The Way We Fall Read online

  “It’s not about being scared,” he said.

  But you know what? It is. I never looked at it that way before, but Dad’s scared of a lot of things. He was scared of Drew kissing boys. He was scared of Meredith getting eaten by coyotes. He was scared of us leaving the house before he even knew the virus was dangerous. He’s scared of me going anywhere in town on my own now, even though I’ve done it more than once, and the only times I’ve ever gotten into trouble were when there were other people with me.

  The problem is, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. This is his field. He’s supposed to know the best way to deal with a virus.

  “Kaelyn!” Meredith called from upstairs, breaking the silence between us. “Kaelyn, where are you? Uncle Gordon?” She managed to sound petulant and panicked at the same time.

  My stomach flipped. Because imagining making her even more sick didn’t just scare me, it petrified me.

  So I said, “I know” and “I’m sorry” to Dad. And then Gav turned on the kitchen tap and let out a little cheer.

  I still can’t help Meredith, but we have slightly cleaner water. Hurray.

  Today I told Gav not to come back.

  I’d just had lunch with Meredith in her room, and was coming down with the dishes, and he was rummaging in the basement to see if Uncle Emmett had anything stashed away that might be useful. I was stepping into the kitchen when he sneezed so loud you could have heard it in the backyard.

  I stiffened. The plates tipped in my hands, and Meredith’s plastic cup bounced on the floor. The basement stairs creaked.

  “It’s okay,” Gav said, poking his head through the doorway. “It was just the dust. I’m fine.”

  He spread out his arms, as if that proved anything. But he didn’t sneeze again, and he didn’t cough, and he didn’t look like he was fighting the urge to, either. And the basement really is dusty. His shirt was already streaked with grayish smudges.

  I picked up the cup and set the dishes on the counter. I didn’t even realize I was crying until everything started to go blurry.

  Gav reached for me, and I said, “Stop!”

  I turned toward him and took a step back at the same time, crossing my arms in front of me.

  “Kaelyn,” he said, moving forward.

  “I said stop!” I yelled, and that time he did. He looked at me, confused.

  “I was just upstairs with Meredith,” I said. “I’ve been touching her dishes. I haven’t even washed my hands yet.”

  And suddenly I was remembering all the times Gav has sat by me, touched me, since Meredith caught it, and I felt like throwing up. I’d been so careless. What did the protective gown and the hand-washing matter when the virus could be creeping up from my feet or through my hair? We haven’t been able to wash properly in weeks. I’ve been re-wearing clothes that seem clean, because every time we run a load of laundry I’m afraid the generator will short out. And I was too wrapped up in this miserable situation to consider how dangerous that could be for anyone else. I was just glad to have him here. How could I have been so selfish?

  I should never have let him in the house after Meredith got sick.

  “You should go,” I said.

  “Kaelyn,” he said calmly, like his life wasn’t on the line, “I’ve been talking to sick people on the route, going in and out of the hospital, for months. If I was going to catch the virus, I would have already.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said. “Meredith was fine for months, and now she has it. You’ve been okay because you’ve been careful. You can’t just stop and think you’ll be fine. It’s not safe in here. I’m not safe.”

  “So I’ve decided to take that risk,” he said.

  “I don’t want you to,” I said, my voice shaking. “I want you to go. Now.”

  He opened his mouth to argue some more, but something in my expression must have convinced him I wasn’t changing my mind.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll go. But I’m going to come back tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going to let you in,” I said.

  “Then I’ll talk to you through the door until you do,” he said. “That’s how we started, isn’t it?”

  Watching him walk to the hall and put on his boots hurt, right through the center of my chest. Because he meant it. He would keep coming back. As if I’m…as if anyone is worth taking that kind of chance for.

  “Gav,” I started.

  “I’m going, I’m going,” he said, holding up his hands. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “No,” I said. “When Meredith’s…When this is finished. Not until then. And not here. Okay?”

  He didn’t answer me. Just gave me one last look and then went out the door.

  It was the right thing to do. I knew that then. I shouldn’t feel so awful now.

  I hesitated for a few seconds after he left, and then locked the door. When I turned around, Tessa was watching me from the living room doorway.

  “I’m not leaving,” she said, in the same tone she’d used when she was threatening to zap Quentin.

  I hadn’t thought that far. I don’t know if I would have. We’ve been with Tessa so long—hell, she practically gave her house to us—I can’t imagine telling her to get out. Where would she go?

  “I know,” I said. “Of course.”

  Does that make me a bad friend, for wanting to protect Gav more than I’m willing to protect Tessa? Or a good one, for letting her decide for herself?

  I told Nell I wanted to go home, so she brought me here. But this isn’t home. This is a cot in a room where Meredith should be but isn’t. Home is gone. There’s nothing left.

  She was screaming. Ten o’clock at night. I had to take her to the hospital. She tore up the Little Mermaid dress with her hands and scratched my arm, but I didn’t want to call, I wanted to take care of her myself. I told Tessa not to worry, I could do it. I carried Meredith out to the car and strapped her into the backseat, and she squirmed and cried, but she didn’t remember how to release the belt. So we made it there. She started screaming again when she saw the hospital, and she bit my hand trying to make me let go of her, but I got her in and I found Dad, and he gave her a shot. Just like he must have for me, and for Mom.

