Two Days Ago
I walked with Sasha, Max, and Theo back to his car, our faces wet with tears. Even the act of placing one foot in front of another, usually so easy, so unconscious, required effort. The slightest breeze might blow us over, as if we were cardboard cutouts.
I should’ve been on that bus. I could’ve done something.
Or maybe I would’ve drowned, the bus my coffin.
They must be so cold down there.
Sasha broke our silence. “Why would she do it? Wouldn’t you think there’d be something inside her that would try and fight it? Some part of her that would stop?”
“Maybe,” Max said. “It just shows how strong the infection is.”
“Lord knows,” I said, “she must’ve hated those kids. Hated being a bus driver. Babysitting them day after day.” Theo looked at me, surprised by my cynicism. “You wouldn’t know, Theo, but some of those kids made her life hell.” I remembered their taunts, mocking her skeletal weight, the sharp features of her face—witch-like, they’d said and laughed. “Everybody has a breaking point. Maybe the infection only made it easier.”
Theo glanced back at the ocean. “Doesn’t mean they deserved it.”
“No one deserves it. I’m just trying to understand.”
As Theo put his hand on the door handle, we heard a scream. I thought it might be our imaginations, a ghostly echo from what we’d seen. Then it happened again.
A scream from below the cliff.
Sasha and I ran back to the edge and looked down. Near the bottom was a person, emerging from the ocean, four-legging himself onto land. It was Renzo.
Upon seeing us, he waved his hands. “Hey! Hey! Help me!”
“Theo! Max! Come quick!” I shouted. “Someone made it out!”
Theo and Max soon joined us, and we couldn’t do anything but wait as Renzo slowly scaled the rocks, careful not to slip, moving in a switchback fashion, first to the left, then to the right, in order to give him purchase up the slope. We were hypnotized by this sign of life, moving closer and closer.
When he reached the top, Max, bless his soul, reached out and helped pull Renzo up. Renzo was soaked, his hair matted to his head, and he panted, exhausted. He took note of Max’s kindness. “Thanks, man.”
Theo asked, “Did anyone else make it?”
“Not that I saw.” Renzo coughed and wiped his face. “They woulda come out by now.” He bent over, catching his breath. “We thought it was a joyride, you know? The younger kids, they loved it. They were screaming ‘faster, faster!’ And then….” Renzo rose to our level. “Kids were screaming. Water rushed inside and something took over and I had to get out of there.”
Suddenly, Max punched Renzo in the face. Renzo reeled as Theo grabbed Max.
“What the hell?” Theo blurted.
“You think it’s a coincidence he’s the only one who made it out?” Max turned to Renzo. “How many kids did you step over? How many did you push out of the way?”
Renzo was too tired to fight back and only massaged his jaw. “I wanted to save ’em. I tried—”
“Liar!”
“You weren’t there! I couldn’t save them. I wish to God I could, but I couldn’t.”
Theo took hold of Max’s arm. “Let it go, Max.”
Max pushed him off. “I say we leave him. The same way he left them.”
“No,” Renzo yelped. “Crazy shit’s going down. Don’t leave me out here.”
“We know what he did to survive,” Max argued. “We know. And he’s what we’re saving? Him?”
Theo tried to calm him down. “It’s the right thing to do.”
“The right thing?” Max shook his head and looked to me for support.
“Max,” I said. “It’s over.” I saw the disappointment on Max’s face, but he stayed silent. Max might’ve been right, but we couldn’t afford to go after each other. We needed to stick together, and the more of us, the better.
Moments later we packed into the Roadmaster, one side of it completely wrecked. Theo and Sasha sat in front, Max and Renzo in the back with me sandwiched between, making sure they didn’t come to blows.
I’d wanted to warn the kids at school. After the bus…accident? Incident? Massacre? I wasn’t sure if the school was even safe to visit. “Theo,” I said. “We should head back home.”
Without a word, he turned the ignition and started back the way we came.
Theo pulled up outside of our house. As evidenced by their cars, Mom and Mr. Scronce were uncharacteristically home early.
