My mom stands in the driveway and stares up at the house without expression, but when Opal takes her hand and pulls her along, she goes without protest. This leaves me and Dillon alone, standing by the truck, both of us not looking at the other.
Well, at least I think so until I risk a glance at him and see him looking at me. It doesn’t matter then how cold the winter air is; I feel warm inside. I haven’t felt that way for a really long time.
“Thanks for the ride, Dillon.”
“You’re welcome.” He tips his chin toward the house. “You guys gonna be okay?”
I think of the car crash and shiver, but nod. “Yeah. I think so. I just… everything… is so…”
Before I realize it, I’m not shivering from cold but with all the emotions I’ve been trying hard to hold in tight against me all day long. I put my hand on the hood of Dillon’s dad’s truck, not caring if the metal’s hot enough to burn my palm. I need to hold on to something solid now. I need to keep myself stuck to something so I don’t spin out of control.
“Hey, hey,” Dillon says softly. “It’s going to be okay. Right? You have your house and your mom back. Right?”
“Right.” I take a long, slow, and deep breath. “Do you want to come in? I mean, we don’t have much, and the place is a wreck, but you could if you want to.”
“Yeah, might save me from hitting a traffic jam on the way back.”
We both stare. I clear my throat. “Yeah. That was… weird.”
“The guy on the radio. Was he talking about what happened at the kennel? The guy they brought in? I saw a glimpse of him when I was helping your mom get ready.”
Together, we get the bike and cart from the back of the truck. “I think so. The cop said he went nuts in the grocery store. Broke some glass. Do you think…?”
But it’s too awful to say out loud. That the world as we know it is getting ready to change again, that no matter what the government and doctors have said, the Contamination isn’t gone. And this time it will somehow be worse because those who didn’t become Contaminated have lived for over a year thinking they’re safe.
Dillon doesn’t have a problem with honesty. “I don’t have to tell you what I think, I’ll tell you what I know. The number of Contaminated being brought into the kennel was slacking off for about six months. I mean, we were operating at full capacity, no real room for overflow, you know? Even when people knew they could start coming to claim their families… well, a lot of them didn’t.”
“Maybe some of them couldn’t. Or… you know, maybe some of them don’t have families left.” I don’t know why I’m defending strangers.
Dillon shrugs. “Maybe.”
There are lots of reasons why people wouldn’t claim their relatives. I can understand them all. “So then what happened? You said it was slacking off, and then what?”
Our breaths puff out between us, silver clouds. My fingers are cold, even when I tuck them under my armpits. The house will be a little warmer, especially if I light a fire, but I don’t want Opal overhearing this.
“Then we started getting more wild roundups. You know, people like your mom, they came from the research facilities.”
I nod. Will my heart ever stop hurting? Will this ever stop making my stomach twist and turn?
“Yeah. I know.” I sound bitter and expect Dillon to flinch, but he only nods like he understands, too.
“Well, in the past six months or so, we started getting more pickups from the wild. Sure, we still had the cops bringing in the ones they got from raids and stuff, but there were more random ones than there’d been in a long time.”
We’re both silent for half a minute, thinking of this. I’m not sure what’s worse: knowing my mom was picked up in the early days of her Contamination and kept in a research facility, where they did tests on her, trying to figure out the reason for the disease, or if I’d found out the police had found her in someone’s basement, chained to the floor and used for something worse than experiments.
“So why all of a sudden, do you think?”
“More sweeps, maybe? Cleaning out neighborhoods.”
Dillon shrugs. “The point is, a few of them looked… newer.”
I know what he means by that. “Like the guy today. Like he’d just turned. Like the woman in the bathrobe.”
“Yeah.” Dillon blows into his closed fists and dances a little in place. “Like them.”
“Come in the house. I’ll light a fire and maybe I can find some hot tea or something.” He helps me push the bike and cart up the driveway.
Opal’s chattering away at Mom, telling some sort of story that involves a lot of hand gestures. Mom’s eyes follow her every move, and though her face is still neutral, I can see a glimmer of something in her gaze. Maybe it’s my imagination.
“Let me get a fire started. Then we can see what’s left in the pantry,” I tell Dillon.
“You’ve only been back here for a few days?” Dillon watches me settle the wood into the fireplace.
I shrug, and twist together some pages from an old magazine. I’m glad the match case that holds the long fireplace matches is waterproof. I can’t imagine trying to light a fire the old-fashioned way, like Boy Scouts do. I’d never be able to manage. The fire catches and glows, heat spreading out quickly, so I hold out my hands with a grateful sigh.
“Velvet, I’m hungry.” Opal’s left off her story. Now she dances in front of me.
“And apparently you have to pee,” I remark.
She looks at Dillon. “Well… yeah.”
“So, go! Jeez.” I look at him, too, but he’s just laughing.
“Hungry!” Opal cries.
“I’ll see what I can make. Go before you wet your pants.” I stand, my knees creaking. My neck hurts, too, I’ve just noticed. Actually, I’m not sure there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t ache or sting somehow. And even though I’m cold, my cheeks still feel hot. To Dillon, I say, “Want to help me in the kitchen?”
“Sure.” He follows me through the arched doorway into the kitchen.
The table’s still overturned in here.
“My mom,” I say over my shoulder as I lead him to the pantry, “was a huge fan of plastic bins. All the cereal, all the rice, stuff like that. Pasta. Some of it might still be okay.”
Lots of stuff isn’t—mice or squirrels have chewed through plastic bags and boxes, and stuff is spilled all over. But lots of the packages are still okay. Cans of soup and vegetables, even tuna and salmon. Bins with sealed lids of bulk rice and cereal. I don’t want to think about why it’s only slightly stale. There are even a few tall glass jars with sealed lids, filled with different kinds of beans, red, black, speckled, in layers. The tag on the front gives instructions for bean soup. I think Opal made these for my mom in school as a Christmas or Mother’s Day present. I can’t remember my mom ever making bean soup, but my stomach rumbles at the thought of it.
“I’m hungry, too,” Dillon admits. “But I can just head home—”
“No.” I say it too fast and feel stupid. “I mean, no, you don’t have to go. I can make some macaroni and cheese. Opal loves that stuff, and look, the boxes haven’t even been touched.”
“And that stuff could last through a nuclear war, not just a Contamination,” Dillon says.
He says it so matter-of-factly, but it strikes me funny, and I laugh. Loud. The sound fills up the narrow pantry. After a second, he joins me. We laugh together, loud and long and goofy, until tears stream down my cheeks and I have to swipe them away. I never laughed with Tony that way, not ever.
“What are you guys doing?” Opal sounds disgusted.
I try to answer her, but the laughter won’t stop. Dillon’s watching me with bright eyes. He has a great laugh to go along with the great smile I already noticed. He runs a hand through his hair to push it out of his eyes. He has great eyes, too.