Pandemic

Copyright © 2014 by Yvonne Ventresca

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First Edition

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ventresca, Yvonne.

Pandemic / Yvonne Ventresca. -- First edition.

pages cm

Summary: “Lil is left home alone when a deadly pandemic hits her small town in New Jersey. Will Lil survive the flu and brave her darkest fears?”-- Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-62873-609-0 (hardback)
eISBN 978-1-62873-960-2

[1. Epidemics--Fiction. 2. Influenza--Fiction. 3. Sexual abuse--Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.V564Pan 2014

[Fic]--dc23

2013037354

Printed in the United States of America

To my encouraging mother and father,
and to my loving husband and children.

PANDEMIC

C
HAPTER
1

As with many serious contagious illnesses, it wasn’t immediately apparent what we were dealing with.

—Blue Flu interview, anonymous US government official

I
stood on the smoking corner behind school reveling in my aloneness. Not many smokers had the same schedule, which made the corner the perfect place for solitude. We always stayed a foot off the high school property, near the big oak tree, and since we were allowed to leave during last period study hall, we weren’t technically breaking any rules.

As if rules mattered.

“Hey, got a light?” Jay Martinez asked, interrupting the quiet. In the fall, he’d moved from Arizona to live with his aunt down the block from my house.

I handed him my half-smoked cigarette. Cupping the burning ember, he used it to light his own. He didn’t fit in with the other smokers, but then neither did I. My black clothes, basic ponytail, and minimal makeup placed me in my own category. Maybe Lazy Goth. But the nice thing about smokers was that they didn’t exclude anyone.

“Thanks.” Jay passed my cigarette back to me. “Is New Jersey always this cold in April?”

Being the new guy at school made Jay the flavor of the month with the other sophomore girls. They craved him in a nauseating kind of way. He was dark, tall, and lanky, and tended to over-communicate. Totally not my type. Now he ruined my aloneness with weather chatter. I shrugged so he’d get the idea that I wasn’t in a talking mood.

“Ethan was hoping to run into you,” he said.

Another shrug. I’d managed to avoid my ex for months. No reason to change the pattern now.

“So . . . do you have Robertson for bio?” he asked.

I nodded. Jay definitely wasn’t taking the hint.

“What are you doing your report on?”

“Emerging diseases,” I said, finally giving up on staying silent.

“Cheerful stuff.”

The school projects I chose did favor the dark this semester. American history report? The decision to drop the bomb. English book talk? A collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories. Thematically, Ebola hemorrhagic fever fit right in.

“What are you writing about?” I flicked the accumulated ashes. “Lung cancer?”

He smiled. “The biology of taste. I write restaurant reviews on my blog and that was the closest topic I could think of. Do you like eating at restaurants?”

Leaning slightly forward, he held eye contact a little too long for me. Was he flirting? Nervous, I pulled my sweater tighter around me and crossed my arms. A flirtatious guy was the absolute last thing I needed in my life. No boyfriends, no coy conversations for me. Not anymore.

Jay’s unanswered question stayed suspended in the air along with the smoke ring I blew.

“Dinner? I don’t get out much,” I said, stubbing my cigarette into a sand-filled can another smoker had left behind. “I have to go.”

“See you around.”

Maybe I read too much into the conversation, but his eyes seemed to question: You need to leave so soon?

It was all I could do to keep myself from breaking into a run.

I entered our house through the garage, surprised to see my mother’s Hybrid parked inside. She wasn’t usually home this early on a Thursday. I spritzed perfume to cover the cigarette smell and popped a mint into my mouth for good measure.

In the kitchen, I washed my hands before grabbing a glass. Shutting the cabinet quietly, I hoped Mom wouldn’t notice. She was in her bedroom directly above me, noisily opening and closing drawers.

“Lily, is that you?” she called.

Damn
. “Yeah.”

She came down the stairs, soft little steps combined with the jingle of jewelry. “How was your day?”

“It wasn’t bad.” I grabbed the organic milk from the fridge. “You’re home early.”

“I’m packing for Hong Kong. There are some new developments in the lead poisoning fiasco, so GREEN needs to have a presence there.”

Mom worked for the Great Reclaiming of Everyone’s Earth Now—GREEN—an environmental watchdog group.

“When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said. “You can invite Megs to stay over while I’m gone. Or Kayla. We haven’t seen her lately.”

Mom and Dad were so clueless. I hadn’t spoken to Kayla in months, since our big fight.

“I’ll be fine alone.” I poured the milk and then grabbed some oatmeal raisin cookies, ready to hole up in my room until any lingering smoke faded from my clothes.

I snacked in bed while trying to read my history homework. The last social studies test hadn’t gone well, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. It should have been English that I hated, with the foreshadowing, antagonists, and metaphors that Mr. B had taught us. But somehow my brain couldn’t process history: the past, the many policies, and all the political maneuvering. My eyes glazed over in twenty seconds as I attempted to read about the Marshall Plan.

After my failed attempts to finish the chapter, I took a break from history to read an article about how people in the Middle Ages carried herbs in their pockets and wore sachets around their necks to try to prevent illness. The new English teacher had approved my poetry analysis topic, an investigation into whether the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosy” was really written about the bubonic plague. It was way more fascinating than the Cold War.

My phone pinged with a text.

I was tempted to lie, but Megs knew me too well. And she was right. It was only a matter of time before my parents checked the online grade book and then I was screwed. Most of my As had dropped to Bs and US history had plummeted to a D. The lower grades would be a red flag for Mom and Dad, and we’d probably spend hours analyzing what Mom would label “the unhealthy drop in my academic performance” before they confined me to the house forever.

I kept my word, reading through my notes until something crashed in the hallway, followed by Mom’s screech.

Oh no.
I jumped out of bed. The crashing sound could only mean one thing.

She’d discovered my emergency supplies.

On my way down the hall, I paused to rescue some rolling cans of black beans. Sure enough, my mother stood in front of the closet, an avalanche of nonperishable food at her feet. I should have known she’d need her suitcase. I could have offered to be helpful, gotten it out for her, so she wouldn’t have seen. But now—

“What in the world is all this?” she asked. “Is your father storing extra food in here?”

It would be convenient to blame Dad. Since he worked as the senior editor for
Infectious Diseases
magazine, I could probably convince her that he’d have at least the minimum emergency provisions suggested by the Red Cross stashed in the house. But as much as I’d mastered small lies lately, the skill to tell a big one was as elusive as scientists’ cure for the common cold.

Mom took one look at my face and knew the truth. Her curious expression hardened into her own special brand of parental worry.

“I can explain,” I said, hoping to head off the tirade.

She pointed at the large stockpile of food, feminine products, and, my personal favorite, the emergency hand crank radio that could also serve as a phone charger. “Hurricane season is over.”

“We should always be ready for a crisis,” I said. “It doesn’t matter what time of year it is. Even the government says so.”

“Right. Have you spoken to Dr. Gwen about this?” She waved her hand at “this,” diminishing my months of saving, planning, purchasing. “When you see her next time maybe we should check about you going more frequently. Maybe—”

“No, no. She said after . . . well, she said this is normal.”

Mom gave me the look, the one that zings into your soul and drags the truth out.