Unnatural Disasters, page 13
I sat up in the dark. “Wait! You remember her too?”
“Do you?”
“I haven’t been able to get her out of my head. That was a toy store she was in?”
“They made custom dollhouses,” Jay said. “The girl was the owner’s daughter.”
“What was she doing there in the middle of the night?”
Jay said he didn’t know. When I asked if she was okay he didn’t know that either. Apparently she’d disappeared in the days after the attack, lost in the waves of injured and homeless. Not even her family knew where she was. I lay back down with my head on the pillow, gazing at the ceiling, the phone warm against my ear.
“Lucy? You still there?”
I said I was.
“What are you doing?”
“I was just . . . she must have thought it was any other night. You know? She goes to work. She has to stay late. Maybe she has plans the next day, with friends, or with her boyfriend. Maybe she’s going to sit in her pajamas all morning and watch old movies. But then—”
My throat closed up. I shut my eyes and there was a blinding yellow flash. After a long quiet moment, Jay said, “You know, Chin ordered the bombing to stop. And the raids. He’s trying to calm things down. He’s calling for peace talks.”
“Is anybody listening?”
Jay was silent. There was a rustle and then a creak of bedsprings. His voice came back soft, husky.
“Somebody posted a map online,” he said. “It has all the likely targets on it with fallout patterns and stuff in case it actually—you know. We’re far away from any big cities, which is good. Military bases too.”
“Sweet, we’ll live out our days in a nuclear wasteland, fighting off mutants.”
Jay chuckled. “I see you as the scrappy scavenger type. Dressed in rags. Living in an old dumpster.”
“Yeah well, you’re going to be one of those weird hermit dudes, hoarding old books and muttering to yourself about Puggle Dungeon.”
“Snuggle Dungeon.”
“Whatever.”
I curled up on my side. Jay yawned.
“Maybe the radiation will give us superpowers,” he said, voice thick with sleepiness.
“Mmm. I want gills.”
“Gills?”
“I plan on building an underwater empire. No boys allowed.”
“Honestly, I just hope my glasses don’t break. The post-apocalypse is really gonna suck with severe myopia.”
I laughed, throat aching from being clenched for so long. Jay’s breath was slow and steady. The door to Dad’s office opened and shut. His footsteps were quiet as he made his way to bed.
“It’s getting late,” Jay said. “Maybe we better—”
“Tell me something about rocks.”
That caught him off-guard. “What about them?”
“Anything,” I said. “Just talk.”
He was awkward at first, stumbling over his words, but then he got in the zone. He told me about star sapphires and cursed diamonds and something called shocked quartz, which was made when asteroids crashed into the earth millions of years ago. His voice was soft in my ear. It was like he was lying beside me in the dark. He started talking about ancient magicians who spent their lives trying to turn base metals into gold and I found my hand moving across my bedspread, reaching out, like it was searching for his.
Thirteen
That Saturday I texted Jay and told him it was time to kick off his education in horror.
Fine, he texted back.
But we have to do it at your house.
but you said you had a sweet
home theater in the basement
We do, but my house can be a bit . . . much.
???
I have brothers and sisters.
so?
I have A LOT of brothers and sisters.
This was intriguing.
how many?
I sat at the edge of my bed waiting for a response, but nothing came.
jay? did you have a stroke?
do I need to call the paramedics?
Three little dots, then,
Damn it.
7.
I almost dropped the phone.
7?!? you have 7 brothers and sisters? seriously?
are you a mormon and forgot to tell me?
Ha.
Seriously though. It’s like
the monkey house at the zoo over here.
Damn it. I just made you want
to come even more, didn’t I?
Dad was locked away in his office again that morning, but I got shouted-through-the-door clearance to break the terms of my grounding. Jay picked me up an hour later. He was silent during the whole rainy drive to his house. Brow furrowed. Teeth grinding. Bethany Books appeared up ahead. Jay turned at the corner and headed down Willow Street toward Queen’s Mill, a sprawling subdivision on the east side of town. We rolled through the gates and down the wide streets. His house was big. Three stories with a neat yard, at the end of a quiet street. He brought his car to a stop behind a white minivan. Rain pattered on the roof. He stared at the house, like a determined general facing a hopeless battle.
“We got lucky with the storm,” he said, carefully surveying the yard. “Otherwise the whole pack would be out here. They’d have taken us down before we made it out of the car.”
He pointed to a door at the far end of the driveway.
“We go in through the basement,” he said. “Then lock the door leading upstairs from the inside. That should keep them out for a while. Just promise me, no matter what you hear up there: Do. Not. Leave. The. Basement. Understood?”
I threw him a crisp salute. Jay rolled his eyes, then opened the car door. We fast-walked up the driveway, heads down against the rain, Jay keeping us close to the wall so we wouldn’t be visible through the first-floor windows. He was reaching for the doorknob when his phone started to ring.
“No no no no no.”
“What?”
He yanked the phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. There was a low peal of thunder.
“No, I—but Mom, I—” Jay drew in a resigned breath. “Yeah. Fine. Okay. I said okay!”
He hung up. The phone dangled from his hand. Rainwater flattened his hair and dripped down his glasses.