We stepped out of the car and Theo said, “Thank God, Mom’s safe.”
As we approached the front door, we heard raised voices, an argument in progress. It seemed like history repeating. My mother and father had argued, the arguments growing in frequency and duration and then petering out. That was the most dangerous time, I discovered, when the fighting ended, when they didn’t even care to fight anymore.
Theo said to the others, “Maybe it’d be better if you all waited out here.”
“We’ll be okay,” Sasha said, though she looked uneasily at Max and Renzo.
Theo opened the door and once inside, he slammed the door to signal our presence. “That better be them,” we heard Mr. Scronce say before he entered the hallway, a scowl etched on his face. Seeing us, he said, “So both of you skipped school. I might’ve expected this kind of behavior from Ruthie, but you?”
“We can explain—” Theo started.
“I don’t want an explanation. I want an apology.”
“They’re dead, they’re all dead!” I screamed. “The kids on the bus. Go and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“It’s the truth,” added Theo.
Mr. Scronce rubbed his head as if massaging away a migraine.
“Theo,” Mom said, “you don’t have to cover for your sister.”
“I’m not covering for her! The bus! It went over a cliff!”
“Theo, listen,” she said. “Listen! We’re not doing this again. We went over to Miss Lauer’s already. This is enough.”
“This isn’t about Miss Lauer! You know what it’s like at school. Kids are missing. Don’t you wonder why?”
Mr. Scronce peered out the front door’s window and saw the damage to Theo’s car. He threw his hands in the air. “You know, I don’t care. I just don’t care.”
I said, “Why won’t you listen to us?”
He looked apoplectic. “Listen to you? I’ve tried to talk to you for months, only to get an eye-roll or silence. Why won’t I listen?” He took a deep breath. “I’m through with this,” and he stomped off into the bedroom. My mother gave me a look of death and quickly followed.
“Greg, wait.”
I was scared of what might happen, so I followed, too, watching from the hallway.
In the bedroom, Mr. Scronce opened his closet door, grabbed a suitcase and flayed it open on the bed, throwing clothes haphazardly into it.
“What are you doing?” My mother asked.
“What’s it look like?” He moved staccato-like, back and forth between the bed and closet.
“Don’t do this. You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, I most certainly do.”
“Why? Where will you go?”
“The inn.”
“Please, Greg.”
“Don’t please me, Julie. I’ve put in my time. I’ve been a good boy. I tried. I’d like someone else to pick up the slack.” His closet was nearly empty, his suitcase impossibly full. He had a hard time getting the zipper to close, so he sat on the suitcase, flattening it. It still wouldn’t close, and his frustration rose.
“Screw it!” He picked it up, awkwardly holding it together, a few shirts dangling from the seam, and barged out. He said to me as he passed, “Happy now?”
He got to the doorway, and Theo stepped out of his way.
My mother came screaming from the hall. “Greg, don’t go!”
“I can’t handle it anymore, Julie. I’m going away for a couple days but when I come back, I want you gone. You hear me? Gone.” His eyes fell on me, narrowing with rage. “Especially you.”
He opened the door, only to see Max, Renzo, and Sasha outside. Without hesitation, he stomped past, popped open his trunk and threw in the suitcase. He was in the driver’s seat when my mother reached him. She tried to open the door, but he locked it before she lifted the handle.
“Greg, please,” she said, desperately banging on the window. “Talk to me.”
I hated seeing her like this. So needy. So in love.
Mr. Scronce didn’t even look at her. He checked his rear-view, backing up quickly, nearly running over Mom’s foot, forcing her to jump back. Once on the road, he switched gears and pressed the gas, pebbles splattering from his tires.
“Greg!” My mother ran next to him and then after him, but within seconds, he was beyond her reach. Winded, she stopped in the road, watching as his car disappeared around the bend and out of her life.
I wish I could say I was happy. This is what I’d wanted all along. But not like this. It’s like the universe heard my wish, but heard it wrong, garbled, and messed it up.
