The Last Place on Earth (18 page)

“But for you, music is essential.”

He played a few more notes. “You're the only one who understands that about me. Actually, you're the only one who understands me at all.” He slipped his hand in his front pocket and pulled out a plastic guitar pick. “I brought a bunch of these along. I don't even know why.”

“Because you knew I'd come for you. And bring your guitar.”

He smiled—the first real smile I'd seen out of him since I'd gotten here. This was Henry. This was my friend.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked. “Play.”

He shifted in his chair and got into position, his right arm bent over the body of the guitar, his narrow left fingers poised. And then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to play. It was a new song, something I'd never heard before. It was sadder than the songs he usually played, but also richer.

When the final notes drifted out into the darkness, I said, “That was beautiful. Who wrote it?”

“I did.”

“When?”

“Over the last couple of weeks. In my head. I'd close my eyes and pretend I was playing my guitar. And I'd think of you.”

“Henry…”

“Your mom and Peter. I know. I'll figure something out.”

A beam of light darted through the window. Henry said, “Don't worry, it's just Gwendolyn. She's on patrol.”

“But I thought the patrol people walked around the perimeter of the fence.”

“They do. Until they get bored.”

The walls shuddered as Gwendolyn climbed the ladder. When she saw me she said, “Oh.”

“Good to see you, too.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets and leaned against a wall, which could probably give her splinters, but whatever.

“So, what happened at school after I left?”

I thought about it. “A few people were out sick—I thought it was just the flu, but nobody was panicking or anything.”

“No, I mean what was
happening
. Did we win against Buena Park?”

“Win … what?”

“Football.” She gave me a
duh
look.

“Oh—right! Um … I have no idea.”

She looked exasperated. Or maybe just disappointed.

I said, “I talked to a couple of your drill teammates when you disappeared.”

She perked up. “Which ones?”

“Some girl named Bethany Bratt? She's in my math class. A couple others, too, but I don't know their names.”

She nodded. “Did they say anything about replacing me? Or tryouts?” It seemed like a weird thing to be worrying about under the circumstances.

“No. Why would they replace you?”

“If a drill team member has more than two unexcused absences, she is off the squad. No exceptions.” Her voice cracked.

“The end of the world seems like it should be a decent exception.”

“This is not the end of the world!”

“Then why are we here?”

Gwendolyn leaned against the wall. “Removing ourselves from society is the only absolute way to prevent infection. My parents say we have to wait here until people are done dying or until someone discovers a cure, whichever comes first.”

“Until people are done dying,” I repeated, suddenly feeling nauseous.

“My dad keeps talking about our money and what's going to happen to our house. And my mom says we should look on
the bright side
, that with a smaller population, we'll have more opportunities.” Gwendolyn's voice turned shrill. “But what if this is a false alarm and we go back and everything's the same? I won't have my spot on the drill squad anymore! And I'll have failed all my classes, and nobody will like me because I ran away.”

Gwendolyn began to sob. “I miss my dog,” she wailed.

“Her parents took it to the pound,” Henry explained. “Because dogs carry fleas, and fleas carry the Mad Plague.”

“I would have used Frontline on him,” she whimpered. “Every month. That would have gotten rid of any fleas. He could have gone on patrol with me. He was part golden retriever, part beagle, part something else—they never knew what. His name was Mabrey.”

I helped Gwendolyn over to my chair, where she curled up into a ball. “I left my friends without warning them. I could have saved them, but I didn't. If they die, it will be all my fault.”

I said, “It might help if Henry played a song.”

She nodded, and Henry began to play, his sad melody wrapping around us like a silky blanket.

 

Twenty-Five

“YOU GIRLS GET
a move on! Sun's almost up, and we gotta put up all those tomatoes!”

Now there's a string of words, coming from a screeching Mrs. Dunkle, that I never expected to start my day. Any day. But then, I never expected to live in a school bus, either. Life is full of surprises.

