by Kate Morris
“Fine,” she said, this time with a lot less patience than she’d shown back at the house.
She reached out to knock on the door, but Roman opened it. He blew out a sigh of relief.
“Good. You’re here.”
“Yep,” Jane said and inhaled, holding it. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, Dez is here and so are her parents. Aaron’s mom is here. Brian’s are at the hospital, so I’m streaming the meeting so that they can watch it through Skype.”
“What’s going on, you two?” Nana Peaches asked with a great deal of suspicion.
“You’ll see, ma’am,” Roman said. “Please, come in.”
He led them to the living room with the tall windows that overlooked their backyard with the covered pool. Her grandmother took the seat he offered on one of the sofas. Then Jane joined him at the end of the living room near the tall, stone fireplace so they could stand and face everyone together.
He looked at her. Jane tried to offer a smile, but she was sure it came off as bizarre and uncomfortable.
“Uh…I guess I’ll get this started,” Roman stated. “Jane and I have been spending a lot of time together.”
“We know,” Dez said with a smile that hinted at something.
Roman cleared his voice. “Can you hear us, Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins?” he asked into the computer.
“We’ve got you loud and clear, Roman,” Mr. Jenkins replied. “Go on, son.”
“Well, we have been spending a lot of time together, Jane and I. And we have something we need to share with all of…”
“Oh, my God!” his mother nearly screeched. “Are you about to tell us that she’s pregnant?”
“What?” Roman asked as Jane’s eyes about popped out of her head. They both shouted, “No!” Then Roman went on to say, “Mom! Seriously. That was rude. And, no, absolutely she’s not pregnant. Good grief!”
Jane stammered quickly and frantically waved her hands in front of her as if to ward off those thoughts, “Right! We’re just friends.”
Roman jumped in to say, “Well…”
“Right?” she asked him for verification. He shot her a confused look. His left eye twitched, but he nodded.
“Yeah, sure. Anyway. Jesus, Mom!” Roman said, still angry at his mother.
“Well, you two sure have been spending a lot of time together, Roman.”
“Yes, but that’s not what we’ve been doing,” he said stiffly. “Anyway, we called everyone here not to announce a pregnancy. Geez.”
Jane jumped in because he was messed up and thrown off his game. “We called you all here to share the information we have on the flu virus.”
“What?” Destiny’s mom asked with confusion.
Brian’s parents chirped up, and Mr. Jenkins jumped in to say, “Roman, what do you know, son? The doctors here are not being very helpful. We’re at Our Lady of Mercy in the city.”
Roman said, “I don’t think they’ll tell you much, either, sir, even if you are a doctor. Jane and I have been doing a lot of research, digging around on the dark web, listening to podcasts from doctors who’ve been working on this RF1 and RF2 flu…”
“‘R’ what?” his mother asked.
“Yeah, Mom, that’s what I’ve been trying to talk to you and Dad about for the past few weeks. This virus was called the RF1 virus. Now it’s mutated and is being called the RF2 virus, or Russian flu.”
“Russian flu?” his father asked with more patience but no less confusion.
Roman opened an art easel and produced a four feet square whiteboard with facts and statistics laid out. He adjusted the computer screen so Brian’s parents could see it well. Jane was impressed. He really was busy. He told them how it was biological weaponry being used by the Russian government. He went on to explain how the government here thought the virus was supposed to wipe out Americans for a violent, hostile Russian takeover of the country and that it was accidentally leaked into other nations, even on their own people now. He produced numbers on the estimated deaths, which had gone up substantially since he and she first started following it.
“Wait a minute, son,” his father said. “I think we’d know about this by now. I just watched the news this morning, and they said the virus was under control and that doctors were estimating that this flu would be gone by Christmas.”
“Right,” Destiny’s mother said. “I heard they just messed up the flu vaccine and didn’t get this one in it.”
“This is biomedical warfare. Or germ warfare, whatever you want to call it,” Roman told them. “Here, watch this video. Mr. Jenkins, I sent it to your email in a link. I recorded these segments on…this other network,” he said, avoiding the term ‘kook network’ that they’d used when talking about that channel.
He pressed the fast forward button to the part where the doctor behind the smoky gray screen started describing the symptoms of the virus, the factors of how it spread and how quickly, and the mortality rates. He then went on to show them the end of the last transmission when men in black tactical gear stormed the studio and took the doctor and the host into custody. When it was over, Jane expected the parents in the room to be more receptive to believing them.
Aaron’s mother got up and said, “This is ridiculous. I’ve got a sick twelve-year-old at home. I’m a single mom. I don’t have time for this.”
“Wait! Please,” Roman pleaded. “What stage is she? Early? Fevers?”
Apparently, Aaron’s mother also had a daughter, which Jane didn’t know because she didn’t know much about any of her fellow classmates, especially Roman’s friends.
“Melissa has the flu, Roman. It’s just the flu. She has body aches, fevers and chills, and vomiting. It’s the flu. Stop being such a conspiracy theorist. Aaron, let’s go.”
