GONE
©2008 The Angst Guy
(theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: The Cuban Missile Crisis boils over in October
1962—and the lives of three sisters change forever. The young Helen, Rita, and
Amy Barksdale star in this tale of family bonds tested under the worst of
worst-case scenarios.
Author’s Notes: The story’s title is the same as that of the
last fantasy fiction I wrote for TSR, Inc., and Wizards of the Coast (“Gone,”
from the 1999 Dragonlance anthology, Heroes and Fools: Tales of the Fifth
Age). Aside from this, the two stories are completely unrelated. Copious
additional notes are found at the story’s end.
Acknowledgements: Daria
fanfic stalwarts Kara Wild, RedlegRick, Renfield1969, and Lawndale Stalker
provided detailed feedback on this story that led to major revisions in the
conclusion. Thank you for your excellent help.
*
This is General Power speaking. I am addressing you for the purpose of reemphasizing the seriousness of the situation the nation faces. We are in an advanced state of readiness to meet any emergencies and I feel that we are well prepared. I expect each of you to maintain strict security and use calm judgment during this tense period.
—General Thomas Power, Commander in
Chief, USAF Strategic Air Command, transmitted to all SAC Wings on Wednesday,
October 24, 1962, at DEFCON 2 (actual quote)
*
Friday, October 26, 1962
Helen
Barksdale, twelve and a quarter years old, heard and reached for the ringing
alarm clock before she was fully awake. Slapping it off, she groaned, then
threw off her covers and sat up in bed. A cold shiver ran down her spine as she
hugged herself, goose bumps on her arms. The house was freezing even with the
central heat on, and Helen’s bedroom at the end of the hall was the coldest
room in the house. Even her sisters called it “The Refrigerator.”
As she
stood on the cold wooden floor in her bare feet and rubbed her arms to warm
them, a noise caught her attention. It was the sound of water running in the
pipes. Someone was already using the bathroom shower. Helen glared as she
stalked over to her door and opened it, looking out into the hallway. Yellow
light spilled from under a nearby door, the bathroom she shared with her two
younger sisters.
Temper
boiling, she walked over, turned on the hall light, and banged on the bathroom
door with her fist. “Don’t use up all the hot water!” she yelled.
“I can’t
hear you!” came her youngest sister’s voice from the
other side. The shower kept running.
“You
little creep!” Helen yelled. “Shut it off right now, and save some for the rest
of us, Amy!”
“Like
you save any hot water for me, whale butt?”
“Amy!
I’m telling on you for that!” Helen snarled. The little rodent had set her
alarm early just to get in and steal the hot water. Helen wrestled with the
doorknob, but Amy had locked it. “Mom’s going to paddle your backside good!”
she shouted in a fury. “Do you hear me?” Helen hammered on the door with both
fists for good measure.
“Stop
it, will ya?” her middle sister Rita yelled from her bedroom. “I’m trying to
sleep!”
“Amy’s using up the hot water!” Helen told Rita, then turned to shout at the bathroom door. “You better turn
it off, four-eyes, or I’ll stuff your head in the toilet!”
The
shuffle of feet came from Rita’s room. Rita opened it, squinting as she walked
out and past Helen, her short blonde hair looking like a tangled bird’s nest.
“I’m telling Mom,” she grumbled, heading down the hall.
“Tell
her to get Amy out of the bathroom!” Helen shouted after her, but she knew it
was a lost cause. Rita would complain that Helen and Amy were fighting and the
noise woke her up, and their mother would make Amy get out of the bathroom,
then put Rita in, so Helen would be third and get the cold water. She hammered
on the door in frustration. “Get out! Right now!”
“Flintstones!” Amy sang, the shower still running. “Meet the
Flintstones! They’re a modern Stone-Age fa-mi-ly!”
“Out! Get out!”
“From
the . . . town of Plainfield, and Helen Big Butt is about to screeeeeeam!”
“Amy!”
Helen screamed.
“Helen, for the love of mercy!” called her mother from the other side of the family’s ranch house. “It’s six o’clock in the morning!”
“Make
Amy get out of the shower so we can have some hot water!” Helen shouted back.
“I have a really important day today and I have to get fixed up early! And she
said ‘butt,’ too! I heard her!”
Her
mother wearily thumped down the hall toward her, wrapped in a bathrobe with
huge bunny slippers on her feet. “I can’t believe you girls can’t wake up one
single day without screaming your heads off and waking up all Creation! Move!”
she said, motioning Helen aside.
Rita
came down the hall behind her mother, yawning wide and not watching where she
was going. As her mother banged on the bathroom door, Helen was immensely
pleased to see Rita walk into the wall and smack her head on the low-set
thermostat box.
“Ow!”
yelled Rita, grabbing her forehead.
“Get out
of there right now!” their mother shouted at the bathroom door.
“I’m coming!” Amy said—and the bathroom door opened a moment later. Amy walked out in her pajamas and bathrobe and big-frame glasses, rubbing her long, dark brown hair with a towel. The shower was still running behind her. “What’s the problem?” she asked with eight-year-old innocence.
“Mommy!”
shrieked Rita in tears. “I hit my head!”
“Mercy! Are you all right?” cried their mother, and she tried
to pull Rita’s hands from her face to assess the damage.
Helen
started past her little sister—then noticed something strange. “Your hair is dry!”
she shouted at Amy. “You weren’t even in the shower!” Amy tried to run,
but Helen lunged and grabbed her by the right hand—a dry right hand.
“Hey! You were goofing around wasting hot water the whole time! You little—!”
“Ouch!
Mom!” yelled Amy. “She’s twisting my arm!” She jerked out of Helen’s vengeful
grasp and got out of the bathroom.
“Helen!”
yelled their mother, turning from Rita. “I’m ashamed of you!” Behind her, Amy
stuck out her tongue at Helen.
“It’s my
turn in the shower!” shouted Rita. “And I banged my head!”
“It’s an
improvement on your regular face!” said Amy. She darted into her room, slammed
the door, and locked it one second before Rita got her fingernails into her.
“I got
here first!” Helen yelled, having now turned the shower off. “I get it next! I
give a speech today in class!”
“You hit
your little sister, you wake up the whole house, and for that I’m supposed to
reward you?” said her mother. “Go to your room and wait your turn!”
“Is it
possible for a man to get any peace at this hour?” roared Helen’s father from
down the hall. “Would everyone please just shut the hell up?”
“Walter!”
yelled his wife. “Don’t use that kind of language in this house, and keep your
voice down!”
“Mom!”
shouted Helen. “This isn’t fair!”
“It is
too fair!” yelled Rita, walking into the bathroom and crowding Helen aside.
“Get out and let me shower!”
“I won’t
have any hot water, and I’m giving a speech! I can’t go in front of my whole
class without a shower!”
“Helen!”
shouted her mother. “I told you to go to your room!”
“God,
strike me down!” her father cried in despair.
“Walter!
Stop it!”
“Can I
use your bathroom, then?” said Helen, holding the towel rack to resist Rita’s
efforts to shove her out of the bathroom. “Let me shower there!”
“Your father’s about to use it,” said her mother, pointing out the door. “Go to your room until you can behave like a lady!”
“Ooooh!” Helen stamped out of the bathroom, making sure she
bumped Rita hard as she left, then went her room and slammed the door. She
threw herself on her bed and pounded the mattress with both fists. “I hate
you!” she yelled into her rumpled blankets. “I hate all of you! It’s not fair!
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
Several
minutes passed with her face buried in the blankets. Life wasn’t fair. It stank
like cow manure. Why couldn’t everyone go by the rules? The rules being, Helen
gets the shower first because she’s the oldest and gets up so early. Didn’t
being the oldest count for anything at all? Rita was a year younger, but she
got everything, she always got her way because their mother treated Rita like
gold. You were the easiest baby I ever had, their mother always said. Not
like Helen, God no, or Amy, who almost killed me—eighteen hours, oh mercy. You
were the easiest, Rita, and I love you.
“I wish
I was dead,” said Helen into her blankets. “Everything stinks. I hate
everything. I wish they’d blow up the world and get it over with. I can’t wait
to get out of this town and go to college. I’ll show ‘em. I’ll be on that bus
and out of here so fast, their heads will spin. I’m going to make some big
changes. I’ll make a difference in this world. They’ll find out. They’ll see.”
She
sniffed and pushed herself up on her elbows. It was 6:09 a.m. on Friday
morning, the best day of the week—or it would be, except Helen knew she would
get only cold water when Rita was done, because Rita took forever and a day in
the shower, and God only knew what she was doing in there. And then tonight
there would be the Friday Night Dinner That Takes Mom Forever to Make. (Wasn’t
there some way to just make a dinner in a couple minutes, like something
ready-made, like frozen lasagna? Helen loved lasagna, but they had it only once
a season, if that.)
And then
there would be the Friday Night Fight for the Big Television Set. It was worse
than having Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson duke it out in the front yard.
Rita would want to see “Sing Along with Mitch,” and she’d get their mother to
sit with her in the living room and they’d both sing those lame songs in their
horrible off-key voices, while Amy reminded everyone (in writing) that it was
her turn to watch “The Flintstones” on the little TV in the den, so Helen would
miss the first half of “Route 66,” and what was the good of watching the second
half of a show when you didn’t know anything about the first half? Maybe Dad
knew what he was doing when he went down into the basement Friday evenings,
beer in hand, to putter with his short-wave radio behind a locked door.
“I hate
everything,” Helen grumbled. “I wish they’d go ahead and blow up the world.”
She considered other options as well, like leaving home when she was sixteen
and lying about her age so she could work as a waitress at a truck stop, and
then after earning some money maybe hitch a ride to New York City and find a
coffeehouse and meet a guy who wore dark clothes and smoked and was going to
college and writing great protest songs, and he’d fall in love with her and
they’d travel the country together, righting wrongs and becoming folk heroes,
and one day she’d see her family again and they’d all be as miserable as the
people in The Grapes of Wrath, but they’d be so surprised they’d drop
dead when they saw her—Helen Barksdale (or whatever her name would be after she
got married), the All-American Heroine. That would show them.
Helen
sighed again and got off the bed. She went to her wall calendar and crossed off
the previous day, Thursday the 25th, and looked to remind herself what was in
store in just a few hours. Today, she would give a presentation on civil rights
and what it meant to Plainfield. It was for her seventh-grade American History
class before lunch, and she knew her speech would really upset the bigoted kids
and maybe her teacher, Mr. Benedict, too. In moments, everyone would tell a
story that started off with, “I heard from my uncle about this Negro who . . .”
(except some kids would not say “Negro” and would use that other n-word word
instead). That would touch off a fierce argument with the minority of kids,
including Helen, who didn’t think there was anything wrong with going to school
with Negroes—heck, Plainfield High had three of them, and they were okay. Helen
knew she’d give her talk anyway, hang the consequences. If the school called
her parents in for a conference, so be it. She had all As
and was the best student in Plainfield High School’s junior high section. Let
‘em do their worst.
Over the
weekend, she’d finish Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring after doing her
homework, then call around and see if anyone wanted to get together Saturday
afternoon and talk about important stuff and listen to her Kingston Trio
albums. Maybe she could stay at a girlfriend’s house Saturday night, and they
could watch “The Defenders,” which Helen loved—a TV show about lawyers who
weren’t afraid to take on big cases about real issues. Maybe she should be a
lawyer, too, and scare the pants off evildoers all over America. She’d hammer
those rotten people, all of them. They’d see.
Except
for setting the clocks back one hour, Sunday would be boring, as it always was,
but that’s what church was all about: boredom. Helen couldn’t see the use of
it. Walt Disney that night would be the one good spot in the day. Monday was
the start of the school week cycle all over again,
plus it was PTA night. Helen was expected to help serve cookies and punch at
PTA, and that meant having to fend off that creepy Mr. Meyer, who kept trying
to grab or pinch her rear end while staring at her breasts all the while, and
she’d have to smile while everyone complained to her about Negroes and
Communists and Democrats. Negroes and Democrats were fine, and frankly, what
the heck did anyone really know about Communists, anyway? Had they ever met
one? Probably not. Here it was,
1962 and the dawn of a new era of hope and peace and love, and people were
acting like it was the Stone Age, like in the Flintstones song, like they
should be out beating each other with clubs and rocks.
Helen
sighed and shook her head. Halloween was next Wednesday, and she’d be expected
to walk Amy and Rita around the whole neighborhood in the freezing cold so they
could collect candy and wear dumb costumes. No doubt Rita would again go as a
princess (imagine that!) and Amy would wear that hideous black robe and skull
mask again and carry around that wooden scythe Dad had made for her, pretending
to be the Grim Reaper. “Always good to see a classic,” Dad said every time he
saw Amy in that outfit. Why couldn’t Amy wear something like a Wilma Flintstone
mask, or Minnie Mouse, or even Amy’s hero, Rocky the Flying Squirrel? She was
so weird for a third grader. Helen suspected Amy kept wearing that Grim Reaper
costume because she liked the shock value. It creeped out
everyone.
Someone banged on her bedroom door. “Shower’s yours, geek!” yelled Rita, who then walked off to her bedroom and locked her door. Helen was too tired to even yell an insult back, which meant she was very tired indeed.
I am
tired, she thought, stepping back from her calendar. Her thoughts were as
cold as the October wind outside. I’m sick of everything. Just blow up the
world. Let’s just throw those bombs around at Cuba and Russia and everywhere,
nuke the whole planet. Just blow the whole rotten thing up, and see if I care.
Today would be fine.
She got
her things and went to the hall bathroom, knowing the hot water would be gone.
It was.
“Save
some of the Frosted Flakes for me,” said Rita at the breakfast table, stifling
another yawn. Her blonde hair was perfectly coifed in Marilyn Monroe movie-star
style, despite the fact that Miss Monroe had killed herself only two months
earlier. It’s a remembrance, Rita always said when she was reminded of
this, and that was that.
“There’s
only enough for one more bowl,” said Helen, pouring the rest of the box’s
contents into her bowl.
“Helen,”
said her mother, “let Rita have the Frosted Flakes. You can have the Corn
Flakes.”
“I don’t
want the Corn Flakes!” said Helen. “I had the Frosted Flakes first!”
Her
mother got up and took Helen’s bowl before she could grab it back, then put the
bowl in front of Rita and took Rita’s empty bowl. “I’ll pour you some Corn
Flakes,” she said. “Just put a little sugar on them and they’ll be just like—”
“Mother! Those are my Frosted Flakes!” Helen yelled. “That’s
not fair! How can you do that?”
“Helen,
keep your voice down!” her mother yelled back. “You’re a young lady now, and I
expect you to act like one! What does it matter what you eat? Have some Corn
Flakes!”
“I don’t
want Corn Flakes!” Helen shouted, standing up and shoving her chair
back.
“Here’s
a Frosted Flake,” said Rita, picking one out of her bowl and flipping it at
Helen.
“Rita!”
said her mother—but Helen was faster. Dipping her fingers in her glass of milk,
she snapped them at Rita and splattered white droplets all over her sister’s
face.
“Aaaaah!” Rita shrieked, also jumping up from her
seat.
“Helen!”
shouted her mother. “You apologize!”
“She
threw something at me first!” Helen shouted back.
“Go to
your room!” her mother ordered. “Right now!”
“What
about Rita? She threw something, too!”
“I have
to fix my hair again, you bozo!” Rita shouted at Helen. “You ruined it!”
“Your
hair is fine, dope!” Helen yelled, stamping out of the dining room for her
bedroom. She slammed her door, waited three minutes by walking in a circle and
watching the clock, then walked back out. Only one
person was in the dining room when she returned—Amy, reading a comic book while
eating the bowl of Frosted Flakes that Rita had left.
“Hi,”
said Amy without looking up. “Did I miss anything?”
“You
retard!” Helen snapped. “Those were my Frosted Flakes!”
“Oh,”
said Amy, engrossed in the comic. The Amazing Spider-Man, Issue #1, said
the cover. “I’m sorry, I thought they were Rita’s.”
Helen
hissed, but it was too late to do anything else now that Amy had her germs all
over the cereal and she was almost through with the bowl, too. Stamping over to
the refrigerator, Helen took out the jelly, stuck a piece of bread in the
toaster, and glowered at her little sister.
“Halloween’s
next week,” said Amy, turning a page in the comic book. “Know what I’m going to
be?”
“Dead,”
said Helen, under her breath. She looked down on the kitchen counter at the
newspaper her father had brought in earlier. U.S. SHOWS CUBAN MISSILE BASE
PHOTOS AT U.N., read the headlines.
“Yeah,
sort of,” said Amy. “I think I’m going to be the Grim Reaper again.”
“You’re
supposed to go as something other than what you really are,” Helen said,
flipping the paper over to read the first page below the fold.
“So,”
said Amy to her comic book, “you’re not going as a girl dog, then?”
With a
sharp intake of breath, Helen dropped the paper and headed for the kitchen
table, making a fist—just as her mother came back into the room. Helen slowed
and pretended she was merely walking over to get the salt from the table.
“Oh,
Amy!” said their mother in annoyance, hands on her hips. “That was Rita’s
cereal!”
“Oops,”
said Amy, turning another page in her comic book.
“And
don’t read at the table,” said her mother, snatching the comic book away. She
flipped it into the trashcan. “You shouldn’t read junk like this, anyway.”
“Mom!” Amy screamed. She immediately jumped from her seat
and rescued the first-edition comic from its fate, then fled the kitchen for
her room.
“Amy!
Come back and finish your cereal!” her mother called. She sighed and walked to
the refrigerator. “Why can’t we eat a civilized breakfast together like
everyone else?” she asked.
“Because
Dad left at ten till seven, and Rita took my cereal, then Amy ate it,” said
Helen. “That’s why.”
“But
you’re having toast!” said her mother. “Why are you so upset about the cereal?”
“Forget
it,” Helen grumbled. The toast popped up, and she gingerly took it out to smear
jelly on it.
“I’m
going into Baltimore this morning,” said her mother, pouring some orange juice
for herself. “I might have lunch with your father at Beckman’s Grill if he can
get away from the office.”
“You’re
taking the bus?”
“I’m
taking the bus. Mrs. Hammond next door is driving me over to the bus stop
before eight. I should be home by three. I have to do a little shopping.”
For Rita
no doubt, thought Helen. You always make special shopping trips for Rita, but
not for me. Helen smeared jelly on the toast with angry swipes of the knife:
zip zip zip.
“Listen,”
said her mother, putting down the orange juice. “I want to talk to you.”
Helen
exhaled heavily and put down her toast, ready for another lecture on Behaving Like a Proper Young Woman. “What, Mother?”
