We go to the basement. His room is off a family room area. He pulls his shirt off on his way to the bedroom. I stay away while he gets dressed and occupy myself with the pictures on his wall. In one, Luke is in the sand, just his head sticking out, while his sisters flank him. In another, Rachel and Luke stand next to a Christmas tree. She wears a large football jersey while he wears a glittery purple jacket that doesn’t fit across his broad shoulders. They hold out wrapping paper with “to Luke” and “to Rachel” scrawled largely. The presents were mislabeled, reversed. They played along.
Luke emerges. “Don’t let anyone in, unless you know them.” He’s changed his pants and added a belt. And his gun. He pulls on an undershirt as he talks to me. Between the gun and his chest, it’s hard to focus.
“I know, I know,” I say as his abs disappear behind the wall of his white undershirt.
He grabs a black shirt and starts buttoning it up. “And Quinn, Ginger is upstairs. You might want to—”
“Sure, I can help however,” I say. It would give some purpose to this quarantine-within-a-quarantine.
Luke stops buttoning. He steps toward me with the upper flap of his shirt dangling. He rubs my shoulder. “Actually, can you keep your distance? I don’t want her catching whatever this is.” His hands stop moving and his thumbs press into my arms before he draws me to him. He hugs me, hard.
“I get it, Luke.” And I do. I’m a freak. He’s a freak. Our fates are tied to this unknown contagious disease. But Ginger’s doesn’t have to be.
Luke kisses the top of my head and steps away, grabbing the remote. The TV lights up. It’s already on a cable news channel.
Sure enough, there’s coverage of our tiny little town.
My parents will find out. They’ll worry about me when they don’t have time to worry about me. My dad is busy. Always busy. And my mom is doing important work too. But this is likely to pierce their world, whether I tell them or not. But why should I call them? They can’t even visit and hug me and stuff me with delicious French food from Geni’s. Whether they’re the next county over or in Japan, there’s an impenetrable wall between us made up of Virginia state troopers. Even my dad won’t have enough sway to break through.
The reporter talks over scenes shot from a helicopter showing the state troopers stopping cars and setting up barricades. They only have three clips, which they show over and over again as the correspondent asks an expert questions: the barricade being set up, cars being stopped and a bunch of students in the campus center reacting to the news that they’re in a quarantine.
I concentrate on what the expert is saying. He has a familiar voice. Peachy!
“The CDC has been advising us on this case. We are now fairly confident it’s a contagion. However, the federal government does not have the authority to take over because, as far as we know, the condition has not crossed state lines. The Virginia state governor has decided not to request federal aid.”
They flash to a clip of Governor Marshal, outside, trees in the background and a swipe of wind occasionally disrupting his otherwise pruned-to-perfection hair. I grew up hearing my dad rant and rail against Marshal. That was before Marshal was governor, but Virginia politicians bump into each other a lot on the journey ever upward. I’m sure my dad thinks this refusal of federal aid is inane.
Governor Marshal has a slight drawl, not dissimilar to Luke’s, and it lulls in his reasoning. “Virginia can take care of her own.”
He says “take care of her own” more like a mafia boss than a doting mother. I shiver.
Luke must notice, because he comes behind me and pulls me to him, in a backward bear hug. His chin rests on the top of my hair.
Peachy continues. “We haven’t nailed down the specifics, but the current theory is that this disease spreads through an exchange of fluid—similar to the way mononucleosis spreads, through kissing and sharing drinks. It also appears, again, from the limited cases available, that the purple eyes emerge in a later stage, so the carrier has the disease for about a week before the change in eye color manifests.”
“This is just so scary,” the correspondent adds, unhelpfully. “These scenes we’re looking at, they’re like something out of a movie.”
Except they’re just replaying the same scenes again. Barricade. Cars. Students. Barricade. Cars. Students.
“But, unlike a movie, some people want to get in to the quarantine,” she says. Finally, they change the footage. Swarms of people congregate in a tiny town nearby. Some are in wheelchairs, others have oxygen tanks or tubes up their noses. Others merely look frail, as though the act of standing is the most triumphant thing they’ve done all month. They hold signs.
Let Us Heal.
Don’t Sentence Me to Death.
The Disease is a Gift.
The correspondent continues. “There are rumors about the miraculous healing qualities of the disease. Some of the terminally ill are desperate to catch it.”
“That would be premature,” Peachy says as he rubs his chin. “There’s still so much we don’t know about this condition.”
“Can you tell us any more about the nature of this disease? How contagious is it?” the correspondent asks. I’m beginning to wonder if the correspondent has the ability to listen. “Do we know where this came from?”
“Well, it’s too soon to make official statements, but—” Peachy barrels on, apparently unaware that a televised interview of someone with health and human services might translate to official statement, “—bare research shows this disease is unlike any we have seen before in nature. My hunch?” He leans in, as though he’s telling a super superb secret on live national television. “This was created in a lab.”
Luke squeezes me a little tighter. I wrap my fingers around one of his hands.
“If that’s the case,” the correspondent says as though she has a trick up her sleeve, “then the federal government can take over. Even if it doesn’t cross state lines, they have the authority in situations that pose a threat to national security.”
“Well, technically that’s correct,” Peachy says. “But it’s unlikely...”
I turn around, into Luke. My chin on his chest. “Why would someone set this disease on us?”
