This World We Live In (The Last Survivors, Book 3) (8 page)

Matt and Jon got in around 4:00. Last week they brought back two huge bags of fish and a sister-in-law. This time al they had was a half bag.

"We stayed as long as we could," Jon said.

"There was hardly any fish. Everyone was gone."

"Put on some dry clothes," Mom said. "We'l be fine with what you caught."

But we al knew we wouldn't be. We'l go through the fish in no time, and then it'l be five people with food for four. I can tel myself over and over that I'm used to being hungry, that it isn't so bad, but it is bad and I hate it. I just hate being cold and lonely and dirty more.

The first thing Matt did was go to Syl and hug her so hard I thought she'd choke. "I kept thinking what if you're not here," he said. "What if you left while I was gone?"

"Why would I do that?" Syl asked, which wasn't exactly the same as "I love you and need you and wil never ever leave you."

Matt pul ed away from her and then he noticed.

"What did you do to your hair?" he said. "Mom, did you make Syl cut her hair off? Was it so she should look like shit, the same as the rest of us?"

"No, Matt," I said. "Mom tried to talk her out of it."

It didn't seem like the right time to explain about offerings to the moon goddess Diana.

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"I was tired of it," Syl said. "It was a nuisance to keep clean. Besides, this way I look like I belong."

"You don't belong," Matt said. "Don't you understand? I love you because you're different from everything I've been stuck with this past year."

"I'm sick of you, too!" Jon shouted. "I don't want to be in this stupid family, either!"

"Matt, you go upstairs," Mom said. "You and Syl both. Take your fight to your room. And change into dry clothes while you're up there."

"Mom, you can't keep tel ing me what we should do," Matt said.

"Yes, I can," Mom said. "As long as you live under my roof. Now go!"

Syl took Matt's hand and led him out.

"Miranda, take the bag offish and put it in the garage," Mom said. "Now."

"Can I put my coat on first?" I asked.

"No back talk!" Mom said. "Get out."

I grabbed the pathetic half-ful bag of smel y, disgusting, uncleaned fish and went out into the cold, dreary, rainy day. When I got to the garage (which in al honesty took about ten seconds), I realized I didn't have the key to the padlock. I was stuck outside in the cold, dreary rain until Mom came to her senses.

I didn't know how long it would take Matt to fal in love with shorthaired Syl, but my guess was once he noticed her cheekbones, he'd adjust. Which meant the two of them would resume their honeymoon and it'd be a while before we saw them again. Which was fine with me.

But what I real y couldn't be sure of was how long Mom would need to talk with Jon. And even though my

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head hurt, and I hate shad, and I was cold and wet and hungry and scared, I knew Jon was cold and wet and hungry and scared and real y angry at Matt, who must have made his life miserable for the past few days.

So I stood against the garage wal with the bag of shad by my side. It began raining real y hard then.

There was no way to keep dry, and I began to shiver.

"It'd serve them right if I died of pneumonia," I said to myself, because when you're stuck outside in the rain with half a bag of dead fish, you say stupid things like that out loud.

I thought about pul ing the shad out of the bag and counting them, multiplying by two, for the two remaining bags, then dividing the total by five, so I could guess how short a time it would be before al we'd have were a few cans of vegetables to keep us alive.

I thought about the mound of bodies.

I thought about what a real y rotten moon goddess Diana had turned out to be.

I wasn't outside for more than ten minutes, but it was long enough that I was shaking pretty badly by the time Jon came to get me. He was carrying my coat and an umbrel a.

"Mom says she's sorry," he said.

I knew she was. I knew Matt was, too. I knew we were al sorry. That's what we're best at. Being sorry.

May 70

Last night Jon took the plywood off the dining room window and moved his mattress in. He now has the room to himself, although of course we can look in from the sunroom.

Mom asked me this morning if I wanted to take the plywood off the kitchen window as wel . She said she'd keep

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sleeping in the sunroom and could check on the woodstove during the night.