“If
anything happens—wait, look at me when I’m speaking to you. Listen. Helen, if
anything happens, I want you to get Rita and Amy and come home, right away. You
hear me?”
Helen
frowned at her mother. “What are you talking about?”
Her
mother pointed at the newspaper, which Helen had flipped over to reveal the
main headline again. “That’s what I’m talking about. You know what I mean. If
anything happens, you find Rita and Amy, and you bring them home at once, right
here. Don’t stop for anything. You get them and come right home. Nothing else
matters.”
This was
weird, much too weird. “Why?” Helen asked, her mouth
suddenly dry.
“I don’t
want my girls out if anything happens,” said her mother.
A last
spark of annoyance surfaced in Helen’s mind. “Why don’t you tell Rita to do it?
You let her do everything else.”
“Stop
it!” her mother snapped. “You’re the oldest, so you’re in charge. You do
whatever you have to do, but get them here. That’s all I’m asking. You
understand?”
Helen
hesitated, almost forgetting what she was trying to do, which was to make
toast. A new tone was in her mother’s voice, one Helen did not ever recall
hearing before. It sent a cold shiver down her back to hear it. Her mother, who
irritated everyone and feared nothing, was afraid. It was more shocking than
anything Helen could imagine.
“Sure,”
said Helen slowly. “I’ll bring them back.”
“I’m
counting on you,” said her mother, pointing at Helen’s chest. “Don’t breathe a
word to them. It’s up to you. Whatever you have to do, get—”
“Hey!”
shouted Rita, walking back into the kitchen. “What happened to my Frosted
Flakes?”
“Amy
happened to it,” said Helen, glad to get away from her mother. Her nerves were
shot.
“What am
I going to eat?” Rita wailed. “I’m starving, Mommy!”
“Helen
made some toast,” said their mother. “She’ll share it with you.”
That was
the last straw. “Mom, no!” Helen yelled. “I have to
eat so I can give my speech! I made that for me!”
“Oh,
Helen, for the love of mercy, just share it! The bus
comes in ten minutes!”
“This is
my toast! Rita can make her own!”
“Mom,
please, can I have some toast?” said Rita.
Seeing
all was lost, Helen snatched the toast and threw it into the kitchen sink.
“There!” she shouted and ran out of the kitchen for her room again. Grabbing
her books and ignoring Rita’s shrieks of dismay and her mother’s reprimands,
Helen rushed past the kitchen, opened the front door and slammed it behind her.
Fighting back tears, she ran down the steps for the end of the driveway, which
was where the school bus stopped every morning at 7:20 a.m., give or take three
minutes. It was still dark outside, except for a haze of light to the east over
the rooftops of the subdivision.
Helen
stopped at the road. She had a few minutes to herself, so she wiped her eyes,
blew her nose in her handkerchief, and tried using her compact mirror, but it
was still too dark out to see herself in it. Snapping
her compact shut, she put it back in her purse, and then she realized she’d run
out of the house without a coat. She had only her magenta sweater to go with
her white blouse and just-below-the-knee powder-blue skirt. Worse, she’d
forgotten to make herself a paper-bag lunch, too, so she’d have to spend thirty
cents to buy one—or else go back in the house. Thirty cents it was, then.
Groaning,
she looked down at her chilled, bare shins. At least her white socks and shoes
were unstained, which was a miracle given the way she’d run out of the house
through the leaf-filled yard. And her long fingernails were still intact. She’d
put pink nail polish on them, stolen from Rita’s room.
“I hate
this,” she muttered. Here she was, breakfast-less and lunch-less, freezing her
buns off by a dark roadside waiting for a school bus. What if a crazy thrill
killer drove by, someone like Charles Starkweather, and he kidnapped her or
worse? Would her mother even care? Would Dad come out of the basement long
enough to attend the funeral? Would Rita and Amy fight over which one got the
best pew in the church? Probably.
Or . . .
maybe one sunny morning, Helen would be standing there by the road, waiting for
the school bus—when she was sixteen or so—and this nice car would come by, a
red Corvette Stingray, and the driver would be a handsome blond guy from
California, a lawyer—maybe secretly working for the government, too—and he’d
pull over and ask where such-and-such a place was, and he’d be funny and she’d
laugh, and he’d offer to drive her to school. Rita and Amy would both happen to
be sick that day with scarlet fever, or maybe polio, so Helen would be at the
bus stop alone, and she’d say, sure, and she’d get into the Corvette because
she knew she could trust this guy, he was a nice man, and off they’d go.
Somehow
they wouldn’t quite get to school but would instead stop at a coffee shop
somewhere, and he’d tell her about his secret work with President Kennedy,
righting wrongs all over America, and he’d fall in love with her and she’d go
with him on missions to places like Cuba and the Bahamas and Hawaii, and they’d
outsmart the enemies of peace and freedom, and one day they’d drive through
Plainfield on their way to Washington, D.C. to meet with the President again
and at a stoplight she’d look over, and there on the sidewalk would be her
family, destitute and wearing rags, and Helen would wave and smile just as the
light turned green and they roared off in the Corvette, and she would hear Rita
scream in agony as they left.
That
would be wonderful. The very idea thrilled her down to her toes.
The
daydream faded as she heard a twig snap behind her. She didn’t turn at once,
but instead pretended to yawn as she casually looked back at the house. Someone
small was hiding behind the walnut tree in the front yard, with one foot and
the edge of her skirt barely visible. Helen turned around as if she’d seen
nothing, looking down the two-lane road for the school bus. She waited ten
seconds, then said, “Knock it off, you little rodent. I see you behind the
tree.”
Amy
stepped out from behind the walnut tree and walked only a few feet closer
before she stopped in the yard. She was far enough from Helen to have a good
head start in case her sister began chasing her. She wore a buttoned-up dark
brown coat and white socks with shiny black shoes, holding her books and her
Rocky and Bullwinkle lunchbox.
“You can
come closer,” said Helen. “I’m not mad.”
“Right,”
said Amy, staying where she was.
“Doing
anything in school today?” asked Helen.
“We have
a field trip,” said Amy. “We’re going to a pumpkin field to pick out pumpkins
for Halloween.” She frowned, staring at her big sister. “I bet I can make a
jack-o-lantern that looks like your butt, if I can find a pumpkin fat enough.”
“Drop
dead,” said Helen amiably.
“You
first,” said Amy.
The
front door slammed shut, and Rita danced down the front steps. Amy immediately
moved to one side to get clear of both sisters, trying not to become trapped if
they decided to join forces and chase her. As it was, neither Rita nor Helen
showed any inclination to do that. It was just too cold.
Rita had
her Marilyn Monroe hairdo protected with a scarf. It was just light enough now
to tell she wore her canary yellow dress, the one with the white-checked
blouse, covered only by a thick white cotton sweater. Without a trace of fear,
she marched up to Helen and stood next to her at the bus stop, shivering a
little from the cold wind. She’d remembered to bring her Junior Miss lunch
pouch, at least.
“Mom’s
really mad at you,” Rita said in a richly satisfied voice. “Wait till you get
home tonight.”
“Kiss my
ass,” said Helen, who had had enough.
Rita
gasped and looked at her with huge eyes. “Oh, you are really going to
get it when you get home!” she crowed. “I’m telling!”
Helen
turned to her, her voice as cold as the wind. “And I’ll tell Mom you put on a
bra when you get to school, and you stuff it with Kleenex until you’re a
thirty-four C,” she said in a level voice. “I’ll even get witnesses—two
teachers, for sure. I’ll even get copies made of that photo from that guy on
the yearbook staff who sold me the negative, the one with your front sticking
out like you put grapefruits in there. You know which photo I mean—the one with
you smooching Frankie March.”
Rita
stepped back but stayed at the bus stop. “You are in so much trouble,” she
whispered, but her voice shook.
“So are
you,” said Helen in a voice filled with promise. “You wanna tell first, or let
me?”
“Bus is
coming,” said Amy from the middle of the yard.
“Good,”
said Helen. They remained in their standoff until the huge orange-yellow bus
pulled up, red lights flashing, and the door opened. Helen let Rita on first,
which surprised her sister. Helen then got on, but she stopped at the top of
the steps—and waited.
Amy
slowly approached the bus. A look of deep anxiety crossed her face as she saw
the trap prepared for her. Though she hesitated before boarding, she gave in to
the inevitable and climbed the steps, hunching her shoulders for what little
protection it would give.
“Hi,
rodent,” said Helen, giving her little sister a sharp pinch on the right arm
when she got to the top of the steps. Amy jumped and shrieked, but Helen hung
on. “Don’t you ever again call me what you called me at breakfast, got that?”
Helen snapped, then let Amy go. Turning, Helen walked
off to take a seat near the rear of the bus—but halfway there,
she turned and pointed at Amy. “And you tell on me, you’ll get it again,
double!”
Amy
silently took a seat near the front and rubbed her arm, glaring back fiercely
through her big-frame glasses. Helen thought she saw tears in Amy’s eyes. Maybe
it was just a trick of the overhead aisle lights. A stab of remorse went
through her, but it passed when she told herself that Amy deserved it. Call
me a girl dog, will she? I’ve got the highest grade-point average in junior
high, and she calls me that? She’s lucky she doesn’t get worse. Helen took
her seat, wrapped in her self-righteousness like a mummy.
A boy
with a crew cut and glasses thicker than Amy’s got on the bus and sat down next
to Helen at the next bus stop. He was a freshman and one of the boys on the
school’s math club. “You hear the news this morning?” he asked.
She
fought down her gag reflex. This boy had the worst breath in Plainfield school
history, on the level of First World War chemical weapons. “No,” she said, and
she looked out the window to signal she wasn’t interested in talking or
breathing his air.
“The
Navy caught a Soviet ship sneaking in to Cuba,” he said. “They found missiles
on it when they searched it, and Russia’s really mad and is telling us to give
the ship back.”
“Whoopee,”
said Helen.
“I bet
they try something,” said the boy. “I bet they try to get it back. That would
be great.”
“Great,”
muttered Helen.
“I bet
we bomb Castro, too,” said the boy. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with
his middle finger. “I hope we fry him good. Dirty Commie.
Better dead than red.”
Helen
didn’t reply. The sky was brighter in the east, but it was amazing how dreary
the landscape looked in the predawn light, the barren fields and bare trees and
broken-down barns along the highway. The world was deserted and empty.
The ride
to school was otherwise uneventful. The bus first unloaded the smaller
children, including third-grader Amy and sixth-grader Rita, in front of
Plainfield Elementary. Helen saw Amy walk around to her window, glare up at
her, then shout with purest venom above the bus engine
and noisy students: “I hope you die!” She walked off immediately after
that, lost in the crowd of kids entering school. Helen wrinkled her nose in
disgust. Amy was so immature.
Moments
later, the bus went into gear and drove around to the front of the adjacent
Plainfield High School, where Helen and the remaining students got out and
walked up the steps to the doors. By the time she got inside, Helen’s teeth
were chattering. She deeply regretted not getting her coat before she ran out.
She went
to her locker, traded books around for the first half of her day, and checked
her appearance in the mirror she kept hidden under one of her books. Her short
brown hair was still in relatively good shape, curled under and bouncy as all
get out, thanks to the hairspray she’d used. She touched it up with a comb,
then hid the mirror and shut her locker. All she had left to do today was make
her speech during third period, right before lunch, and the rest of the day was
downhill from there to the weekend.
If she
could shake off the knot in her stomach, it would be a perfect day. She
remembered her mother’s face as she told Helen to bring her sisters home “if
anything happened.” What did she think was going to happen? Nothing would
happen. Nothing ever happened in this town. Everything exciting happened in
Wilmington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C., at most only a day
away over two-lane roads from tiny little Plainfield. Baltimore was closest, to
the southeast. Helen had been there twice.
Swallowing,
she took a deep breath and held it five seconds. The knot in her stomach eased.
She then straightened her spine and lifted her chin. Today would be perfect.
Nothing would go wrong. She relaxed a little and headed off for homeroom. Maybe
she could bribe Amy with a couple of quarters to forget the pinch and let her
watch “Route 66” in uninterrupted bliss. It was a steep price to pay, but worth
it.
The
atmosphere in the hallways at Plainfield High was strained that morning. The
whole week had been tense, ever since President Kennedy’s televised speech
Monday night about the Soviet missile bases in Cuba and how America wouldn’t
stand for it. On Wednesday and Thursday, men brought yellow boxes and barrels
into the school storage rooms, Civil Defense symbols visible on each container.
The boys whispered about war and fallout and Geiger counters and missiles and
giant mutant ants. Today, a number of kids walked around with stricken
expressions. Helen saw a girl crying as she hid her face. What was going on?
Helen
walked to her homeroom class and heard a voice mixed with static as she came
in. Most of the guys, the brains and the football players and the delinquents
alike, were crowded around the teacher’s desk, listening to a plugged-in radio.
The red morning sun peeked through tree branches at the windows.
“What’s
going on?” Helen asked the pony-tailed girl in the seat in front of her, the
only person she thought of as a close friend. Tiny, blonde Caroline Barkley was
a junior varsity cheerleader, the youngest of them all and usually a fountain
of chatty fun—but not now.
“I don’t
know,” Caroline whispered in an uneasy tone. “Something about
the Navy. I think there was a fight.”
A cold
finger went down Helen’s spine again. “Where? You mean
in Cuba?”
“I don’t
know. I don’t want to hear about it.” Caroline turned away and buried her face
in her notebook, scribbling down answers from a Social Studies homework paper
she’d borrowed for copying.
Helen
hesitated, then got up and made her way to the front of the room where the guys
were standing. She gathered a few strange looks as she went, but most of the
class was used to the way Helen stuck her nose into whatever was going on, even
if it was supposed to be guy stuff.
“—stated
it had no information on casualties,” said the male voice on the radio as she
got closer. “The Defense Department will neither confirm nor deny reports of a
conflict involving U.S. naval forces and Cuban aircraft. We have been informed
that the President might make an announcement this afternoon at one o’clock
Eastern time, but we have no word if he’ll discuss
these reports. We will break in to regular programming once we have further
news on events taking place off the coast of Cuba.”
Pop
music came on then, in the middle of an Elvis song. “Turn it up!” said one of
the girls in the front row.
The
teacher turned the radio off instead. “In your seats!” he shouted. “Let’s get
roll call done!”
“Mister
Gaines!” shouted a lanky boy on the basketball team. “Can the Russians get a
bomb over this far into America? Like anywhere near where we are?”
The class laughed nervously. “Not likely,” said the homeroom teacher, frowning at his attendance roster as he checked off names. “I used to work at a school in New Mexico, near that White Sands missile-testing place. Rockets aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.”
“You
worked with missiles?” someone else asked. “Wow!”
“No, I
didn’t say that!” said Mr. Gaines irritably. “I said I worked near the
place where they tested them. Missiles have a mind of their own. You shoot ‘em
off, they’ll go anyplace. We’ve got nothing to worry about. The Reds don’t have
any missiles around here, anyway.”
“They
got those ones in Cuba,” someone reminded him. “And the Russians got bombers.”
“Yeah!”
cried several other people.
“The
Cuban missiles aren’t ready to be fired,” said Mr. Gaines, looking more
irritated. “We found them in time. And planes—we’ll shoot down anything that
gets into our airspace. The Russians haven’t—hey! McNeil, Arthur, Donaldson,
the rest of you—sit down, or I’ll get out my board of education and educate
your rear ends!”
Helen
took her seat and pulled out the notes for her civil rights speech to study
them. Her mind wouldn’t cooperate, however. Her attention jumped from word to
work on the index cards, seeing them as collections of letters but not as words
with meanings. This horse hockey about Cuba was getting on her last nerve. She
remembered her wish this morning that this would happen, that there would be a
war and the world would blow up, but what was wished for in righteous anger was
pure nightmare now. When she realized she’d stared at the name “James Meredith”
for half a minute and couldn’t remember who he was even though she knew
who he was, she gave up and tucked her index cards in her American History
book.
Mr.
Gaines let the class talk in low voices once roll was called and the morning
announcements were made over the intercom. Plainfield had an away football game
that night, and everyone was encouraged to come out and support them. Classroom
chatter turned to pro football and the usual all-guys argument over whether
Green Bay, New York, or Dallas had the better team.
It was a
blessing when the first-period bell rang. Helen gathered her books and set out
for General Math. The teacher, Mrs. Williamson, was a thin, elderly woman
capable of boring to death even the most devoted students, so Helen took the
time to relax and daydream a little. As often happened when Helen was bored, she
began to think about romance—and sex.
Careful
to keep her math book open in front of her, she focused on the stapler on Mrs.
Williamson’s desk and thought about the book she’d discovered last week in
Rita’s bedroom under her mattress. Helen found it while searching for Rita’s
diary for future blackmail material. The book was a far better find than the
diary for blackmail purposes, but Helen became so attached to the volume, she
couldn’t imagine turning it over to their mother. It was Sex and the Single
Girl, by Helen Gurley Brown. A sex book, and
another Helen had written it! Thrilled, Helen went through the book like
lightning, soaking up the information. A single woman having sex! For fun! Any
guy she wanted! Without getting married and having a baby! It was beyond
imagining, too incredible to be true.
Just thinking about it made her edgy, but not in a bad way.
It got her imagination pumping. What if she was at the drugstore having a root
beer float one day, and Rita and Amy were off with Mother shopping in Lehman’s
Department Store across the street, and this rakish guy with dark hair sat down
nearby and ordered a hamburger. He’d be muscular and tall and look like he was
having the best time of his life. She’d watch him, and he’d notice her watching
him, and he’d smile and ask how she was doing, and they’d sit together and
talk, and he’d pay for her float and show her his black Corvette Stingray
parked out front.
You
live around here? she’d ask him.
Nah,
I’m from California, he’d say. Hollywood.
Hollywood?
Really?
Yeah,
I work in the movies, stunt-car driver. Pay’s good, the work’s fun. A little
dangerous, but that makes it fun.
He’d
laugh. He’d be so at ease, he’d put her at ease, and she’d laugh with him.
And
after they drove around in his black Corvette for a while, racing other cars
and maybe righting a wrong here and there, she’d ask to see where he was
staying, after letting it drop that she was on The Pill (the details on how she
was able to do that were not important), and he’d have a room in a hotel, nicer
than the no-tell motel down the road that the high-school seniors were rumored
to use, and the room would have scenic windows with a nice, clean room with a
big white bed, and they’d walk into his room and he’d slowly shut the door and
take her in his strong arms and then—
Things
got a little dark at this point in the fantasy because Helen wasn’t exactly
sure what was supposed to happen, but she was a knot of tension, practically
dancing in her seat in a fever. Her brain had shut down, processing nothing
except for a need to do something she couldn’t name, a need that reached out
into every part of her body from her head and feet to her—
Helen
jerked and blinked, wide awake and back in math class. A brilliant flash of
light had gone through the room, which meant—
Without
thinking, Helen threw herself out of her desk and dropped to the floor, ducking
and covering as she had been taught all her childhood to do. She steeled
herself for the heat and blast and flying glass and falling walls.