He looked at Roman with an apologetic shrug and left with his mother. Roman hung his head for a moment before continuing. His mother was becoming less and less patient. Destiny’s mother, however, seemed very concerned. Her own husband was not home and was out of town on business in Arizona. Jane hoped he left and came home early and would not go back out into the germ-ridden world of air travel again. She really liked Destiny’s parents. They’d both been very kind to her. She also hoped Destiny’s mother could convince him that what they were saying was true.
Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins thanked them and said they had to go and find their son’s doctor. They didn’t seem happy. Jane wouldn’t be, either, if doctors and public health departments were lying to her about her sick child.
“Roman, I think this is enough,” his mother said. “You’re causing everyone to panic.”
Jane didn’t know her well, but she didn’t like her, either. There was something about her. She seemed shrewd, as if she were the kind of woman nobody would want to work for. She was beautiful, though, and Roman took after her. She’d always thought he looked a little different from the average boy, and she now could see why she assumed that. She’d never met his mother before the other day, so she hadn’t known what it was about him that made him seem different, but not in a bad way. His mother was obviously from half or part Asian descent. She was exotically beautiful, not traditionally, and it made her stand out. It was what made him stand out, too. He had her thick, dark hair, high cheekbones and slightly tilted eyes along the outside corners. However, his eyes were blue like his father’s, and he was tall like him, too. Mrs. Lockwood was on the short side, not much taller than Jane. It did not make her any less imposing of a figure. She had yet to see her in anything less than an expensive business suit, and she was even wearing one today.
“Mrs. Lockwood,” Jane broke in, “I think there’s something else we need to tell everyone.”
Roman looked at her curiously.
“Nana Peaches, I wasn’t honest with you the other night. Saturday, I didn’t stay the night at Destiny’s.”
“Excuse me?” Nana said.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep the lie going. I’ve never lied to you before, and I don’t want to
start now. Roman and I… well, we went to the hospital that night. We wanted to know, to see if what we were hearing was true.”
“Jane!” her grandmother said as if her name were a swear word.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she apologized. “But it was my choice. I knew you wouldn’t like that, but I had to know. Roman felt the same. What we found there was…”
“I can’t believe this!” his mother interrupted angrily. “Roman, don’t you see? This new relationship of yours is toxic, just toxic!”
“Mother, stop. It was my idea, not Jane’s,” he said. “Jane’s a good girl. She’d never come up with anything like that. Ever. And listen to what the hell she’s trying to tell you!”
“Young man,” his father warned.
Roman looked at his dad and said, “Sorry. It’s just that she won’t even listen. We saw something I wish all of you would’ve seen. There were so many dead bodies. Sick people were tied up with zip ties in the E.R. and locked in rooms so they couldn’t hurt people and each other.”
“Or get out!” Jane added, remembering those people, their red eyes so feral and rage-filled. “There was Army personnel everywhere. There were Army trucks and these huge white tents set up outside. They were treating people in the tents because there were so many people in the hospital, too many. The Emergency Room was so full people were sitting on the floor waiting to be seen.”
“And a portable crematorium,” Roman added.
This seemed to capture his father’s attention. “What?” he asked.
“Yeah, there was this huge gas crematorium where they were burning the bodies outside of the tents,” he answered him. “I remembered when I used to go to work with Mom sometimes, so I knew all the ways around where I wouldn’t get caught. We found rubber gloves and face masks and wore them. There were signs all over the hospital with boxes of free gloves and face masks for people to use. Jane and I went all through the hospital. It was bad, really bad. Soldiers were trying to keep it all under control. People were really sick. The waiting rooms and hospital rooms were full, three or four people in each. Like Jane said, there were so many people there they were sitting on the floors. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Then these Army guys saw us and chased us…” Jane said.
“What?” Nana Peaches inhaled sharply. “Jane!”
“Sorry, I should’ve told you.”
“You certainly should have, young lady,” her grandmother stated angrily, making Jane feel like crap for lying.
“But we needed to see for ourselves,” she said. “We’d done so much research. We just wanted to know if what we’d found was true.”
“This is just great!” Roman’s mother stated and slammed her wine glass on the table beside her. “You see? I told you this was a bad idea, Jim.”
His father didn’t seem as upset as her, but Jane didn’t know him well enough to make that assessment.
“What was a bad idea?” Roman asked as if he didn’t want to hear her answer.
“Letting the two of you hang out,” his mother answered.
“Why not?” Roman pressed.
“Yes, why not?” Nana Peaches asked with a quiet warning in her voice.
“Nothing good can come of this,” his mother said. “Can’t you all see that? Just look! They’re lying, sneaking around, breaking the law apparently!”
Destiny’s mother broke in and said, “I don’t see any of that, but what I do see here are two brave kids who have done what the rest of us should’ve been doing instead of focusing on things that don’t matter. They’ve investigated something and discovered the truth of the matter on their own. They used their own gut instincts and followed them until they got the answers they needed.”
“Don’t get sucked into their little game, Harper,” Roman’s mother said to Destiny’s, using her first name.