  She has her own room. Everyone’s dead now. No more need to cram bodies into every available space. She got one little bed in what was supposed to be a storage room on the second floor.

  I don’t usually go up there where the Stage Three patients are. The yelling’s louder.

  When the shot wears off, that’ll be Meredith yelling too. There are only enough drugs to keep the patients calm when bringing them in. They strapped her arms and legs down to make sure she won’t hurt herself, or anyone else, when the hallucinations take over.

  Dad said he’d walk me to the car. I let him. I should have said I’d be fine. But it wouldn’t have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered that I wanted my dad there with me for just a few more minutes if I hadn’t seen something moving in the darkness from the corner of my eye. If I hadn’t turned, trying to figure out what it was.

  “What?” Dad said, and I said, “I thought I saw someone over there,” and I even pointed, because I didn’t think, I didn’t think at all.

  Then there was a scraping sound off around the side of the building, and Dad started jogging over to see, and I followed along, because I didn’t know what was happening, and then he was running and shouting, “Stop! Stop right there!”

  I should have run too. I don’t know why I didn’t run. I saw the woman with the gasoline can, and she spun toward Dad, and I froze. All those moves Gav taught me, and I had nothing. So there was no one close enough to stop her when Dad reached for her and she raised the can and slammed it into his head.

  I screamed. Dad swayed and fell. The woman dropped the can and took off. And then, then my legs started working again.

  People were rushing out of the hospital. They must have heard me. I screamed so loud, my throat’s still sore. I was kneeling on the concrete w
alk next to Dad. Everything smelled like gasoline. The blood was seeping out through his hair so fast. I pressed my hand against it, but I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to think I felt a breath, but his eyes kept staring, just staring, and he wouldn’t blink.

  Nell says they were trying to set the hospital on fire. There were two men with the woman. A few of the volunteers checked around the building after they saw Dad, and chased the guys off before they could do it.

  Nell says they must have thought they’d get rid of the virus if they burned down the place where just about everyone who’s had it ended up.

  She says Dad is a hero because he stopped them.

  She said, “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’m the one with Dad’s blood on my hands.

  I don’t know where they took him. Somewhere in the middle of everything, Nell pulled me away from him and hugged me, and then he was gone.

  Everyone’s gone. It’s only me.

  It’s cold up here on the cliff. There’s frost speckling the rocks, and the wind coming off the water numbed my nose in all of about five seconds. I wanted to breathe the ocean air one last time, but now I can’t smell anything.

  I wore my fingerless gloves so I could write, but my fingers are already aching, so I don’t know how long this entry is going to be. I just felt like I should give some sort of explanation before I do this. To show I really have thought it through.

  When I’ve read about people jumping off a bridge or a rooftop, it always sounds like some melodramatic fit, flinging oneself off into nothingness. But it isn’t really like that. Looking at the edge of the cliff, I can picture stepping into that empty space on the other side without hesitating, without flinching. Like it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Like taking that step doesn’t mean anything more than starting down a staircase.

  You can’t even say I’m out of my mind. Young gorillas will let themselves waste away when they’ve lost both their parents. They stop eating and playing, and eventually they get sick and die. What I’m doing here is a completely natural response.

  This way is just more efficient.

  I’m not one of those people who shine, whose light is going to be missed the minute I’m gone. I never have been. Dad looked after the hospital, and Gav organized food for the whole town, and Tessa is going to create better crops for the entire world. What the hell have I done?

  The only thing I’m good at is watching. Birds on the beach, coyotes in the forest, all those people dying.

  But I tried. I tried to go out and help, and look where it got us. I put ideas into Quentin’s head, I led him back to Tessa and Meredith. I arranged for Gav’s group to start bringing sick people to the hospital, and now his best friend’s dead. I didn’t take enough precautions and caught the virus and made Drew feel he had to run off in some crazy plan that’s probably gotten him killed. Maybe I even brought it home to Mom. It had to be someone.

  And then I just watched—as Mom died, as Meredith got sicker. I stood by and let some woman bash Dad’s head in.

  There’s nothing left. I can’t do anything but hurt. I want it to stop.

  Gav will be all right. It’ll be better for him—one less person he’ll feel he has to risk his life for. And Tessa takes care of herself just fine. I feel a little guilty about Meredith, but she won’t even know I’m gone. If I stayed, it’d only go one of two ways. I’d ignore everything Dad said and convince Nell to try the antibodies treatment one more time, and Meredith’s last days would be agony. Or I’d sit and watch her fade, never knowing if there was something I could have done that I missed.

  So I’m putting things right. I should never have been one of the ones who survived. Maybe there is some kind of higher power that will see this, that will let me pass my luck on to Meredith. She deserves it.

  Trading my life for hers—seems fair, doesn’t it?

  Damn it’s cold. I can hardly feel the pen.

  My heart’s already pounding. My body knows what it’s going to do. It’s just four steps from here to the edge. I’ll put the journal down, and it’ll be over in less than a minute. I won’t look down. I won’t even cry.