Everyone
began to laugh. “What are you doing?” said the guy who sat behind her. “Are you
nuts?”
Shaking
all over, Helen slowly straightened and looked around. The whole class was
laughing at her. Mrs. Williamson was at the windows, opening them as she always
did to send some cold air around the room and wake up the sleepy students, and
as she pulled another window open, the sunlight flashed on the pane exactly
like the previous flash of light.
Helen
stood up and took a seat at her desk, her face burning with shame. Her daydream
was a shambles.
“Goodness,
what is everyone carrying on about?” Mrs. Williamson asked from the windows.
“You should be studying now! Miss Barksdale, is there a problem?”
“I
dropped something,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry.”
Mrs.
Williamson stared at her a moment more, then went back to opening windows.
Other students snickered and watched Helen for the rest of the period, waiting
to see if she’d do something else crazy.
The
second-period bell rang after a million years of this torture. She made it to
her Home Economics class and took her seat, grateful that no one here had been
in General Math a few minutes ago. Caroline the tiny cheerleader took the seat
ahead of Helen. Snapping gum in her mouth, Caroline grinned at Helen, her blonde
ponytail bouncing in its usual perky way.
“Wanna
piece?” Caroline asked, holding out a stick of gum.
Helen
shook her head. “No, thanks. How was your morning?”
“Oh, it
got better. French is always fun. I wish I understood what everyone was saying,
though.”
Helen
smiled. Caroline wasn’t very bright, but she made everyone around her feel good
and was immensely popular. Perhaps because Caroline was no threat to Helen’s
first-place position in grade-point averages, Helen thought of her fondly and
depended on her high spirits to lift Helen’s own. Helen was also more honest
with Caroline than with anyone else alive.
“I fell
out of my desk last period, in math,” Helen said, reddening again. “It
embarrassed me to death.”
“Oh, no! Are you okay? I think they make these desk seats
too high.”
“I’m
okay. It was just something stupid. Hey, what are you doing tonight? Oh,
right—the game.”
“Yeah. We have to be on the bus at . . .” Caroline’s voice
trailed off as she looked at the doorway. “Who’s that?” she asked.
Helen
looked. She recognized the mother of one of the other girls in Home Ec,
standing in the doorway and talking in a loud whisper to the teacher, Miss
Barnes. “That’s Sally’s mom,” Helen said. “What’s she doing?”
Miss
Barnes turned back to the all-girl class with an anxious look. “Sally?” she
called, and made a come-hither motion with her hand. “Get your things, please.
Your mother’s here to pick you up.”
“What? Where are we going?” Sally asked.
“Come
on!” her mother called, waving. “Get your things right now!”
“Is
something happening?” Miss Barnes asked her mother, but her mother did not
answer. Sally got her books and walked uncertainly for the door, where her
mother put her arm around her and guided her away at a rapid pace.
The starting bell for class rang. Miss Barnes sighed and shut the door. “Well,” she said, walking to the front of the room, “as promised, today we’re going to make a grocery list.” She stopped at the blackboard and wrote OUR LIST on the board in white chalk. “Okay, let’s say you’re shopping for a family of four. There’s you, your husband, and two children, one six years old and one a baby. What kinds of things will you need?”
Hands
shot up all over the room. Call on me, call on me! thought
Helen, prepared to talk about ready-to-eat lasagna.
“Emily,”
said Miss Barnes, pointing somewhere else.
“Diapers,”
said Emily, “tons of them.”
“Right,”
said Miss Barnes with a smile, “but I should have been more specific. We’re
just going to the grocery store today. Look at the four basic food groups and
think about it. Let’s say you’re all out of—”
Someone
knocked on the door. Miss Barnes sighed again. “Julie, would you get that,
please?”
Julie,
whose chair was closest to the door, answered it, then
stepped back. “It’s Dorothy’s mom,” she said, looking at Dorothy, the tallest
girl in the class.
Abruptly,
Dorothy’s mother—a short, frumpy woman with graying hair and a faded print
dress—pushed past Julie and walked into the room. Without a word, she grabbed
her daughter and pulled her out of her seat, heading for the door.
“Mom!”
said Dorothy as she was dragged along. “What’s going on?”
“Excuse
me!” cried Miss Barnes. “Excuse me, Mrs. Hastings? Mrs. Hastings, please!”
Dorothy’s
mother did not stop. She pulled Dorothy out the door and was gone down the hall
at a half run, pulling her protesting daughter behind her. Everyone stared at
the open door and listened to the sound of the footsteps retreating.
“Class,”
said Miss Barnes, putting down the chalk, “I’ll be right back. Stay in your seats,
please.” She strode quickly for the classroom door and headed down the hall.
“Where’s
she going?” someone asked.
Julie
got up and peeked out the door. “She went in the junior high office,” she said.
“Some other teachers are there, too.”
“Maybe
she’s going to report Dorothy’s mom,” said someone else. “She’s weird.”
“Yeah,”
said several other girls. Talk broke down at that point into dozens of small
conversations, everyone looking nervously at the door, where Julie kept watch.
Helen
noticed that Caroline was clutching her stomach and appeared ill. “Are you
okay?” she asked.
Caroline
shook her head. “No,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m scared. Something’s wrong,
I know it.”
Helen
put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she said, but she wasn’t
sure she believed that. “Things are fine, really. People are just acting
strange today. Everything’s under control, though. I’m sure of it.”
Caroline
nodded, but she covered her mouth with her hand and shut her eyes. “I can’t
stand this,” she whispered. “It makes me so scared. I wish they would stop it.”
“Shhh,”
said Helen. She got up and crouched on the floor by Caroline’s desk, taking her
hand from her stomach. “It’ll be all right, okay? Listen, it’ll be fine. We’ll
all be fine.”
A tear
fell from Caroline’s chin and splashed on Helen’s hands. Caroline hid a sob,
but everyone heard it anyway. Within moments, other girls came over to offer
comfort until Caroline was swamped with well-wishers. Uncomfortable, Helen felt
she was getting in the way, so she pulled back and let Caroline’s other friends
move in.
And, as
she did, she thought about Rita and Amy.
If
anything happens, you find Rita and Amy, and you bring them home at once, right
here. Don’t stop for anything. You get them and come right home. Nothing else
matters.
Helen
stepped back toward the door. Her eyes were on Caroline’s ponytail, all that
was visible of her through the crowd.
You’re
the oldest, so you’re in charge. You do whatever you have to do, but get them
here. That’s all I’m asking, okay?
She
turned to the door and took a step toward it.
Miss
Barnes walked back into the room. Something was wrong—Helen read it instantly
in the awkward way Miss Barnes moved, the frozen look in her eyes. Everyone
stopped talking.
“Take
your seat, Julie,” said Miss Barnes in a strained voice. “Everyone, please take
your seats, right now.” She pulled the door shut behind her and then stared at
the wall where all the windows were. She stared at it for too long, as if
hypnotized. “And pull the shades,” she finally added. “Pull all of them down. Now.”
Several
girls got up to do that. The sunlight faded from the
room, and only the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead gave illumination. Miss
Barnes walked to the front of the room and stood before her desk. She reached
back and caught her desk by the edge with both hands, then leaned against it
and looked at the floor. Everyone waited.
At long
last, Miss Barnes took a deep breath. “When I was a girl,” she said, “my family
lived in San Francisco. I really liked it there because of the hills and
streetcars and—well, just everything. I’d like to move back there one day, when
. . . oh, one day. We’ll see.” She cleared her throat and looked up, eyes
scanning the classroom and the girls before her.
“One
December morning,” she went on, “we went to church, but before services
started, we heard on the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. It shocked
me that anyone would even think about attacking us, but we went to services
anyway, and we prayed for our soldiers and our country, and then we went home.
It got worse, though, because these rumors started that San Francisco was going
to be attacked next—which of course it wasn’t, but we didn’t know that. It was
just . . . just a very scary day, and a scary month came after it.”
Miss
Barnes swallowed. “There’s some bad news on the radio,” she said. “There’s been
a . . . some trouble around Cuba, but I won’t go into it. All I want you to
know is that it might be a scary day, but it might not. We’ll have to wait and
see. If things don’t . . . if there’s trouble, I want you to remember that we
will pull through it, just like I did when I was your age. I want you all to be
brave and think of what’s the right thing to do, each of you, and have faith in
God and our country. I’m sure we’ll come through this, and everything will be
well again. All you need is faith. Can we all do that?”
Everyone
nodded. Many said, “Yes, Miss Barnes.” Helen felt a stirring of courage inside
her. Her dread began to shrink.
“What’s
going on?” asked a girl in the front row.
Miss
Barnes looked down and chewed her lip for a long moment. “There’s been . . .
some fighting, some kind of problem around Cuba, but it’s being fixed. I think
that’s all I can say about it. I’m afraid I don’t know much else.” She stood
away from her desk and walked to her chair, but she did not sit down. “Class,”
she said, “before we go on, let’s have a moment of silence and if you want to
pray, that would probably be a good idea. Okay? Just take a moment and give
thanks for something good in your life, or say a prayer for our country. Or both.” She sat down and, after a moment, bowed her head,
her hands clasped in her lap and eyes closed.
With
nervous glances, everyone else in the class did the same. Instead of thinking
about the separation of church and state, which she would have done under any
other circumstances, Helen suddenly thought of all the times she’d said that
going to church was boring and stupid. Maybe that hadn’t been such a wise thing
to say after all, even if church usually was boring. It served a function, too.
Helen bowed her hand and put her hands together.
God,
she thought to herself, please don’t let anything bad happen to us today.
She wrestled with what to say next, suddenly confronted with the way she’d been
treating Rita and Amy. True, they got on each other’s last nerve, but they were
still her sisters. Help me keep my temper when Rita and Amy try to drive me
crazy, she went on. I’m sorry I pinched Amy and bad-mouthed Rita, and I
should be sorry even if they never apologize, though maybe You’ll
remind them about that later. She winced. Or even if You
don’t, I should be a better big sister. Try to make me more patient
with them, whatever it takes. I don’t really want any of us to get hurt. Oh,
and be nice to Caroline. She’s having a bad day. Please cheer her up. Thanks.
Amen.
She
opened her eyes, feeling better. When most of the class was looking around
again, Miss Barnes got up and walked around to the front of her desk again.
Instead of talking about grocery shopping lists, however, she began to talk
about her childhood in San Francisco during World War II. Helen and the rest of
the class became entranced, asking questions as they listening to her tale. The
bell signaling the end of class came all too soon.
Many of
the girls hugged Miss Barnes before they left. Helen didn’t, but on impulse she
hugged Caroline before leaving the room. “Have a good day,” she told her.
“Thanks,”
said Caroline, surprised and touched by the hug. “You, too.
See you at lunch?”
“You
bet,” said Helen. Calmer and able to smile now, she gathered her things and
headed out the door for American History. With the civil rights speech she
finally felt prepared to give, it was sure to be a class no one would forget.
Helen’s reborn good mood lasted about twenty seconds on her way to
the stairs and her next class. She passed a cluster of boys arguing around a
locker and caught one of them saying, “Man, I’m telling ya, there ain’t no such
thing as a little A-bomb. It had to be really big, or maybe more than one.”
She slowed, eyes on the floor ahead but her ears turned to the
talk. “As long as it was in Cuba, that’s fine with me,” said another boy. “They
can shoot ‘em all off at those Commie bastards, as long as they’re not going
off over here.”
Helen
kept walking a few more steps, then stopped and turned back. “What happened?”
she said.
The boys
immediately looked at her and fell silent. “Nothing,” said one uneasily.
“Come
on,” said Helen, walking closer. “Just tell me.”
One of
the boys sighed and looked unhappy. “Someone said on the radio that an A-bomb
went off,” he told her. “They don’t know much about it. It was either on Cuba
or around it.”
“One guy
said it was on a Cuban missile, ‘cause it hit some of our ships,” said another.
“Oh,
bull,” said the first boy angrily, “it did not! No one can get close enough to
bomb our ships!”
“That’s
what he said!” the second boy insisted. “I ain’t kiddin’ ya!”
“It had
to be us dropping the big one on Castro,” said another boy, and the argument
was off and running again.
Helen
stayed a moment to listen, then walked away to her
class with automatic feet. Her speech was suddenly the least important thing in
the world. Was it true? Had someone done the unthinkable and dropped the Bomb?
That must have been the news Miss Barnes wouldn’t tell, and now Helen knew why.
What would happen next? Anything was possible, now—anything bad.
American
History was on the third floor of Plainfield High’s main building, on the
eastward side. At 10:30 a.m., when third period started, Helen slowly walked
into the classroom and dropped her books on her desk, then sat down with a
lifeless thump. Where her stomach had been was a dull, empty ache. Don’t let
this happen, she thought as she sat. Don’t let this happen to us. Stop
it now, God, just get down here and stop it. This isn’t funny anymore, and it
wasn’t even funny to begin with.
Pre-lunch
classroom jitters on Friday were always bad, but today there was additional
anxiety thanks to the radio news, which everyone had heard about by now. All
the students talked, shouted, and cut up even after the starting bell rang.
“Shut
up!” shouted Mr. Benedict from his desk for the eighth time. “Everyone, get in
your seats and shut up! Shut up, damn it!” His swearing made the students laugh
and get wilder. He slapped a yardstick on his desk until it broke, which
brought more laughter from the class. “That’s it!” he shouted, throwing down
the broken half of the yardstick. “I’m bringing the principal here!”
Mr.
Benedict strode to the classroom door and walked out, leaving it wide open.
From the shouting and noise in the halls, Helen could tell that other
classrooms were similarly disrupted across the third floor. What about my
speech? she thought. Am I going to give it?
Will anyone care? I worked on this thing for days!
A paper
wad fight broke out. A ball of notebook paper hit Helen in the side of her
head. She groaned and got up, leaving her books behind
as she walked across the room and stood by the windows. Scattered clouds
drifted overhead in a blue sky, and dead leaves flew across the school grounds.
A number of students were outside the building, standing in groups talking or
walking or throwing rocks. To Helen’s mind, nothing so clearly showed the breakdown
in authority as students not being in class while school was going on. It was
unthinkable. If I was a teacher, she thought, I’d drag them in by
their ears. I’d show ‘em. Two of those jerks are even smoking! Of all the
nerve!
The
siren at the volunteer fire station down the road sudden rose in the air,
howling up to an ear-piercing high note. Helen made a face and left the window
as the siren abruptly fell, then rose again in an
unfamiliar up-down-up-down pattern. Great, she thought, this is just
great, we really need a big fire right now to make everything just peachy and—
The
classroom intercom beeped. “Attention all classes!” shouted a loud male voice
over the wall speaker. Helen recognized him as the school principal. “I want
all teachers to—” The rest of his words were lost in the chaos from the class
and the rise-and-fall wail of the fire siren outside. Helen shouted for
everyone to stop talking, but no one listened. She couldn’t even hear herself.
Her place at the window was taken by students hoping to see fire trucks leaving
the station.
Giving up, she pushed her way through the other students to the classroom door and listened in the hallway, but she still couldn’t make out what the principal was saying. However, in moments, students spilled out of classrooms up and down the hall, led by their teachers. “Against the lockers!” one teacher shouted. “Crouch down and face the lockers! Move away from the windows!” Students were white-faced. Some cried.
“What’s
going on?” Helen shouted. Several of her own classmates stood behind her,
looking at the madness. “What’s happening?”
“Attack
warning!” the teacher shouted back. “We have an attack warning! Get everyone
out of the room and into the halls! Get them out!”
Attack warning? An attack warning?
Stunned,
Helen leaned forward to ask for a clarification.
A very
great Light went off behind her, appearing and disappearing in an instant,
faster than she could blink. She jumped, startled. The unearthly intensity of
the Light and the pricking of heat on the back of her neck were so different
from anything she’d ever known, she forgot all of her blindness-prevention
instincts, forgot all her training to duck and cover, and she turned around to
see it. For a moment, the noise in the corridor fell except for gasps and cries
like “Jesus Christ!” and “What was that?”
It was
impossible to see anything through the mass of students in the history
classroom at the windows—but many of them had recoiled from the glass, yelling
in shock or pain, clutching their eyes. A wave of voices arose next in terror
and panic. “It’s a bomb!” a voice screamed.
“Bomb!”
screamed everyone else.
Helen tried to get back into the room, but a big male student charging out slammed into her and knocked her backward into several other students dashing down the hall. She fell sprawling to the linoleum floor, banging her head and knocking the wind out of her. Running students stumbled over her, stepping on her arms and legs.
Terrified
she would be trampled, Helen scrambled to the row of lockers across the hall as
a stampede began around her. She instinctively curled, hands over her head and
legs drawn up. Hard-soled shoes kicked and slammed against her. Screams filled
her ears as blows rained down from every side. The battering went on until she
was close to losing consciousness. For the first time ever, Helen feared she
would die.
A
chaotic age later, she dully realized the chaos had subsided, and she uncurled
long enough to crawl into an empty classroom doorway in case more people ran
past. Horrifying screams, dozens of them, echoed up stairwells along the
third-floor hall.
Half
aware of what she was doing, she got to her unsteady feet. Every spot on her
body ached. To her surprise, she found that she was crying. Blood stained her upper
blouse and right hand, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from. One of her
shoes was gone. She saw it twenty feet down the hall, by a trampled student
prone on the floor.
Blinking,
Helen staggered toward her shoe and with an effort was able to crouch down,
snag it, and put it on as she leaned against the row of lockers. All the while,
she stared at the student lying nearby, a vaguely
familiar boy who was a senior at the high school. He seemed to be unconscious.
A greenish bruise was forming on his cheek. Despite the situation, it was hard
to feel empathy for him. A feeling of unreality had taken over Helen’s mind.
She thought she was seeing a movie and wasn’t really there in her body at all.
Voices
called in pain from down the corridor. She shook her head and realized she’d
stood in place for some time. The screaming had faded, but cries could be heard
from the stairwells and at the ends of the hall. As she watched, a sound like
long rolling thunder vibrated everything for several seconds before fading
away. Earthquake? Helen thought, then: Shock
wave from a bomb blast. Looking around, she saw teachers and students
walking in the halls, bending over motionless bodies and trying to offer aid.
My sisters.
“Amy and
Rita,” Helen said aloud. “Amy and Rita.” She stumbled
off toward the nearest stairwell down. Bodies were scattered on the stairway
and landings, victims of the stampede to escape the school and get outside.
