Never Wake (6 page)

“Please continue to hold…”

“The one, almost-f bottle,” she said out loud, and the recording paused as if being polite.

“Your call will be answered…”

Troy stared at the wad of gum.

Five people didn’t just pass out from drinking a half a bottle of vodka, did they? Maybe there were more bottles.
Maybe they were in a trash can somewhere? It’s not like you bothered to look
. It made sense that they would hide the bottles. If someone saw them drinking on the job, they could be fired. Then why leave the one bottle sitting on the table if they were worried someone could come in and see them? Why not pour it in the punch and hide the bottle?

They must already know what’s happened down here
. Troy’s mind went back to the sleeping cop in the patrol car.

“Please continue to hold…”

If they already know, where are they? Where are the sirens?

“Your call will be answered…”

They were being cautious. It made sense that they would want to know what they were up against before they sent in the guys in white suits.
Stop analyzing everything, damn it
.

“Please continue…”

The hospital staff, the cop, those boys in the doorway of that stationery store. Why had she ridden on by? Because that’s what she did when something made her uncomfortable. Drunks, cops, and people huddled in doorways—whether they were homeless bums or thugs playing dice—were all to be avoided.

What if this was a bigger problem than she thought? Troy opened the door to the stuffy phone booth and stood, phone pressed hard to her ear, staring out into the city. She heard no far-off sirens, no birds chirping, no planes overhead. The phone clicked, and a buzz tickled her eardrum.

“Please…”

The receiver tumbled from Troy’s hand and crashed into the shatterproof glass.

Standard, Oregon, August, Years Ago

Ever since The Boy could remember, he had to have his birthday dinner at Bernie Ann’s Corner Side Café. Pam, that was his mother, told him that she could remember going there on her birthday when she was a little girl, so he figured it had to be the oldest restaurant on earth. The oldest in Standard, Oregon, that’s for sure.

He hated his birthday because of Bernie’s. He wished it was in winter instead of the summer. He wouldn’t even care if it was the same day as Christmas, like one of the girls in his class. He’d never forget to wear long pants if it was cold outside. Then his legs wouldn’t feel so sticky or get scratched by the holes that were all over the seats from people dropping their lit cigarettes. Pam had fallen asleep on the couch with a cigarette once and he had watched the flame grow so high that he knew it would have reached the ceiling if she hadn’t woken up and put it out. These seats must be better quality than their old couch.

Pam cooked when Hoyt made her. She would bang around in the kitchen for hours, and then he would always smell burning food. Hoyt would then go out for cigarettes and come back smelling like BurgerCity onions. Pam made him eat what she had cooked—as if it were his fault she had to cook. Pam’s food didn’t taste so good, but the food at Bernie Ann’s made his stomach hurt.

He pushed his creamed corn under his mashed potatoes and wished it was BurgerCity French fries instead of the mess on his plate. He had learned on his fifth birthday that pushing the corn under the potatoes made it look like he had at least eaten something, and it also made the mashed potatoes look less runny.

He pretended to eat some of his chicken, but he spit it into his napkin when no one was looking. Last year he’d swallowed the mashed potatoes because they didn’t taste all that bad. He’d ended up in the bathroom for so long afterward that his ass had felt raw for three days straight.

He could hear the slippery smacking noises that meant that Pam and Hoyt were being gross. He didn’t have to look up to know that Hoyt had his fingers sunk deep in Pam’s long blond hair, and Pam’s hand would be on Hoyt’s crotch. He had overheard someone call Pam beautiful. She was tall, had blue eyes, and blond hair, and long, red nails. She was kind of skinny because she sometimes didn’t eat very much and smoked a lot of cigarettes. The waitress—she’d said her name was Amy—had to wait until they came up for air before she could give Hoyt the bill.

Pam snatched the receipt so fast that Amy had to jerk her hand back to keep from being scratched. Amy must have hurried away because The Boy heard her asking another customer if they “needed more syrups.” He liked the way she put an “s” at the end of syrup. He poked at his chicken leg until a pool of grease grew on his plate.

