Storm (24 page)

I use some random shoe that must have belonged to the people who lived here before to poke the window open. Let the shoe drop out of the window. Deliciously cool air floods in. I breathe. I stare at the rain. It's falling so quietly.

Go on, freak, just do it
, the rain whispers.
Put your hand out. Dare
you.

“No,” I tell it, out loud.

I go back to bed.

I can't sleep.

It isn't even proper autumn yet, is it? The summer has been hanging on. There's only going to be more rainy nights like this—and days. I should be feeling glad, that I am here with my dad and Dan, but when I think about that, when I think about the winter coming, when I think that there could be days on end—weeks!—stuck inside… WHAT IF IT SNOWS? There will be no snowball fights; there will be no sledging; there will just be…more terrible meals with that woman.

If we can even get food. I've seen what my dad has stored, and I have to say that it's pretty poor. He has clearly not read the
SAS Survival Guide
. Even his DVD selection is not great. For all his talk about how he's going to do all this wonderful stuff… I think about what I heard my mom tell my auntie Kate, that my dad was basically just a dreamer. And I'd been so mad about it, so hurt for him because he'd said so many times it was just his stupid job that was holding him back.

I'm going to be stuck in this house for weeks on end with the brother-brat preferring the Princess's company to mine, and my dad preferring that woman's company to mine, watching the same DVDs over and over without even a guinea pig to keep me company because my dad will only try to kill and cook it.

This is quite bad. See what I mean about apocalypses, and how they can get worse?

And I could go back down there right now, and I could say, “Father dearest, I am both the secret and the keeper of the secret.”

And my dad would say, “Huh?”

And I'd say, “THERE'S A CURE.”

And I wouldn't be able to explain it properly, and a whole lot more terrible stuff would start up, and all I want is to be still and quiet and sleep and just not have to deal with another thing.

So I don't want to tell them about any of that.

I could just run away.

But I can't run away, can I? Where would I go? In any case, I feel the terrible weight of responsibility—and not just on my shoulders. It crushes my whole body into that bed. If I go, Dan will be at the mercy of these people—these people being my father and that woman. The Princess too. They'll be left to run wild without a single clue about how to behave properly and how you're supposed to grow up—only they won't live long enough to find out.

It is possible, I suppose, that my dad is just having a bad reaction to the whole apocalypse thing—that, just like I did, he's having a temporary phase of not coping. That seems the kindest way to think about it, and not that my dad is a bit of an idiot and a lot of a dreamer and in lurve. I mustn't think those things, especially the idiot part. After all, I am his daughter, and surely that would only make me a bit of an idiot too.

By dawn, I have decided how it must be. Until my dad snaps out of it and gets with the program (and gets an
SAS Survival Guide
), someone is going to have to take charge around here, and that someone is me.

The freak
, whispers the rain.

“Oh, why don't you just shut up!” I shout at it.

My door opens. That woman, that Tilly, comes in. It is too late to pretend to be asleep because she has actually had the nerve to just step right into my room, where I am sitting bolt upright in bed and—and maybe I just shouted so loud that you can still hear it ringing in the air.

“Are you OK?” she asks.

I find it hard to speak.

“I heard you shout…” she says…and—OH NO—she shuts the door behind her and pads across the floor and comes and sits on my bed. OH NO.

“I'm OK,” I manage to say.

I know for a fact I can't possibly look it. I rub my piggy-feeling eyes.

“Your dad is—”

“Don't talk about my dad,” I blurt.

“He's asleep,” she carries on gently. “Do you want me to wake him?”

“No!” I say, horrified.
I just want her to go.
“I'm fine!” I tell her.

Her face crinkles.

“I really am fine! I'm absolutely fine.”

I curse my own chin for wobbling, my own breath for doing the sucky thing.

“I'll get him,” she says, getting up.

“NO!” I grab her arm. “Please don't.”

“You're upset…”

GET IT TOGETHER, RU
—that's what I tell myself. I hear the rain laugh:
Yeah,
freak
.

“Look, Dilly—”

“Tilly.”

“There's really no need to get my dad up. It was just a bad dream and… I'm…just so happy to be here, that's all.”

There is a pause. Oh yes there is. During which she looks at me and I don't look at her.

“That's not really true, is it?” she says, and before I can go on about how it is true, she carries on. “It's OK. I get it. You'd rather I weren't here, right?”

I look at her. Lady…of course I'd rather you weren't here. But—trust me—you are pretty much the least of my problems.

