“Please, please, please, please,” Lucy begged. And then, with a voice that was nearly inhuman, she yelled with rage and fear. “Why won’t you help me? Give me the rest of the vaccines!”
“Even if I had it, Lucy,” Darla said, her voice calm and quiet, hovering at normal volume, “it wouldn’t do her any good. It’s too late.”
“I don’t…believe you,” Lucy replied and she took a shaky breath and then screamed. She stopped when she felt Salem’s hand wrap around her wrist and attempt a squeeze. “I don’t believe you, I don’t believe you!”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Darla continued. “She would’ve needed it hours ago. Before it reached this point. I’m sorry, Lucy.” She slunk back to the rear of the kitchen next to Leland and rested her head against the side of the wall.
Lucy seethed and she watched as her tears dripped on to Salem’s shirt creating a little pattern of slow-spreading circles. Then she looked straight at Darla, who didn’t even try to break eye contact, and raised a shaky finger. “You wasted them.”
“Lula, he…saved me,” Salem mumbled, drawing Lucy’s attention back down toward her friend. Turning back to Salem, she slipped her clammy hands into her own and held on to them tightly.
“I don’t understand,” Lucy sniffed. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“That summer. At the beach.”
Then Lucy remembered. She knew what Salem was trying to say.
She remembered this story perfectly.
Her parents had always instilled a healthy fear of the ocean—the Oregon coast riptides were not trivial and insignificant. A King family friend lost his son to a sneaker wave the same summer Salem now remembered—it was a long Indian summer and they all loaded up the car for a day trip to the beach on Labor Day when the weather hit close to one-hundred degrees in Portland.
They were bodysurfing, pushing past the coldness of the water with the sun beating down on them; their bodies shivered, while their hair absorbed the heat from the sun. Her father yelled that they were going too far out, and Lucy dutifully obeyed his command by spinning around, treading water back until her feet could touch, and finding safety on the sand. It was Salem who pushed out further and ignored Lucy’s and the King family’s pleas to paddle back.
“He saved you,” Lucy said now, finishing the story, even as her shoulders heaved. “You were drowning. And he saved you.”
Salem had slipped below the surface and Lucy was terrified. Screams and shouting filled the beach and she remembered the alarm in her own voice, her fear of losing her friend. And Lucy’s father had sprinted from the blanket, waded into the ocean fully dressed and pulled her up, paddling back to shore with a gasping Salem in his arms. He had lost one shoe in the sand; it was absorbed into the muck. Maybe it resurfaced later and was discovered by an early morning jogger. One lone shoe without a partner, bobbing in the surf, resting in the foam, or tangled with seaweed.
“I can’t save you.” Lucy dropped her head on to Salem’s chest. Her forehead dug into the sharp edges of Salem’s gold crucifix. “I’ve never been able to save you. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
“But he saved me,” Salem said again. “El me salvo.”
And Lucy curled up beside her best friend, their bodies touching. She kept her hand placed squarely on her heart until the distressed breathing stopped and the rise and fall of her chest slowed to a stop.
Salem was gone.
The room didn’t move.
Then Grant took a tentative step toward them and Lucy, sensing his approach, lifted her head. “No. Stay back.”
“Lucy—”
“I said stay back,” Lucy cried out.
A great and terrible fury passed through her. And in an instant she was on her feet, scrambling across the kitchen to Darla. Her foot slipped in blood that had seeped beneath Salem’s body and she lost her balance, tripping into the table. Her body knocked around the plates and glasses as they clinked together. She ran her hand over the table and threw the items to the floor, where they shattered or bounced, and then gripping the sides she flung herself forward, pressing her weight against Darla’s body and pushing her to the floor.
Darla darted out from under her and rolled to safety and then she lifted herself up and held her hands up in defense. She had the poise of someone who knew how to fight, but Lucy—who had only engaged in mock wrestling matches with her brothers—fought with blind rage. When she lifted a hand to scratch at Darla’s tan face, she felt a firm grip around her wrist, digging into the same spot where she had been handcuffed. And Lucy crumpled to the floor, allowing Darla to stand up straight and catch her breath.
“She let her die,” Lucy gasped. “She let her die! We had everything we needed to save them and you just let Spencer have it. How could you let me believe I was safe?”
“You are safe,” Darla said again. “You are safe. Ethan told me—” she stopped, sighed. “I didn’t know there were other people. I had one task.”
“It’s fine to be angry. It is normal for grief to look like anger,” Leland’s voice said near Lucy’s ear. “But you should not fight with your friends in a time like this,” he elucidated in a parental tone.
“She’s not my friend,” Lucy responded quickly and she yanked her hand away from his grasp. But she did not move from her place in the ground.
No one spoke. Grant wandered over to Salem’s body and stood looking at her—a sliver of sun filtered through the window fell over Salem’s legs. Then he turned back to the group, his skin red and blotchy and his eyes puffy. “What vaccine?” he asked.
Lucy stood by the window and looked out on the street. The boy had gone, run off somewhere, so the girl’s body was alone on the wet concrete. The rain had not lifted and the water ran off her body like tiny streams.
Grant sat at the piano. He ran his fingers over the fake ivory keys, stretching them out, and then settled them into position. He hit a chord and another, running them together into a melody that Lucy had never heard before, even though it had the quality of something familiar, something memorable. Grant finished the song, sustaining the last note throughout the house until he lifted his foot off the pedal suddenly and he spun on the bench and stared at Lucy.
“A Grant Trotter original,” he said in a half-whisper.
“You made that up?” Lucy asked, too tired and sad to even muster an impressed smile. “I didn’t know you could play.”
“I’m full of surprises.”
“I should’ve said something.” Lucy turned back to the window. “I should’ve put it all together and realized. I should’ve warned you both.”
Grant stood up and stretched. “No,” he said. “In some ways, it’s better not to know. But I want it stated for the record. I was right. That first morning when I predicted that we were just taking longer to die? I don’t know why I didn’t take bets.”
Lucy began to cry again.
He walked over and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. “I feel like you should be consoling me right now. I am the one that just learned I’m going to die sometime today.”
Lucy leaned into his arm.
“I’m not afraid to die,” Grant said.
Pulling back, Lucy looked at him and wiped her tears on her sleeve. “I don’t understand. We’ve been fighting so hard to stay safe and alive…for almost a week…”
“You misunderstood.” He took a step back and placed his hands on Lucy’s shoulders. He was taller than her by almost a whole foot and he had to stoop his shoulders to look in her eyes. “I want to live. But I’m not afraid to die. This new world is much scarier than death, Lucy.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Amen.”
“We have to go back to the school and get one of the vials back from Spencer.” Lucy mentioned this is in a rush of importance, begging him to agree. She had been thinking about the trip back and how they could pull it off. She had a plan. The vaccine in Spencer’s possession was a travesty, especially since Grant was just playing a waiting game.