H2O (16 page)

None of the keys would fit.

“For
's sake!” shouted a guy through the hatch of the first cell. “Come on!”

His voice, it sounded so broken. So dry, sore, and broken.

“The keys won't fit!” I cried.

“
! It's a kid. It's a
kid. SHUT UP! SHUT UP!” he screamed louder and louder.
“IT'S A KID!!! SHUT
UP!”

That corridor of cells, it quieted down.

“The keys won't fit!” I shouted at the row of doors.

There was another outbreak of swearing until the guy in the first cell shouted them all back down again.

“Try the custody desk, hon—behind you, on the way in. Try there.”

Darius nodded at me and went to look.

“Hon?” said the guy.

“My friend's gone,” I said. The fear made my voice shake and stammer.

(Please note, that's how traumatized I was: I called Darius Spratt my friend.)

Darius came back right away with a bunch of what looked like keys to a giant's house—keys four times the size of normal keys.

“Did you get them?” said the cell guy, hearing their rattle.

“Yes…” I said.

It was quiet compared to how it had been, but from every cell, you could still hear it, this bubbling of swearing, cursing, desperation. It felt like any second, it would all go crazy again—and who knew what would happen when the doors were actually opened?

Darius cleared his throat. “Look, you've got to promise not to hurt us or anything,” he told the row of doors.

It sounds so stupid now, him saying that. It even kind of sounded stupid at the time, and it made those men angry. The swearing started up again until the guy in the first cell shouted them down.

“I swear,” he said, “on my mother's life. No one will hurt you.”

Right then and there, I thought,
Your
mother
is
probably
dead. Like
mine
.

There was nothing else we could do. Darius unlocked his cell.

There were five men packed in there; three of them didn't come out.

The one that had spoken to us stood there with his face all twisted up and twitching …I suppose he might have wanted to cry, but when you get dehydrated like that, you can't get any tears.

“Thank you,” he managed to say. He leaned on the wall.

“Everyone's dead,” I told him. “Everyone's dead.”

I don't even know why I said that. I really don't.

That man, he kind of nodded, like he could believe it, like he already knew.

He held out his hand for the keys.

“I'll do the rest,” he said. “You go.”

We didn't argue.

“You're good kids,” he shouted after us. “God bless you!”

“Don't drink the water!” Darius shouted back at him.

I guess Darius hadn't seen what I had seen. There was a drinking fountain in that cell. I can't think about that. They must have found out the hard way about the water.

We climbed back out through the window. The kid was still there, waiting. Some random scary guy, bloody—like fighting bloody, eyes and nose—burst out through the window behind us. He dropped down to the ground, nodded politely at us, and then ran.

“We should get out of here,” said Darius Spratt.

You
don't say
, I thought.

As we ran around to the front of the police station, another guy staggered past us. I grabbed my bike.

“Don't you want to come with us?” blurted Darius Spratt.

“No!” I said. As in,
No
way
. As in,
As
if
. “I'm going to my dad's.”

I biked off.

Toward home. I wasn't so nuts that I was going to bike to London, was I? I didn't know how I was going to get there. I had what Simon would have called “a slight logistical problem,” which is what he said when I told him where I was going to go, and he'd point out that that would depend on me getting a ride from “someone” and that “someone” had other plans that did not involve driving me about like a chauffeur.

“We'll be at the school!” Darius Spratt shouted after me.

I looked over my shoulder at the two of them, just standing there.

“Bye!” I shouted, which I thought was very charitable of me, considering.

Charitable and also a further sign of how serious the situation was: girls like me don't even acknowledge the existence of boys like Darius Spratt. It's a basic law of nature.

I took the shortest route home, cutting across the top of the High Street.

That was some sight: in the late afternoon sun, it was a river of broken glass, glittering. I leaned the bike against a wall and waded in, just a little, just to see.

Things floated on that river. Bodies, yes, but other things too: toys, electrical stuff, books, candy, random items of furniture even…and shoes, clothes, jewelry. Makeup. Really good makeup. The kind I couldn't afford, even if I'd been allowed to buy it.

I told myself I needed some more of that dry shampoo anyway, and while I was looking for it, I just happened to wander into a couple other shops, just to see…and, er, basically…it turned into my own one-girl riot.

You know where normally you'd have to spend, like, about an hour trying testers on the back of your hand and umming and ahhing because you could only afford one lipstick so you had to get it right? I didn't even bother with the testers. I just took every lipstick I liked. You know how you'd have to choose which color to get a top in because no way in a billion years could you get both or all three or all four, no matter how good they were? How you'd have to put that jacket back because it was way out of your price range? How your mom would go CRAZY if you bought that dress? How you liked those shoes, but you weren't really sure what they'd go with? How no way would you be allowed a bikini like that and no way, not ever could you get fancy, flimsy, floaty, flirty underwear? How you had to make do with one bottle of perfume? And only had one decent bag? And no no no no no way could you ever get, like, real jewelry, stuff that was actually silver or full-on diamante mega-bling, with matching earrings AND a tiara?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I GOT SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH STUFF!!!!!!