She sighs. She looks out at the rain (does it speak to her too?!). She looks back at me. “But here we all are,” she says.

There is another almighty pause. I look at Tilly; I don't like her any more than I did before, but I do get that maybe stuff has happened to her like it happened to me.

“That's what I was crying about,” I tell her.

“Yup. You and me both,” she says…and that's when I notice Tilly—so why was she up so early?—has been crying too.

“Are you sure you don't want me to get your dad?” she asks.

I shake my head. She looks doubtful; she's going to get him, isn't she?

“I can deal with this,” I tell her.

“Me too,” she says—after a moment.

Any other adult I have ever known would give me a kiss or a hug right now. Tilly doesn't; she just flashes a twisty smile at me and leaves.

The door closes. I flump back down on the bed. I close my eyes. I just want to sleep. Oh, I just want to sleep.

Freak
, the rain whispers at me.

I want to ask it to let me forget. I already know it is never going to let me forget.

It's late when I wake up. I know that even before I see a clock. I know it because I know about days now in a way that I never used to. I feel time—not in a seconds-and-hours way, but in what I suppose is an animally way; how many hours of light are left, what kind of sky there is. Even before I look.

Today there is late September heat and sun streaming in through the window…same way it used to stream in through the window when you were at school, going, “Hey! Sorry I missed the summer and all—but ain't I just lovely now?”

The
sun; it always comes too late.

And it is late—in the day. Couldn't put a number on it, but I know it's afternoon.

I get up. I go and pee in the chemical toilet in the bathroom. It stinks. I sniff my pits; so do I. Uh! What does it matter? I'll sort it out later.

I feel thoroughly depressed already…but also, weirdly, thoroughly determined. I will eat some breakfast; then I will wash; then I will start to sort this whole mess out. I can't even be bothered to clean my teeth, or—I glance in the mirror—even clean my smudgy, tired face.

I plod downstairs. I am in my (BIG, BAGGY, FLOWERY) hospital-issue underwear and skanky PE teacher's T-shirt. I have not washed since I got here. I care not. Why would I? This is my family. We're in an apocalypse.

“Oh, and here she is,” I hear my dad start as I slouch straight for the kettle.

Aw, shuddup
, I want to tell him.
I'm gonna save you, all
right?

But not right now. All I want right now is a big fat cup of tea, and then I'll start.

“Nice underwear,” Dan snickers.

“Shut it, weasel face,” I tell him.

I check that there's water in the kettle; I shove it on the stove. I grab a cup, drop a tea bag into it. There's a carton of creamer there. I pick it up, shake it. It's empty. Uh. Gonna have to speak to people.

“So is there any more milk?” I ask, turning around.

They're all there, eating lunch. There's my Dad. There's Tilly. There's Dan, grinning his head off. There's the Princess. There's Darius Spratt…

D-A-R-I-U-S    S-P-R-A-T-T

I can't breathe.

“Hi, Ruby,” he says. That's a perfectly normal thing to say, but the voice he says it in is NOT normal; it shakes about all over the place.

Oh
. Oh my
. Oh my
.

I feel like I could faint on the spot.

And then I do breathe, mainly for the purpose of sucking air in so I can screech. I am in underwear. Like, basically, I am naked. I screech. I screech and—I run.

Tilly runs after me, comes busting into the bathroom.

“Is he your—?”

“NO!” I shout at her, pacing, scrubbing my face with a baby wipe. That teacher's mascara? Not waterproof. (Why would it be? They don't cry! They only make kids like me cry!) Yet again, we have a classic zombie look.

I don't even know what I'm doing; the Spratt has seen me in a million worse states, I'm sure, but I'm on some kind of weird autopilot—I think that's what it is. That if I can just manage to look normal, I'll feel normal. Having some clothes on would be a start. I don't really care about what clothes, just as long as I am wearing some… But not that! I shake my head at some offering from Tilly's wardrobe. Or that! Another wardrobe offering.

I dive for my room and pull my teacher's tracksuit bottoms back on.

Tilly flings down a pair of underwear—WUUERH! “They
are
clean,” she says.

She looks the other way as I put on used but clean underwear. Tilly holds out a T-shirt; it is white, plain white—not like mine, which is apocalypse gray. I put that on too.

I return to the kitchen…but I am not composed. Nor is Darius; he looks all red and flustered and nervous and emotional. I need to be alone with him, immediately. I need to speak to him. That earthquake fault-line in my head? It's shuddering again; it's closing, and the two great lumps of me—the past me and the rain me—are smashing up against each other. It feels fairly overwhelming.