“My mom says she wants to meet you.”
I started laughing. Jay turned his back on me and headed for the front door.
“You think it’s funny now . . .”
We came around the side of the house and climbed the steps. From the other side of the door came the crash of shattering glass followed by a chorus of voices screaming at the top of their lungs.
“YOU MEANT TO DO THAT!”
“I DID NOT! YOU’RE JUST STUPID!”
“I’M NOT STUPID! YOU’RE STUPID! AND A BABY!”
“I’M NOT A BABY—YOU’RE A BABY! MOM!”
“MOM!”
“MOM!”
“MOOOOOOOOOOOOM!”
Jay pushed the door open, exposing a large marble-tiled entrance hall. There was a scream as a small mob of children tore across it from right to left. There must have been fifteen or twenty of them, all bound up together in a boiling scrum of flailing limbs, snotty noses, and screeching voices. As soon as they disappeared down the hall to our left they were immediately followed by a pack of five barking dogs the size of small ponies, which were in turn followed by a single toddler, who ran with his arms outstretched, giggling madly. Halfway across the room he slipped, fell flat on his face, then got up and kept going, crying instead of laughing.
“Jay, that’s more than seven.”
He’d turned pale. His happy glow from the day in Shangri-La, gone. “Saturday,” he said. “They brought their friends. Stay close. This could get ugly.”
I followed as Jay moved carefully into the house. All around us was what could only be described as an explosion of humanity. Everywhere I looked there were raging packs of kids. Kids playing video games, kids watching TV, kids listening to music—all with the sound turned way up—and in one corner kids involved in what looked like an MMA-sanctioned brawl. Toys and books and discarded clothes littered every available surface, and it seemed like half the walls in the place were decorated with crayon scrawls. When they saw Jay, it was like a feeding frenzy. Half of them dropped whatever they were doing, or destroying, and ran to him, pawing at his legs and shouting.
“Jay! Gloria broke my snow globe!”
“I did not!”
“Jay! I need a snack!”
“Jay! Ralph’s diaper is full.”
“Jay, who’s the girl?”
“Jay!”
“JAY!”
“JAY!”
Jay kept his head down and powered through even as a handful of the kids attached themselves to his arms and legs and he had to drag them along. I followed in his wake and we eventually made it to the stairs that led up to the second floor. The narrow passageway had the natural effect of knocking some of the kids off him. They tumbled away and past me, laughing and squabbling all at once. I turned back. There was a dog pile of them at the bottom of the stairs and they were all trying to get to their feet and give chase. More were coming behind them, eyes wide and fingers sticky.
“Don’t look back!” Jay shouted. “Keep moving! They can smell fear!”
We made it through a door at the top of the stairs. Jay slammed it shut the second I got through and put his back to it, panting.
“We did it,” he said. “We’re safe.”
“JAY!”
The voice came from somewhere down the hall. Not a kid’s voice this time. A woman’s. Jay’s mom, I guessed. He grimaced and pointed forward. Along the way we passed a boy no older than three or four, who was completely naked and struggling to do a handstand.
“Eric, go put on some pants!” Jay said. “We have a guest.”
The kid giggled and ran away.
The woman called out again. “Jay? Is that you? Come in here!”
We passed through a dining room and into a large living area. There were two women there who looked like sisters. Both were tall and striking with angular faces and thick black hair. One, slightly older, I thought, was in a sharp gray suit, while the other wore all black and had a brightly patterned scarf tied around her neck.
“Mom, Halla, this is Lucy. Lucy, this is my mom and my Aunt Halla.”
Halla, the woman with the scarf, waved and smiled. Jay’s mom stepped forward and stuck out her hand. “Amina Karras.”
I took it, suddenly feeling like I was interviewing for a job at a bank. “Lucy Weaver.”
“You two were planning on watching movies today,” Ms. Karras said. “Horror movies, I think.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the work of Farouk Ibrahim?”
I looked to Jay, who seemed vaguely mortified. “Uh . . .”
“Egyptian filmmaker,” Ms. Karras said. “He doesn’t make horror movies though. He makes documentaries about the current state of the Middle East.”
“More or less the same thing now, sis,” Halla commented.
Ms. Karras slung her purse over her shoulder. For the first time, I noticed that she had a deep scar that ran from the corner of her right eye onto her cheek. “Very true.”
“Well,” I said. “I’ll . . . check him out.”
“Excellent,” she said with a nod, then pivoted toward her son. “Jay, I need you to take your brother Wendall to the hospital.”
“What?” Jay said. “Why?”
Ms. Karras pulled her keys out of her purse and grabbed an umbrella. “He broke his finger practicing karate with Gloria.”
“Mom, we have plans!”
“It won’t take long,” she said. “You can watch movies when you get back.”
“But—”
Halla stepped back and yelled up the stairs. “WENDALL! YOUR BROTHER’S HERE TO TAKE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL!”
“OKAY, AUNT HALLA!”
“Mom. Seriously. You know his finger isn’t broken.”
“Oh, are you a doctor now, Jay?”
“No,” he said, clearly grasping for patience. “But you know Wendall’s a big faker. He does it for attention.”
