Allison Hewitt Is Trapped (10 page)

I couldn’t believe it. I was hallucinating, I just had to be. It wasn’t possible. I get word from my mother
and
confirmation that others are out there—close—in the same twenty-four-hour period. The university is only ten blocks away, a ten- to fifteen-minute walk at a leisurely pace. But to go out—to risk it … That ten blocks would be dangerous and filled with undead. The university is at the heart of the city, a populated place. It could be absolutely crawling with those things …

Jesus, Mom, be safe.

She’s probably already left and won’t be able to read this but I just can’t stop thinking about her out in the open, trying her damnedest to get here.

There will be time to worry about that in the coming days, discussions to start, arguments to endure. For now, I wanted to stop worrying, fretting, and just follow directions. And so I did as the voice said, I sat back against the pillow, put my hand on Dapper’s head, closed my eyes, said a prayer for my mom’s safety and listened.

“ ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us; we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.…’ ”

There are voices that you never forget.

Sleep tight Isaac, Brooklyn Girl, Reverend,
Mom
. There are voices in the darkness, sweet beacons of radiant possibility, and they offer the chance to each and every one of us for survival.

COMMENTS

Isaac says:

October 1, 2009 at 10:08 pm

Congratulations on finding your mom, Allison. If only all of us could be that lucky. I’ve got my fingers crossed for her journey.

Brooklyn Girl says:

October 1, 2009 at 10:34 pm

Add another pair of crossed fingers! Let us know the minute she gets there.

Allison says:

October 1, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Thanks for the support guys. I’m sure, wherever she is right now, my mom appreciates it!

October 3, 2009—Paradise Lost

“Who the hell needs this many Christmas ornaments? Did she have a different tree for each of the twelve days of Christmas? This has to be a sign of mental instability, right? I mean, it’s beyond compulsive,” I say, holding up just one of a gajillion glass Christmas balls. “Beyond tacky.”

“They’re hideous,” Holly confirms, shuddering.

“Do you think we could rig them somehow? Turn them into bombs? Couldn’t you just see these raining down from the window, taking out a whole legion of those creeps?”

“Worth a shot,” she says.

Today we continue the task of organizing all of Ms. Weathers’ things and finding a place for them. She really has a lot of clutter. It takes up most of her closets and even part of the hallway. Most of the stuff she’s saved up and packed away is sentimental junk. Nothing is labeled, so Holly volunteered to help me go through the boxes and sort out the ones with useful items and the ones that could be set aside for later.

It’s hard to focus. There’s no sign of my mom yet and I’m picking up old watercolor paintings, no doubt by Ms. Weathers’ grandchildren, and having a hard time remembering what box I pulled them out of. I haven’t told anyone about the radio yet. I know it seems selfish but there’s a reason for the omission.

Holly is cooing over something she’s found. It’s an old photograph, faded and orange and covered in water spots. The frame is still in good condition and the photo is of Ms. Weathers and presumably her husband or an old boyfriend. He’s in a sailor’s uniform, dressed as a cliché, and they both look positively carefree. I take it away from Holly before she can get too attached.

“I know it’s hard to get rid of all this stuff,” I tell her, burying the photograph in the bottom of a box. “I know it feels wrong, like robbing her or something. I hope she would understand. We’re all still young, we don’t deserve to be struggling to live.”

“You’re right,” Holly says quietly. Her short red hair sticks up in every direction. It’s really quite endearing.

“Here,” I tell her, pushing another box over, “try this one. Let’s hope it’s not more expired coupons.”

I can’t guess if Holly can tell I’m distracted or if she’s distracted by something too. I mean, she knows I’m worried about my mother but she has no idea about the radio yet. There’s a mean, aching trouble gnawing at my stomach and it’s not hunger. I open another box: candles and air fresheners. Not bad. I keep meaning to investigate the maintenance room downstairs and a solid supply of candles is just another reminder. Maybe I could actually do something productive if the voice repeating in my head would shut up and go away.

“You have somewhere to go, somewhere to seek.”