Because I am having difficulty standing, I sit down at the table—where a cup of tea and a hideous lunch are waiting for me. My idiot brother is grinning his head off at me. Even the Princess looks ever-so-slightly amused. My idiot father appears to be… URGH! What is that look? Is that…
fatherly concern
?! HE HAS GOT SOME NERVE. Sheesh!

“So, well done, Darius, eh?” my dad says in a weird, stern kind of voice. “He's managed to track you down, Ruby.”

“Yeah,” I breathe. I am guessing Dar has had the sense not to mention that the last time he saw me, I was standing, crying in the pouring rain, or surely Father Dearest would have a few questions to ask about that.

“Would you prefer some cereal, Ruby?” Tilly asks after I've inhaled the stink of garlic coming off the lunch and shoved my plate away from me. I find I'm grateful she's there, because she's the only one who's actually behaving like people are supposed to behave.

“Um, yeah, sure, thanks,” I manage to say, even though I'm pretty sure I couldn't eat a thing. I pick up my tea, attempt to slurp it. “Ah
!” I swear.

I look up. Why are they all looking at me? Why can't they just talk among themselves?

“So you were saying, Mr. Morris?” says Darius Spratt.

This is marvelous, because (1) it indicates that all that has gone on is my dad going on, and (2) it's going to take the heat off me—but REALLY! Could he PUL-EEEESE just sound a little less like some sort of creepy prospective boyfriend-type person?!

Tilly puts a bowl of cereal down in front of me, and I ladle a comforting spoonful into my mouth, dagger-eyeballing the sniggering brother-brat and even giving a quick mini-eyeball stab to the Princess, who's definitely SMIRKING.

I hear my dad telling his version of how come he ditched out of the army base. His version sounds like a reasonable, well-thought-out explanation—the kind of thing you'd get an A+ for in school. “Well, it just seemed to me to be somewhat oppressive,” he says. “Undemocratic,” he says. Then he uses words like “Orwellian” and “fascistic.” At one point, he even comes out with “Kafkaesque.”

I'm not really listening. Dan already told me Dad went AWOL from the army camp because he hooked up with Tilly in the hangar line waiting to be processed—I mean, really!—and when he realized he was going to have to get up even earlier than he did pre-apocalypse, and work harder and not go out for long lunches and not be able to “do things” (Dan-speak) with Tilly because there was a shortage of family accommodation, so they were all crammed into the same room, he did a runner.

I slurp in spoonfuls of breakfast cereal, waiting for the moment I can extract myself and Darius from this hideous situation.

“So you said you were at an army base,” my dad says finally, after he's finished going on about totalitarianism.

“Um, yeah,” the Spratt says. “I guess I'm quite good at math and stuff.”

I could kiss him for being so vague. For sounding so dumb. I pounce.

“So, come on, Darius,” I say brightly, in a voice that comes straight out of some wholesome family TV show and sounds weird and strange to me and must sound utterly bonkers to my family. “Let me show you around.”

I scrape back my chair, pick up my unfinished breakfast, and scurry into the kitchen area. Dan scurries after me, no doubt outraged by the thought that it's only
his
stuff there is to show.

“Oh, Ruby, dearest, let me help you with that,” he says, trying to grab the bowl off me. “Ruby's got a boyfriend, Ruby's got a boyfriend,” he whispers at me as we do tug-of-war over the bowl in the kitchen area. I win: I let go right at the perfect second; milk sloshes over him.

“Shuddup,” I growl at him.

“Ooooo!” he whispers. “I'm so scared!”

Tilly strides between us and mega-eyeballs him. Dan hands her the bowl.

Maybe I've got things wrong about this place; maybe there is some sort of control—and a sense of decorum. Coming from Tilly, a stranger.

“Come on, Darius!” I call in a slightly less-wholesome way.

“Yes, do come along!” trills Dan—and Tilly points a finger into his face to shut him up.

I shove my feet into boots that must be Tilly's, and me and the Spratt walk out into the sunshine.

It is unseasonably warm. At this point, there is not a worry in the sky. At this point, there is nothing but cirrocumulus floccus fluff. A meringue cloud sky, all sweet and puffy.

I am puffy (of face—not enough sleep), but I am not sweet.

“Did you say anything to them?!” I viper-hiss at the Spratt as we walk away. I glance back; oh my
. They are ALL watching from the huge, scenic double-glazed patio doors.
What ARE they like?!
I make out like I am showing the Spratt around. I point at Thunder and Lightning, the ponies.