The Way We Fall Read online

  We leave our hair for last, and then dunk it in. Mine’s not too bad—it’s shoulder length now, but if I use just a little shampoo, I’m done in a few minutes. Makes me glad I never gave in when Mom would comment about how pretty my hair would be if I let it grow out for once.

  Meredith’s isn’t much longer, but hers is so much thicker, it’s harder to work the shampoo in, and harder to rinse. So she works at the front parts while I work at the back, which makes the process go faster.

  She’d just straightened up from the last rinse when she said, “Kaelyn, what was it like when you were sick?”

  “The first part was like a bad cold,” I said. “And having a bunch of mosquito bites at the same time. After that, I don’t really remember. The virus stops you from thinking properly.”

  She sat still while I rubbed the towel over her head.

  “Were you scared?” she said quietly.

  I balked at answering, but what was the point in lying? “Yeah,” I said. “I didn’t know what would happen.”

  Suddenly I felt cold all over. Wondering why she was asking. “Are you feeling okay?” I said.

  “I think so,” she said. “Sometimes I get a little itch, but then it goes away. Does that mean I’m getting sick?”

  I was so relieved, I hugged her until the dampness of the towel seeped through my pajama top. “Definitely not,” I said. “Little itches that go away are normal. You don’t need to worry, Mere. I’m not going to let that virus get anywhere near you.”

  She nodded, but her eyes still looked worried.

  I’m doing everything I can to keep her safe, but I never feel like it’s enough. Sometimes I wonder where the breaking point is. When she’ll have gone through so much that, even after the epidemic is over, she won’t ever be herself again.

  Please, let us never have to find out.

  I woke up this morning to the smell of smoke.

  At first it didn’t seem so strange, in that hazy time while I was still half asleep. Sometimes people burn leaves in the fall. There are those families who build campfires in their backyards and let their kids roast marshmallows now and then. But gradually I noticed that it smelled like wood, not leaves, and who would be roasting marshmallows at six in the morning when a killer virus is on the loose?

  My mouth went dry, and I pushed myself out of bed. The ferrets were pressing their noses up to the bars of their cage, their backs hunched. The burning smell got stronger as I went into the hall.

  From the front door, I could see smoke billowing up over the roofs south of us, darker than the cloud-filled sky. The tang filled my mouth. I went back inside and woke up Tessa so she could watch out for herself and Meredith. Then I drove to the hospital, hoping someone there would know what was going on. Everything’s so damp, I didn’t figure a fire could spread far, but I wouldn’t have expected one to start in the first place.

  I was almost there when the siren went off, the one they use to call the volunteer fire department. A short, choked sort of laugh jerked out of me before I could catch it. Because, really, who’s left to answer?

  In the hospital, Dad was on the phone at the reception desk. A nurse stood in a corner at the other side of the room, taking blood from a cluster of people. I sat down on one of the chairs and tried to relax, but my fingers kept curling into my palms.

  As soon as Dad hung up, he came over. He didn’t even ask why I was there.

  “No one’s sure what’s happened yet,” he said. “A group went out to take a look.”

  “Do you think the fire was set on purpose?” I asked, wondering if someone had lit it in the middle of a hallucination.

  “Too early to say,” he said. He put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed, but then he had to get back to work.

  I figured since I was already there I might as well help out. I spent the next few hours with Mrs. Hansen, running sheets and gowns through the laundry, and then preparing pot after pot of Cream of Wheat for the patients’ breakfasts. We were just ladling out the last few bowls when Gav walked into the kitchen, bringing the smell of smoke with him.

  “It’s out,” he said. “Finally.”

  “I didn’t know you’d gone to help,” I said. Even though he was obviously safe, a little jolt of panic shot through me. I wanted to hug him, to feel for sure he was okay, but Mrs. Hansen was right there watching us.

  She gave me a knowing smile and rolled the cart out of the kitchen. As soon as she was gone, I wrapped my arms around him. He leaned into me.

  “I heard the siren, so I went out to see if there was anything I could do,” he said. “A bunch of us showed up and tried to stop the fire. Only one guy had any training. I’m not sure if we actually helped or if it just ran out of fuel.”

  He turned his head away from me to cough, clearing the smoky rasp from his voice. Then he pressed his lips against my forehead. “At least no one was hurt,” he added.

  “It looked huge,” I said.

  “Six houses,” he said. “All in a row. The hose wasn’t doing anything to put out the fire, and we figured out why when we found a bucket that smelled like gasoline.”

  “Where would someone get a bucket of—” I started, and then stopped when I saw the obvious answer. My hands clenched, resting against the front of Gav’s shirt. He nodded.

  “After we found it, I went to check the station,” he said. “The door was bashed up. They just helped themselves.”

  He didn’t need to say who “they” were.

  “But why would they want to burn down a bunch of houses?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Gav said. “Doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  Maybe the gang thought it’d be fun to destroy a few buildings. These are people who’ll shoot someone just for being sick, after all. But it seems to me like they’re sick too—sick with fear, sick with selfishness. How can anyone do all the things they do without hating themselves for it?

