Two Days Ago
I had a theory and no one would listen. Not my mother. Forget Mr. Scronce. Even my father had brushed me off. Too busy, as usual.
No adult would believe me. Not a single one.
Or was there?
I picked up the phone and dialed. A secretary answered. “Hemlock High School.”
I said, “Mr. Watkins, please.”
By the time he got on the line, he asked, “Ruthie? To what do I owe the pleasure? I’m looking at my clock and it seems either Daylight Savings Time crept up on me or you’re late for school. Everything all right?”
I nearly hung up on him. I couldn’t take yet another rejection. But I needed to trust him, trust someone in a position of authority or power—the very definition of an adult, at least when compared to me, a teenager. I said, “I’m not coming to school, Ian.”
“Calling me by my first name. Now we’re getting somewhere. Why not?”
Now or never, I thought. “It’s not safe out there.”
I heard him close the door to his office. “Not safe, how?”
“It’s not something I can tell you over the phone. I need to meet in person. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”
He was silent a moment. “What time and where?”
I could’ve done nothing. I could’ve just buried my head in the proverbial sand. Or I could’ve tried to rally the town’s kids like some kind of crazy Paul Revere—the adults are coming! The adults are coming! But I still held out hope that someone in authority could help. Who would understand. I mean, isn’t that what they always tell us? “Let me try and understand.”
Besides, I was running out of options.
So my guidance counselor and I arranged to meet someplace private, someplace open, and for me, somewhere I knew like the back of my hand—a wooded area near the middle of the island, away from any neighbors. Yet, as I walked to our rendezvous, it was too much like the wooded area I had run through when the sheriff chased me. Desolated, exposed, and a place filled with shadow and decay. I felt a foreboding and was tempted to flee. I only stayed because, really, what else could I do?
It was upsetting that something so special to me—memories of walking here with my father—were becoming tarnished, and I had to fight to hold onto the original feelings of this place.
I hid behind a tree, waiting until I heard footsteps and peered carefully over the bark to make sure Ian Watkins was alone. My only precaution was to call Max before I left, but I’d only reached his voicemail. Ian stepped through the forest dressed in jeans, button-down shirt, and brown dress shoes that were slathered in mud. He checked the time on his phone and waited in that uncomfortable I’m-alone-but-I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-myself way until I was sure he hadn’t brought the sheriff along with him.
“Ian?” I said and stood up, revealing myself.
“There you are. How long have you been waiting?” Something about him told me he’d never been in a forest, and he fidgeted, swatting at bugs.
“Not too long.”
“Thought you might be pulling a prank on me.” He lifted his feet, one at a time, trying to scrape his shoes clean. “So, what’s so important you could only tell me in person?”
“You really didn’t tell anyone you were meeting me?”
“When I get a chance to play Deep Throat, I take it seriously.”
“Deep what?”
“It’s a Watergate—never mind. I’m alone and I’m all ears.”
“I think,” I said and then paused. Now that I had someone who might take me seriously, I didn’t want to blow it. “You know about the Solomon family, right?”
“Everyone does. A real tragedy.”
I told him about Miss Lauer and her niece and nephew and then about the sheriff and Jose. To my surprise, he didn’t seem shocked.
Ian said, “Jose wasn’t in school today.”
“That’s because he’s dead.”
He digested what I’d told him. “Have you told anyone else?”
“My mother. Mr. Scronce. They didn’t believe me.”
He turned around, it seemed to make sure we were alone.
“If what you’re telling me about the sheriff is true, we need to call someone. The Washington State Police. The F.B.I.”
“It’s more than just the sheriff.”
He slapped his arm, killing a mosquito. “I don’t understand.”
“Have you ever heard of animal behavior infanticide?”
“That’s when animals eat their young, right?”
I nodded and explained about my hamsters, then Miss Lauer’s rooster, Mario, a species not known to take part in animal behavior infanticide. I told him about the oil spill and the dispersant and my theory that people had come into contact with the chemical, and it was now acting like an infection. Changing them.
“And you think Mr. Solomon, your old neighbor Miss Lauer and the sheriff were all…infected?”
