The Way We Fall (14 page)

I made it through last night. I felt kind of stiff and cold going through the motions, but I calmed Meredith down, and cooked us dinner, and got us to bed, and even when the lights were out and she was breathing softly, I didn’t let myself cry. I was afraid if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop, and I’d wake her up.

What’s the point of crying anyway? I know I’m sad. Why does anyone else need to see it?

Dad didn’t come back all night. Over breakfast, Drew said he was going down to the hospital. I would have gone too, but I didn’t want to leave Meredith on her own—and I can’t stand the thought of bringing her into the hospital the way it is now.

So instead I put on
The Little Mermaid
, her favorite, and we were halfway through when the doorbell rang.

I assumed either Drew or Dad had forgotten to take their house key with them. We never used to lock up. I was so sure, and I guess in a bit of a daze, that I opened the door without checking.

Gav was standing outside. His shoulders were hunched like he wasn’t sure how he’d be welcomed. I stared at him, and he stared at me, and then he straightened up and gave me that little smile. “No interrogation this time?” he said.

“Hi,” I said. “I…” And then I stopped, because I had no words. It was like all the walls I’d put up to keep me from falling apart were getting in the way of thinking too. My brain switched to autopilot.

“Come in,” I said.

He stepped inside and I shut the door. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “What’s up?”

“I told you I’d show you some of those self-defense techniques,” he said. “If it’s a good time for you.”

“Sure,” I said again. I didn’t really see the point right then. But I thought, I said I’d do this; I’ll just get through it, no problem.

Then he glanced around and said, “House seems quiet today.” Which reminded me how much I’d wanted Mom to just be quiet the last few days, and now she was quiet because she wasn’t even here, and probably she was never coming back. It was the first time I’d let myself think that far, and before I could stop it, this sob burst out of my throat. I sank down and wrapped my arms around my head and pressed my face against my knees, as if I could hold myself together if I squeezed hard enough. But I’d already lost it. Everything spilled out. Tears, snot, I don’t even want to know what I sounded like.

After a while I registered a pressure by my arm, and a while after that I realized it was Gav’s hand on my shoulder. Like an anchor, bringing me back into place. There was a floor under my feet and a wall behind me. I was home. I wasn’t alone.

The sleeve of my sweater was totally soaked. I wiped at my face and at my jeans, which were pretty damp too. Gav took back his hand, but I could still feel him crouched down in front of me. I didn’t want to look at him.

“Sorry,” I said. “My dad had to take my mom to the hospital yesterday.”

He let out a strangled sort of laugh and said, “Why are you sorry?
I’m
sorry. I should have figured out something was wrong. Why would you want to be practicing headlocks when you’re dealing with that?”

He didn’t move, though, and he didn’t say anything else, so after a moment I raised my head. He was watching me, both concerned and nervous. Like I was a fox with my leg in a trap and I might bite him if he tried to help. I remember noticing, inanely, that his eyes were sort of green, even though I’d thought they were brown, but maybe it was just because he was wearing a green shirt today. Then he started talking again.

“My mom’s sick too,” he said. “My dad’ll probably be soon if he isn’t already, considering they’re still sleeping in the same bed. I’ve been crashing at Warren’s. Mostly I’m worried
he’ll
get it. He was sick a lot when he was a kid.”

“Make sure he wears one of those masks I gave you when you go around with the truck,” I said. “And you too. If you want, I can give you gloves. My dad’s been wearing protective gear at the hospital and when he was looking after my mom, and he’s still fine.”

“Yeah,” Gav said. “We’ve been using the masks. And sure, I’ll take some gloves if you have extras. Thanks.” He looked down at the floor and then at me again. “Do you want me to go?” he asked. “Or…I mean, I can stay if you want.”

Him leaving would mean going back into the living room with Meredith and pretending everything was fine. I wasn’t sure I could do that.

“Actually,” I said, “maybe a little fighting practice would be good. Blowing off steam, right?”

Which is how we ended up having a martial arts class in my living room. I asked Gav if he could teach Meredith too, and he said sure, so we paused the movie and pushed the ottoman off to the side. “This isn’t professional or anything,” he said, but he seemed to know a lot. When you’re actually trying techniques on other people, I guess you figure out what works and what doesn’t pretty fast.

He showed me how to break a hold on my arm, and what to do if someone grabbed me from behind, and quick moves you can do that cause enough pain to buy you time to run away. Even Meredith could handle most of those. At one point she jabbed at his eye a little harder than she meant to, and he ended up sitting on the couch holding it and wincing while I wrapped an ice cube in a napkin for him.

“I think you’ve got that move down,” he said to Meredith. “And see, it works!”

Meredith was kind of shy at first, but after poking Gav’s eye, I think she felt she owed it to him to be friendly. By the time he’d shown us everything useful he could come up with, she was talking to him like he was her new best friend. She hasn’t seen any of her real friends since she moved in with us, maybe not since school shut down, depending on how paranoid Uncle Emmett was. She must get bored having just me and sometimes Drew for company.

Then I wondered if any of her friends are even still alive. Another awful thought to add to an already long list.

But depressing as I sound right now, it was good. I even laughed once. Gav was putting on his shoes, and Meredith said, out of the blue, “What’s your real name?”

“What?” he said.

“Gav isn’t a real name,” she said. “It’s a nickname, right? Like my mom used to call me Mere, and I call Kaelyn Kae sometimes. So what’s your real name?”