(Even though: 1. It was Dartbridge High Street, which, as you can imagine, is not exactly Camden Lock or Covent Garden or Oxford Street or even Exeter, and 2. In some cases, I'd been beaten to it, e.g., the place that sold MP3 players and phones and tablets and stuff was cleaned out. I checked. Thoroughly.)

I don't care how awful it sounds. I didn't care then, that's for sure, and I don't much care now. For the first time since before it rained, I was actually happy—or distracted, I was going to say—but you know what? I think I really was happy. I had, like, a crazy amount of stuff—so much stuff I had to double back to loot bigger (and better!) bags to carry it in—and I think I would have gone on and on with it, never mind how I was going to get it home, if it hadn't been for The George. I'd forgotten all about it, and the air stank so bad anyway that I hadn't noticed the smell wasn't just bodies—it was a burned pub.

Wow. It was gone. There was a charred black hole where The George had been. Only its beams remained: black bones hanging above a tumble of burned-up rubble. That place, where I had known for sure that I was in love, it was as dead as any dead person.

It was hard to carry on after that. I did try. There was this one particular boutique-y shop, the one that had THE best stuff in it and was owned by an evil old hag cunningly disguised as a super-chic designer-model-type woman, who hated me and my friends and anyone who was younger than her—hated the way that sort of woman does when she realizes we could easily look better than her if we only had the right clothes—and who would blast us with death-ray stares and openly persecute us with “Can I help you?”-type questions that didn't mean “Can I help you?” at all but meant “Get out of my shop, you rude young girl” whenever we dared venture into her insanely expensive kingdom of exclusive style—which wasn't often but which was often enough for our hungry eyes to have gazed longingly at every item in there.

I emptied a rack of sequined items, grabbed belts that cost a year's allowance each and stuffed them into super-expensive handbags I didn't even like all that much.

Surrounded by booty, sipping a fizzy organic ginseng drink looted from the designer mini-fridge at the back of the evil old hag's designer shop, I sat on the church wall, practically panting. Not from the heat—and it was bakingly, dead-body-rottingly warm—but from the mad, dizzy-making thrill of the thing. I could take anything—ANYTHING—I wanted.

And I'd have given anything to have Lee there with me, so that it really would be actual fun. Everything was dreadful, but there was this. There was this—and no one to share it with.

I burped.

Except Saskia. See…what I knew was that where she lived was just behind the church. I hadn't even been there, to her house, but Lee had. I'd just go look, that's what I thought. I'd just go look.

Truth? I wasn't even sure how much I wanted to see Saskia, because I felt like there were things I might want to ask that I wouldn't want to hear the answers to. Not even how she had gotten away from Zak's exactly, but…hadn't I seen Saskia refuse that glass of water Sarah had offered? Had she thought about stuff everyone else was too freaked with panic to think about? Stuff that not even Barnaby knew? Had she thought about that stuff and…not even bothered to tell anyone? Did she just stand around complaining about wanting to go home while she watched everyone else die?

Her road, it wasn't nice. It was close to the hospital. Where normally there'd be parking for residents only, it was jammed…with the usual—cars, bodies. I'd dumped my stuff at the church because I figured I wouldn't be long. I'd just go look; if I couldn't find her immediately, I'd go back—immediately.

The thrill of the shopping thing got killed by how that road was, but I got this other buzz on: how you feel when you're looking for someone, how you just want to know… So I picked my way right down that road; then I turned, I crossed the street, and I picked my way back. I wasn't about to start shouting her name or anything, and I didn't even know how I'd know which house was hers…until I did.

In the living-room window, I saw the sweetest, darlingest, snow-white Chihuahua you ever did see. Wagging her little tail at me; scratching at the glass with her tiny, mighty paws.

I knew this Chihuahua. I had seen this Chihuahua. This Chihuahua had to be—she HAD to be—the one that belonged to Saskia's mom. Hadn't we all ooh'ed and aah'ed and cooed over her when Saskia's mom had come to pick us up from Ronnie's flop of a party?

She had been called Tiffany—or maybe that was Saskia's mom's name?

“Hello, darling!” I whispered at her, my heart totally melting.

I ran up to the front door. I rang the doorbell. I shouted through the letterbox.

“Saskia! Hey, Sask!”

Then, “It's me, Ruby!” I shouted when there was no reply.

I went around through the gate to the back.

Saskia's mom, plus a bunch of other people, were in the garden. They'd been having a barbecue—with a fancy buffet, that had gotten wrecked. Stuff spilled all over the place. Saskia's mom lying right in the middle of it all. Saskia's mom, plus dip. That had to be guacamole, right?

The Chihuahua scrabbled at the kitchen door.

“Sask!” I shouted at the door, banging on it. “Sask!”