“You going to eat that chicken, boy, or just play with it?” Hoyt sounded amused.

“Uh…excuse me?” Pam sounded annoyed.

He stopped pushing at his chicken and looked up. He knew that tone. She was getting ready for a fight. She was always ready for a fight with anyone except Hoyt. With Hoyt, she always backed down, but never with anyone else.

“You hear what I asked you? You gonna eat that chicken or just play with it all night?” The Boy tore his eyes from Pam long enough to look at Hoyt and then down at the chicken leg.

Hoyt was in a good mood today, which made him feel sad. He was the one that should be in a good mood. It was his birthday. Why wasn’t he allowed to pick where he wanted to go? He would have been happy with a kid’s meal and a box of cookies from BurgerCity.

He smelled Amy’s perfume when she returned to their table.

“If you’d’ve asked, you would know it’s my son’s birthday, so we don’t have to pay for his food.”

The Boy glanced up in time to see Amy look to Hoyt for help, but Hoyt was busy picking his teeth with a toothpick and staring at the chicken leg on The Boy’s plate.

“The special’s for kids five and under, ma’am,” she said, just like she had last year and the year before that.

Pam leaned forward in her seat and jabbed her red nails in his direction. “He ain’t but five, so he eats for free.”

The Boy felt real bad for Amy. Pam was always mean when they came in and Amy still gave him a free scoop of vanilla ice cream for being the “birthday boy,” even though the deal didn’t include dessert.

Nobody said anything and The Boy prayed that Amy would not argue with Pam.

Hoyt reached across the table and snagged the chicken leg off his plate. A moment later, he heard a crunch and the heavy, appreciative breathing that meant that Hoyt was enjoying his food.

Amy still hadn’t said anything. He stopped forking his mashed potatoes over his corn and waited. He closed his eyes tight and prayed for Amy. He could hear Hoyt’s breathing increase. He hated that sound. He had heard it enough. The walls of the trailer were thin. Hoyt’s excited breathing and other sounds made his tummy churn more than the thought of eating the stuff on his plate.

“Ma’am, I thought your boy turned five last year.” The Boy dropped his head as if concentrating on his plate. He brought the fork beneath the table and jabbed it into the side of his leg.
Please, God, please don’t let her hit Amy.

“You must be thinking of some other family, ’cause my boy is five. You trying to tell me I don’t know when I gave birth to my own boy?” Pam’s voice was tense, past the point where she would back down. Amy would have to, or Pam would hurt her.

He pressed the fork harder; tears burned the corners of his eyes. He wanted to help her. He wanted to yell out, “I’m seven, I’m seven,” but he knew that that would mean pain when he got home. He would have to sit still and quiet and hope Amy would do the same.

“I’m sorry, my mistake.” Her voice was soft like she was talking to a mad dog. He eased the fork out of his leg and looked up just in time to see Amy walking away, her back stiff.

“No tip for her today.” Pam’s voice was loud enough for Amy to hear, but The Boy relaxed. He brought the fork back up to his plate and began toying with the mashed potatoes again.

Soon, Hoyt would reach over and begin scooping the corn and mashed potato mix into his mouth and they could go home.

Tonight he would whisper all that had happened into his grandmother’s ear. He would also tell her how much he hated Pam and Hoyt. She would never tell anyone.

Amy came back with a new bill and set it on the table between Pam and Hoyt. Pam acted like she was Amy’s best friend and told her that she should come by the nail shop and get her nails done. She’d even give her ten percent off.

Amy said something and was gone.

It had worked this time. No one was fighting or crying. The trick was to hurt himself enough that God would feel real sorry for him. Sometimes it worked, but most times it didn’t.

Light forced its way through the trees and onto Troy’s bare feet. Warmth from the sun kissed the part in her hair and the back of her neck, but she shivered. She was sitting with her knees drawn up, and her face pressed into her forearms. Her head and eyes hurt, but crying had felt good. No, not good, necessary. She needed to cry, and she could think of nowhere better to do it than with Patricia.