Some were motionless, others moaned, and a few crawled, huddled silently in
corners, or begged for help for dreadful injuries.
“I’ll be
back,” Helen told the injured as she went downstairs without stopping. “I have
to go get my sisters and take them home. I’ll send someone over to help as soon
as I can. I’m sorry I can’t stay. I’ll be right back, I promise.” She meant to
keep her promise, but she could not stop just yet. Her sisters had to be found
first.
Helen
was descending the last stairway to the main floor when she recognized one of
the bodies, a crumpled form at the foot of the steps. It was a small blonde
girl with a ponytail, lying flat on her stomach with her face turned to the
left. Her thin arms and legs were purple from bruising, her left arm clearly
broken in two places and bent behind her. It looked to Helen as if the girl had
fallen down the stairs and been trampled. She didn’t recognize the girl right
away, but as she passed she stared, slowed, stopped, then knelt at Caroline’s
side.
Blood
pooled on the dirty linoleum around Caroline’s head, bubbling from her nose and
mouth. Helen carefully touched Caroline’s neck, feeling for a pulse as she had
been taught in her Red Cross classes. Footprints were visible across the back
of the smaller girl’s white blouse.
“Oh, my
God,” Helen whispered.
Caroline’s
left eye slowly opened and turned up at Helen, as if the smaller girl were
awakening from sleep. Helen flinched in horror. She had thought Caroline was
dead. In a terrible way, she had hoped her friend was dead, as her
injuries were so awful.
“Caroline!”
she whispered. “Oh, God! Oh, God, it’s me, Helen! I’m
here, okay? Caroline, I’m here! I’m with you, okay?” Possibilities for rescue
crowded her mind. Should she move Caroline? Was her back broken? She stroked
Caroline’s face and hair, trying to collect her thoughts. “I won’t leave you,”
she whispered. “I have to go soon because I have to get my sisters, but I’ll
stay here with you until I get you out! I’ll get help for you, okay? Can you
hear me? Caroline, can you hear me?”
The
little cheerleader’s gaze stayed focused on Helen’s face wherever she moved,
but Caroline did not otherwise stir. Her breathing was audible now, labored and
short. Helen realized most of the cheerleader’s ribs might be broken. How could
anyone do this to another human being? How was it even possible? How could God
let this happen?
“Caroline?”
Helen fought back her tears as she stroked the girl’s cheek. “Don’t die on me,
okay? I’ll get help and get you out of here, okay? You’re my best friend! Just
wait for me, okay? Wait for me until I get back with help? Wait for me?”
Her
friend’s lips slowly moved as another bubble of blood appeared and popped
between them. As Helen watched, Caroline’s lips curled. She smiled up at Helen.
“I love
you!” Helen cried, sobbing openly. “I love you!” She had never once considered
saying that to anyone she knew at school, even to Caroline, who was her best
friend in the same way the radiant Caroline was everyone’s best friend.
Caroline’s lips moved to say something in return, words without
sound.
She did
not finish. In moments, she let out a long, slow, tired sigh. Glittering red
bubbles popped from her mouth and nostrils, but no bubbles appeared after that.
Her lips parted. The smile stopped. Caroline’s left eye ceased to follow
Helen’s movements.
“Caroline?”
Helen stroked her cheek. “Caroline, can you wait for me?”
The
smaller girl’s face and skin took on a yellowish hue. Helen moved her hand in
front of her friend’s eye. Caroline’s pupil did not respond.
Helen
remained motionless for a long moment, then put her hand down and touched
Caroline’s neck again. It was still warm. There was no pulse.
“I love
you,” Helen said. She knew what had happened but said it anyway. “I’ll come
back for you. Wait for me. I promise to come back. I have to get my sisters and
take them home first. I promised Mom I’d—”
Helen stopped talking but did not flinch. She did not take her hand from her friend. The second Light died as swiftly as the first, reflected from every surface and lighting even the dark places. In the distance outside the building, Helen heard wild screams and car tires screeching on pavement.
The
first flash might have been an accident. The second flash said it was not.
Atomic
war, she thought. They went and did it. It’s real. They’ve killed us
all.
It was
necessary to pause for a moment, necessary to sit still for a handful of
seconds and reflect on all the people Helen knew had ceased to exist in that
instant flash, reflect on the many more who were dying
even now, and offer a prayer for them. Helen felt for a moment as if she talked
directly to God, asking mercy for all humanity, asking that all be saved even
if mankind had just failed the final test to avoid extinction. Spare us,
spare us, have mercy, forgive us. Don’t let this
happen.
She sat
until she could wait no longer. The dead were gone. The living called. She
opened her eyes and looked down at Caroline a last time.
“I have
to go,” Helen told her friend. “I have to get my sisters and take them home.”
She stroked the smaller girl’s cheek, then got up. Her
knees felt warm and sticky. She looked down and saw that the front of her shirt
and her knees were soaked with Caroline’s blood, which ran down in long streams
into her socks and shoes. She started to reach down to wipe it away, but gave
up. It did not matter anymore.
“I love
you,” Helen said to the little cheerleader. “I love you.” Turning, she
staggered toward the double doors at the end of the first floor hall. A broad
blue sky was visible through the windows. Blue sky, Helen thought. That
is just so wrong. How could the sky still be blue?
Helen
pushed open one of the doors at the end of the corridor, blinking against
direct sunlight. Cold October air swept around her, but she hardly felt it. Her
body was detached from her consciousness and moved without guidance in her
shock. As she left the school, a group of four adult women—parents, she
thought—rushed past her and into the building, after giving her horrified
looks. They cried out only moments after they entered. Helen did not stop or
look back. Rita and Amy,
sang the mantra in her head, Rita and Amy, Rita and Amy.
To the north was Plainfield’s elementary school, several hundred feet away across a grass lot and a softball field. A road running past both schools was already carrying a greater than usual number of cars heading into the countryside, most of them speeding and honking horns. Scattered knots of high-school students and staff were visible everywhere, crouching behind cars or hiding behind buildings. None of those hiding were exposed to the south or east. Few people were in the open, most running in different directions alone or in small groups. Only a few people stood around, watching the sky, talking, smoking, running hands through their hair and looking dazed.
Baltimore
is southeast, she thought, where Mom and Dad are. As that thought
entered her mind, it was suppressed. Washington, D.C. is south, her
thoughts ran on, as if nothing had happened; Wilmington and Philadelphia are
farther away to the east.
There
had been two flashes so far. The first was either east or southeast, given the
way the students at the windows had reacted as if blinded. Helen did not
speculate where the flashes had come from. She did not want to know.
Vaguely
aware she was attracting attention because of her bloodied appearance, Helen
continued walking in the open toward the elementary school. The blood on her
legs pulled on her skin as it dried. As she crossed the baseball diamond and
went around the fence, a second rumbling thunder came and shook her bones. She
remembered the thunder following the first flash: a fading blast wave from a
nuclear weapon. She kept going.
A half-dozen women were clustered around a side entrance on
the west side of the elementary school. Several pounded on the closed doors and
shouted for them to be opened. Helen decided to avoid them and continue on
around the gray, two-story building in a clockwise direction, looking for the
classroom where she thought Rita might be. Rita had said the night before that
Halloween decorations were taped to her room’s windows, but most of the
classroom windows had them. Had Rita mentioned a big witch? She’d compared it
to her big sister, as Helen recalled, though she was not in the least offended
now. The insult was not worth comment.
“Honey?”
a woman yelled at her. Helen looked over and saw a lady she did not recognize,
on the edge of the group at the doors. The woman stared at her, badly shocked.
“Honey, are you all right? Do you need help? What happened to you?”
Helen
shook her head and kept walking. It wasn’t worth the time to explain; she had
things to do. The other women watched her with visible fear and concern. “You
need to get to cover!” another woman shouted at her. “There’s radiation
coming!” As if that mattered, Helen thought, and ignored the warning.
On the
north end of the elementary school was the main entrance and bus loading dock.
The doors here, too, were shut and apparently locked, given the crowd of
several dozen parents shouting for their children to be sent out. All but a few
were women, and not all wore coats or sweaters, as if they’d dropped everything
to get to the school as quickly as possible. Cars were parked haphazardly at
the loading dock. The fathers must still be at work, Helen thought. With
luck, they were not working in the big cities—but she carried that thought no
further.
Helen
briefly considered joining the women, but she remembered being trampled by the
mob in the high school, so she stayed far away. Circling wide around the scene
at the main doors and ignoring any calls to her, she crossed the road that the
buses took and scanned the school windows carefully as she headed south along
the eastern side of the long building. Despair entered the fringes of
consciousness, but she fought it back and continued walking at a slow and
deliberate pace so she would be sure to see a witch cutout or decoration. She
saw many small ones, but no large one.
While
she looked, she became aware that the right side of her head throbbed. She
touched her right ear and discovered the brown, curled-under hair on that side
was clotted with blood. Someone must have kicked her when she was run over. It
explained the blood on her blouse after the stampede. A long shower would be
required once she got home. Perhaps Rita and Amy wouldn’t mind if she got the
hot water first this time. She also felt an urge not to shower, to leave the
blood on her. It was all she had left of Caroline.
Reaching
the south end of the building again, she glanced across the road at the high
school. A few students were filtering back to it. Teachers and parents were
trying to collect the teenagers and either take them inside or walk them toward
their homes. “Are the phones working?” she heard one teacher repeatedly shout.
“I can’t get the police!”
Helen crossed the south end of the elementary school, saw no big witches in the windows, and headed back up the west side again. After a moment, she looked toward the side entrance where the women had gathered ten minutes earlier. They were gone.
They
got into the building, she realized. She began to run back to the door, but
her legs and chest hurt so much she had to walk again. The effects of her
near-trampling were beginning to worsen. Ugly greenish bruises covered her
arms, shins, and thighs, and she ached to the bone everywhere. It doesn’t
matter, she told herself, I can’t stop until I get Rita and Amy out.
Maybe we can get something to drink before we go home. She licked her lips,
which were chapped from the wind.
When she
reached the door and opened it, she found two men immediately inside. She
recognized them as teachers. One saw her and gasped, “Good God!” He stopped her
by catching her arm and crouched so his face was level with hers. “Are you in
pain?” he asked. He tried to turn her head to look at her right ear. A muffled
chorus of shouts and yells, arising from the throats of many children, came
from behind a door at the end of the short entry hall, twenty feet away.
Helen
pulled away and pushed his hands aside. “Do you know which room Amy Barksdale is
in?” she said. She figured Amy would be easy to manage with a few threats, but
she could be dragged along for a short time if it came to that. Rita liked to
be a pain just for the sake of being a pain, so she would have to be picked up
second.
“She’s
bleeding down her legs,” the other man said, looking Helen over. “We need to be
her to the school nurse.”
“Where does it hurt?” the first man asked Helen with genuine concern. “Did you hurt your legs or tummy? Are you in pain?”
Tummy? she thought. Do I
look like a kid? “No!” she snapped. “I’m here to get Amy Barksdale! Do you
know where she is?”
“Is she
a student?” the second man asked.
“She’s
my sister, in the third grade,” she said. “I have to take her home with my
other sister, Rita.”
“Rita
Barksdale? Blonde girl, sixth grade?” said the first man. “She’s in my class
next to mine on the second floor. You’re her sister?”
“Yes, I
just said that!” Helen’s patience wore thin. “What room is she in?”
“Two
thirty-one,” said the first man. “Look, sweetie, we’ve got to get you to the
school nurse. You’re really bleeding, see?”
“I’m not
hurt!” Helen shouted, shoving away from him. “Everyone that’s hurt is back in
the high school! They’re all dead over there, most of them. Leave me alone!”
With
that, she shook them off and left at a fast pace. Pulling open the entry-hall
door, she dashed into the corridor beyond to get to the stairway across the
hall. The building hadn’t changed since she had last been there in the spring,
when sixth grade ended. However, she discovered that she had to pass what
looked like a thousand children sitting in the halls against the lockers, all
talking or shouting or crying or making trouble. The air stank as if some
children had gone to the bathroom in their clothing. The least disturbance
attracted their bored or overanxious attention.
When Helen made her appearance, all the children near her screamed
and moved back, seeing her bloodstained clothes, hands, and legs. It was
impossible to hear anything else. Ignoring them, Helen pushed her way through,
went up the stairs, and got to the second floor. Her energy reserves were low.
She was also aware that she stank of drying blood and perspiration, but it
couldn’t be helped. Room 231 was only a few doors down. She steeled herself
when she walked out into the second-floor corridor, which was filled with
children not much younger than she was. Their reactions were predictable—gasps,
shrieks, wide-eyed looks, pointing, and “Wow!” and “Gross!” and “She’s
bleeding!”
“Are you
all right?” a female teacher asked her.
“I’m
okay, but I’m looking for Rita Barksdale in room two thirty-one,” she said
quickly.
“Where
are you hurt?” asked the lady. “Why don’t you go with me to the girls’ room and
let me get your cleaned up and find out what happened to you?”
“No!”
said Helen, shouting to be heard over the noise of children in the hall around
them. “I’m looking for Rita Barksdale!”
“She’s
right there!” said a boy, pointing. Helen turned and looked behind her.
Rita
stood not four feet away in her bright yellow dress. She stared at her older
sister with huge eyes and an open mouth. “Good heavens!” Rita said in a voice
remarkably like their mother’s. “What did you do?”
“I
didn’t do anything!” said Helen crossly. “We have to go home!”
“Is Mom
here?” Rita asked.
Helen
opened her mouth to say no—but didn’t. “She’s outside! Come on!”
“You
can’t leave yet, honey!” said the teacher. “You’re too badly hurt!”
“I’m not
hurt!” Helen insisted. “The people in the high school are hurt!” She pointed to
Rita. “I have to take her home!”
The
teacher vacillated, then looked at the many students
lining the corridor. “I’d rather you stayed,” she said. “Are you sure you won’t
stay?”
Helen
paid no attention. “Let’s go!” she said to Rita, trying to grab her by the
hand. Rita swiftly pulled back, looking Helen over. “Is that blood?” her sister
asked, putting a hand over her mouth.
“Yes!
Now, come on!”
“Don’t
touch me!”
“Come
on, or I will touch you!”
“No, you
won’t!” Rita headed for the stairs, with Helen right behind her. Rita started
down, then turned to look back. “Can Susan Milford
come over tonight?”
“No! Mom
said no!”
“Oh, she
did not!” Rita shouted back. “She’ll let me! It’s Friday!” She started up the
stairs again. “I’m going to get Susan.”
Helen
blocked her way, then stuck her bloodstained hands out
at her sister in a threatening way. “Go downstairs!” she shouted. “Now!”
“Get out
of my way! I’m telling Mom!”
“Go ahead!” Helen shouted. “Go ahead and tell her! You go ahead!” She did not say that she thought their mother was already dead, burned up with all of Baltimore by one of the bomb flashes. It was the first time she admitted to herself that her mother and father were likely gone.
“I will
tell!” Rita stamped down the stairs, then tried to
outrun Helen to get outside first.
I’m
the mom now, Helen thought. I’m the mom. It’s up to me. She began to
run. Her legs hurt like hell. “Wait up!” she shouted. “Stop running! We have to
get Amy!”
“You get
her!” Rita shouted and ran for the side door that Helen had used to get in.
Helen got to the bottom of the stairs, stirring another round of shrieks and
cries from the smaller children because of her appearance.
As Rita
pushed open the entry hall door, Helen shouted to the two teachers there,
“Catch her! Don’t let her go outside before our mom gets here!”
To her
satisfaction, one of the teachers caught Rita by the shoulders. “Hold on there,
girl,” said the man, keeping her still despite her struggles. “You just wait
until your mother gets here, like your sister said.”
Rita
glared back at Helen, but she did not attempt to flee. Helen shouted, “Thanks!”
and looked down the corridor. Smaller kids shrank back, staring at her dress
and legs. The dark brown blood was almost dry.
“Get
away from me!” a girl screamed. “That’s disgusting!”
“Where
is the third grade?” Helen shouted at the kids and teachers. “My sister Amy’s
in the third grade! Where is she?”
“They’re
not here!” one of the women teachers called back. “Amy and the others went on a
field trip. They weren’t supposed to come back until one o’clock.”
“Field trip?” We have a field trip, Amy had said that
morning. We’re going to a pumpkin field to pick out pumpkins for Halloween.
“Where’d they go?”
“They
went to Boylan’s Fun Farm,” the teacher said. “It’s
south of here. Just wait for them to come back.”
“Boy Land Farm?”
“No,
Boylan’s. B-O-Y-L-A-N, Boylan’s Fun Farm. It’s off
State Route Nine, about ten miles or so.”
“Can
someone call there and see if my sister’s there?”
“The
phones don’t work, dear. None of them do. Must be something
wrong with the system. Too many people using the phone
lines or something. If you’ll just wait here with us, she’ll be back.”
“Thanks,”
said Helen, her face without expression. She headed for the door out. Amy’s
gone, Amy’s way south of us, and I can’t get her back. We’ll have to wait for
her.
She
pushed open the door to the exit corridor. The two teachers were still there,
standing by the door out. Rita stood leaning against the wall, arms folded over
her chest, glaring at Helen.
“Let’s
go,” said Helen. “Stay with me.”
“You’re
not my mother!” Rita shouted as they went outside into the cold wind. The two
men waved goodbye to them, but neither girl noticed. “Where is Mom? You said
Mom was out here!”
“We’ll
talk about it when we get home,” said Helen, walking ahead of Rita toward the
front of the elementary school. “We have to get Amy first.”
“Amy’s
gone on a field trip, geek brain!” Rita shouted, moving to a point ten feet
away from her sister. “Didn’t you know, dork breath?”
“I didn’t
know!” Helen shouted back in a fury. “She’s at a farm south of here!”
“So,
where are we going?” Rita yelled. She kept her arms crossed, hunched up against
the chill. “Why did you bring me out here?”
“Because Mom told me to get you and Amy and bring you both home!”
“Well,
where is she?”
Helen
stopped and faced her sister. “I don’t know where she is!” she screamed
at the top of her lungs. “I don’t know where the hell she is! Stop bothering
me with that bull crap!”
“I’m
telling on you, potty mouth! I’m telling! I’m telling everything on you!”
Helen
stood for several long seconds, staring at Rita. “Fine,” she said in a soft
voice. “You can tell her when we see her. Tell her everything. I don’t care
anymore.”
A look
of anxiety crossed Rita’s face. “I will tell!” she shouted, trying to regain
her momentum. “I’ll tell her you messed up your clothes and everything! I’ll
tell her you were mean to me! You’ll get it good!”