There it was. Stated out loud. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself, but I desperately wanted something to make sense.
“Ruthie.” The way he spoke was the way a doctor might talk to a delusional patient.
I listed all the research I found on the Internet and added, “These things happen. They happen all the time. Think of Mad Cow, a disease transmitted after people ate infected cows. It sounds so stupid, just the name alone, but millions of cows were slaughtered to stop its spread. Pigs and chickens too, for different diseases. I’m telling you, that chemical affected our food supply, and now we’ve been exposed. How else can you explain everything?”
He said simply, “I can’t.”
“What about kids missing school? All the empty chairs I saw in class?”
He stopped, his eyes searching the ground.
I asked, “What are you not telling me?”
He found my eyes. “I have been getting a lot of odd excuses from parents.”
“What if I’m right?”
“Ruthie.” That tone again.
“If I’m wrong, you have nothing to lose. But if I’m not?” At stake was everything.
He smiled. “Surprised you aren’t on the debate team. We might’ve gone to Nationals.”
Suddenly, he sneezed. When he drew his hand from his nose, there was blood. He must’ve seen my face, for it betrayed my fear.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“The sheriff, Miss Lauer. They all….”
“Had a bloody nose?” He tilted his head back to stem the flow. “I told you before. Allergies. Who knows what’s blooming out here this time of year?”
He took a step toward me, and I took a step back.
“Ruthie, I came out here—all by myself—to meet an underage female student in a very peculiar circumstance. Out in the woods. You know the risk I’m taking? What you could accuse me of and it would be your word against mine?”
Confused, I stuttered, “I’m sorry….”
Blood still trickled down his chin. To prove his point, he said, “See? I’m not a zombie.”
“They’re not zombies. They’re like themselves. That’s what’s so scary.”
“Look, I’m not saying I believe you. I mean, you’re standing there accusing me of going sci-fi-movie-of-the-week on you. But there’s enough wrong with Jose missing that I think we should call for help. And whether it’s from the oil spill, human nature gone bad or thunderbolts from Zeus, it’ll be someone else’s problem.” He saw my hesitancy and added, “I trusted you enough to meet you. Will you trust me?” He held out his hand, motioning me forward.
As an answer, I moved toward him.
“Good.”
Someone had taken a leap of faith with me, a leap of faith for me. My muscles relaxed and a wave of relief passed through my body.
As I approached Ian, he curled his arm around me with a platonic hug. He smiled, warm and comforting, and then in a second, like a trick of the light, his eyes shifted into dark orbs, his face a mask, empty of expression.
Before I could run, his hands were around my neck. He slammed me to the forest’s floor. The weight of his body over me, trapping me, I kicked and floundered uselessly. Precious seconds dripped away, my heart slamming against my ribcage, my body screaming for air, heat enveloping me, my chest on fire for breath. Above me, his face was cold, calm and still, the last image I would ever see. My eyes felt like bursting, pressure building within every vein, darkness creeping on the edges. I was drowning in a sea of carbon dioxide.
I could not exhale, I could not inhale, I was trapped between breaths.
I didn’t want to die.
There was no flash of life or memories before me. No light at the end of the tunnel. Only darkness expanding toward the center, an inkblot of despair.
I couldn’t scream. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
I straddled the world of the living and the world of the dead.
Then I saw an angel.
It was Max. He flickered into my field of vision.
The darkness was near-total, my heart reaching a crescendo, a timpani pulsing in my heart, chest and fingertips, as Max hefted a rock, his arms struggling under its weight, and dropped it on Ian Watkins’s skull.
Instantaneously, the pressure released and I gasped, a draught of air that can only be described as life itself, for that’s what it was. My body settled, calm replacing terror, my eyes seemingly falling back into their sockets, a sense of warm liquid suffusing every inch of my body. I floated peacefully, wondering if I hadn’t died after all.
“Ruthie,” Max said. “Are you okay?”
The peacefulness vanished, giving way to a pounding headache, the worst I’d ever known. I felt so horrid I almost yearned to die and croaked, “I’m alive.”