“Don’t say that about your brother!”
“But—”
“What if it’s like that episode of that show?”
The voice came from behind us. I spun around to find a staggeringly pretty black-haired girl who was maybe twelve years old. She had her hands on her hips and a sour look on her face.
“Remember?” she said to Jay. “The one where the guy broke his leg and they fixed it, but bone marrow had leaked out of the break and it got in his bloodstream and he went crazy and died.”
Jay had both hands pressing into the sides of his skull like he was trying to keep his brains in. “Don’t be an idiot, Marla.”
Marla squealed. “Mom!”
“Don’t call your sister an idiot, Jay!”
Jay sighed and turned his back on Marla. “Mom, come on, Wendall’s finger is not broken.”
“Just take him to the ER and see!”
“Why can’t you or Halla?”
“Sorry, kiddo,” Halla said. “Your mom’s got an important meeting and I have a thing at the gallery I can’t miss.”
“But it’s Saturday!”
“The world does not stop revolving just because it’s Saturday,” Ms. Karras said.
“What about Dad? He could at least say if it was actually broken or not.”
Halla nodded toward a small room off the kitchen where a man—the spitting image of Jay twenty-five years in the future—was dead asleep and snoring in a recliner. He was wearing green doctor’s scrubs and had a headset stuck in one ear.
“Your dad didn’t get home until four a.m. and has to be in again tonight,” Ms. Karras said as she and Halla moved toward the stairs. “He needs his sleep.”
Marla wailed from behind us, “But Mo-om! Jay has a movie date!”
Then she howled with laughter. When Jay feinted like he was going to punch her, she ran away giggling. Ms. Karras handed Jay an insurance card and a credit card and she and Halla swept out of the room and down the stairs. Just then an angelic-looking boy appeared. He was maybe seven or eight, but small for his age. He had rosy cheeks and hair so blond it was almost white. His chubby cheeks were glistening with tears. Wendall held up his right hand, which had been wrapped several inches thick in what looked like a mix of toilet paper and tape.
Jay rolled his eyes and waved him along faster. “All right. Come on. Let’s get this over with.” He turned back to me. “I’ll take you home on the way. We can do the marathon another time.”
“That’s okay. I’ll come.”
“You want to come to the ER with us?”
“Nothing else happening. We’ll start the marathon when we get back.”
Wendall wailed. “Ja-ay! My finger! Hurts!”
Jay shut his eyes and drew in a long, deep breath, the kind you take when it’s either that or you start ax-murdering people. When he was settled, he pointed his brother toward the door.
“All right, ya little creep, let’s get moving.”
* * *
A couple of hours later Jay and I were on the way back from the ER. Wendall was in the seat behind us, sound asleep, his finger wrapped in gauze and a metal brace. It wasn’t broken, but it was sprained, which had allowed the little guy a tiny measure of satisfaction.
The rain was falling harder, a steady gray rush. The windshield wipers swished back and forth.
“So,” I said. “Can I ask you about something that isn’t remotely my business?”
“Does it have anything to do with how I came to have seven brothers and sisters, none of whom look anything like me or my parents?”
“Well, I would’ve found a slightly more delicate way to phrase it than that.”
Jay took off his glasses and polished them on his shirttail while the car merged onto the highway.
“My folks met at a refugee camp in Algeria when they were kids. Dad’s from Greece. Mom and Halla are Egyptian.”
“How’d they get here?”
“It was before the worst of the bans. And Dad has a distant uncle in Wisconsin who sponsored them. Anyway, they had me and then, when I was seven, they started adopting other refugee kids who’d lost their parents. Marla from Vietnam. Paolo and Gloria from Mexico. Ahmed from Bangladesh. Eric from Kenya. Parviz from Pakistan. Wendall’s from Florida. His folks died in Hurricane William.”
I turned around. Wendall was in his seat, softly snoring, his white blond hair like snow.
“Does he remember?”
“Not really. He has bad dreams sometimes. Most of them do.”
“That’s amazing,” I said. “That your parents did that.”
Jay slipped his glasses back on. “Yeah, it made us super popular around the neighborhood,” he said. “Threats online. Angry phone calls all night. Dad used to come out every single morning to find his tires slashed. He was probably the only person in history to buy spares in bulk.”
“Did it ever stop?”
“Not until we moved,” he said. “This was back in Georgia. We lived there until I was eleven.”
The car glided off the highway and onto the road that led to Bethany. Shops flickered by as we came down Main Street. Jimmy’s. The Beth.
“So your mom and dad’s families . . . ?”
“Dad lost most everybody in the famine,” he said. “I think there are some cousins left, but no one’s heard from them since the New Dawn got voted in. Mom and Halla’s parents were university professors back in Cairo when the al-Asiri took over.”
He didn’t say more. Didn’t need to. I wondered if they’d killed them after his mom and her sister had escaped, or before.
“It’s just me and Dad at my place,” I said. “And the cat now, I guess. My aunts come over a lot too. My Aunt Bernie used to be a marine. She fought in Korea. She and my Aunt Carol are about to have their first baby. They were adamant about not finding out the gender. I’m hoping for a boy.”