“I’m not,” Mrs. Bradshaw said. “I’m truly concerned. The schools are all closed. I watched the news this morning, too. This isn’t just our community. Schools and businesses across the country are closing. They said the virus has spread to thirty-two states. They’re calling this a possible pandemic. I don’t know what the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic are, but it sounded bad.”
Jane answered since she and Roman researched that very thing, “Epidemic is when certain people in large regions become ill with a virus, and a pandemic is when that same sickness spreads worldwide and is not limited to specific regions anymore.”
“Right,” Roman said and smiled at her, “This is definitely a pandemic. Reports are showing that nearly twenty countries have now reported in as having been affected by it.”
“Well, there ya’ go. YouTube reports are showing twenty countries,” his mother said with skepticism.
“Mom!” Roman said, all patience with her depleted. “I can’t believe you won’t listen to us.”
“Roman, you aren’t a doctor…”
“No, but I’m listening to podcasts given by doctors.”
She snorted, “They’re hiding behind screens, and that other one had on a mask, Roman.”
“Yes, and can’t you understand why? They want the message out there but could get into a lot of trouble taking it to the public. People could panic.”
“This isn’t panicking?” she asked with a laugh.
He shook his head and actually groaned with frustration.
“It’s just that we don’t want to see anyone else get infected,” Jane said, trying to calm the situation. “That’s why we asked for the meeting. We want to protect our families and make sure we’re all safe.”
“That’s very thoughtful, Jane,” Destiny’s mother praised.
“I think you two are feeding off of each other,” Roman’s mother stated.
“What?” he asked, his brow knitting together with growing irritation. “How’s that even make sense? Jane and I barely even know each other. We just started hanging out. So, how the hell are we feeding off of each other?”
“I do. And I think it needs to stop. Jane is obviously a bad influence on you. Your grades have been dropping lately anyway.”
“Mother!” he complained loudly this time. “We’ve only been around each other less than a month. What the hell’s it gonna matter if my grades drop if this is the end of the world as we know it? Jesus! Dad, can you talk some sense into her? Please?”
His father motioned to speak but was interrupted.
“Excuse me?” Nana Peaches asked. “My granddaughter is not a bad influence on anyone. If anything, she’s a good influence on bad kids.”
“Are you accusing my son of being one of those ‘bad kids’?” his mother hissed.
“Ladies, let’s all just take a breath,” his father said, trying to squelch the sizzle before it became a fire.
Destiny’s mother, also trying to help, said, “I think Jane’s been a great influence. She and Dez have a wonderful relationship, and Jane’s never done anything to give me a moment’s hesitation on that. She’s a little sweetheart, really.”
She shot Harper a shy but appreciative grin.
“Roman doesn’t need the distraction of hanging out with a girl like Jane right now,” his mother said as if she had cotton balls in her ears. “He needs to stay focused.”
“What exactly does that mean? What kind of girl do you see my granddaughter as being?” Nana asked, rising out of her chair.
“Everyone knows that your daughter….well, Miss Barnes, that your daughter is…” his mother stopped and raised her eyebrows as if to say all she needed to say about Jane’s mother.
“Jane, let’s go,” Nana Peaches said firmly.
Jane wasn’t an idiot. The conversation was done. Her grandmother was about to blow a fuse on Roman’s mother.
She joined her quickly, but her grandmother turned and said to Roman’s mother, “My daughter, even at her lowest points, never treated someone so rudely and with so little respect. And while we’re talking about what everyone knows, everyone also knows your son�
��s own secret little run-ins with the law and how they were swept under the rug with a few payoff bribes made to cheap judges taking up a seat in the juvenile court system. Perhaps, he was the bad influence, after all. People in glass houses, Mrs. Lockwood.”
Crap! Crap! Crap! Jane kept thinking this over and over all the way to the truck. That wasn’t how she thought it’d go with them. She and Roman were only trying to help.
Her grandmother didn’t say anything during their two-minute ride home. Then she went inside and brewed them a kettle of tea.
“Light a fire, Jane,” she requested in a calm voice. “It’s going to get cold tonight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied meekly and got to it.
By the time the tea was done, the fire was crackling, and they sat in the living room together, she on the sofa, and her grandmother in her recliner.
“I’m sor…”
Her grandmother’s hand shot up to silence her, “Don’t apologize again. Once is enough. I don’t require two.”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said quietly and sipped her hot tea.
“I’m glad that you told me the truth,” she said. “I don’t approve of you lying to me, but I’m glad you came clean.”
“Do you believe us, Nana?”
“Yes, I believe you, Jane. I’ve been keeping an eye on this flu situation, as well, but I didn’t want to alarm you.”
“Oh,” she whispered.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t realize it was that bad. I was going by the information I was getting from the news, snippets here and there. I’m not happy that you went to the hospital. You could’ve exposed yourself to this virus.”
“I’ve already been exposed. I went to that party with Destiny and Roman almost two weeks ago. That kid, Caleb, had it, too, remember? I’ve also been going to school. Lots of people started missing school the last few weeks.”
“I know. We didn’t know what we know now,” she said, to which Jane nodded. “And now your school’s closed for the week, which is good.”
“Roman and I don’t think it’ll just be this week,” she confessed.