  Here I go.

  I’m still here, Leo. I came back.

  I feel like I should thank someone, like I’ve been given a gift, even though the decision was mine the whole time.

  I should thank the cormorants.

  I went right up to the edge. And then I couldn’t help looking down. All that choppy red-brown rock dropping away into the waves. All those clumps of sticks and seaweed nestled on the tiny ledges. Hard to believe anything can perch there, let alone raise a family. The wind was tearing at my hair, wrestling with my coat, ripping twigs and bits of sea grass from the nests.

  And I thought, how long must it have taken? How many failed attempts before the first cormorant figured out just the right way to arrange those sticks so the wind didn’t blow them away? How many eggs slipped out and cracked open on the rocks, or tumbled down into the surf?

  They could have gone somewhere else, somewhere that looked easier. But the easier places have predators hungry for bird meat and eggs, other birds competing for space and food, all sorts of dangers. So really not easy at all.

  If they were going to survive, they had to make life work here. But they didn’t just know how. They made mistakes. They must have.

  They made nests that fell apart. They lost eggs. And slowly, trial after trial, they figured out one piece of the solution, and then another.

  It’s impossible not to see it, once you look. If they hadn’t kept trying, even when they were screwing up more than they were succeeding, there wouldn’t be any cormorants. If they’d given up, they’d have all died out. It didn’t matter how long it took them to find the right way. The trying was what was important.

  All of that went through my head as I looked down at the nests and the long, long fall. My heart was in my throat. And I realized, that’s what I’m really throwing away if I jump. The chance to keep trying. It doesn’t matter if I don’t shine like Shauna. Shauna’s dead. It doesn’t matter if I’m not as confident as you, Leo, or as strong as Tessa. We’re on a cliff, all of us, and surviving isn’t about who’s the best or the brightest. It’s about holding on as long as we can, and trying, and failing, and trying again until we’ve inched a little closer to getting through this.

  If I go back, maybe I’ll screw up again. But maybe I’ll help, if only a little bit. If I walk off the edge of the cliff, that’s the end of everything. I’ll be standing by, letting the virus and the gang and hopelessness win, for the rest of eternity. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. No matter how much the trying hurts.

  Maybe I’m not good at much other than watching, but sometimes when you look, you see things you wouldn’t have otherwise. Important things. Like what’s really scary here, and what the person I am can do about it.

  I want to laugh, and cry, and hug someone, but I’ve got to look after Meredith first.

  Dad knew viruses, but he didn’t know everything. And sometimes he let himself be too scared. Meredith will die if we do nothing. That’s a fact.

  So if I can give her even the smallest chance of surviving, the risks don’t mean a thing.

  Yesterday feels like a million years ago already. Like I walked a long way after coming down from the cliff, even though I went straight to the hospital.

  When I saw the front doors, for a few seconds I couldn’t move. I could only think about coming down those steps with Dad the night before, and the pain tore through me from belly to throat like a gutting knife. My eyes welled up and my stomach lurched.

  But Meredith needed me. I still knew that. Thinking about her got me through the doors.

  I wandered the halls until I found Nell in one of the rooms. As soon as she’d finished checking on the patients, I pulled her aside and told her about the antibody transfusion.

  “I remember that,” she said. “We tried the procedure using a b
lood serum with five of the patients, but it wasn’t successful in the end.”

  “Do you know how to prepare the serum?” I asked, and she nodded.

  “I want to try doing the transfusion one more time,” I said. “With Meredith. I want you to take as much blood as you can from me and give it to her, all of it.”

  “Kaelyn,” she said, “I know you want to help, and I know how awful you must be feeling right now, but I don’t think—”

  “What could it hurt?” I interrupted. “Just once. Just try it. That’s all I’m asking. I need to know we did everything we could.”

  She looked at me sadly for a few seconds, and then she sighed. “All right,” she said. “Give me ten minutes to get the equipment I need, and I’ll meet you in the reception room.”

  So I had my blood taken lying across the reception room chairs. Two times Nell said it was enough, but I didn’t feel that bad, so I insisted we keep going. The third time, my head swam when I raised it.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Good,” she answered. “I was putting my foot down now anyway.”

  She had me drink a couple of juice boxes and eat some stale cookies, and told me to rest in the reception room for a little longer. “If you feel at all out of sorts in the next day or two,” she said, “come straight back here. Don’t hesitate.”

  Then she hurried off to prepare for the procedure.

  I know she’s only doing the transfusion because she figures Meredith’s dying anyway. But the why doesn’t matter. I’m just glad she agreed.

  The sun was almost down when I left. I heard Gav’s footsteps before I made him out, weaving through the cars blocking the road around the hospital. I hesitated on the stairs. He stopped when he saw me. His eyes looked dark in the dim light.

  “Kaelyn,” he said, sounding worried and relieved at the same time, “I’ve been looking for you all afternoon.”

  He moved like he was going to run right to me, but then he seemed to check himself. I thought back to the last time we’d talked. How I’d told him to stay away from me. Right then that seemed almost as ridiculous as what I’d been going to do on the cliff.