| |
Two years and five months. That’s how long my mental breakdown took to boil over. I don’t even know what started it. It was a normal day. But maybe that was it.
Normal.
Easy.
The perfect storm.
Mom and I finished repairing the last solar panel that morning.
The first two died when a large tree branch crashed through the side of the house a few weeks back. It took out both panels, and Dad’s office. We never went in there anyway, so we just sealed that part of the house off and went about our business, and salvaged as much of the panels’ frames as possible. We had learned back in June, the hard way, that trying to repair broken cells was a futile and infuriating endeavor. So we had dismantled them and stacked them in the shed, along with all the other things my mom hoarded.
The third solar panel had flown away just the day before when a freak dust storm kicked up out of nowhere. Ripped it right off its pedestal and sent it flying through the air like a frisbee. Luckily the fourth, and final, panel only flipped over on its side. We found it leaning against the house when the cold woke us up.
There we were at 4a.m. smearing dust off the panels and screwing it back onto its slab of wood. That old frame came in handy, so kudos to Mom’s ‘just in case’ pile.
Mom sure was a trooper. She even had the strength to drive a couple extra screws into the panel for the next freak storm. HNN alerts loved to call them that, ‘freak dust storms’, although they came with such regularity by then.
Anyway, Mom felt good enough to make breakfast and even keep Brooks occupied so I could have alone time.
I tried to convince Howie to meet up at the tree, but he had too much to do that day. So I spent my entire free day alone with myself.
A funny thing happens to the human brain when it runs on fumes and secret candy for two years and five months after a tragedy. Without that comfortable stimulus, it... reboots?
The day started out fine, after the solar panel drama, of course. I wandered around aimlessly for a while and ended up at our tree after all. Standing there, looking up at Howie’s perch, the words he’d spoken not long ago came back to me. //I know.//
The gravity of that statement fell on me. He knew he was my only hope for surviving this mess. And he welcomed the responsibility. I’d spent two years trying to make life go back to normal. But normal was gone. Dad was gone. My dad was gone.
Everything was a blur after that. Just flashes of the day, bits and pieces incongruently scattered across my life. They had me leaning against the base of the tree, catatonic. My dad’s stone rested in my palm, leaning against mine, catatonic. Forever.
It wasn’t him. I had enough sense to know that. But it was him, somehow. Everything I never got to say to him, I thought it that day, staring at our stones. I imagined the girl he wanted me to be when I grew up, taking over the company, having kids of my own.
I knew none of those things would happen. My future died with him that day on our dining room floor. Mom’s future. Brooks’s future. Everything they’d worked for their entire lives, The Rebellion... The Underground... survival. It was all gone. I squeezed our stones together as hard as I could until the rough edges tore into my flesh.
I missed him so much. I never let myself think about it. Too much to do, I told myself. Feed Brooks. Make him take a bath every once in a while. Help Mom as much as I could. Help Howie with Evelyn and his mom. Everything was always so hard, so urgent. There was no time for missing the ones you lost.
I missed my mom. My living, breathing, trying mom. Seeing her moving around earlier, helping, laughing at the how many screws she dropped trying to fix the solar panels. The Mom she was before. I missed her.
And I missed the Mom I knew I’d soon lose. That one day of normalcy was a lie, a tease. I knew that tomorrow she’d be bedridden in agony. Would that be one that did it? When she couldn’t get out of bed ever again? When I came home from a hunt to find her dead?
The world spun around me. Everything closed in on me.
Then I was home.
I found myself in my room with no idea how I got there, blackness all around me. The Fox’s voice wafted toward me from the old PodMate I found at the landfill the week before. Dad’s radio still worked, but the reception was too sketchy. So was our electricity grid. Since Pods didn’t need either, it was better to retire Dad’s ancient radio into my closet pile of his old things. Besides, with the Pods I could even replay any episode in Fox’s backlog. I never bothered, but it was a comfort to know I could.
I looked around the room, still confused about what I was doing there. The lights were off and there was no sound coming from anywhere in the house. It was pitch black outside, too. So not only had I lost time, I’d lost an entire day.
//Howie?//
Minutes passed.
//Howie!//
More minutes. I began to wonder if the world really did end while I was... gone.
//HOWIE!//
//I’m here. Are you alright?//
//I don’t know. I...//
//Stone you scared the hell out of me!// The adrenaline played on voice.
//What happened? It’s dark.//
//You don’t remember?//
//No, I... I was at the tree then... everything just... I don’t know...//
//You freaked out or something. I don’t know, either. You were just screaming in my chip, over and over. I thought someone was...// He didn’t finish that thought, but the mental image leaked through.
I gasped. //What was I saying?//
//You were just screaming ‘Noooo’... ‘Noooo’... ‘Nooooo...// Howie’s voice trailed off. Then he added. //I found you at the tree, just laying there. You looked dead, Synta. You looked dead!// I could feel him crying, feel his heart break when he saw me like that.
I started to say something, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t think.
After a moment Howie came back, calmer. //I picked you up and carried you home. Your mom was white as a ghost when she opened the door.//
//I don’t remember anything past going to the tree this morning...// I clenched my fists to keep from trembling, then frantically checked my pocket. Tears fell as my fingers ran across the familiar lumps. //Oh, Mom. And Brooks... Did Brooks see me like that?//
//No, Brooks was over here with Marcus when it happened, thank Stone. But Syn...//
Silence.
//Yeah?//
Silence.
//That was three days ago.//
Howie’s words hung in the air. It wasn’t possible. Three days?
//Syn, I gotta go. Evelyn’s waking up. Please... please don’t ever do that again.// His fear gutted me.
//I promise.//
I sat there for a few minutes getting my bearings, unable to process the information. Fox’s voice came from the Pod as barely more than a whisper, floating from shadow to shadow around my room before tickling my ears. In complete darkness, after what Howie’d just told me, it was more creepy than comforting.
For the first time, my room felt cavernous. It wanted to swallow me up. I grabbed the PodMate off the night stand and ran to my closet, dragging the covers behind me. Huddled beside Dad’s memorial pile, I hugged the Pod to my chest and turned it up.
Just in time for Fox deliver the news.
“The First Lady is dead.”