“Oh,” he said, and waffled while he tied his shoelaces. “It’s Gavriel.”

That’s when I started laughing. He shot me an evil look, smiling to show he didn’t mean it.

“That’s like a Knights of the Round Table name,” I said. “No wonder you think you have to save everyone. Trying to live up to it.”

“That must be it,” he said.

He asked how we were for food, and I said we were fine, because we have everything I grabbed from Uncle Emmett’s house too. It doesn’t seem

Oh god, Leo. I don’t know what to do. I stopped writing for a sec because I had an itch, but when I scratched it, it didn’t go away, and then it moved, it was on my hip and now it’s my stomach. I told myself I just had dry skin and put on some of the expensive cream Dad uses for his eczema, but it didn’t help. What if

No. I won’t think that. I’ll go make dinner, and that’ll distract me, and then the itch will go away. I’m just extra nervous because of everything that’s going on. That’s all.

Now I know how Mom must have felt. She looked like she was fine, but she sensed it, creeping under her skin until she couldn’t ignore that something was wrong. So she shut herself away from us before she got any worse.

I went downstairs to cook dinner yesterday, like I intended, but then I saw Drew and Meredith playing Connect Four on the dining room table. And I thought, What if I am sick? I’m the last person who should be touching anyone’s food. The spot on my stomach was still itching. For a minute or two it would ease up, and I’d started to feel relieved, and then my skin would start tickling even worse than before.

I gave it an hour, because that seemed scientific somehow, and then I put on my mask and some gloves from the box Dad left in the hall. Even with the mask on, I tried not to breathe as I was moving Meredith’s things out of my bedroom. I dragged out the cot, but didn’t know where to put it. Maybe they’ll set it up in the living room? I left it by the top of the stairs so they could decide. Then I got the suitcases she’s been living out of even though I told her there was room in my wardrobe, and a few books and toys she’s left scattered around, and piled those beside the cot.

The itch was killing me. Just as I was about to pick up the shirt she’d left on my computer chair, my hand got away from me and went for it. I had to toss out that glove and grab another.

But it was still just an itch, and part of me believed there could be another explanation, like I was the one person in the history of the universe to get chicken pox twice, or I’d managed to contract some new form of measles, either of which, honestly, would be better.

My door doesn’t have a lock, so I sat on the bed listening for the creak of the stairs, and when I heard someone coming, I stood by the door in case they tried to open it. Thankfully, the first person who came up and noticed the cot was Drew and not Meredith. I’m sure he figured out the most likely explanation right off.

“Kaelyn?” he said, just outside the door.

“Yeah,” I said. “I think…” I didn’t want to say it out loud, so I settled for, “I’m worried. Can you make sure Meredith doesn’t come in? And when Dad gets home, I want to talk to him.”

He said he’d tell Meredith, but just to be sure, I shifted my bed over so it would hold the door shut. Then I lay down and tried to sleep. But my thoughts kept jumping around, and the itch wriggled over to my armpit, and I felt too hot when the blanket was on and too cold when it was off. I might have dozed somewhere in there.

Around midnight, there was a light knock on the door and Dad’s voice asking softly, “Kae? Are you awake?”

I sat up and said, “Yeah, just a second,” so I could move the bed. He came in with his mask in his hand instead of on his face, so I put mine back on. Maybe he assumed that if I wasn’t coughing or sneezing, I wasn’t contagious, but I wasn’t going to let him take that chance.

He sat on the computer chair with his hands clasped in front of him, and said, “Drew says you’re not feeling well.”

He sounded exhausted, and like he was trying incredibly hard to sound calm and optimistic. I knew what he really wanted was for me to say I’d been wrong, or to show I was just being paranoid. And suddenly I felt guilty, for doing this to him on top of whatever is happening with Mom, as if I had any choice in it. But lying wouldn’t fix anything.

So I told him about the itch that wouldn’t go away, and how I couldn’t sleep, and he nodded and said it was too early to tell and he’d take a little blood in the morning so we could find out for sure. He went out and came back with a glass of water and a pill to help me sleep. When I got up to take them from him, he set them on the desk and hugged me.

It wasn’t the safest thing he could do, but in that moment I didn’t care. I hugged him back until the itch got so bad I had to step away to scratch at it.

The whole time I felt like I was being so levelheaded, so mature. I think somehow I believed if I stayed calm it’d go away.

But this morning, right after Dad left for the hospital, I got a tickle in my throat. I had to call Drew through the door to bring me another glass of water, which I made him leave outside and took after he was gone. It’s been half an hour, and I’m still coughing, off and on.

What the hell else could it be? I’ve got the virus.

I can’t see Meredith or Drew or anyone except Dad again.

I’m going to be stuck in this little room until I get so sick Dad has to drag me away.

The virus is going to eat away at my brain until I can’t control what I say or what I think, until I’m blathering all sorts of horrible things, like Rachel’s dad did, like Mom, until I’m screaming at people who aren’t even there, and I won’t even know how crazy I am. God. I’ve got to

Leo, if somehow you’re reading this, if you’ve come back and you were trying to figure out what happened and you found this journal, burn it. Burn it now. I’ve just coughed on it and I’ve been breathing on it, and the virus is probably crawling all over every page.

It’s not like I’ll have time to write much more anyway.