I knew I shouldn't be doing what I did next. It's possible Saskia had just gone out—like me—and would come back and catch me smashing my way into her house…but it was also possible that she was lying inside sick or dead and that was what I'd say to her if she did come back: “I thought you might be lying inside sick or dead.” There was this knee-high concrete Greek lady by the garden pond. She was a hefty girl but manageable. I got hold of her and heaved her headfirst at the kitchen window. Her head broke off. Only one pane busted. Double-glazed…they're a nightmare, aren't they? The glass is super-tough and even if you get in lots of practice—which I didn't feel I had time for just then—it's still a hard job. I cased my options, like burglars must do—wood-framed patio doors, single glazed, key in lock; the little darling dog scrabbling to get to me.

“Come here! Come on!” I shouted to her. I lured her back around to the den window. I teased her through the glass, then zoomed back around, and—CRASH!—smashed that bare-bottomed lady feet-first through the patio doors. She was perched on a blob of rock; neither the rock nor the lady's chunky legs broke.

Good aim, Ruby! (Can't wait to tell Dan how I'm practically a professional criminal!)

I shoved my hand in and opened the door.

“Saskia?” I called.

The darling dog came running. I scooped her up before her precious paws could get cut on glass.

“Saskia!”

Clutching the trembling pooch, I toured the house. It felt creepy. Saskia had two sisters, and I wouldn't have known for sure which one of those freakishly neat and tidy rooms was hers if it hadn't have been for the photos; on the wall, in frames…a ton of photos of Saskia—doing gymnastics, winning stuff, posing on vacation somewhere hot, in a bikini…and that same one of me and Caspar—only it wasn't of me and Caspar anymore; it was of Caspar and Saskia. I had been cut out.

Know what I also saw? That I only saw because I just happened to open her closet and the drawers in her dressing table? Saskia's stuff was gone. She had packed stuff and gone.

I could have left that dog in that house. I held her in front of my face. How could—HOW COULD—that boyfriend-stealing
leave that sweet pooch?

“Don't worry, Darling!” I said. “Ruby will take care of you!”

Petting and fussing over MY dog, I stomped back to the church, put my tiara on, grabbed as much stuff as I could carry, and crunched back up the High Street. I got my bike, put Darling in the basket, and crunched back down the High Street, detoured to load up with yet more ditched booty because I couldn't bear to leave it, and crunched home.

Me and Darling, we split right, through the library parking lot. I passed the big fighting man and the woman who had hugged and rocked and kissed him.

I felt…not a grief thing, exactly, but really, really solemn.

I stopped in Holywell Park, like me and my mom used to do when I was little.

There's a spring there, a holy well; that's why it's called that. In medieval times, they believed the water from it could cure lepers—but it couldn't. There was no cure.

Now, not even the most desperate leper would want to drink from it.

Mom said it was a fairy well. When we first came here and I was young enough to believe in fairies, we'd stop by on the way home from the shops and pick a flower—or just a nice leaf if there were no flowers—and leave it for the fairies. If the fairies were pleased with it, she said, they'd leave a flower too…and sometimes they left other things: pretty shells and stones, sometimes ribbons, sometimes little bits of jewelry my fingers ached to touch; sometimes they even left a poem.

It took me a long time—like, really, an embarrassingly long time—to work out that it wasn't fairies…partly, I reckon, because we never told Simon about it. He hated that kind of thing, not just because it was a kind of hippie thing (which is what it really was; Dartbridge types leaving offerings for whatever pagan-y water god they were into), but because he also thought all that sort of stuff—tooth fairies, Santa Claus, guardian angels—was…not just silly nonsense, but lies that should not be told to children. What a fun guy, huh?

The fairy well, it was our secret. Mine and my mom's. And that, I think, is really why I believed in it for so long, because it was something just for us. I believed in it because I needed to believe in it—like the lepers, I guess.

Just this last spring, I saw my mom at the well—with Henry. She was holding him in her arms, and I could see her whispering to him—about the fairies, I expect…and I…I felt this awful twisty stab of jealousy. A twisty stab of jealousy and sadness and a knowing that she wasn't just mine anymore; now she belonged to Henry too…and I did what I think is the most grown-up thing I'd ever done. I wanted to run home and cry. I know that makes me sound like a baby, but it was how I felt. (“She finds change difficult”; that's what my mom always said about me, so I wouldn't feel so bad about hating new stuff like Simon, like discovering I had a brother called Dan, like going to middle school, like finding out my mom was pregnant.) (Like trying to survive a global death-fest mega-crisis.)

I didn't run home and cry. I picked a flower, and I went to her, and we both told Henry all about the fairies. I leaned my head on her shoulder, and she gave me one of her special kisses, on my forehead, and stroked my cheek. And then Henry started bawling because I wouldn't let him eat my flower, and we went home.

I let Darling wander around on the grass while I looked for a flower. I found the perfect one: a single honeysuckle bloom, delicate and sweet-scented. I laid it down on the wall by the well—the other flowers there rain beaten, sun shriveled, and rotten—and I asked the fairies, please, to never forget my mom. To show how much I meant it, I left them my tiara.