We use the generator for only two things. First, the hair clippers. Because me looking like a boy is my family’s highest priority. Second, the treadmill. Because my physical endurance might be the only thing that saves my life one day. Hanging on the wall beside the treadmill is a recently completed embroidery saying, When in Doubt, Run.
I peer up the stairs, see no one, and then run past the zooming treadmill to Dean’s old room. Josh sleeps here now. I move the small table beside his bed and fall to my knees. The carpet is cool against my fingers. I pinch the fibers and lift.
A manhole covers the cement beneath the carpet. I slide it aside and the smell of damp earth oozes out around me. Dropping down into the hole, I look at the food we have stored down here and my mouth waters. Several cans of dehydrated ground-beef substitute and cornmeal are mixed in with countless barrels of beans and rice, but we are saving them for a special occasion—the day my brother comes home. We used to have lentils and barley, too, but we’ve eaten all of that.
Peering at the entrance to the storage room, I pull three bottles off a shelf and take them out of the storage room. With trembling hands, I replace the manhole, cover it with the carpet, and put the table back on top of it. And then, with the three containers in my hands, I dart to my bedroom.
I drag my backpack out from under my bed and unzip it, cramming the three containers of calorie tablets inside, right on top of my spare pair of boys’ underwear, size fourteen, my toothbrush, and toothpaste. Next, I put a water purifier attached to a two-liter bottle inside. When contaminated water is put into the purifier, it is filtered into the two-liter bottle and comes out clean enough to drink. One purifier can clean roughly ninety gallons of water. A person typically needs two liters of drinkable water a day. One purifier should give me clean water for 180 days. I hope that will be enough. Dying of thirst is supposed to be slow and painful.
I fill all the remaining space in the backpack with bullets. Bullets that fit my dad’s Glock. Because if I am going out on my own, I am taking the best gun. The Glock is smaller and lighter than a rifle and has a clip that holds nineteen bullets. I think Dad will understand. And Mom should embroider that onto a piece of fabric: If You Go Out on Your Own, Take the Best Gun.
I shove the backpack under the bed again and go to the still zooming treadmill. I am about to get on when I hear Mom’s hushed voice drift down the basement stairs. I know this tone of voice. It means she is saying something she doesn’t want me to hear. It is the voice that means I need to eavesdrop. Slowly, I creep to the basement stairs and look up. I can’t see anyone, but Mom and Dad are obviously standing in the kitchen and holding a conversation.
“. . . our granddaughter,” Mom says. I frown and creep up two stairs. I can’t be hearing them right, because they don’t have any grandchildren.
“That’s what he said,” Dad answers. “But it wasn’t just them. It was all the women. That’s why he mentioned moving Jack.”
Moving me?
Mom squeaks, and then she starts crying, audible sobs I can hear all the way in the basement. “Why?” she asks between sobs.
“You already know the answer to that, Ellen. It will be worth the risk. We have until morning to decide.”
It won’t matter what they decide because I won’t be here in the morning.
“I’m going to go relieve Rob. You try and get some rest. Be content in the knowledge that the child will be safe.”
I roll my eyes. I am not a child.
Dad walks by the top of the stairs and I press myself against the wall. When he’s past, I go back down and get on the treadmill for the last time. As I jog, my plan runs through my brain over and over again, like water being filtered until the deadliest elements are removed. I hope my plan has been filtered to perfection. I really don’t want to die yet.
To conserve energy, I run two slow miles instead of my customary eight, and when I get off the treadmill, my brain is still going at top speed. After I call good night to my family, I go to my room, take off my sweaty clothes, and get dressed in a white T-shirt, boys’ underpants, boys’ green camouflage pants that have been taken in at the waist, boys’ running shoes, and my tackle vest.
I lie down in bed with my ankles crossed and my hands behind my head and stare at the dark ceiling. My mind is still running. Still filtering. I do not sleep.