When Life Turned Purple (14 page)

Russ nodded. “Makes sense,” he said. He felt like having another beer himself.

Lia’s face continued to be full of thought as she absently stroked her fingertips through the ends of her hair in a way that was so innocent and feminine that Russ yearned to cradle her in his arms, yet he didn’t want to ruin the moment.

“You know what?” Lia finally said. “I think the world will split into victims and controllers.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Think about it. A lot of people will be medicated. But the body adjusts to medication, which is why doses often need to be increased. Parallel to that, the situation will worsen. Meaning that more of these things will appear, maybe come even closer and presumably, they’ll be still affecting us. People will want to increase whatever drug they’re taking to deal with that, too. So we’re talking about an increasingly passive population worldwide.”

“But you said there are side effects.”

Lia nodded. “Yeah. Some people will become manic. Some will commit suicide or develop health problems. And some people won’t take drugs of any kind. I wonder how they’ll respond?”

“Like us.”

“Yes, like us. But what about world leaders? Dictators? Criminals? How are they being affected by these things?”

Russ rose and started pacing, one hand in his pocket and the other rubbing the back of his head.

“Also,” Lia continued, “the effect of these things isn’t steady. I was having a meltdown back there when they first appeared, but now I feel much more stable. Oh, the issues are still there, whispering at the edges of my mind, but I don’t feel them as intensely as I did—not at all.”

Russ nodded. Thoughts of Emma and their baby—
their
baby!—was still hovering around inside, but with a distant sadness, not the intense guilt and grief he had felt back at Evan’s.

“But people will stay on their meds,” he said.

“Or whatever drug they’re taking,” said Lia. “But yeah.”

“While other people will recover fast enough.”

“Right. Now, I imagine that some of them will choose to be caretakers. But quite a few would exploit the situation, I think.”

“Everything you’re saying makes sense,” said Russ. “But I still need to understand the main thing—what about us?”

Lia gazed at him, her eyes dark and shiny with affection. Russ felt like shoving his hands in his pockets, kick at the floor with the toe of his shoe and say, “Aw, shucks” while squirming with pleasure.

“We know that we’re crazy,” she said.

Russ stared at her.

“That’s the key. Even when we get overwhelmed with emotion, our mind still works. We know—and we really know now—what these things do to us.”

“And that’s the key?”

Lia smiled. “In these times, sometimes the best you can do is to at least
know
you’re crazy. The people who really suffer, the people who have almost no hope of healing, are the ones who think they’re normal. If you think you’re fine, then what motivation do you have to change, or to do anything to improve your life?” Lia nodded to herself. “Yes. If you at least
know
you’re crazy, and that the world is crazy, then you can still have hope.”

Russ didn’t reply.

He knew that knowing was only half of any battle.

But Russ wanted to be ready for the other half.

A few days passed since the space things had multiplied and for now, they remained stable.

Every news site Russ and Lia checked reported on the massive numbers of people making appointments to receive psychiatric medication for nerves “as a temporary measure to help everyone adjust to this rare, new phenomenon.”

They’d just parked in at the supermarket to stock up on even more supplies.

“How much longer do you think until things start to go down?” Russ asked her quietly.

“It depends,” she said. “When people start noticing that things have changed—and when things actually start changing. And if more of those things appear or move closer.” Lia raised her face to catch the wind and inhaled deeply. Then she continued, “The world leaders know the truth—well, as much as there is to know, anyway—and probably a lot of other people, too. People in astronomy have friends and family—although some astronomers are in denial. There are all sorts of theories racing around right now. And there are always the people who figure stuff out on their own just by connecting the dots.”

“Good people or bad people?” asked Russ. But he already knew the answer.

Lia looked at him. “A bit of both, I’d wager.” A teasing sparkle appeared in her eyes. “Or were you talking about the world leaders and governments?”

“Nah, not them. There’s no question of there being any good people among those wackos.”

She smiled with a little, “Heh.”

“What about your family?” he asked, knowing that was a loaded question.

Her smile dropped and the twinkle vanished from her eyes. She glanced up at him in a way that was both searching and accusatory.

“Sorry,” he said.

Then they entered the store.

He already knew it wouldn’t be more crowded than usual, judging by the number of cars in the parking lot. But the type of people populating the store weren’t the usual local young 206ers. Russ saw a lot of men of all ages and thirty- to fortysomething couples. There were also more kids than usual, young kids with their parents. A lot of the women wore crosses as jewelry, especially necklaces. Russ bet he also wasn’t the only one carrying.