I considered it, but right now what I real y want is to be back in my bedroom. Being there the other day, looking at my skating trophies, made me long for my bed, my chest of drawers, my windows.

The dining room has two doors: one from the living room and one from the kitchen. But we're never in the living room, since that's where we put al the dining room furniture. And there's no reason to go from the kitchen to the dining room, except for Jon to get in there.

But you have to cross the kitchen to get to the downstairs bathroom and the sunroom, and even the cel ar stairs. And it's the kitchen. We keep our food there and plates and silverware.

The dining room may only have fake privacy. But the kitchen has no privacy whatsoever.

So I'm going to keep sharing the sunroom with Mom, at least for the time being. We moved our mattresses away from the back door, and then we moved the clothesline into the kitchen so the sunroom feels less like a dorm and more like a family room.

It's rained on and off since Matt and Jon got home. It's not like I expect to see sunlight, but I'd like it if things dried out.

May 21

Just what we needed. A cold spel . The rain turned into snow last night, and there are a couple of fresh inches on the ground.

"Sometimes it snows in the spring," Mom said.

"It'l melt soon enough."

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Matt and Syl took advantage of the snow day by spending it in Matt's room. Occasional y there were shrieks.

Jon reorganized his basebal cards. Good thing we hadn't sacrificed Mickey Mantle.

I looked out onto the backyard and pictured the mound of bodies covered once again with snow.

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***

Chapter 7 May 22

Matt and Syl came back from town, and Matt was in a much better mood. It couldn't have been easy biking through the snow, but he didn't care.

"The mayor was in, and he performed the ceremony," Matt said, waving a marriage certificate.

"Syl and I are now married in the eyes of the great state of Pennsylvania."

"You should have come with us," Syl said. "Al of you."

"Maybe next time," Mom said.

"And look," Matt said. "Five bags of food!"

I did look. I looked even harder as Mom and I put the food away. There were a few cans more than last week, but I think what Mr. Danworth did was give us our standard amount and put it in five bags instead of four.

Mom decided, since the fish has been cleaned and salted and is already stinking up the garage, that we should only have it a couple of days a week and then just two shad for the five of us. I'm glad, even though I know she's doing it because she's scared of what's going to happen when we run out and when we no longer get any cans from town.

What wil become of us then? Where wil we go?

Wil Matt and Syl leave by themselves and I'l never see him again?

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I know I should be happy for him, but with everything I'm scared of, I think I'm scared most of losing Matt forever.

May 23

"Did Horton eat last week?" Jon asked me.

"When I was away?"

"A little," I said.

"He isn't eating very much," Jon said.

"Cats eat less in the spring," I said. "Horton always loses his winter weight."

"Yeah, but he's real y getting thin," Jon said.

I know he's right, but there's nothing we can do about it. When Horton feels like eating, he'l eat.

May 24

We spent the day drying the cel ar out, pail by pail.

The electricity came back on for the first time in weeks, and Matt got the sump pump running.

Mom acted like this was Christmas and New Year's. I'm surprised she didn't burst out singing.

May 25

Matt and Jon are back chopping firewood. As far as I'm concerned, that means the official end of the school year. Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet.

May 26

The third day in a row with electricity. Al three days the electricity's been on for hours, and last night it came back on for a few hours as wel .

We don't get any TV reception, and the news on the radio remains bad, but Mom announced that we should

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spring clean. So that's how she and Syl and I spent the day. The menfolk chopped wood. Us women vacuumed and scrubbed.

Matt came home exhausted, but when he saw how clean things were, his mood brightened. "Syl, you're fantastic," he said.

Syl worked every bit as hard as Mom and me but no harder.

Sometimes I'd like to kil him.

May 27

I can't remember the last time I was in a good mood. It feels like al I do is crab and mope and feel sorry for myself.

Since the house is as close to spotless as it's ever going to get and Romeo and Juliet are total y dead, I told Mom I was going house hunting. I think she was glad to get me out of here, so she didn't put up a battle.

"I'l go, too," Syl said, which wasn't my idea at al .