I should just tell her. I should tell everyone. Something is standing in my way, a question. It’s that one word, “seek.” What if I don’t want to seek? What if I’m done with seeking? Even if we made it to the university, then what? Would we stay there forever or would there be another destination after that, and then another, and another? We’ve found a good thing here. It’s not perfect, it’s not glamorous, but it feels manageable, sustainable. Phil, Janette and Matt have already slipped into the old pattern of life; they ignore us and we ignore them. Maybe that symptom alone is enough to convince me that we’ve discovered a semblance of normalcy—why risk it? Even if it’s only ten blocks away, why uproot again just to live in a crowded gymnasium with a new set of strangers? But if I don’t tell them it feels like lying, like just another betrayal.

“Allison?”

“Hm? Yes?”

“Are you okay? You’ve been staring at that Glade PlugIn for five minutes now.”

Fuck.

“Oh, oh yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, just had a thought, that’s all.”

“Is it your mom? Want to share?”

Sure, I think, looking at Holly’s wide-open face, why not? It’s not that she’s stupid, she’s just very, very trusting. I can’t imagine she’ll prod for my true motivations.

“Holly,” I begin, clearing my throat, “do you like it here? I mean, if you had the choice, to stay here or go somewhere else, what would you do?”

She shifts from sitting cross-legged to sort of resting with both her legs crooked to the side. The miniature snow globe in her hands began to travel up and down, tossed from palm to palm as she sticks out her tongue a little and considers the question. At least she doesn’t have an immediate answer. Maybe my hesitations aren’t so strange after all.

“I guess it depends,” she says at last, shrugging.

“On what?”

“On where it is.”

“Yeah, that’s a good point.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know; just curious, I guess. I mean, this place isn’t so bad, right? We’ve sort of carved out a bit of a niche, don’t you think?” She looks away as I ask the question, molding her palms around the curved dome of the snow globe, pressing it together until it looks ready to shatter in her hands. “Holly?”

“It
is
good here. I … I like it.”

With that, she turns back to the boxes, conversation terminated. I watch her as she gets up on her knees to reach across for a big, heavy, unopened box. She grabs it by the flaps but it’s too heavy and the box tumbles out of her arms, landing askew. A cascade of tinkling Christmas ornaments lands across our feet, red and green and gold, smelling like dust and pine. One of the green ball ornaments has broken, cracked open on its end like an egg.

I reach to start cleaning it up and without warning, Holly is in tears. She covers her face with both hands and sobs, hard, her whole body shaking with the effort to stop, to recompose. I gently touch her knee, wondering if my question was too much, went too far.

“Hey, it’s okay. Only one broke, we’ll just clean it up, no worries.”

“It’s not … i-it’s not that!” she says, forcing out the shuddering words between sobs.

“Jesus, hey, don’t worry. What’s going on?”

I brush the broken glass to the side and move closer to her, hoping a human presence and a shoulder to cry on is what she’s looking for. Holly stays still, hiding her face for a moment before her fingers slowly wipe down her cheeks.

“It’s Ted,” she says, stumbling over his name. My first thought is that he’s broken up with her and my second is that I’ll have to break his face. “He’s … he’s proposed. He asked me to marry him.”

“That’s great!” I shout, maybe a little too enthusiastic. Holly stares back at me, mystified.

“It is?”

“I mean … yeah—isn’t it? I thought you two were … ya know, in it for the long haul.”

“It’s not that. I love him, I really do, but I just don’t like it.… It feels like he’s only doing it because of this, you know, because of everything that’s happened,” she says. The tears have stopped, coming to a slow rest on the curve of her cheekbone. She sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her pale hand. “So I asked him: would you be asking me this if we weren’t stuck here together? And he said no!”

I knew Ted was no Casanova, but that’s pretty inexcusable.

“Well, I’m sure he means that … that the circumstances being the way they are, well, things are uncertain. I’m sure he would have proposed eventually, so what’s the difference if he does it now?”

“I don’t know. See? I just don’t know! I should be happy, part of me is. I thought he would never get up the courage. He was so shy when we met and I know his parents would never ever approve of us, but that’s just it! It means he doesn’t think we’ll ever see his parents again. I think he’s given up.”