Helen
did not react, except to stare at Rita. “Okay,” she said quietly. “Do it. I
don’t care.” She waved a tired hand. “Let’s go wait for Amy, then
go home.”
“How are
we getting home, dork brain?”
Helen
hesitated. “We’ll walk. It’s not all that far from here.”
“It is,
too! I’m not walking!”
“We’re
going to wait for Amy’s bus, then we’re going home!”
“I don’t
want to go wait for Amy! I’m going back to my friends!” Rita took a step back
toward the elementary school.
“Mom
wants us home!” said Helen. “The sooner we get home, the sooner you can tell on
me. If you go back to school, she’ll be mad at you, not me.”
“I don’t
believe you! You’re lying!”
Helen
shook her head. She couldn’t hold back any longer. “Do you know what’s going
on?” she asked. “Don’t you know?”
“Know
what?” said Rita, angry and a little confused.
Helen
shook her head again and began walking toward the front of the school again.
“Never mind,” she said. “Come on.”
Rita was
on the verge of heading back into the building. When Helen stopped and looked
back, she reluctantly walked toward her sister, not her friends.
They got
to the front of the elementary school to find many cars now parked along the
street and loading dock area. Parents everywhere were rushing into the open
doors of the building and bringing out their children. Many people were crying,
adults and children alike. Traffic was bad, with cars backed up everywhere
along the highway.
Helen
waited for Rita to catch up, then motioned her over to
a spot some distance away from the crowd. They stood about ten feet apart by
the wall of the school, watching the chaos. Helen thought of an anthill she
once disturbed, and how the ants dashed around pell-mell, crazily accomplishing
nothing.
“What’s
going on?” Rita asked. Her rage was spent for the moment. “Why’s everyone going
home?”
“A war’s
just started,” said Helen. “We have to go home because of the war.”
“You’re
lying!” Rita said, but her voice lacked conviction. “There isn’t any war!”
“It just
started,” said Helen without emotion. She couldn’t believe how tired she felt.
“It’s an atomic war.”
“A what?”
Helen
shook her head and looked away. She then looked down at her wrists, realizing
she had left her watch at home. “What time is it?” she asked Rita.
Rita
checked her own watch, a nicer one than Helen’s. “Eleven fifteen.” She looked
her sister over carefully. “Is that really blood?”
Helen
looked down at her hands, legs, and clothes. She nodded. The urge to cry
surfaced, but she fought it down.
“How you
get it all over you?”
Helen
dropped her hands and looked away without answering.
“Did you
have your period? Did you just get your first period and you didn’t bring a
pad?”
“No.”
“I bet
you did. That was dumb. Look at you.”
Helen
didn’t bother to answer. She hated her sister more in that moment than she ever
had in her life.
“Are we
just waiting for Amy’s bus?”
Helen
forced herself to answer through gritted teeth. “Yeah.”
“Why
don’t we call Mom and see if she can pick us up?”
“I don’t
know where she is.”
“Well,
go to the office and call home!”
“The
phones don’t work.”
“None of them?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Helen
exhaled heavily. “Because of the war, dope.”
Stung,
Rita turned away, hands on her hips. “You are such a liar,” she muttered. “I’m
telling.”
Helen
looked at Rita’s back and imagined whacking her with a baseball bat. She
wondered if her sister’s head would fly off if you hit it hard enough.
“I
haven’t had lunch yet,” said Rita. “Can we get something to drink? I’m really
thirsty.”
So am
I, you retard, thought Helen. So am I.
Cars
pulled up in front of them, adults getting out and looking around and shouting
for their children. One was a gray Plymouth four-door. Helen noticed the
shadowed driver beckoning to her, but she looked away. If he wasn’t a school
bus, she wasn’t interested. She hoped they wouldn’t be out in the cold weather
forever. She was starting to shiver.
“Helen!
Come on!” Rita shouted a few moments later.
Angry
beyond reason, Helen turned to snap off a bitter retort. It died on her lips.
Rita was getting into the gray Plymouth, into the front passenger seat.
“Rita!”
Helen screamed. She launched herself at the car, but Rita shut the door and
punched down the lock before she got there. “Get out! Rita! Get out of the—”
The
driver turned his head toward her with a twisted grin. It was Mr. Meyer, the
creepy slime ball who liked to grab her rear end on PTA night and ogle her
breasts.
And he
was driving off with Rita.
“NO!”
Helen shouted. A dread greater than her fear of atomic war
seized her. Panicked, she grabbed the rear door handle as the gray
Plymouth slowly rolled forward to get out of the line of cars. The door was
locked. Holding on to the handle and running alongside the car, she pounded on
the side window with her fist. “Stop!” she screamed. “Rita, get out! Rita!
RITA!”
Rita got
up in the front seat and reached back to unlock the rear door. She hesitated.
The locking knob had been pulled off, leaving only a metal screw sticking up by
the rolled-up window. She grabbed this and tried to pull up, but she let go of
it almost immediately, shaking her fingers in pain.
Mr. Meyer
attempted to get through the line of cars leaving the school, but his way was
blocked by a two-tone station wagon crawling past him on the highway side. As
Mr. Meyer honked his horn, Helen let go of the door handle and ran around to
the left of the car, squeezing between the Plymouth and the station wagon. She
grabbed the rear door handle there and pushed in the metal button with her
thumb.
The
latch popped. She opened the door as wide as she could in the limited space
between the two cars and scrambled in just as Mr. Meyer got around the station
wagon. The Plymouth surged forward, throwing Helen back and slamming the rear
door on her feet. With a yelp, she jerked her legs back and pulled the door
fully shut. The Plymouth accelerated, moving quickly around the packed cars to
head for the highway.
“This
man said he’d get us something to eat!” Rita shouted at Helen over the engine’s
roar. “Then he’s going to take us to get Amy!”
Pulled
from side to side as Mr. Meyer made several quick turns, Helen wished that
someone would invent a restraint that would hold a person in her seat and keep
her from being bounced all over creation inside a moving car. She scooted over
to Rita’s side of the car. Mr. Meyer had an intense look on his face as he got
into the swift flow of traffic and headed away from the school grounds, into
the countryside.
“Stop
the car!” Helen shouted in fear. “Let us out!”
“I’m
helpin’ ya out, kid!” said Mr. Meyer with a faint grin. “We’re gonna take a
li’l trip, just the three of us. I’ll getcha somethin’ to eat. Don’t worry.”
“No!
Stop the car!”
“Helen, for gosh sakes!” Rita yelled angrily, turning in the
seat to look back. “Cut it out! You’re not Mom!”
“You
tell ‘er, kid,” said Mr. Meyer. The Plymouth picked up speed. Her mouth dry with
fear, Helen saw a road sign pass: STATE ROUTE 15 SOUTH.
“We’re
not going to get Amy!” Helen shouted. “We’re going the wrong way! She’s at a
farm off State Route Nine!”
“This is
a shortcut,” said Mr. Meyer, his humor fading, “and keep your damn voice down,
all right? It’s pissing me off.”
“Yeah,”
Rita chimed in, though she eyed the driver and her voice wasn’t as loud as
before.
“Please,
stop the car!” Helen said. “Let us out! Let us out!”
For an
answer, Mr. Meyer swung at her, his right hand balled into a fist. The blow hit
Helen’s left shoulder, knocking her back on the rear seat. She grasped her
injured arm, grimacing in pain.
“I told
ya to shut your trap!” he shouted. “Just shut your damn mouth when I tell ya to
shut it!”
Rita got
up on her knees in the front seat and looked back at her sister. Her face was
creased with fear.
“She’ll
be fine,” said Mr. Meyer. The car went over a rise, and everyone bounced in the
seats. “Don’t worry ‘bout her. I hadda do it. The li’l bitch was gonna make me
have a wreck.”
Helen’s
shoulder blazed with pain. She looked up at her sister’s white face, then at
the rear-view mirror in which Mr. Meyer glared at her. “Jesus,” he said, “what
kind of crap have you got all over you? You’d better not be getting’ my car dirty, or you’ll pay for it the hard way. Ya hear me?”
“Let us
out!” Helen hissed through gritted teeth.
“When
the time comes,” he said. Helen saw him glance over at Rita. His gaze rested on
her for much too long. When Mr. Meyer looked back at the road, Helen saw his
right arm move toward her sister.
Rita
flinched and looked down. “Hey!” she said, and she struggled to get free. Helen
couldn’t see what was happening, but she knew. She knew exactly what was
happening.
Rita
pulled away from Mr. Meyer and scooted over to the passenger door, a shocked
look on her face. “Don’t do that!” she said.
“Do
what?” asked Mr. Meyer with a grin. “It was just a li’l squeeze. You need to
relax. Everything’ll be fine if you just relax, got it?”
“Don’t
touch me!” said Rita in a frightened voice. Mr. Meyer reached for her again,
but Rita stayed out of his grasp, pressed flat against the passenger door and
window. “No!” she said, on the verge of crying. “Please don’t!”
“Oh,
come on, relax and enjoy it,” said Mr. Meyer. “It’s not like there’s a choice.”
He suddenly lunged to the right and caught Rita by her wrist, pulling her
toward him. “Gotcha!” he said. He laughed as she struggled.
The
laugh said it all. Helen saw it instantly. Mr. Meyer would hurt them. He would
take them far into the countryside and do terrible things to them both, things
they could not imagine anyone would ever do. Helen would suffer, she understood
that, but Rita would suffer more because she was pretty. Helen would be
helpless to stop it. When Mr. Meyer finally killed them, as she knew he would,
it would be a blessing to die.
In less
than a second, Helen launched herself off the back seat and wildly struck at
Mr. Meyer’s head with her fists. He cursed and let go of Rita and tried to fend
off Helen with his right hand, but she reached around his head and raked with
her fingernails, determined to tear the skin from his face. Her fingers dug
into both his eyes. Jerking violently, Mr. Meyer slammed down with his right
foot on the accelerator. The sudden motion threw Helen backward—and her
fingernails tore through everything in their way.
Mr.
Meyer screamed and let go of the steering wheel to grab at his face. The car
drifted to the right, scattering gravel as it left the road, then went
airborne. Falling across the rear seat, Helen felt herself go weightless and
fought to grab something. With a crash, she was thrown into the back of the
front seat and onto the floor, and then everything bounced and she was flung
against the left rear door as the car spun out.
The
world came to a stop. The Plymouth’s engine was still running, and the vehicle
slowly began to roll forward over bumpy ground. Helen got up in a daze, her
brains rattled. “Rita?” she called. “Rita?”
The car
was in the middle of a field of flattened corn stalks, about sixty feet from
the highway. It had gone off a five-foot embankment before landing hard and
spinning around, and now it coasted toward a patch of trees at five miles per
hour, heading back the way it had come. Dirt was splattered all over the
windshield. Mr. Meyer had been thrown forward over the steering wheel into the
windshield on impact, smashing the glass into a huge spider web of cracks with
the top of his head. The center of the spider web was stained red. Now he lay
slumped against the steering wheel, head down. Dark, glistening blood was
visible all through his hair. Rita lay in a tangled ball in the floor under the
dashboard on the passenger side, feebly moving her arms and legs.
Helen
saw that the rolling car was about to hit a poplar tree, and she braced herself
against the back of the front seat. The bang as the car hit the tree and
stopped was mild compared to what had gone before. The engine continued
running. Mr. Meyer did not stir. Rita groaned and tried to get up.
Eyeing
the motionless Mr. Meyer, Helen crawled over the front seat, then
reached down to pull up Rita. She unlocked the door and kicked it open. In
moments, the two girls got out of the car and ran for their lives across the
cornfield in the cold sunlight. Near exhaustion, they reached a dry creek bed
lined with trees and climbed down the bank. Helen risked a look back. Hundreds
of feet behind them, the gray Plymouth still pressed against the quaking
poplar, smoke pumping from its tailpipe. “Hide!” Helen shouted, and they got
down on the bank of the creek in the cold dead leaves, only the tops of their
heads showing to watch the Plymouth.
Cold
sweat ran down Helen’s face from the run. Her injuries had been forgotten in
the panic to escape. She looked at Rita, hunkered down beside her and panting
as hard as she was, then looked back at the car with the open passenger door.
Helen was entirely too aware of what could have happened to them. Her free
reading time in supermarkets, when her mother wasn’t looking, was occasionally
spent flipping through police and detective magazines filled with gory, lurid
stories of dismembered hitchhikers and cross-country serial killers and
bloodstained bathtubs and naked bodies found in fields at night with their
hands and feet bound with electrical tape.
This
would have been a million times worse than any of that.
“What if
he comes after us?” Rita’s voice quavered.
“We’ll
run,” said Helen. “We’ve got a head start, and he can’t see us.”
“We
should get out of here!”
“Okay,” said Helen, hoping that Mr. Meyer wasn’t getting out of the car anytime soon. They got up and headed for the opposite bank.
“Oh!”
cried Rita, stopping dead. She felt in her yellow dress pockets. “Oh, no! The key’s gone! I lost the key to the house!”
“What?”
“I had
the key to the house in my pocket, but it’s gone!”
Helen
hesitated and looked back at the car. “When did you have it last?”
“I had
it in the car!” said Rita. “I remember because . . . because I had it . . . in
my hand . . . when . . . he was—” Rita burst into tears and began to wail. “I
wanted to stab him with it!” she cried. “I wanted to make him stop! He—he—God!”
For a
long moment, Helen watched as her sister sobbed, her
head down and arms limp at her sides. Helen looked back at the car, saw no one
coming, then looked back at Rita. She knew what had
happened to her. It had happened to Helen, too, and she still felt dirty when
she remembered it.
Then
Helen did a thing she never imagined she would do. She took two steps toward
her sister and put her arms around her and hugged her. It felt strange to do
it, but she did it anyway. She did not recall ever hugging Rita, at least not
in the last few years. As they stood together under the bare trees in the dry
creek bed, Helen felt sorrow and pain for the sister she had hated for so long.
It was a new feeling, and it hurt in new ways. Still, it felt like the right
thing to feel.
“It’s
okay,” said Helen as Rita wept. “We’re okay. He can’t get us.” She repeated
this and many things like it for a long time. At some point, she added, “He did
that to me, too. He’s been after me for weeks. I won’t let him do it to you
again. I’ll never let him do that to you again.”
“What?”
Rita’s crying faded. “He did what?”
“He did
that to me, too, what he did to you. I couldn’t get away from him. He won’t get
us anymore. I won’t let him.”
“He
did?” Rita pulled back. “To you? Why didn’t you tell
me?” Her nose was running badly. She had put eye makeup on, and it was running,
too.
“You got
in his car before I could say anything.” Helen pulled Rita close again, not
wanting to look her in the face and talk about it. “We’re okay now. I’ll look
out for you, like Mom did. I promise I’ll take care of you, but don’t leave me
like that again.”
Rita
cried a little while more, then Helen took out a
handkerchief and wiped Rita’s face off. “There’s a war going on,” said Helen,
speaking in a low voice as she cleaned up her sister. “It’s a real war. I’m not
lying to you about it. People are going crazy everywhere. They went crazy in
the high school, and . . . and things happened that I don’t want to talk about
ever. We have to be careful from now on. Don’t go anywhere without me, ever.
I’ll do everything I can to get you and Amy home, I swear it. Okay?”
“Okay,”
said Rita. She wiped her eyes. “Helen?”
“What?”
“I
really lost the house key.” She sniffed, close to tears again. “I think it’s in
the car. With him.”
Helen
looked back at the idling Plymouth. She imagined that in moments, Mr. Meyer
would wake up and find the house key on the passenger side floor. He might know
where the Barksdales’ home was, and he might decide to visit the three little
girls one night while their parents were gone. For a long minute, Helen stared
back at the car.
If I
run now, said a voice inside her, he’ll come
back with that key.
“Wait here,” she told Rita in a low voice. “Get down on the ground and hide. Put some sticks and leaves over you and don’t move.”
“Where
are you going?”
“Back to the car.”
“Don’t!
Stay with me! Don’t go there!”
Helen
hugged her sister once more. “Shhh. I’ll be back. I
promise. Stay here and hide. Don’t move until I get back, okay?”
“I’m
scared!” Rita began to cry again. “Don’t leave me! I’m sorry! It’s all my fault!”
“Shhh. Just wait for me here. I’ll be back. I promise.”
I’ve
said this before, Helen thought. I told all of those other kids in the
high school the same thing, but I knew I wasn’t coming back for them, except
for Caroline, but she was gone before I could save her. I can’t do that to
Rita. I can’t leave her behind. I will come back for her. I will.
She made
Rita get down in the leaves and lie still. Helen scattered dead leaves over her
sister for more camouflage, then readied herself. She stood still, head down,
and closed her eyes for just a moment—Help me, God, please help me do this
and get back safely. Looking down, she found a rock that fit in her right
hand with a sharp point sticking out. She then carefully climbed the bank.
Taking a deep breath, she left the tree line, rock in hand, and set out in the
cold sunlight for the idling gray car.
Helen
headed across the flattened cornfield in a crouch, keeping close to the ground
to reduce her visibility. She stopped often, nerves jumping and muscles tensed
to flee when she thought she saw movement in the car, but she would again creep
closer once reassured nothing had changed. She approached the car at a
diagonal, so Mr. Meyer could not see her through the rear view mirror. Cars
rushed by on the highway, taking no notice of the scene.
Helen
looked back several times but could not see Rita, well buried in the leaves.
She knew Rita was watching her, and she wondered what Rita was thinking of her
now. She probably thinks I’m braver than anything, Helen told herself, but
I’m scared to death and I can’t believe I’m doing this. I could give up and run
away, but then Mr. Meyer will get the key and come after us. He’ll probably
come after us anyway after what I did to him. He doesn’t need a key to get us.
He’ll wait and catch us when we leave the house. I can’t let him have the key,
though. If he gets it, we’re as good as dead. I hope I hurt him good before we
crashed. I hope I hurt him so much he died! Damn him! Damn him straight to
hell!
The final approach to the car was made with Helen’s nerves frayed to the breaking point, hunched down so far she almost crawled to the open passenger door. Her fingers cramped from gripping the rock so tightly in her fist. Smoke from the tailpipe got in her lungs; she covered her mouth and forced herself not to cough.
Her thoughts
went a mile a second: If he sees me, I’ll throw the rock at him and run to
get Rita. Wait—I can’t run toward Rita! I’ll lead him right to her! I’ll have
to run somewhere else, away from her, far away. If he catches me then, he won’t
hurt her. She’s smart enough to stay down until it’s
safe out. She’d better be smart enough—she was the one who got in his car and
believed him to begin with. But she knows now what she did wrong—boy, does she
know. Be careful, be careful!