"Laura, do you want to come with us?"

Thank goodness Mom said no. "See if you can find any more books for me," she said instead.

I didn't want to go house hunting with Syl. I wanted to spend time by myself. I was looking for a tactful way of explaining that to Syl, but before I could, she said, "Let's split up. We can meet here at noon."

"How wil you find your way back?" I asked. Matt would kil me if I let Syl out of my sight and she wandered off, never to be seen again.

"I never get lost," Syl said. "I'l be back here. Don't worry."

I thought about how lost I'd gotten and I've lived here practical y my whole life. But Syl's an old married woman

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and I'm just the kid sister-in-law. And I real y did want some alone time. "Fine," I said. "I'l see you, then."

We biked together until Schil er Road, and she turned to the left. I kept biking down Howel Bridge Road until the right onto Penn Avenue. Lots of nice houses there. A very literate neighborhood.

I real y do love breaking and entering, and I got positively cheery seeing how the wealthier people in Howel used to live. Not that I found that much we could use, since everybody else must have realized Penn Ave. would have good pickings.

But there were books for Mom, and one space heater, and best of al , two pairs of blue jeans, price tags stil attached, in a size I never could have fit in before. I tried on one pair, and it was a little loose (I guess shad doesn't have that many calories) but definitely wearable. Syl weighs even less than I do, but I figured the second pair could stay up with a belt, and I was sure she'd appreciate having something new to wear.

I also took a can of ocean breeze room freshener.

Now that the temperature's up to 50, Mom's been opening the windows to air the house out, but everything smel s like fish anyway. That and a travel-sized bottle of aspirin were my best finds.

I balanced the handlebars with one trash bag on one side and one on the other and began biking to the rendezvous spot. My mood was much better than it has been in ages. I pictured how pleased Syl would be with my gift of blue jeans, and how Matt would appreciate my generosity, and how Mom would love the books I'd found, and how Jon ... Wel , how Jon would turn out to be a secret ocean breeze air freshener freak. Okay, I couldn't think of why 85

anything I brought home would make Jon happy, except maybe the aspirin, for when his muscles ache from chopping wood.

Jon's never been easy to shop for.

Even with nobody to hear me for miles, I didn't burst into song, but I did whistle as I biked. I liked the splashy way the bike rode through puddles on the road. And I had this great realization: I don't have to be happy al the time. With everything that's happened, no one should expect to be happy. But moments of happiness can sneak up on you, like pairs of unworn blue jeans, and you need to cherish them because they're so rare and so unpredictable.

I even understood why Matt married Syl ten minutes after meeting her. Finding her was rare and unpredictable.

Of course it hadn't hurt that she had long hair at the time.

I was whistling "I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair," a song I learned in third grade and haven't heard since, when I rode my bike straight into a pothole and went flying off.

I landed face down in a puddle, and for an instant I was in a state of total panic. I remembered Mom in the cel ar, and I swear I thought I was going to drown.

What shocked me to my senses was how much I hurt. When you're in that kind of pain, you almost wish you were going to drown in a half inch of water.

I rol ed out of the puddle and moved my fingers, my hands, my arms, my legs, until I was satisfied I hadn't broken any bones. The palms of my hands were scraped and it felt like my knees were, too. My chin and jaw hurt horribly, but I wasn't spitting any teeth out. I was going to be a total-body black-and-blue mark, but no one dies of bruises.

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I crawled back to the bike. It was lying on its side, but the two trash bags were unbroken, and both tires looked okay.

That was when I realized how lucky I'd been the day I got lost. What if I'd had a flat tire? I'd been miles away from home, with no idea where I was, and I would have had to walk back.

Sometimes I think al I've done for the past month is cry, but that didn't stop me. I sat by my bike, tel ing myself over and over again how lucky I was, and I sobbed.

I didn't have to use my sweatshirt to blow my nose this time, though. I'd found a tissue packet at one of the houses, so when I was up to it, I dug through a trash bag and located it.

That's progress.