Glancing at Lia, he saw that she also noticed the different type of crowd.

As they filled up their cart, Russ noticed that the canned food shelf was suddenly pretty thin. Ditto with the hard liquor section, especially the whiskey and bourbon.

“Isn’t it fun to think of preppers leaning back in their chairs in their underground storage containers, sipping a mint julep while the kids play Go Fish, and chaos runs rampant outside?” said Lia.

“Whatever rocks your world, baby,” said Russ. And he grabbed several bottles himself, plus more beer.

Lia watched him with wide eyes.

“Hey,” said Russ as they clinked into the cart. “It’s a great antiseptic and in case of minor surgery, much better than biting down on a strip of leather.”

“Can’t argue with that,” said Lia.

When they finally got to the checkout line, Russ noticed that most people had two carts with mounds of groceries.

“Going camping this weekend?” chirped a cashier.

The couple bagging their own groceries stared at her for a moment before the wife forced a pitying smile and said gently, “Well, something like that.”

But when the cashier turned away, the woman and her husband exchanged knowing looks as if to say,
Can you believe how sheeple she is?
Yet when they looked at her, it was with eyes full of compassion, like the way you might look at an elderly alcoholic.

Next to them stood a fresh-faced pregnant woman in her young thirties. She wore one of those Sixties-esque maternity tops and was chatting with a gaunt, leathery skinned friend.

“I am
so
not nervous!” the pregnant one chirped. “I mean, everyone keeps asking me if I’m nervous, and I’m like, ‘Totally
not
!’ I don’t know why I just feel so great about everything. I mean, I have total confidence in my midwife—she’s fab!—and I just love the hospital I chose. And I’m in
such
a great birthing class.”

“Maybe people mean about the space anomalies?” her friend asked.

“Oh, sure!” the pregnant one said. “People totally ask me that
all
the time. And I’m like, ‘No way! I think it’s totally cool. Like, my kid’—omigosh! Can you believe I’m saying that?
My
kid! Anyway,
my
kid is gonna grow up hearing me say things like, ‘Well, when I was your age, we never had these space anomalies. We didn’t even know they existed! Like, when we looked up at the sky, we just saw stars.’ And that’s what I tell everyone. Because it’s
so
true. And I think that is really the best attitude.”

Her friend nodded solemnly, then said, “But do you worry—like, do you ever wonder how it might affect your child if we all have to take meds?”

The pregnant one laughed, her dark hair bouncing as she shook her head. “
So
not! I mean, they’re going to be born into it. So they’ll have already adjusted. You know what I mean?”

Her friend seemed to think it over, her tongue working behind her teeth in her open mouth. Then she said, “Did you read that somewhere?”

“Oh, sure. Like this biologist has been tweeting this out. But it makes sense. Like, I sort of realized that before he said it, you know? And anyway, I’m not taking meds because of the pregnancy. I take vitamins and herbs and go for acupuncture. And I’ve got the best essential oils for calming
and
crystals. Plus I do yoga and think positive thoughts. And when you do all that? You know that nothing really bad can happen.”

“Maybe you should have done that with Jack,” Lia whispered. “You know—offered him a cup of chamomile tea and shot off some hot yoga moves?”

“I’ll tell that to Steve,” Russ whispered back. “When the starved and desperate try to break into his bug-out shelter, he should just add a few drops of lavender oil to a water gun and squirt them with that.”

“Great idea,” said Lia, her voice still soft near his ear. “He can also stick signs around his property, like
Don’t Worry, Be Happy!
Or,
If you dream it, you can do it!
And,
THINK POSITIVE!
”

Russ couldn’t hide his grin.

“Because,” said Lia, “when you do all that, then you know that nothing
really
bad can happen.”

Back outside, Lia and Russ automatically glanced up at the sky and stopped short.

There was another massive one.

It really looked like a large, lumpy soap bubble: purplish and glittering and translucent.

“Ooh!” said the pregnant woman, standing before her open car door. “How pretty!”

Russ felt that urgency to get home again before people would start acting crazy. But it didn’t feel as urgent as it had the first couple of times. Now it was more like dogged determination than a rush of adrenalin, like when you’re stuck in traffic and you’re looking for a space, an exit, or a way to use the carpool lane without getting caught.

Lia sat still next to him as they drove, her arms crossed tight against her body.

“I can’t stand this,” she said through clenched teeth.

He shot her a glance, but mostly he wanted to watch the road for freaked-out drivers and jaywalkers.