Twenty
feet from the car, she rose up and peered in, trembling all over. Mr. Meyer was
still slumped against the steering wheel in the same position as before. Was he
dead? Did the wreck kill him? Had she killed him with her fingernails? She
looked down at her nails and saw bloodstains on her fingertips, but she didn’t
know if it was his blood, hers, Caroline’s, or someone else’s. She looked up
and slowly moved toward the open passenger door. When she reached it, she
peered inside.
The
brass key to the house was on the dirty floor mat by the open door, partway
under the seat. Helen reached down, keeping her eyes on Mr. Meyer all the
while. Blood ran from his hair down over his face in thin streams, dripping
from his nose and chin into his lap. To her horror, she saw that both his eyes
were bleeding. They appeared to be closed, but scratches from her fingernails
clearly ran across his face and through his eyes as well. It was ghastly and
made her stomach lurch.
She made
herself look down just long enough to pick up the house key. She was ready to
run then—she even began to lunge away from the car—but then she saw the back of
Mr. Meyer’s pants. His wallet stuck partway out of his right back pocket.
A wallet. Money. Helen had two dollars in her dress pocket, which was an enormous sum to her. What did Mr. Meyer have? What could Helen do with some extra money on a bad day like this, when any emergency might appear?
She
shook herself. What am I thinking? God, Helen! Run, you dope, run like hell!
Yet, she didn’t. Struggling to decide, she stood with key in hand and stared at the top of his wallet.
He
owes me, she thought. He hurt my sister. He hurt me. He owes me
everything he’s got. I hope he dies out here, but I might need that money to
get food later, for Rita and Amy and me, if Mom and Dad don’t—
The line
of thought was immediately rubbed out. Helen put the house key in a dress
pocket, then got into the car, moving at a snail’s
pace. The rock was raised in her right hand, pointed end out. Mr. Meyer did not
stir. Helen moved so slowly it took almost a minute to get to him. With her
left hand, she reached over and took hold of his wallet. It came out of his
pocket easily. She jammed it into her deep sweater pocket and scrambled out of
the car and turned to run.
She
dropped the rock and screamed instead.
“Hey,”
said the tall teenager blocking her way. Several other teenage guys stood on
either side of him. He nodded at the Plymouth. “You have a wreck?”
Helen
opened her mouth but was too terrified to do anything else. The tall teenager
wore a brown leather bomber jacket and had his thumbs stuck in the belt of his
dirty jeans. He ignored the cold. A grass stem hung from the side of his mouth.
He had a blond crew cut and clear blue eyes that revealed nothing inside him.
He was as big as a titan. The three guys with him were big, too, but not like
him. She had focused so intently on getting the wallet, she hadn’t noticed
anyone coming.
“Cat got
your tongue?” the tall teenager said. The guys with him smiled or snickered. He
ignored them and looked over Helen’s head into the idling Plymouth. “That your
dad in there?”
“No,”
she said in a high voice, shaking her head.
“Uncle? Friend of the family?” He
grinned broadly. “Husband?”
The
other guys laughed. She shook her head quickly and shivered.
The teenager
looked Helen up and down. His gaze came to rest on her bare legs. “Why are you
with him?” he asked, staring at her legs.
Helen
could hardly talk, she was so scared. “H-h-he k-kidnapped me,” she whispered.
It was almost true.
The
teenager had been chewing on the grass stem, but when she said that, he
stopped. “He kidnapped you,” he repeated. The guys with him stopped smiling and
glanced at the big blond teenager for direction.
She
nodded.
“He hurt
you?” He stared down at her lower half.
Helen
glanced down at the bloodstains on her dress, socks, and legs. She suddenly had
an idea what he was thinking. She didn’t know much about sex and its
consequences, but she had read some and heard a little from other kids. When
she looked back up, she hesitated—then nodded yes.
The tall
teenager’s empty eyes changed in a way that terrified Helen to her core. He
looked away from her and walked around the gray Plymouth to the driver’s door.
Opening it, he reached in and with one hand pulled Mr. Meyer out across the
dirt clods and flattened corn stalks. The tall blond teenager was very strong.
He dragged Mr. Meyer twenty feet away from the car and dropped him, then walked
back to the car and turned off the ignition. “Wasting gas,” he said.
The
three tall boys began walking around to the other side of the car. One pushed
Helen ahead of him. She went, knowing she was about to die and glad—if that was
the right word—that Rita was not with her. She prayed that Rita and Amy would
escape, and her death would be quick and painless.
“So,” said the blond teenager, standing over Mr. Meyer, “this guy hurt you, right?”
Helen
nodded, shaking all over.
The
teenager spit out the grass stem, reached behind him under his bomber jacket,
and pulled a long-barreled black handgun from the back of his pants. He pointed
it at Mr. Meyer and pulled the trigger—BAM BAM BAM. Blood spattered
across Mr. Meyer’s shirt from three dark-red holes. Mr. Meyer stiffened, then
slumped and did not move again.
The
teenager twirled the handgun rapidly on the index finger of his right hand,
held the barrel to his lips, blew across it, and holstered the weapon in his
right pants pocket as if it were the easiest thing in the world to do. He
looked up at his friends with a bright grin, hands spread out to his sides.
“Now,” he said in a cheery voice, “did I not do that just like on ‘Gunsmoke’?”
After
hesitating, the three other teens burst into nervous laughter and applause.
Helen stared down in mindless terror at Mr. Meyer and the glistening drops of
red that covered him from head to waist.
“We got
a car now,” said the blond teen, looking at the Plymouth with his hands on his
hips. “Ain’t a Chevy, but it’ll do. Almost
a full tank. Jeez, I was tired of walking.”
“We
gotta go west,” said one of the guys with him. “Everything east is glass.”
“Yeah, I
saw the clouds, too,” said the blond teen. He considered. “Can’t
go south or north, either. Baltimore’s gone, Washington. Philly’s
probably next. Bet New York’s gone, maybe Chicago, don’t know what else. Too
many people on the roads, running around like roaches. It’s crazy, dad.”
“California,”
said another teen. “We need to get the hell away from the fallout.”
“Yeah,
west coast,” said another. “L.A., if it’s still there.”
“All the
ICBM and SAC bases are west,” said the third one. “We gotta cut down toward
Mexico, go through Phoenix, maybe.”
“I could
do that,” said the tall blond. “Got a cousin in Phoenix.
She’s hot. We could get her and her girlfriends and check out the coast.” He
leaned down and rolled Mr. Meyer’s body over with a single heave. Blood soaked
the back of Mr. Meyer’s shirt around three holes ripped through the fabric. “No
wallet,” said the teen, checking his pockets. “Must be in the
car. See if this son of a bitch left his wallet under the seat or the
glove box or trunk or something. Check for guns and stuff, too.” Two guys
walked over to the Plymouth to do just that.
“Hey,”
said the guy behind Helen. “What about her?”
The
blond teen looked down at Helen with blue eyes colder than any winter. “The bad
man went bye-bye,” he told Helen. “Take a hike now. Scram.”
She
didn’t move.
“We
could take her with us,” said the guy behind her. “You know, for company.”
“Jeez, no. I don’t do kids.”
The guy
behind Helen sighed and gave her a push. “Beat it,” he said, “or join the bad
man in hell.”
Helen bolted. She forgot her earlier plans about not running toward her sister and made a mad beeline across the field for the trees where she’d left Rita. She tripped and fell once, dirtied her knees and hands, heard the teenagers far behind her laugh, then got up and ran harder. The twisted stalks of corn flew under her in a blur.
“Run!”
Helen shouted when she reached the tree line, jumping down the bank. Rita
scrambled up, crying as she probably had been since Helen left, and they ran
together down the dry creek bed, jumping over rocks and fallen branches. They
stumbled, fell, got up, and kept going as fast as they could.
Far down
the creek bed was an old concrete bridge, where the banks were deep and trees
and undergrowth shrouded the girls from the eyes of the world. They ran under
the bridge and staggered to a stop, too exhausted to go any farther. Small
branches, rocks, and debris littered the streambed. Helen directed Rita to a
place against one wall where the ground was relatively free of anything except
dirt and pebbles, and here they sank down to rest, their backs to the concrete.
Helen put her arms around her sister and held her as they painfully gasped for
air with overworked lungs.
“I
thought they shot you!” Rita wailed. “I thought you were dead! I was sure you
were dead!” Helen pulled her close and tried to shush her, but nothing worked.
She was too tired to cry much, and it was easier to hold Rita and gather a
little warmth from her.
The last
few minutes since Rita had gotten into Mr. Meyer’s car at the elementary school
were surreal, a bad dream from a fever that refused to go away. Rational
thought was a long time in coming.
Those
boys said Baltimore and Washington were gone, Helen thought. How did they
know that? They said they saw the clouds. Did they mean mushroom clouds? I
never looked out the window like the other kids did, so I never saw the flashes
or clouds or anything. Good thing, though, because those kids were blinded. I
was so lucky. I can’t believe this is really happening. Isn’t it possible this
is just a big mistake, and nothing bad is really happening? Those teenagers
looked at a regular cloud or a smoke cloud from a regular fire, and everyone’s
scared, but there’s no real war? Then what were those two flashes in the sky? Sunlight reflecting from something? Why did those students
go blind when they saw it? Are they still blind? Was this just like that radio
panic from the 1930s, when everyone thought the Martians were invading? She
suspected it wasn’t. It felt all too real. What would happen next was beyond
her ability to guess.
Helen
raised her head and looked around. She had no idea what time it was, but she
guessed it was about noon. She raised Rita’s left wrist and peered at her watch:
11:56 a.m. It was hard to recall even what day of the week it was. Sunlight
spilled over the brown autumn landscape to either side of the bridge. It was
cold in the darkness, but here at least no one could see them.
Helen
turned her head and peered at Rita’s hair, which was stiff with hairspray. “Are
you okay from that bump you got this morning?”
“What
bump?”
“On the
thermostat.”
“Oh.”
Rita reached up and touched a spot on the right side of her head, covered by
her hairdo. “It hurts a little, but it’s okay.”
Helen
looked at the spot Rita touched, then leaned closer and kissed it. After a
moment, Rita settled in closer to her sister.
A car
drove over the bridge at a high rate of speed. Both girls flinched and looked
up. Rita’s fingers gripped Helen tightly. “I’m scared,” she whispered.
Helen
listened. The car hadn’t stopped, but other fears crowded in. Were those
teenagers coming for them after all? She let go of Rita and forced herself to
get up. “Stay here,” she said in a low voice. “I’ll—” She grimaced from the
pain shooting through her cramped legs “—go see if anyone’s coming.”
“Don’t
leave me! Helen! Don’t leave me!”
Helen
limped over to the edge of the bridge, looking back the way they’d come. No one
could be seen or heard. Another car went by overhead. She pulled back, holding
her breath, but that car did not stop, either.
Exhaling
heavily, Helen leaned back against the concrete wall and tried to make sense of
it all. I woke up this morning, she thought, and from that moment on,
everything went wrong. Everything got completely away from me. This has to be a
dream, except I know it isn’t. I can’t get hurt in a dream.
Her
hands were cold, so she tucked them into her sweater pockets—and found Mr.
Meyer’s wallet. She pulled it out, then remembered the
house key, too. It was still safely in her dress pocket. When did Mother give
Rita a key to the house, too? Helen kept hers inside her right shoe, so it
could not be lost. It wasn’t uncomfortable once she got used to walking on it.
She
slowly opened the wallet. Mr. Meyer’s driver’s license, a membership card from
some place called the Wild Stallions’ Corral (with the silhouette of a naked
woman on it), five business cards from people and companies that were
unfamiliar to Helen, several unremarkable scraps of paper, and . . .
Helen
carefully counted out the bills. Three twenties, two tens, a
five, and two ones—eighty-seven dollars. It was more money than she had
dreamed of. She stuffed the money in her dress pocket with the house key, then stuck the wallet under a rock. With a last look around,
she walked stiffly back to Rita. “We need to find out where we are,” she said.
“I don’t know what road this is.”
Rita
sniffed. “Please stay with me.”
“I will.
Don’t worry.” Helen wanted to lie down and sleep, but she discarded any notion
of resting for long. It was too cold to be comfortable, and she was too afraid
of what would happen if she let her defenses down. Pure exhaustion and pain,
however, dictated that she would not be traveling any great distances for a
while.
“Helen?”
“What?”
Rita
hesitated, then burst out with, “I really have to go
to the bathroom, bad!”
Helen
had no immediate answer for that. She looked around and considered. “Well . . .
you’ll have to go here.”
“I
can’t!”
“There’s
nowhere else to go.”
“Can we
get to a house?”
It
wasn’t worth arguing over. “I don’t know if there’s a house around, and I don’t
trust anyone enough to ask.”
“I
really have to go! And I need TP!”
“We
don’t have any toilet paper. Just go here. No one will see.”
Two cars
went by overhead. Both girls froze until the cars were well gone.
“I’m
scared someone will see me!” Rita cried, looking desperate.
“No
one’s going to stop here, and we can’t stay. Just go!”
“I
can’t! I can’t wait!”
The
needs of nature and Helen’s promises to stand guard resolved the situation.
Once she was finished, Rita wanted to leave immediately, because of the smell
and because she wanted to get cleaned up somewhere. Helen looked down at
herself and thought Rita had nothing to complain about, but she kept her
thoughts to herself. Only the fact that she hadn’t had anything to drink since
a water fountain break at school—and nothing to eat since the night before—kept
Helen from a similar urgency. She figured that was good in a way, despite her
thirst and gnawing hunger, as she doubted she could have held it in after all
she’d been through.
Still, a
drink of anything was becoming a pressing need of its own. Helen wished for a
puddle she could scoop clear water from, but none was visible. She feared she
would be less picky before long and drink even dirty water.
With
great care, Helen stepped out from under the bridge, on one side and then the
other, and peered up at the highway. She hoped to see a road sign telling them
where they were, but nothing was visible. She finally climbed one of the banks
to get a better view of their surroundings. Around her were rolling hills
dotted with small farms. After a moment, she spotted a distant and
familiar-looking white farmhouse with two red silos behind it, nestled into a
forested hillside on the right about a mile away. The highway curved off to the
right around that hill. She quickly climbed down.
“I know
where we are!” she quickly told Rita. “You remember when we drove to that river
park last year? We’re under the road going that way. I think it’s the same road
that goes to that pumpkin farm where Amy’s at, State Route Nine.”
“Oh,”
said Rita. “How far do we have to go?”
“Uh . .
. I don’t know. We’ll just have to walk when we’re ready to go. We still need
to rest.”
“Are
those bad guys going to find us?”
Helen
walked back and looked in the direction they’d come. Her stomach growled. She
hoped Rita didn’t hear it. “I don’t see them. I think they’re gone now. I think
they just wanted the car.”
“Why were
they shooting?”
Helen
swallowed. She didn’t answer.
“Were
they shooting at you?”
“No,”
said Helen, thinking of dead Mr. Meyer. “Let’s don’t talk about it.”
“I was
so scared.” Rita’s voice quavered. “I was so afraid they’d shot you. I couldn’t
see what happened.”
“Rita,
stop.” Helen sighed, feeling depressed, and looked out
from under the bridge once more. “You know,” she said, “maybe we should rest
here. Amy’s bus was coming back at one, someone told me, so if we just stay
here, it’ll come back and we can get on it.”
Rita
wrinkled her nose. “I don’t want to stay here. It stinks.”
“We
can’t go walking. I’m worn out.”
“I want
a shower.”
“Me, too.”
“I get
to go first.”
Helen
felt an incredible urge to scream at Rita, but she fought it down and walked
back to the bank on the side they’d first run under the bridge. After a bit of
study, she climbed the bank, ignoring her stomach’s insistent growls. At the
top, she looked down the two-lane highway in the direction of the farmhouse
with the two red silos.
“Oh!”
she cried out and scrambled to her feet. “Rita! Rita! Get up here! It’s the
bus! Amy’s school bus is coming!”
Helen
had climbed the slope on the left side of the road, beside the oncoming traffic
lane. She waved her arms energetically as the distant school bus approached.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Stop! For Pete’s sake, stop!”
To her
amazement, the bus’s brake lights came on, and it slowed as it got nearer. The
vehicle appeared to be jammed with people. Some kids had their heads and arms
out the windows, waving or shouting at her.
Rita
climbed the slope behind Helen as the bus pulled up and stopped. Helen
immediately saw that the vehicle was filled beyond capacity with children. Kids
were even standing right behind the folding doors on the bottom steps. A lady
teacher she remembered from fifth grade stuck her head out a window and hailed
her. “Helen Barksdale?” she shouted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Children on the bus laughed and hooted when the teacher said “hell.”
“We’re
looking for my sister, Amy!” Helen shouted back. “Is she on this bus?”
“Are you
hurt? You look a mess!”
“No, I’m
all right! We’re trying to find my sister, Amy Barksdale!”
The
teacher pulled back and shouted something into the chaos inside the school bus.
After a long moment during which Helen could hear children shout negative
replies, the teacher reappeared. “She’s back on the other bus. It broke down
two miles back, and we put as many of the kids on this one as we could. If you
want to walk there, you can, but we don’t have any room for you on this one.
I’m sorry as hell, but we just don’t.” More hoots and jeers came from the
children.
Helen’s
heart sank, but she was glad to know Amy was nearby. “She’s back that way?”
Helen asked, pointing south.
“Yes! We
have to go!” called the teacher. “Do you know anything about what’s happening
in town?”
“It’s
really bad,” Helen said. “The traffic is terrible. There was a lot of trouble
at the high school, and . . . some kids got hurt. Be careful.”
“Honey,”
said the teacher, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but we heard on a radio at the
farm that the Russians attacked us. Do you know if that’s true?”
“I think
it is,” said Helen, “but I don’t know much. There were some big flashes that
might have been from bombs.”
“That’s
probably what they were,” said the teacher. “Baltimore got hit. They have a
short wave at the farm, and someone on it said the city was on fire. You
couldn’t see it through the smoke.”
Children
on the bus began to cry and shout questions at the teacher. “Oh, damn it!” she
said, suddenly regretting her comments. “Listen, we have to go! Cars are
coming! Go to the other bus! Bye now!”
Helen nodded, her face grim. The bus pulled away as children waved
farewell to Helen and Rita. Seeing traffic approaching, Helen grabbed Rita and
guided her back down the slope to hide under the bridge again.
“We can
wait here,” said Helen at the bottom of the slope, “or we can walk south to the
other bus. I say walk. At least we’ll be safe with the other kids and teachers.
But let’s walk way off to the side of the road, so no one can see us. I don’t
want to have any more problems, okay?”