  The last couple days we’ve had fires in four different parts of town. All of them lit with gasoline. There hasn’t been much anyone can do except make sure no one’s inside the houses, and stop the flames from spreading farther.

  For a little while I hoped all the smoke might get the attention of someone on the mainland, let them know we need more help. With no internet, no off-island phone service, and no luck using the radio, we might as well try smoke signals. But we haven’t even gotten another helicopter.

  Yesterday morning, Gav agreed to go with one of the adult volunteers down to the summer house the gang has claimed as their base of operations, to see if they’d be willing to talk.

  “Why do you have to go?” I asked him while the other volunteer finished talking to Dad. “I think this hero complex of yours is getting out of control.”

  I was trying to sound teasing, but the truth is, I was scared. That guy in the truck would have shot me without blinking. I didn’t exactly trust them to listen to reason.

  “I’ve dealt with them more than anyone here,” Gav pointed out.

  “But we’ve locked the pumps,” I said. “They can’t have stolen that much gasoline in one go. When they run out, they’ll have to stop anyway.”

  “And then they’ll pull something else,” he said.

  Which is true. So I stood and watched him walk out to the car, my arms folded tight over my chest and a weight in my gut. I don’t like how hard it was to see him go.

  I only just got past two years of pining over you, Leo—the last thing I need is to get so wrapped up in another guy that I can’t think straight. And Gav’s not going to want some needy girl who’d wait by the window for him instead of having her own things to do.

  So I boiled more water and brought lunches around, and tried not to look at the clock every two minutes. It was exactly one hour and fourteen minutes later that Gav got back. When I heard him coming through the doors, I stopped and let relief wash over me. Then I made myself take the cart back to the kitchen before I went to find out what they’d learned.

  “
We got held up a few houses down from their place,” Gav told me while the other guy was filling in Dad and Nell. “A couple of them stepped out in front of the car—Lester from the ferry dock, and Vince’s older sister, Andrea. She had a shotgun pointed at us. Neither of them would listen to anything we said. They just kept saying they were setting the fires ‘for the good of the island.’ ‘We’re cleaning the town up,’ Lester goes. ‘Bet the virus can’t survive incineration!’ I said people wouldn’t either, and he just laughed. And then Andrea pointed her gun at us and told us we had ten seconds to leave.”

  So they’re burning down their own town to try to take the virus with it.

  I keep remembering how Quentin talked in the toy store. So angry, and desperate. I told him the government wasn’t going to come with help until the island’s safe and the virus is gone, and that we still didn’t know a way to beat it. So now they’re trying their own way.

  And you know what? As long as they keep their bullets and their fires away from the people I care about, that’s all right with me.

  Today we decided to take a little break from worrying about viruses and gangs and the island falling apart. It’s Mom’s birthday, or it would have been, and Dad said we should make up for that lost Thanksgiving and honor her memory.

  Tessa and I baked the last of the chicken breasts from her freezer, and we had a real salad with lettuce and tomatoes out of the greenhouse. Seeing Dad sitting there at her table felt so weird. It’s the first meal he’s eaten with us at Tessa’s. But once we started eating and talking, everyone relaxed.

  Dad talked about how he met Mom at university, and the day he worked up the nerve to ask her on a date, and I talked about how she taught me to ride my bike and kept cheering me on, even though she ended up more banged up than me by the end of the day. And then we got quiet, which seemed appropriate too. I wondered where Drew was right then, and whether he was thinking about Mom. Our words didn’t feel like enough without him. The ache in my chest got bigger and hasn’t gone away since.

  After we cleaned up, Dad went off with Meredith so she could show him all the necklaces and bracelets she’s made with her new beads, and Tessa and I flopped down on the couch. She glanced at the mantel over the fireplace, where a couple of photos of her with her parents—sitting on a log in a forest, squinting against the sun in front of a country landscape—are propped up. Suddenly I wanted to hug her, even though Tessa’s about the least huggy person I’ve ever known. I miss Mom and Drew every hour, but I still have Dad. Tessa’s been on her own so long.

  “How do you do it?” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ve stayed so calm and together, even though you don’t have anyone,” I said. “I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

  “I have people,” she said. “I have you and Meredith.”

  “But you hardly knew me before the epidemic started,” I said. “It’s not the same.”

  She shrugged and said, “I know you now. I look at what I have and try not to think about what I don’t. I don’t know if I’d be any less worried about my mom and dad if they were here with me. I’d probably be more worried. At least, as far as we know, the virus never really spread on the mainland.”

  In comparison, I probably seem like an emotional wreck. I guess Tessa has her home and her greenhouse and the scavenging trips we go on, and she’s narrowed down her life to those three pieces. Must be easier to stay sane that way. But I can’t imagine leaving behind the work I do at the hospital or the food runs. Even when the things I see are hard to deal with, at least I know I’m helping. I don’t think I’d be coping half as well without that.

  I hadn’t meant to mention this, ever, but it sort of fell out.

  “Before,” I said, tracing the pattern on the arm of the couch, “when school was still going, there was one day you came to class late and you wouldn’t sit next to me.”

