I’m so scared!”

  Tilly strides between us and mega-eyeballs him. Dan hands her the bowl.

  Maybe I’ve got things wrong about this place; maybe there is some sort of control—and a sense of decorum. Coming from Tilly, a stranger.

  “Come on, Darius!” I call in a slightly less-wholesome way.

  “Yes, do come along!” trills Dan—and Tilly points a finger into his face to shut him up.

  I shove my feet into boots that must be Tilly’s, and me and the Spratt walk out into the sunshine.

  It is unseasonably warm. At this point, there is not a worry in the sky. At this point, there is nothing but cirrocumulus floccus fluff. A meringue cloud sky, all sweet and puffy.

  I am puffy (of face—not enough sleep), but I am not sweet.

  “Did you say anything to them?!” I viper-hiss at the Spratt as we walk away. I glance back; oh my . They are ALL watching from the huge, scenic double-glazed patio doors. What ARE they like?! I make out like I am showing the Spratt around. I point at Thunder and Lightning, the ponies.

  They have their pony butts turned to us. They do not want to get involved.

  “Of course I didn’t!” says Dar.

  I sigh with relief and point at the massive crumpled heap of the bouncy castle.

  “Ruby,” Darius says. “I thought you were dead.”

  I cannot look at him. “How did you even get here?!”

  “I drove. Oh, Ruby, I thought you were dead…”

  I cannot have one more word of this conversation here, with everyone watching. I feel very, very confused. I don’t know what this all means. I must stay on mission. I do an emergency think.

  “Wait here,” I tell the Spratt.

  I stride back to the house; I don’t have to go inside because as soon as my snooping dad sees me coming, he’s out of those doors…

  “What is it?!” he says. “Are you OK?!” Whoa! Does he really think…that the Spratt has somehow molested me when—hello?!—we’ve just been standing right there, with everyone watching?

  “Yeah, we’re just going to go into town and stuff,” I tell him.

  My dad’s face clouds quicker than the sky is about to.

  “I need things, Dad.”

  “What kind of things?” he blurts.

  “Steven…” Tilly says. I could—maybe—get to like her.

  “Clothes and things.”

  “We’ve got clothes. Tilly’s got clothes,” my dad gibbers.

  “Steven…”

  “And things. Tilly’s got things. Haven’t you?”

  Uh. Could he get any more embarrassing?! Is my dad really, seriously, meaning tampons and sanitary napkins? Oh…my….

  “She probably needs condoms for her boyfriend,” Dan chips in, super-helpfully.

  My dad actually cuffs him around the head. Not hard—my dad’s not like that—but not playfully either. But Dan is grinning his head off. The Princess gasps out a little wheezy laugh; Tilly bites her lip, trying hard not to do the same. Only me and my dad are not finding any of this in the least bit funny. I’ll never be able to say for sure, but I suspect we’re on about the same level, horror-wise, though for different reasons. I have to take control of this situation now. This is not a negotiation. I have made the classic mistake of telling a parent what I intend to do.

  “We are going into town,” I say. Oh: my dad’s face. I make a concession, it being the apocalypse. I give him precise information. “For an hour,” I tell him.

  Urk: see my father’s face calculating what could happen in an hour. Have never had to deal with this before.

  “Dad, I’ve driven, like, all over the whole country. I know how to take care of myself. I’ve been on my own for months and…”

  I have to stop myself. Not just because he looks horrified, like he’s only just realizing all this and his imagination is adding a ton of stuff that didn’t happen to the TEN TONS of stuff that did, but because I feel I could quite easily have another total, screaming meltdown (probably ending in me yelling, “FATHER! I AM BOTH THE SECRET AND THE KEEPER OF THE SECRET!”). Plus, this line of persuasion is not working.

  “Oh, Daddy, please…” I try.

  Cumulus-congestus look on his face. A downpour of no is about to happen. I must evaporate it. Heat must be applied. I have a Ruby the Genius moment.

  “He’s the school nerd,” I tell my dad. “I am so not even about to…”

  Whoa! I have kind of just mentioned sex, without actually saying “sex.” This is the wrong direction to go in.

  “Dad, he’s a nerd,” I say—and roll my eyes. (HE’S JUST A NERD WHOM I ONCE KISSED PASSIONATELY IN A CLOSET AND WHOM I… My feelings are so confused, I couldn’t speak the next part even if I tried.)

  “Steven…they’ll be fine,” Tilly says.

  Behind her back, behind everyone’s backs, the brother-brat is doing a horrific smooch pantomime. Next opportunity I get (coming up real soon), I am going to be so horrible to him.

  My dad looks at Darius, standing, shuffling awkwardly, on the lawn. The sight seems to reassure him.

  “OK,” my dad caves. “But I think he likes you,” he whispers—doing this comedy eye-bulge/watch-out thing.

  Dan snorts with laughter.

  “He’s a nerd,” I say to my dad, and I comedy eye-bulge back. Right: discussion over—swift exit. “Thanks, Pop.”

  I’ve never called my dad “Pop.” My dad smiles at me—and I remember how much I love him for being like this. It’s a new one, this situation, but he has always been prepared to be on my side…even when he didn’t really get where that was. At this moment, he certainly doesn’t, but I am his Ruby, his girl. And I always will be.

  I get the brother-brat back straightaway. I give him the tiniest mean look as we’re leaving and watch him panic.

  “Ruby…” says Darius, the second we get into the car.

  I can’t look at him. “Wait,” I tell him. “Please. Let’s just get away from here first.”

  Dan and the Princess come running after
the car, but by the time he gets to his zoo in a cottage, me and Darius are already confiscating his most lethal pets—in silence. The brother-brat is also silent. He can’t say a thing about it.

  “It’s for the best,” I tell Dan.

  He does this pouty thing.

  “They’re too dangerous.”

  Super-pout.

  “They’d die in the winter.”

  The pout twitches; he knows it’s true. Yeah—pout all you like. Game over.

  “And anyway, if Dad found out, he’d probably make us eat them. Snake stew, Dan.”

  So we load them up. Dan even helps, mainly so he can whisper his little good-byes to them. He’s given them all names.

  “Now you go back to the house, and you stay in the house,” I tell him.

  I’ve seen the sky; the sky looks like the beginnings of questionable. Some stratocumulus starting to hang out on the horizon.

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Dan mutters.

  He kisses the bunny he’s clutching; the Princess has hold of “her” guinea pig, the one hilariously named Pretty.

  “Go back to the house, Dan.”

  He scowls at me. Because I can’t kiss him anymore, I kiss the bunny in his arms.

  “Please?” I whisper.

  And my brother-brat, he amazes me.

  “I am happy you’re home, Ru,” he whispers back.

  “I love you so much,” I whisper. My brother blinks; his nose twitches like the bunny’s. I am so glad I told him that.

  Me and the Spratt drive away. There is this horrendous few minutes more of silence as we bump out onto the main road. I feel like the whole world really is disappearing.

  I can’t drive. I stop the car. We kiss like we are falling off the edge of the world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We are leaning against each other, forehead against forehead, in a car that has not moved.

  I do not want us to talk. I just want us to stay here, fallen off the edge of the world.

  “I thought I’d never see you again,” I tell him.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Why did you come here? How did you find me?”