“Okay,”
said Rita in a soft voice. She did not look Helen in the face. “What were they
saying about Baltimore?” she mumbled.
Helen
wrestled with an answer. She started to dismiss it, but she hesitated too long.
“Rita,” she began, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say for seconds
longer. “Rita, I don’t know what happened. Some people said a bomb hit
Baltimore. I don’t know if it did, but that’s what they keep saying. I don’t
know anything else. We’ll have to go home and wait for Mom and Dad to get home
tonight, okay?”
Rita
nodded, looking down.
“Come
on. I hurt all over, and you probably do, too, but we have to get Amy. Let’s
go.” Helen waved her sister to follow.
“Can we
stay here?” asked Rita. Her words were barely audible. “I’m scared.”
“We have
to get Amy. Mom told me to get both of you and go home. We’re going together.”
“I’m
scared.”
Helen
thought Rita was being a baby, but in a way, what else did she expect? Rita had
been catered to by their mother since birth. She was helpless when the chips
were down, always waiting for someone to give her direction.
She
could have been me, Helen realized. If I’d been treated like Rita, I’d
be dead by now. Perhaps it was rationalizing, but it made Helen feel a
little better about her so-called hard life. She gave Rita a quick hug. “We
have to get going,” she said. “Stay with me. If those bad guys come back, we
have to be far away from here.” She took Rita by the hand, and her sister
followed in silence.
The left
side of the highway had a broad, curved slope down to the bottom of a
twenty-foot-deep ditch. On the top of the opposite side of the ditch was a wire
fence, beyond which was a large grassy field that Helen figured was used for
making hay. This would probably be the last harvest for the year before winter
set in. It might be the last harvest period, Helen thought, if a real atomic war has broken out.
The
girls discovered that if they walked along the bottom of the ditch, cars on the
highway could not be seen and likely could not see them, either. The ditch fed
into the dry creek bed, so getting into the ditch was simple.
At first
the walk was made in silence. Helen could tell that they had a long way to go,
and she thought of her weary leg muscles and grumbling stomach. She planned to
go to bed for the whole weekend after they got home. Even if she had to get up
at three a.m., she was determined to get the bathtub all for herself,
with the hottest water there was.
About
three minutes into their walk, Helen thought of a song and began to hum it. It
took a few moments to remember the words. She knew her voice wasn’t very good,
but Rita’s was worse, so it hardly mattered.
“‘Only
love can break a heart,’” she sang softly, remembering the Gene Pitney tune,
“‘and only love can mend it again.’”
To her
surprise, Rita chimed in with the main stanzas after humming the proper notes
that followed. “‘Last night I hurt you, but darling, remember this,’” they
sang. “‘Only love can break a heart, / Only love can
mend it again.’”
Helen
knew only the first set of lyrics, but Rita knew them all. “‘Give me a chance
to make up for the harm I’ve done,’” she sang, keeping her voice low, “‘Try to
forgive me and let’s keep the two of us one, / Please let me hold you and love
you for always and always, / Only love can break a heart, / Only love can mend
it again.’” Helen joined in the final line, and they drew out the words “love,”
“mend,” and “again” as Pitney did when he sang it. She almost forgot her hunger
and thirst.
“My
turn,” said Rita. She twisted her mouth from side to side, thinking, then
began, “‘Well, I’m the type of guy who will never settle down, / Where pretty
girls are, well, you know that I’m around, / I kiss them and I love them,
‘cause to me they’re all the same, / I hug them and I squeeze them, they don’t
even know my name, / They call me the wanderer, yeah, the wanderer, I roam
around, around, around, around—‘” She stopped and giggled. “I can’t remember
the rest of it,” she confessed.
“Who did
that one?”
“Um,
Dion,” said Rita. “I know a bunch of them.”
“I feel
like we’re wanderers.” Helen wiped her face. She was already heating up from
the walk, for which she was grateful. The temperature had improved as the day
progressed, but it was still about fifty degrees Fahrenheit, she figured. The
wind was almost nil in the ditch, which helped. “Sing something else.”
“You
hate my singing,” said Rita. “Why do you always tell me to shut up when I’m
singing?”
Helen
sighed. “It’s okay to sing. Just sing.”
“Boy, I
don’t understand you. You screamed in my face the other night when I was trying
to—”
“Rita,”
Helen interrupted. “Rita, just stop it. I said a lot of things that don’t
matter anymore. I’m sorry, okay? Let’s drop it.”
“But why?” Rita half shouted. “What do you mean it doesn’t
matter?”
Helen
said nothing. She watched the ground ahead of her as she walked, feeling the
edges of depression creep in.
“Is this
about Mom and Dad?” asked Rita, her voice not so loud.
Swallowing,
Helen nodded. “Let’s don’t fight anymore, okay?” she said. “I don’t want to
fight anymore ever.”
Rita
blew out her breath and was silent, too. Both of their stomachs rumbled at the
same time. At last, Helen remembered a tune that all three of the sisters had
liked. When it came on the radio, they often sang it together, though in
separate rooms.
“‘In the
jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight,’” she sang. Rita picked up
almost immediately. “‘In the jungle, the quiet jungle, the lion sleeps
tonight—’”
“Wee-mah-wack,”
Rita said rapidly, to set Helen straight on a long-running argument, and they
both went on with the chorus, making up some of the odd words as they always
did. Helen began to clap, and Rita followed. They went through the entire song
twice.
“My
shoes are ruined,” said Rita. “Look at them. I’ll have to get Mom to get me a
new pair over the weekend.”
Helen
said nothing. Rita’s face fell, clearly considering the possibilities if their
parents did not return.
Two more
songs later, they noticed the ditch was becoming shallower, and they were
visible to passing traffic. At Helen’s suggestion, they climbed the opposite
slope, crawled under the barbed wire of the fence, and walked through the grassy
field, keeping low. This ended their singing, but it allowed them to feel safer
as they went.
“I see
the bus!” said Rita ten minutes later. “Look!”
Helen
shaded her eyes and saw the bus, pulled off on the other side of the road onto
a long gravel driveway. The bus’s hood was pulled up. Smoke or steam drifted
from the engine block. “Why are those kids off the bus? Oh, look! There, by the
front of the bus! That’s Amy!”
One of
the tiny figures in the distance did indeed look like Amy, wearing her brown
coat and round glasses. The two girls broke out of the field, went under the
fence again, and began running despite their weariness. Some of the kids by the
bus saw them and pointed. Amy looked in their direction. Helen was pleased to
see a look of total astonishment spread over Amy’s features.
It still
took two more minutes to make it to their goal, but when the girls crossed the
highway and ran around the bus, it seemed to Helen that almost no time at all
had passed since she’d spotted her littlest sister. She and Rita ran to Amy—who
stared at them in disbelief—and caught her, knelt by her, and hugged her,
sandwiching her between them. Overcome with relief, both Helen and Rita began
to cry.
“Jeepers!”
cried Amy. “How’d you get here?”
“I love
you!” Helen gasped, and she began to cry harder, clutching both Amy and Rita to
her. “Thank God we found you! I love you so much!”
“Hey,
you’re crushing me!” Amy began to cry, too. “Not so hard!”
“Where
did you girls come from?” asked the bus driver, a portly middle-aged woman
smoking a cigarette. “You walk all the way out here from town?”
Helen
shook her head and kissed Amy on the forehead, though Amy recoiled a moment
later and wiped her eyes.
“Mom and
Dad are dead!” Rita wailed into Amy’s coat.
“What?”
gasped Amy, her brown eyes huge behind her glasses.
“Shhh! Rita!” Helen moved over and grabbed her middle
sister. “We don’t know that! Don’t say it!”
“You
mean Baltimore?” said Amy. Helen looked her in the face. Amy sniffed, her eyes
red, but her manner was composed again. “We heard it got bombed. Did it?”
“We
don’t know,” said Helen. “We got out here to find you and take you home. Mom
wanted us all to be home as soon as possible.”
“Mom’s home?”
“No,
she’s not back yet,” said Helen. “She told me this morning to get you two home if anything went wrong.”
“They’re
dead!” Rita said between sobs. “You told me they were dead!”
“I
didn’t say that!” Helen half-shouted. She put an arm
around Rita and pulled her close. “I said I don’t know what happened to them!
People keep saying stuff about Baltimore, but we don’t know anything about what
happened. We have to get home and wait for them to get back.”
Helen gave Rita and Amy a last hug, then stood. After trying but failing to get Rita up, Helen turned to Amy. “Help me get her over there to that rock,” she said. With an effort, the biggest sister and the smallest one got Rita on her feet and over to a broad, flat boulder that was the right height to double as a seat. There, Rita put her face in her hands and continued crying. Unable to do more for her, Helen led her littlest sister by the hand out of earshot of Rita.
“How did
you two get here?” Amy asked.
Helen
took a long breath and let it out slowly. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, she
trusted Amy with the truth. “A creep gave us a ride. I’ll tell you more about
it later. It was hell.”
“What’s
that?” Amy pointed to Helen’s stained legs and filthy clothing.
“It’s
nothing. Forget about it.”
“Is that
blood? Did you get hurt?”
“I’ll
tell you about it later, okay?” She fought back another urge to cry, and she
wiped her eyes with her palms. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’m just glad I
found you.”
“I’m
still mad at you,” said Amy in a low voice.
“Mad? For what?”
“You
really hurt me this morning when you pinched me.”
Helen
stared at her sister and remembered. She then stuck out her left arm. It was
covered with scratches and bruises. “Pinch me back,” she said. “Hard as you can. I won’t do anything about it. Then we’ll
be even.”
Amy
stared at Helen’s arm. “What happened?”
“Amy,”
said Helen wearily, “the truth is, there’s a war going on, everyone at the high
school panicked, my best friend got killed, Rita and I got picked up by a sicko
and almost got killed, and then—look, we’ve just been through a ton of crap to find
you. God strike me down if I’m lying.” She took a breath. “Now, pinch me and
get it over with.”
Staring
at Helen in shock, Amy finally looked down at her sister’s arm and gave her a
small pinch. Helen knelt, pulled Amy close, and hugged her again. After
hesitating, Amy put her small arms around her in return.
“This is
a bad joke, right?” Amy asked, her voice muffled by Helen’s sweater.
“I wish
it was. I really wish it was. Things are really bad.” She pulled back and
looked Amy in the eyes. “Look,” she said in a softer voice, glancing back at
Rita, “we had some really bad things happen to us on the way out here. Don’t
ask Rita about it. I can talk to you about it later, but I don’t want you to
upset her.”
“Since
when did you give a hoot what Rita thinks?” Amy asked, confused.
No quick
answer suggested itself. “We’re in a bad way,” Helen finally said. She ran her
fingers through Amy’s long brown hair, taking out tangles. “Don’t ever leave me
and Rita from now on. We three have to stick together, no matter what happens,
okay? Things could be really rough for a while, but we have to stay together
and not get separated. Nothing else matters but that. You got that?”
Amy
stared at Helen, then nodded slowly.
Helen
nodded back and kissed Amy’s hands. “I swear,” she
said, “I swear before God I will never hurt you again. I’m sorry for all the
bad stuff I’ve done to you. I don’t ever want to do it again. I promise.”
Long
seconds passed.
“Mom and
Dad are dead, aren’t they?” Amy whispered.
Helen
looked down at Amy’s small hands. “I don’t know,” she whispered back. “I heard
Baltimore and Washington got hit. They started an atomic war this morning, I’m
pretty sure. I don’t know anything else. I can’t even believe we’re still
alive, it’s been so bad. Don’t ever leave me, okay?”
After
another hug, Helen got to her feet and patted Amy on the shoulder. “Keep this
to yourself, okay? Don’t spread it around, especially to the other kids.”
“Okay,”
Amy whispered. White-faced, she took Helen’s hand and gripped it firmly, no
emotion showing.
Leading
Amy with her, Helen questioned the bus driver and one of the two teachers who
had stayed with the bus. Twelve students had been left behind with them after
the other bus, grossly overloaded, headed back to town, the driver intending to
return as soon as possible.
“We had
some kids go off with their moms who drove out here to find us,” said the bus
driver. “We’re all that’s left. You know anything about what’s happening?”
Helen
shook her head. “Nothing. Things were a big mess in
town.”
“We saw
a flash in the sky,” the driver went on. “You see anything like that?”
“Two
flashes,” said Helen. “I don’t know where they came from.”
“Well, I
can guess,” said the driver. She took out another cigarette and lit up.
“We’re
letting the kids go to the bathroom in a culvert over there,” said the teacher
who stood by the driver, and she pointed to a place behind the bus. Helen saw a
large drainage pipe almost five feet in diameter in a low part of the nearby
ditch, where the other teacher stood with three students in a line. “Wish
someone had a radio so we could get some news.”
Helen
looked back at Rita. She appeared to be over her crying jag and was fixing
herself up once more.
“I have
to go,” said Amy. “Go with me?”
“To the potty?”
Amy
frowned. “To the toilet,” she corrected. “I’m not a baby.”
“Right,”
said Helen, sighing. “Sorry. Just a second. Hey, Rita?” Rita looked up from her seat on the rock,
brushing debris from her dirty yellow dress. “Rita, do you . . . have to go
again?”
“Go
where?” Rita called back.
“Go,”
said Helen, pointing down to the culvert with her free hand.
Rita
looked where Helen pointed, not getting it for several seconds. Her face then
scrunched up in revulsion. “I already—” She glanced at Amy “—no, I’m fine.” Rita
got up, smoothed down her dress, and walked over. “Does Amy have to go?”
“Yes,”
said Amy. “I’ll pretend I’m a wild bear in the woods.”
“Don’t
say it,” warned Helen.
“Say
what?” asked Amy. “I didn’t say shit.”
Helen
gasped, then began to snicker. Rita joined in,
covering her mouth. After a moment, neither of the older two could stand up,
and they sat down on the ground and howled with laughter.
“That
was funny?” Amy said, cracking a smile. “I should say shit more often.”
“Stop! Stop!” gasped Helen. “No! No more swearing! Just
stop!”
“Are you
going to tell on me?” Amy’s smile faltered.
“No,
no,” said Helen, getting control of herself, “but don’t say it again! Okay?”
“Okay.”
Amy smirked, but it was a weak one. No one mentioned that there might no one at
home to tattle to.
Once she
got to her feet, Rita volunteered to take Amy down to the culvert. Amy did not
seem happy with the arrangement, giving Helen a significant look, but she went
anyway. Helen stayed behind, watching them go, then turned and walked back to
the bus driver and teacher standing in front of the bus. She had something she
had to sort out, but she had to do it without her sisters in hearing range.
“Excuse
me, but I keep hearing that Baltimore was hit,” she said as she walked up to the
adults. “Our parents were there. Are there, I mean.” She flushed, shocked that she’d mentioned them in the past
tense.
The
teacher, a young woman with short dark hair, looked highly uncomfortable. “We
were listening to a ham operator outside Baltimore when we were at the farm,”
she said. “It didn’t sound good. I’m . . . I’m very sorry.” She rubbed her lips,
her eyes watering up. “I should shut up and go see if they need help with the
bathroom line.”
After
the teacher hurried off, Helen turned to the bus driver. “Tell me the truth,”
she asked. She hoped she didn’t sound like she was begging.
The bus
driver, sad and tired, looked her over. “You the oldest?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The
driver knocked ash from her cigarette. “All right, then. You asked. Baltimore
got hit this mornin’ about ten-thirty. The guy on the radio said there were a
lot of fires. He was out in the Parkville area. Fire departments from all over
were tryin’ to get in, but the roads were jammed to hell. He said a few radio
stations are doin’ that ‘mergency whatchacallit, conel-somethin’, CONELRAD, but
they’re not sayin’ anythin’ useful. Some radio stations away from town are
still broadcastin’, tellin’ people whatever they know, but nothin’s coming from
downtown.” She blew out a dragon’s breath of smoke. “Washington might’ve gotten
hit, too, few minutes after that, but some radio stations are still on the air
around there and say things are mostly all right. Bomb went off east of there,
sort of over the ocean.” She took another long drag on her smoke. “I’m sorry,”
she said, blowing smoke as she talked. “Wish I had better news.”
“That’s
okay,” said Helen. “That’s what I thought it was. Thank you.” A void grew
inside her. She had put off thinking about this all morning. There simply
hadn’t been time. Now she had no idea how to deal with the knowledge. Because
the attack came with so little warning, one or both of her parents were almost
certainly dead. A void ate everything inside her. “We’ll just go home and see,”
she finished lamely.
“We’ll
get you girls home,” said the bus driver. “Don’t worry about it. Did you walk
all the way out here?”
“Someone
drove us,” said Helen in a dull voice. That was all she was determined to say
about it.
Singing
drifted down the road from the culvert. Waiting in line to use the culvert,
Rita and Amy were going through “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The other kids and
teachers joined in. All the remaining children in the area walked over to join
them.
“Good
kids,” said the bus driver, looking back at Helen. She squinted against the sun
at Helen’s back. “Your sisters are lucky to have you.”
Helen
said nothing. Too much weighed on her mind. After finishing the song, Rita
began a new one, Little Eva’s “Loco-motion,” and she got the other kids to clap
along while she danced and sang. Amy went into the dark culvert with one of the
lady teachers. Helen listened in uncritical silence, though Rita’s voice was,
of course, off-key. It was a surprise to see Rita in a better mood, though
Helen knew her sister would be up and down the emotional scale for a long time
to come—as would they all.
The bus
driver walked toward the culvert to better see the goings-on. Helen turned and
looked south toward where she imagined Washington, D.C. lay hidden behind the
rolling hills, then looked southwest toward Baltimore. She half expected to see
a mushroom cloud there, but the attack had been hours ago now. She couldn’t
tell if the clouds in that direction were mushroom shaped or not.
She
closed her eyes and imagined what it must have been like—her mother in a
department store, looking for dresses for Rita, and her father sitting at his
brown desk by the windows facing Baltimore’s harbor, making notes for a
meeting, then—a Light, the brightest Light they had ever seen, coming in the
windows and doors and down hallways and through cracks for only a flash in
time, and then a moment of rushing and flying and falling walls and burning,
and then—
Peace?
Did they find peace on the other side, God and angels, or a distant green land,
with millions of other human beings caught by the same Light? Or were they
still alive but buried under tons of burning rubble, choking on smoke, unable
to see or move, and even now calling for help that could never reach them in
time? Or were they alive after all and coming to get their children? Had only
one parent made it through this awful day, or no parent at all? The questions
were too much to struggle with.
How
would it be if a bomb went off now, right before me? Helen thought. She
imagined the blinding Light, the building Heat, the trees around her in flame
and the children screaming as they burned like torches, then the great breath
of the blast wave roaring past, throwing flames and cars and school buses and
bodies before it, and the smoldering desert that the blast would leave behind,
the silence of an ash-filled wind.