  She frowned. “Which class?” she said. “Where were you sitting?”

  “It was biology,” I said. “I sat at the front. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No,” she said. “I know why. I always sit at the back. When we’re doing review I like to start the homework from other classes, but most of the teachers get annoyed if they catch you. The front of the room doesn’t work.”

  It was that simple. Sitting next to me just wouldn’t have worked.

  If I’d actually known Tessa back then, maybe I would have realized she hadn’t meant to snub me. She doesn’t waste time holding grudges or ranking people. She just wants to be able to do what she wants on her own terms.

  Back then, her attitude looked like arrogance to me. But now I kind of admire it. Tessa shines, too, in her own thoughtful, steady way. She may not light up a room like Shauna does, but she wouldn’t want to. Which I guess you saw a long time ago, Leo. And maybe I would have sooner if I hadn’t been so busy resenting her for having you.

  “Thank you,” I said to her. “For letting us stay here. And everything.”

  For not realizing or at least overlooking the fact that a couple months ago I’d have happily stolen your boyfriend, was the part I didn’t say.

  I’d thought I didn’t care anymore, now that Gav and I are, well, whatever we are, and now that Tessa and I are at least sort of friends. But I’m not sure I really let go until that moment. It felt like this thorn that had been digging into my side for months finally worked its way free and fell away.

  I don’t know what I’d have done without Tessa. She deserves you, Leo.

  You know, for all the talk you hear about “Mother Nature” and the harmony of the natural world, the truth is, nature doesn’t give a crap about anything or anyone.

  Every scientist knows that. Nature doesn’t have feelings or morals; it’s just a bunch of random chances that sometimes work in the favor of this pack or that herd, and sometimes wipe one out. Some random chance gave this one virus the ability to infect our brains and spread itself by making its victims want other people’s company. And as far as nature’s concerned, whether we win or the virus does, it’s all the same. There’s nothing that stops and thinks about how much or how many are going to get hurt.

  But every now and then I still want to have someone to grab and shake and shout at: “How could you?”

  A question Nature’s never going to answer.

  I was at the hospital this afternoon. Tessa and I decided we shouldn’t leave Meredith alone in the house for our scavenging trips, what with the gang lighting fires all over. I found a copy of Never Cry Wolf in the hospital library a little while back, and I’ve been reading chapters to the patients who are sick but not that sick yet, who get bored and depressed sitting around waiting for the virus to crawl deeper into their brains.

  I was at my favorite part, where Farley Mowat chases after a pack of wolves wearing nothing but his shoes, when I heard someone yelling. Which would have been normal in the hospital these days, except the voice was coming from the direction of the reception room, not upstairs, where they’ve moved the most sick patients. And it sounded familiar.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said, and went out to see what was happening.

  The words got clearer as soon as I opened the door: “How long will the test take? When will you know?”

  Gav was standing at the end of the hall, one hand splayed against the wall, the other clutching his mask. His face was flushed and his shoulders were shaking.

  My heart didn’t just sink. It plummeted.

  “I need you to calm down,” Nell was saying to him. “We’re doing the best we can. Please put on your mask.”

  What does it matter? I thought. What good’s the mask going to do if he’s already sick?

  He took a long breath and said, not quite shouting this time, “Are you going to do anything for him? Is there anything you can do?”

  And I realized he was flushed with emotion, not fever. It wasn’t him. Which meant there was only one person it could be.

  “We’re doing o
ur best,” Nell repeated.

  “Great!” Gav said. “So I brought him here so you could just shut him in some room and leave him to die. Fuck that.”

  He wavered on his feet, looking like he wanted to say more but was too angry to find the words. When they didn’t come, he spun around and stalked out through the reception room.

  For a moment, I was paralyzed. Then my legs lurched forward and I ran after him, peeling off my protective gown as I went.

  He’d already pushed past the front doors. I caught up with him on the steps outside. He didn’t hesitate or glance back at the sound of my feet, so I said, “Gav, wait!”

  It was like I’d hit him. He stopped and dropped down onto the steps amid the puddles left by the morning’s rain, lowering his head into his hands. The coat he’s been wearing is too big on him—used to be his dad’s, he mentioned once—and suddenly he looked very small in it.

  I sat down next to him and slid my arm around his back. It didn’t seem right to talk first.

  “I tried so hard to make sure he’d be okay,” he said after a bit. His voice was ragged. I think he was trying not to cry.

  “Warren?” I asked, even though I couldn’t imagine who else he’d be this upset about.

  “I convinced him he’d do the most help working with the kids in the church, because I knew they’d all been tested, so it was safe,” he went on, without answering. “I made sure he wore his goddamn mask every minute of every goddamn day.”

  “Has he had the blood test yet?” I said.

  “They’re doing it now,” Gav said. “But…I could tell. It hit him hard. He was fine the whole day, and then about an hour ago, all of a sudden he couldn’t stop coughing. Or scratching his neck. I practically had to wrestle him into the car—he’d decided he was going to drive himself here, as if he even could. He was worried about me.”