“I don’t know.” His head bends toward mine and he rests his lips on the top of my hair.
As my hands slide around Luke’s shirt, feeling the warmth, feeling him breathe, the reporter lists all the potential political targets in Allan.
Shit.
Part of me wants to swivel back around, but another part loves the way everything feels when my forehead is touching Luke’s breastbone. I wait. She lists so many that it has me breathing easier. First, the professors: a professor who published a controversial book on Israel and Palestine, a professor who had some not so nice things to say about China, and a professor who spent some time in North Korea. And then the students: a CEO’s granddaughter, a federal judge’s daughter, the president’s beloved nephew, and the daughter of an ambassador.
I look at Luke. He just stares into me before pressing his lips to my head.
Good. He doesn’t know.
Peachy smiles his smile. “Poe is a prestigious university a couple hours from Washington, D.C. Of course they will have some elite professors and students. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t simply a leak, similar to SARS or...”
As they continue to bob and weave and rant, Luke tightens his hug around me before relinquishing it all together and continuing buttoning his shirt. “I’ll come back and check on you soon.”
“I’m fine,” I say.
He cups my cheek in his hands and draws me in. I run my fingers along the back of his neck as he kisses me. All our diseased germs commingling. He touches my rib where it had been bruised. His fingers slip under my shirt, lifting the fabric along my skin. It isn’t sexual, not really, but there’s something deeply intimate about the way his thumb glides along my now healthy rib. The rib that had pierced my internal organs just days ago. “I don’t want anything else to happen to you.”
“I’ll be fine, really.” I move my hands down his chest but there’s a jab in my stomach when my wrist hits his gun. I had forgotten he had it. My spine tenses. He doesn’t notice.
He rests his forehead on mine. “Call me if you need me.”
He gives some instructions on locking up, and then he’s gone.
I stand, mesmerized by the talking heads on the screen. The flashing of the same footage over and over. I watch it so much I start to pay attention to the background. Zachary and Rashid are in the shot. They’re at a table, tablet and notepad before them. Working. Even in a crisis. Zachary is pointing something out to Rashid. He’s explaining something to him.
And then the state troopers come up again. The barricades. I have to wait patiently for it to loop back. There was some germ of an idea that crept into my brain.
And Zachary and Rashid are back.
I pinch my nose. It’s like something in my subconscious is there. It’s screaming but I can’t make out what it’s saying.
Zachary is explaining something to Rashid. Zachary is explaining something to Rashid.
My thoughts can’t formulate though, because Ginger creaks down the steps. She walks so slowly—a nudge against the wood, a soft sigh, another nudge of wood—I know it’s her, and not Rachel, before I see her.
“Ginger, Luke wants me to stay away from you,” I say. “I don’t want you getting whatever this is.”
But she keeps descending the steps. When she gets to the bottom, she eyes me like she’s a bull and I’m the rodeo clown. She walks toward me. I back up and back up, hands outreached, protesting. “Luke doesn’t want you to get this.”
As I stumble into the couch, she says, “But I do.”
She gets close enough to hold my shoulders. If she was stronger than me, which she definitely isn’t, she’d be pinning me down. But as it is, I simply stay in her control out of a sort of respect.
“Quinn, I know this is strange, but will you kiss me?” Her sharp, green eyes, the eyes Luke used to have, shimmer. Her shoulders bend and her chin goes to her chest as she waits for my response.
Shit. What am I supposed to say? “Ginger, I think you’re awesome, it’s just, I’m not that kind of girl...”
My joke doesn’t illicit so much as a smirk. Ginger leans back, curling her hands. All her movements look taxing. “I need this disease. But Luke is already on to me. He locked up his toothbrush. He washes every dish he uses immediately. Just kiss me, it would be medicinal, like CPR. We can close our eyes and just do it.”
I stand and take a couple steps back, arms outstretched. “Ginger, you don’t want this. They don’t even know what it is. I mean, we could all drop dead in a week.”
She slides off the couch, knees on the ground, eyes up, hands clutched together. “Don’t you understand? I’m going to die anyway. And it will be a long, slow battle downward.”
She doesn’t clutch or scramble or scream anymore. She looks at the carpet, the beige, uniform carpet between the wood-paneled walls of their rather regular-looking basement. A curled smile erupts on her face, but tears wash it out. “Whatever this is,” she whispers, “it might save me.”
I take three more steps back and clear my throat. “Luke doesn’t want you to get it.” I’m a broken record.
Her shoulders slump, she kneels down and pulls at the carpet. She chuckles, a weird, dark chuckle. “I used to be the one telling him what to do.” Her grotesque giggles grow more ferocious until she’s shaking and her hands rub her arms. Even that kind of self-comfort takes such careful movements. I kneel across from her.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think I can be a part of it.”
The corners of her eyes grow thick with water. “I just want to live.”
I don’t see it coming, but something rushes through my chest. Compassion? Deviousness? Are they ever the same?
I grab a cup of water that’s been on the coffee table. I do my best loogies. I spit in it until my mouth is raw and set it down on the table.
Her shaking, unsteady hand reaches for the cup. As she grasps it, she closes her eyes. “Thank you.”
“I should leave,” I say, but to no one in particular.
She nods, but I’m not sure if it’s to what I said or if she is bowing to the cup, a prayer to the disease.