Mr. Scronce, I knew, didn’t deserve my mother. She was better off. She would be. In time.
She stood gazing in the distance, statue-still, and no one spoke. We all waited for the moment to pass, and it didn’t. It just stuck. Renzo, Max, and Sasha looked at me, unsure of what they should do. I walked up to my mother, gravel crunching beneath my feet, sounding incredibly loud. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
She didn’t respond for the longest time. Then she mumbled.
“What?”
With her face still turned from me, she said, “Your fault. This is your fault.”
I couldn’t believe it. My mother would never say such a thing. I stepped back, horror and sadness spreading through me and understood: she must be infected.
God, no.
I didn’t run from her. She was my mother. I would not abandon her.
But I had to know for sure and grabbed onto her. “Mom?” She swiveled toward me, and there, as I expected, was her face.
But it was normal. No nosebleed. No faraway look.
Only tears.
Her voice was hollow. “You finally got your revenge, didn’t you? I had an affair and you punished me for it. My own daughter.”
Facing me, she saw the group of us—Max, Renzo, Sasha, and Theo standing near the door, a silent audience. Unlike Mr. Scronce, her face flushed with embarrassment. No, I thought: humiliation. My mother walked ahead of me, not once looking back, past my friends and inside the house without saying a word.
I was the worst daughter ever.
Theo stared and I could tell some part of him blamed me, too.
Max said to me as I went inside, “Take your time. We’ll be all right.”
As much as I wanted to comfort my mother, as much as I wanted to correct her, and as much as I felt somewhat responsible, too many people had died, and I feared more would if we didn’t get off the island. She could hate me for as long as she wanted, as soon as she was safe somewhere else.
I would make sure she had the luxury of hating me.
My mother slumped to the bedroom, the fight drained from her, emotionless, and laid down in a fetal position on the bed, facing away. The air in the room was heavy, as if the air itself felt despair. I sat on the bed next to her. It reminded me of the days when she would soothe me when I had nightmares as a child, only our roles were now reversed.
Theo watched from the doorway.
“Mom,” I said as soothing as I could, “let’s all go for a trip. What do you think? Somewhere on the mainland. You can even go to a nice place by yourself, maybe a spa. When’s the last time you got a pedicure, like a real pedicure with all the pampering? It’s probably been years.” She didn’t respond. “Mom, are you listening?”
Mom lay still on the bed, her body rising with her breath.
Theo said from the door, “Mom, we need to leave.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“No, not just this home,” he said. “This place. This island. People are dying. They’re not acting like themselves. And I think it might be contagious.”
When she didn’t respond, I said, “If you don’t believe me, or Theo, then I can bring Max and Sasha and even Renzo in here and you can interrogate them one by one to see if their stories match.” No reaction. “I know you’re mad at me. I know I’ve been a disappointment. And I promise I’ll be a better daughter. But I’m begging you. We have to leave.”
She said, her voice so soft I had to lean in to hear, “I remember holding you as a baby. I could never get enough of your baby smell. Wiggling your little toes. Watching you learn to walk and talk. It was all such a miracle. You grew so fast. So fast.” Her voice cracked, tired. “I barely recognize you now. You’re like a stranger. I know I gave birth to you, but I don’t see any part of me in you. You’re…foreign. An alien.”
I waited for her, thinking she might say something kind.
The room went quiet.
She asked, “Do you love me?”
I might have hated my mother sometimes, but I always loved her. “Course I do.”
“Then prove it.”
I looked at Theo and he shrugged. I said, “How?”
“Kill yourself.”
Now
“That’s when I knew that my mother had…changed.” It’s one thing to watch other adults, people on the periphery of your life, the great mass of authority figures, all blend into a shade of gray. But to see your own mother, one of the few constants of life, transform into someone they aren’t and never should be? There are no words.
Detective Perez asks, “Did she have a bloody nose?”
I nod.
She hesitates before asking, and I know the question before she asks. “What did you do?”
Not enough, I think. Not nearly enough.