“No,” I tell her firmly, squeezing her knee. I mean it. “That’s not true. He wouldn’t have asked you to marry him if he’d given up hope. He has hope for the two of you, for a life together. That’s not an insult, Holly. I just wish you knew how lucky you are.”

She rests her warm hand over mine and nods, a smile tugging at her lips even as the tears finish sliding off her chin. Carefully, she picks up a jagged piece of the broken ornament and turns it, letting it catch the light, crackle to life and sparkle.

“You won’t tell him, will you? That I was mad?” she asks, dropping the piece of glass. I can’t stop looking at it.

“No, of course not,” I say, laughing. “It’s our secret.”

*   *   *

I had a visitor just before getting into bed tonight. Zack came to chat. I hadn’t seen much of him or Ted today; while Holly and I worked on sorting Ms. Weathers’ belongings, Zack and Ted volunteered to sweep the other apartments more thoroughly to locate useful items and to check and double-check hiding places. The cold has seeped in through the windows; Zack shuffled in draped in a chunky afghan.

“Busy?” he asks, nodding toward the laptop perched on my knees. Dapper rolls over a few feet, anticipating that he would be asked to move.

“Not really,” I reply, shutting the monitor. “What’s up?”

“Is everything okay with Ted? He seemed weird today.”

“Weird how?”

“I don’t know.… Jumpy … Irritable,” he says, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “I know he’s not my biggest fan, but it was strange.”

“I’m sure he likes you just fine,” I say. “It’s just stress. I think he and Holly are having issues. Best just to leave it alone.”

“Ah,” he says, “I see.… Trouble in paradise.”

“So you would call this paradise?”

He looks over at me, squinting like I’m miles away. I try desperately to keep my face neutral, to stop my cheeks from turning a bright, burning red. Getting a sneaky question past him will be hard, much harder than with Holly.

“What are you up to?” he asks, scooting closer.

Well, here goes.

“I heard someone on the radio last night,” I tell him. His eyes double in size. “It was a man at the university. They’ve set up some kind of relief effort there. He also read me to sleep.”

“Really?” Zack replied, arching an eyebrow with a smirk.

“Not like that. It was … nice, but odd, ya know? To hear someone out there, someone with some kind of authority. He said they had food and shelter.”

“He a cop?”

“I don’t think so, he didn’t say anything like that,” I reply. He looks away, down at his fingernails. “So?”

“So what?”

“So do you think we should go?”

“It’s not so bad here.”

“That’s what I was thinking too. The last thing I want is to be milling around with a hundred sweaty college kids, or my own goddamn professors,” I say, shaking my head. “But we might run out of food here, especially if my mom is coming and bringing people, or the cold.… I just think it’s worth discussing.”

“Look,” he says, taking my hand. “Food can be found. What we have here … It’s like a home, a place of our own. If we go to the university who knows what we’ll find. It might sound good now, but it will be harder to leave once we’re there.”

“I know,” I say, “but I’m not good at keeping secrets. I think I should tell the others.”

“Do it,” he says, nodding vigorously, his curls bouncing. “But I guarantee you they’ll say the same thing.”

“Thanks for listening.”

“Mind if stay? I could use a bedtime story.”

We turn on the radio and blow out the candle. The voice is there, the stranger. We lie perfectly still in the dark, both of us on our backs, listening to Dapper breathing and to the low, rhythmic voice coming to us over the radio. I can’t help but wonder at the miracle of such things, of technologies I’ve never cared about or considered before. It’s as if an entirely new person is there with us, a man I’ve never met but that I know will become familiar with time. He’s there, reading, his voice separating into a million pinpoints of light, carrying a story, words, warmth. We lay quiet and still and I feel my breath going out of my lungs, lifting out and over to the radio, traveling through the speaker, across the invisible airwaves to visit the stranger with the mesmerizing voice.

The voice reads from
The Awakening
and I can’t help but think of my mom. I wish she was here to listen, to put me at ease. It would be much easier to just relax and enjoy the radio if I knew she was still alive, if I knew she would make it here to read it to me again the way she used to. She’s out there, I know she is. I just hope my urgent thoughts are enough to see her safely through.