She had gone to her small cottage—the only place she had ever felt comfortable calling her own, once, and had stayed no longer than the time it took her to shower and stuff some clothes into her bag. Home reminded her of how lonely she had been without Patricia and of how wrong she had been in thinking things couldn’t possibly get worse. Why return to that when the whole city was full of showers and clothes that didn’t carry painful memories.

For the last two days she had ridden the city looking for any sign that there had been an evacuation, but she had found none. She would look more today, but she no longer held out hope that she would find anyone else awake. The only thing she knew for sure was that something had happened to everyone else and had missed her.

“So this is it, right? This is the price I’m supposed to pay for what happened.” She didn’t expect an answer. She hadn’t gotten one in sixteen months, but sometimes she’d imagine that Patricia was still there with her, rooting for her to continue to live. Not today, though. Today, Patricia seemed to have deserted her, and the hurt of that seemed more tangible than the fear of being left alone.

“What am I supposed to do?” She spoke out loud for no other reason than to disturb the quiet. “I’ve tried calling…you name them, and I’ve tried calling. There’s just no one out there, and I don’t…” She stopped speaking and smiled. “You know, I used to think that I wanted something like this to happen. But I had something more exotic in mind.

“I read this story once about these two girls marooned on an island, and the whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking, you know, I would love that. I would love being alone with you, not having to worry about people bothering us.” Troy laughed. “That would have driven you fucking nuts, wouldn’t it?” She ran her hand along Patricia’s grave marker and sighed, her eyes taking in the cemetery. Small and private, it got a surprising amount of sunlight for Portland. Which is why she had agreed when the Harveys had insisted Patricia be buried there. She hadn’t cared at the time that she would have to cross one of the bridges to visit her, and she still didn’t care. She would do what she had to do to give Patricia the best.

Patricia’s life insurance, and four hundred thirty dollars borrowed from Raife, had gotten her a “desirable” spot. Troy wanted to give Patricia the best. Something she could never do on her messenger’s salary. Not that that had ever been an issue between them.

“I used to have this dream that someday I could save enough to buy in with Raife, and maybe we could buy us a small house in Mount Tabor. We would have the pick of the place now. Everyone is asleep there, too.” Troy leaned back and studied the old-growth trees, the sky, and the clouds. “Why is this happening to me?” Her voice sounded disjointed and curious, but not scared. “What did I do to you?”

She was so tired of it all. So tired of being sad and angry because the world kept moving when she would have preferred it all to stop. Now she had gotten what she wanted. The world had stopped, but it forgot to stop her with it. All of Portland was like this graveyard—everyone dead, at least, to her. What’s the point of living amongst that?

It’s only been two days. They could wake up, but what if they don’t? What are you going to do? Keep riding through the streets yelling for people who can’t hear you? And so what if they do wake up? You’re just doing what you have to do to survive anyway. That’s not living.

Troy straightened. Maybe she had been looking at this the wrong way. What if this wasn’t a punishment? What if this was someone’s way of telling her she didn’t have to fight anymore?

“Even you wouldn’t want me to be alone, would you? Not like this.” Troy stood up, her heart pounding. She didn’t need an answer. Patricia would not want her to be alone. Patricia had told her on more than one occasion that her worst fear was to die alone. Troy liked to think that she was unconscious when she died. But she would never be sure, and that fact haunted her.

Troy jumped on Dite and forgot to say her customary goodbye to Patricia as she allowed the argument to continue in her head. Was she going crazy? Is that what this was? It would make sense.

After Patricia died.

After you let her die.

That particular thought was familiar. It had tormented her since Patricia’s death. She’d started taking the sleeping pills to get some sleep, but she continued taking them when she found that it also dulled her senses. She floated in a haze of bad TV and crying. She left the house to buy food, but even that was rare.