I sat up and whacked my forehead against the metal roof. “Ow!”

“Watch your head!” Kirsten chirped from below.

I peered over the side of my bunk. “Put the tomatoes up
where
?”

“Huh?” She looked up from buttoning her shirt. It was solid olive today, a big step up from the camo. Well, a step up, anyway. “Oh!
Putting up
means canning. We're canning tomatoes today. Don't worry. It's easy.”

She unscrewed a jar of glitter powder and whisked some over her cheekbones. “Want some?”

“Sure.” I stuck my pinkie in the pot and dabbed a spot on each cheek. When putting up tomatoes, a girl needs to look her best.

*   *   *

A few words about my experience canning tomatoes: boiling water, slippery fingers, broken glass. Within an hour, Mrs. Dunkle excused me from my duties, which I thought was a good thing until she told me to go clean the bathrooms. All the bathrooms. With bleach.

Did you know that straight bleach can actually burn a hole in your clothes? Neither did I! I didn't know you were supposed to dilute the bleach with water, either. By the second bathroom (there were five), my prized My Little Pony shirt was looking seriously unmagical.

The bathrooms were equally unmagical, or at least unfinished. None were painted, two lacked faucets, and one had a sign taped to the toilet that said
DON'T USE THIS
.

“It's not that big a hole,” Karessa said, checking my T-shirt. She had discovered me in the bathroom off the kitchen, fighting back tears. For once, she didn't have a small child attached to her body. Since the twins were napping, she got to can tomatoes instead. Sometimes you just get lucky.

“But it's a hole.” I poked at it with my fingernail. “I have two shirts, and the one I like
has a hole
.” I'd found the T-shirt at Buffalo Exchange one Saturday when I was shopping with my mother, who was a big believer in recycled fashion. Used or not, the shirt was one of my favorites, even back when I owned more than two shirts.

Karessa leaned down to inspect the damage. “All's you need to patch it is a little piece of white fabric.”

I shook my head. “I can't sew.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Bonus points to me for not adding,
And I can't churn butter or work a loom, either.

She straightened up and shrugged as if to say,
Not a big deal
. “I can fix the shirt for you. Just give it to me in the bus tonight.”

“Seriously? Wow. Thanks.”

Now I was doubly glad for resisting my sarcastic impulse. From what I'd seen, Karessa was a genuinely nice person. As the oldest girl, she was like a second mother to the little Dunkle kids—you know, the nice mother. Karessa worked hard, she never complained, and she did exactly as she was told. So, either she was a genuinely nice person or she was a genuinely nice robot. In the bus tonight, I would listen for mechanical sounds or maybe beeping.

*   *   *

After lunch, Henry's parents asked (told) me to join them upstairs in headquarters. Once again, we sat in molded plastic seats at the long laminate table. Once again, I felt like I'd been called into the principal's office.

At the last minute, Mr. Dunkle burst into the room and claimed the head of the table. Irritation flickered over Mr. Hawking's face, but he forced himself to nod at the other man. Mr. Hawking had apparently located a razor, though not a good one. Dark red nicks covered his smooth cheeks and shiny head.

“We need to find a place and a purpose for you in the community,” Mrs. Hawking announced.

“What community?”

“This community. Here. The compound.”

“Oh.”

“According to Mrs. Dunkle, your kitchen skills are … lacking.” Her eyes flickered to my hands, which had amassed an impressive collection of burns, one of which was starting to turn yellow.

“Whaddaya expect?” Mr. Dunkle said. “Dad gone, mom working all day, nothing but convenience foods in the freezer.”

Mrs. Hawking's face tightened. She worked longer hours than my mother, and her pantry had always been way better stocked with snacks than mine.

Ignoring Mr. Dunkle, she continued, “And the job you did on the bathrooms … did you really not know that you're supposed to rinse off the bleach?”

My face burned. “Um … at home we just use those premoistened wipes to clean. And a Swiffer.”