She inhaled loudly. “I
hate
this, this up and down, this—one minute everything’s okay, the next minute chaos is about to strike, but then it doesn’t really—”

“Hey, baby,” Russ said. “Don’t freak out here. Just wait till we get home.”

He felt her staring at him.

“It’ll be okay. All right?”

She didn’t answer. He glanced at her again and she was glaring at him, her hunched shoulders heaving as she panted.

“Not
here
!” he shouted. “All right? I can’t focus on you and also on all the other people who might be freaking out behind the wheel! Dammit, just sit on it until we get home!”

He gave the wheel a thwack with the heel of his hand. He hated how those things affected him too. A couple of cars were weaving and one stopped by the curb, its back end sticking out, forcing the other cars to swerve around it. People on the sidewalks were rubbing their foreheads with their palms or wrists, or shaking their heads. But one guy punched the pole of a street sign. But that was it. It wasn’t worse than that. Russ figured most people were on meds by now.

But every time he glanced at Lia, she still sat there trembling, her eyes squeezed shut and tears streaming down her face.

She knew, she understood, but still, she was paying a high price to fight it.

As he eased into their parking space, Russ’s mind raced with what to do next. Everything seemed calm and deserted, but he didn’t want to leave the groceries here while he got Lia up to the apartment, yet he didn’t want to leave her here while he kept making trips with the supplies.

But Lia solved the problem for him. She unlocked herself from the position she’d been holding herself in and looked at him, her hand on the door handle.

“Let’s go,” she said.

They made two trips, carrying as much as they could each time, locking the door in between.

Her arms shook as she started putting things away.

“Maybe you should just veg out on the couch,” said Russ. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

But Lia slowly shook her trembling head, taking deep breaths between sobs. “No,” she said, her voice also wavering. “I think it’s good to stand up to it. I think…it helps.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“I just remember all those girls....”

“What happened?” Russ asked even though he didn’t really want to know

“It was just a lot of pain,” said Lia, sliding a can of pineapple slices into a cabinet. “Different girls told me so many things. It was weird because, for example, one girl was in the popular crowd, but she didn’t talk to them about what had happened. She handed me a note one day—a three-page letter, really—and I called her after I read it. Then she would call me sometimes and write me more notes.” Lia paused to glance at Russ. “This went on for a year, then sort of petered off for another year. After that, I saw she tried to avoid me. When she did see me, she gave me these apologetic smiles.”

“After all that?” said Russ. “That’s pretty ungrateful.”

Lia cocked her head to one side and said, “No. No, I don’t think it was ingratitude. I wasn’t hurt or offended by it. She wasn’t snubbing me. It’s like she was embarrassed. She’d poured out so much of herself, her deepest feelings and secrets, and now that she was strong enough to go on, it was uncomfortable for her to be around me—the person who’d seen her in her weakest moments.”

“So she was just using you.”

Lia shook her head. “Nope.”

“So what was it? Why’d you do it?”

Lia took a deep breath and said, “I just felt like that world can’t work that way. It can’t be that people are hurt and there isn’t anyone to care about them. It can’t be that people have to sit alone with all their pain.” Lia gazed at Russ. “She wanted to kill herself, but she was too scared to die. A ninth-grader like me. Why should she have to feel that way?” Lia shook her head. “I didn’t want to live in a world where nobody cared.”

“So you became the person who cared.”

Lia nodded. “One person isn’t enough,” she said. “But it’s one-hundred percent more than nothing.”

Suddenly, Lia’s phone rang. She answered, then listened, her face going white and slack. She raised her chin to mouth to Russ,
The Space Station went down.

Russ went over to the window to look at it and saw that it wasn’t actually bigger—it was closer.

Lia got off the phone.

“Did we have any of our people left on it?” said Russ.

“No Americans, no Brits. Just the Russians.”

“Well,” said Russ. “Helluva way to die.”

Lia was chewing her lower lip and ran her hands through her hair. “These things are taking down satellites and now the ISS. And the Hubble.” She looked at him. “We’re dependent on telescopes for information now.”

Lia’s phone rang again.

Russ was standing so close to Lia and the caller’s voice was so high-pitched that Russ could hear clearly, “IT LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE’S IN ONE OF THE BUBBLES!”

“What?” said Lia.

“Yeah, he’s just standing there inside, looking around!”

“He’s
standing
?”

“He’s standing! And his head is moving, like he’s looking around.”

“With a helmet?”

“No, no helmet. No spacesuit, nothing like that.”

“And the other guys?”

“No, no bodies as far as anyone can pick up. But those could have easily been incinerated.”

Lia and Russ stared at each other.

“How long has he been there?” said Lia.