She nodded. “We don't use premoistened wipes here. Bleach, vinegar, rags—that's all you need. Much cheaper, much more versatile.”

In my family, we saved money on cleaning products by not cleaning very often. But then, the Hawkings used a cleaning service. They weren't exactly bleach experts, either.

“In any event,” Mr. Hawking said, “there must be some way you can make yourself useful. Do you have any experience with, say, carpentry?”

“You mean like, building stuff?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“How about sewing?”

“No.”

“Knitting?”

“Definitely no.”

“Gardening?”

Mrs. Hawking answered that one for me. “Kadence said she kept pulling out the seedlings along with the weeds.”

I gritted my teeth. First Kadence threatens to impale me with an arrow, and now this. Just when I thought we were becoming pals. She was the most treacherous eight-year-old I had ever met.

“Have you ever hunted?” Mr. Hawking asked. “Or fished?”

I shook my head.

“Beekeeping?” He looked doubtful.

“I read a book about it!” Points for not adding,
when I was imprisoned underground
. “But … not really.”

“What about gutting deer? Or tanning hides?” Mr. Hawking said.

“You're kidding, right?”

Mrs. Hawking sighed—twice. The first time it was quiet and involuntary, the second loud enough to let me know that she found me completely useless. In case I hadn't noticed. “There must be
something
you can do.”

“I can draw. And … I'm pretty good at algebra.” There must be other stuff, but that was all I could come up with.

Mr. Dunkle leaned forward. “You know what good those skills will do in the new world? Zero.”

The Hawkings exchanged a look.

“I volunteered at an art camp last summer,” I said. “So maybe I could work with the kids. Teach them some stuff about art or maybe help them catch up on their schoolwork.”

Mr. Dunkle perked up at that one. “Babysitting!”

“Not exactly. What I had in mind was—”

“That might free up Karessa a bit.” He was nodding. “Give her more of a chance to help out her mother. This one”—he pointed at me—“could take over changing the diapers and giving the little kids their baths.”

I said, “I meant helping out with the older kids. I've done some babysitting in my neighborhood, but they're all out of diapers. And at camp we weren't allowed to touch anyone. Like, at all. So I've never—”

“Fine,” Mrs. Hawking said. “From now on, Daisy's in charge of the twins.”

Mr. Hawking scowled at Mr. Dunkle and cleared his throat, which was clearly intended as a statement of some kind. When the bearded blond man didn't react, Mr. Hawking said, “You can go tell your wife.”

After Mr. Dunkle left, I stood up, my brain swirling. Sassy, the girl twin, was adorable, but how was I going to control her demonic little brother?

Mr. Hawking did that throat-clearing thing again, directed at me this time. As I am not fluent in Ahem, I was semigrateful when his wife translated. “Daisy. Please sit.”

Mrs. Hawking had always had a severe look about her, with that narrow face and perpetually pursed mouth. Now her cheeks were even more sunken, and there were circles under her eyes. She had taken to wearing bobby pins in an effort to control her hair.

I braced myself for yet another speech about my general uselessness. Instead, this:

“My great-grandparents came to America from Italy.”

“Right.” I knew that already.

“They arrived with no money, no English, and few connections. Their lives were hard, and their children's lives were hard, and their children's children's.”

Here I lost track of the generations. All I knew about Henry's mother was that both parents died when she was young, and she wound up living with a distant aunt. Henry said this was why she was so focused on worst-case scenarios: Because when she was a kid, anything that could go wrong did go wrong.

Mrs. Hawking blinked several times, trying to find the right words. “What we want you to know, Daisy, is that our reservations about you have nothing to do with your ethnicity. We do not condone any kind of prejudice, and we have raised our son to judge people by who they are and not where they came from.”

“Isn't it better not to judge anyone at all?” I said.

Mr. Hawking cleared his throat.

“You should go find the twins,” Mrs. Hawking said.

 

Twenty-Six