Would
anyone remember me? Would anyone know my name out of the millions of dead?
Would anything I did or touched, anything good I did in my entire life, survive
into the future if I did not? She did not know, and it disturbed her. I’ll
survive, though. It would have been better if I had died and Mom and Dad were
here now, but I’m here, and I have to do everything I can to keep us together
until—until Mom and Dad get home. If Mom wants to favor Rita, that’s okay. I
can live with it now. And Dad can hide in the basement. I won’t argue with
either of them. I just want to see them again and have my family back. That’s
all I want.
Tears
ran down her cheeks. The sun warmed her face even as the wind cooled it.
Give
me strength, God, whatever happens. Give me the strength to take care of my
sisters, if they are all the family I have left. Let me be there for them,
whatever happens, and if it can be done, bring our parents home. If that cannot
be, give them peace wherever they are, forever. And grant peace to Caroline and
all the others, but especially to Caroline, my angel. Amen.
Helen
opened her eyes and looked south. This morning, her only concern in life was a
hot shower, a talk on civil rights, and watching “Route 66” on the television.
Now the old world was ending, and a new world was being born. Helen knew of
nothing more frightening and terrible. And the burden of facing that world
would fall on her.
She
turned away, empty as death, and went to find her sisters.
A truck
stopped an hour later and took the rest of the children and adults back to
Plainfield Elementary. A neighbor recognized the Barksdale girls and drove them
home with her own daughter. Helen used Rita’s key to get into the empty house,
and they locked the door behind them. The power was still on. The TV showed
only static, except for a station showing a Civil Defense symbol with no sound.
Rita and Amy went to their rooms, but Helen stopped in the kitchen. After
looking in the refrigerator and judging how much food they had left—and
remembering the money she had taken from Mr. Meyer—she sat down at the table,
in the chair where her mother always sat. She thought for a long time, worrying
and planning, then got up and walked down the hall to her sisters’ bedrooms.
She
knocked on Rita’s door first. After a long pause, Rita opened it. Her face was
red and puffy, and she clutched a large brown bear she called Buddy.
“Go take
a shower and change your clothes,” said Helen softly. “Save some hot water for
Amy, though. I’m going to make us something to eat.”
“Mom
will make dinner when she gets home with Dad,” Rita said, her voice high.
“If
they’re late, I’ll have something ready for them when they get here,” Helen
said. “We need lunch, though. Go on.” Rita nodded and went to get a change of
clothes.
Amy did
not respond to a knock on her door. Helen tried the knob and found it was
unlocked. She went in and saw an Amy-sized lump under the blankets on the bed.
Helen sat beside it. The lump moved away from her.
“Amy,”
Helen whispered. She pulled the blankets away. Amy had buried her face in her
pillow and would not move. After a moment, Helen kicked off her shoes and lay
down on her side in the bed close beside her little sister.
“Amy?”
said Helen.
Amy did
not reply.
Helen
swallowed. “Amy, I need your help.”
Amy
shifted, then looked up, sniffling. Her face was as
red and swollen as Rita’s.
“Mom and
Dad might get back tonight,” Helen said in a soft voice, “but whatever happens,
we need to keep the house going. I’m worried about Rita, but I think you and I
can keep her on her feet if . . . if things don’t work out too well.”
“How
could things get any worse?” Amy said, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
Helen
put her arms around her little sister, who scooted closer to her. “I love you,”
said Helen.
“I love
you, too,” Amy whispered.
The
silence lasted a long time. They heard Rita turn on the shower, listened to the
hot water pipes pop and groan.
“Helen?”
“What?”
“What
happens if Mom and Dad don’t come back?”
A pause. “I’ll be here. I’ll always be here to take care of
you.”
“Thank
you for coming to find me,” said Amy. “I was scared.”
“We’re
okay now.”
“I’m
sorry I called you names this morning.”
Helen
kissed Amy on the forehead. “Forget it. I feel bad about pinching you. You
didn’t deserve it.”
“Yes, I
did.”
“Shhh. No. I was wrong.” Another pause.
“Are you hungry?”
Amy
nodded slightly. Helen kissed her again and got up. “I’m going to make lunch.
Take a shower when Rita’s done and get changed. A real shower, this time, and
wash good.”
“Okay.”
Pause. “Are we going back to school on Monday?”
Helen
stopped at the door and looked back. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about
it.” She thought about it. “I don’t think so.”
“That’s the
first time I’ve ever heard you say that.”
“What?”
“‘I
don’t know.’ You always know everything.”
Helen
chewed the inside of her lip. She has a point. I was like that. “I’ve
been through too much today,” she finally said. “I can’t think of anything else
to say.”
In the
hall, the bathroom door opened. Helen realized the shower was off. Rita walked
into the hall, her hair plastered down and body wrapped in a big towel. “Next,”
she said, then went to her room. It was the shortest
shower she had ever taken.
The
three sisters ate leftovers from the refrigerator, warmed in the oven, then
turned on the TV. The one television station they could get, a static-filled
image from Philadelphia, had a handful of live reporters and announcers
retelling what they heard from radios and wire services. The United States had
been attacked that morning by missiles and aircraft from Cuba and possibly from
the Soviet Union or its submarines. The U.S. had retaliated and was continuing
to strike back. Atomic war raged across Europe and Asia. Baltimore, Miami, San
Diego, and several Air Force bases in Florida had been hit. Washington, D.C.
took a near miss but was still operating; many Congressmen had fled to a secret
location, but some had vowed to stay on. People were fleeing every major city,
but looting and rioting were minimal except at some grocery stores and gas
stations. Further atomic attacks were expected at any time, and all families
with fallout shelters were urged to use them immediately.
The
girls checked the driveway every few minutes. No mother or father came home to
them. Helen dialed all their relatives on the phone, but all numbers were busy.
The telephone system was overloaded, and nothing more could be done.
Helen
made dinner—more leftovers—and they ate in silence and listened to the TV in
the living room. When it got dark, Helen pulled down all the shades so no one
would know no adults were present. No neighbors came by. It grew cold again.
At
nine-fifteen that evening, the newsmen on TV reported that President Kennedy
was dead. Helen gasped in disbelief. His Air Force jet had crashed,
destroyed in flight by the bomb that went off near the capitol. President
Johnson was directing the war effort from an unknown location. Martial law had
been declared throughout the U.S. and in Canada, and all National Guard and
reserve troops were being called up. All civilian air travel was banned, and
all harbors and ports were closed except to military ships.
Helen
got up and turned down the volume, then remained standing to watch the TV with
her arms crossed in front of her. She still couldn’t believe the President was
dead. Rita sat on one end of the couch, covered with a blanket, and cried into
the pillows. Amy silently played with her Bugs Bunny stuffed doll at the other
end, glancing up at the TV now and then. She finally put down the doll and sat
beside Rita, holding her hand. When Helen left the room, Amy got up and went
with her, even sitting outside the bathroom when her sister went in there.
At
midnight, every light in the house was on. Staring at the TV, Helen sat on the
sofa between Rita and Amy, who were asleep and covered with blankets from their
bed.
How
many millions of people are dead? she wondered. Or
are there billions dead now? Are we about to pass away as a species? Did we
really just kill ourselves off today, in just a few hours of time? Will
radiation clouds and fallout get us all? Are we gone?
She
carefully got up without waking her sisters and tried the phone. It made a
peculiar noise like static and did not work. She hung up and tried the radio in
the kitchen. A few stations were on, giving ghastly reports from survivors who
had escaped from the inferno that was Baltimore, Civil Defense instructions for
avoiding fallout, and urgings for people to return to their homes, take
shelter, and stay calm.
Numb,
she turned the radio off. The only news that mattered was the return of her
parents. Every minute that passed eroded her faint hopes that her mother or
father had survived. New terrors assailed her as she sat down alone at the
kitchen table. If their parents were dead, would the sisters be taken to an
orphanage and lose their home and be split up, never to see each other again?
Would they be able to find relatives to live with? Would criminals try to break
into the house and hurt them? Helen took out all the steak knives and put them
around the house, hidden from view, just in case.
And the
worst moments of the day came back to haunt her—Caroline’s face as she died,
Mr. Meyer’s attempted kidnapping of Rita, the psychopathic teenager with the
gun. Could I have saved Caroline? Could I have stopped Rita from getting
into Mr. Meyer’s car? Would the teenagers have taken me away to hurt me, as
they said they might? How could I have been so cruel to Rita and Amy, so angry
with my parents, so uncaring of those I love? Did I bring this war on by
wishing for it this morning? How could I have ever wished for a thing like
this, knowing how terrible it is? How will we survive now that everything is
gone?
She went to the bathroom and took a
shower so hot it burned her skin, scrubbing herself until it hurt to get rid of
all the blood, dirt, and filth of the day. She cried, remembering Caroline,
then finished up and got out and dressed in her room without noticing what sort
of dress she’d put on. Making herself a cup of hot cocoa, she went back into
the living room and watched the TV for more news. Strangely, no more news was
being offered now—“for security reasons.” Apparently, someone was afraid the
Russians were monitoring television broadcasts to pick out more targets to
strike.
Restless, she was walking into the
kitchen again when she spotted a Bible in the living room bookshelf. She
stopped and gently pulled it out. Helen remembered going to Bible study classes
as a little girl, but they had always bored her to tears. She randomly opened
the black book and read the first thing she saw. It was Ecclesiastes 1:4. It
read: One generation passeth
away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever.
If Mom and Dad are dead, we will
survive, she thought. We will make it through somehow. And the note
about the earth lasting on, no matter what, comforted her. Not everything was
lost. She put the Bible back on the shelf and sat on the couch between her
sisters, her hands cupped around their heads. The TV gave instructions on how
to purify water and make sure food was safe to eat, how to use a Geiger
counter, how to wash fallout off a car, house, or vegetables from a garden.
When the sun came up at eight the next morning, Helen was still awake, but her parents were not home. She got up from the couch to look out at the red sky, marveling that the day could go on as it always had when so dreadful a time was upon the world.
At long last, she straightened her shoulders. She was the oldest, and she would do what had to be done, no matter what. Her mother, for all her faults, had known Helen could be relied upon to take care of things and meet any emergency. She took a breath and held it, her eyes closed. I am prepared, she thought. I will keep us safe and use good judgment. She remembered something her father once said, that in Louisiana was an Air Force base named Barksdale. Thinking about it made her feel stronger. She would protect her sisters, guide them through this new and terrible world, and keep them safe.
Wiping her eyes, Helen went to the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator for something other than leftovers for breakfast when her sisters awoke. One generation had passed away, and a new generation had taken its place. The earth would abide.
*
Author’s Notes II: Though there are many alternate-history
stories of Daria in which the changes
in events are confined to happenings within the series only, there are few such
stories in which the changes are within the greater framework of world history.
This lack intrigued me, and this story was written with that in mind. It is
possible that a future story will follow from this tale, showing how the
Barksdale sisters grew to adulthood in their war-torn world—and if there is
someone named Daria in this post-atomic future.
This
story was originally posted as a serial tale (“Gone”) on the Sh33p’s Fluff MB
in late November 2003. By being posted chapter by chapter, the tale was
intended to initially mislead the reader as to whether it was Daria mixed with real history, a bad
dream, or an alternate universe. The original ending (in which Helen was killed
when caught in the open by an atomic blast) was changed after examining reader
feedback; several other endings were also discarded until the present one was
used.
Part of
the basis for this story came from my childhood memories. I clearly recall the
curious autumn in second grade, in October 1962, when the local high school was
filled with Civil Defense supplies, and my elementary school had special
survival drills that were not connected with tornado weather. I had no idea why
it was happening, but I knew it was different and the adults were nervous. It
soon passed, but I was curious.
“Gone”
was also influenced by atomic-war stories I read and saw throughout my
childhood, particularly the “postwar” novels Alas Babylon, Tomorrow!,
Triumph, Dark December, Warday, On the Beach, Malevil, and A Canticle
for Leibowitz, and the movies Testament, The Day After, Invasion USA,
Panic in the Year Zero, and Atomic Cafe. All contributed in some
way, great or small, to the particular vision herein.
Historical
nonfiction books contributed a great deal to the story, particularly John
Hershey’s Hiroshima, Richard Rhodes’s Dark Sun: The Making of the
Hydrogen Bomb (chapter 27, including the source of the real-life quote from
General Power on page 572), Kenzaburo Oe’s The Crazy Iris and Other Stories
of the Atomic Aftermath, and Bruce D. Clayton’s Life After Doomsday: A
Survivalist Guide to Nuclear War and Other Major Disasters (chapters 2 and
3, and appendix A).
A recent
anthology of alternate-history speculations had a major influence on this story
and should be acknowledged: What Ifs? of American History: Eminent
Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, by Antony Beevor
(ed.), Calebert Carr, Robert Cowley (ed.), Robert Dallek, John Lukacs, and Jay
Winik. The chapter entitled, “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Second
Holocaust” (pages 251-272) was influential, though I altered the events leading
to war and the list of American cities targeted. The chapter appears to follow
notes from Richard Rhodes’s Dark Sun (chapter 27) and the basic concept
for the post-atomic, global-cooling effect now called “nuclear autumn,” a
variant of the “nuclear winter” posited by the 1984 book, The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War (by Paul R.
Ehrich, Carl Sagan, Donald Kennedy, and Walter Orr Roberts).
Finally,
Internet sources too numerous to name were consulted for information on the
aftereffects of thermonuclear weapon explosions, sibling birth order’s effects
on personality, popular songs and cars in 1961 and 1962, clothing styles of
that period, etc. It’s amazing what you can find online these days.
In
addition, of course, is the Daria element. I went through everything I could
find on the three Barksdale sisters in various episodes of the series and began
creating a table of what I imagined they would have been like in October 1962.
It would take too long to show how I came up with the ages and birth order of
the sisters, but the result was satisfying to the story and to me. Below is an
appendix giving my specific notes (not all of which were used) on the
personalities, likes, and goals of the three girls in their childhood, and on
that dreadful time in October around which the story revolves. My thanks to
everyone who offered suggestions and information sources for the tale.
LATE
NOTE: In a 2005 interview with Kara Wild, Glenn Eichler gave a different birth
order for the three Barksdale sisters. The interview is posted at:
http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/glennanswers.html
with a follow-up interview
covering the same issues at:
http://www.the-wildone.com/dvdaria/glennfollowup1.html
However, the birth order given by Mr. Eichler (Rita
was oldest, followed by Helen and then Amy) was never made relevant in the Daria series, and the story here does
not contradict any part of the show except for the obvious alteration of
history. Richard Lobinske later created a fairly detailed chronology of events
in the Daria series (“The Daria
Temporal Analysis Project”), found here among other places online:
http://www.outpost-daria.com/essay/rl_daria_temporal_analysis_project.html
Helen’s birth year is still likely to be 1950,
though Rita’s and Amy’s would vary per Mr. Eichler’s comments above.
APPENDIX: STORY NOTES
THE BARKSDALE SISTERS (OCTOBER 1962)
Name HELEN RITA AMY
Age (Birthday) 12 (July 1950) 11 (April 1951) 8 (September 1954)
Grade 10/1962 7 junior high 6 elementary 3 elementary
Hair short medium brunette short blonde, styled dark brunette
Hair Style shoulders, curled under Marilyn Monroe cut long, wavy, free
Eyes hazel green brown
Height 59 inches 57 inches 49 inches
Weight 95 lbs. 75 lbs. 52 lbs.
Personality overachiever popular, pretty isolated reader
sucks up to authority peer group only sarcastic/cynical loner
power/control freak seductive/charm smart aleck/rebel
commands groups gets someone to help her does it by herself
threats, bribery, blackmail gets mother to defend her insults, sarcasm
humiliation, pressure romantic fantasies heroic fantasies
romantic/sex fantasies underachiever, cheery practical, realistic, solemn
(similar to Jodie Landon) (similar to Quinn) (similar to Daria)
Songs Pat Boone (claimed) Elvis Chipmunks
Elvis (in secret) Roy Orbison Monster Mash
Ray Charles Dion Flintstones song
Peter Paul Mary Rick Nelson Purple People Eater
Kingston Trio Twist/Locomotion Walt Disney songs
“Lion Sleeps Tonight” “Lion Sleeps Tonight” “Lion Sleeps Tonight”
FOLK/POP DANCE/POP/TOP 40 CHILDREN/ANNOYING
TV shows 77 Sunset Strip Lassie Flintstones
Route 66 Sing Along With Mitch Walt Disney
Lassie Walt Disney Jetsons
Walt Disney beauty pageants Mr. Ed
The Defenders situation comedies Lassie
news shows soap operas Bugs Bunny
soap operas commercials with songs Rocky & Bullwinkle
Idols JFK Jackie K. Rocky & Bullwinkle
John Glenn M. Monroe (d.8/25) Spider-Man
Rachel Carson James Bond (Dr. No) Annie Oakley
James Meredith Elizabeth Taylor Bugs Bunny (smart aleck)
James Bond (Dr. No) Annette Funicello anti-authority figures
Issues civil rights Miss America bedtime & TV issues
Berlin Wall Jackie K. fashions Halloween costumes
Peace Corps M. Monroe’s death up late reading in bed
China v. India going steady (plans) won’t interact with other kids
Pollution hairspray problems rude in class under pressure
Nov elections wants a bra, stuffs dress feels left out of everything
Cuba/Castro entitled, deserves best doesn’t trust life, hostile
Books To Kill a Mockingbird Sex & Single Girl Mad Magazine (banned)
Life Magazine Teen Scene Spider-man comics
Silent Spring Teen Life Wonder Woman comics
Sex & Single Girl (doesn’t read much) (reads everything possible)
Other Vaughn Meader JFK lp Dr. No (hasn’t seen) Dr. No (hasn’t seen)
Media Dr. No (hasn’t seen) 101 Dalmatians 101 Dalmatians
West Side Story The Parent Trap The Absent-Minded Professor
Gone with the Wind The Music Man Alice in Wonderland
Tom Lehrer albums
Lunchbox Paper bag Junior Miss Rocky & Bullwinkle
Clothing Black hair beret Canary yellow Large-frame brown glasses
(typical) Magenta sweater checked dress Dark brown sweater
10/26/62 White blouse (with white) White blouse
Powder blue skirt White sweater Forest green skirt
White shoes/socks Yellow shoes Black shoes, white socks
Color Summer/Autumn Spring Autumn
Season (like Quinn) (like Daria)
Favorite idiot square Communist
Insults moron four-eyes (Amy) whale (or big) butt
retard bozo pervert
sicko geek snot face
four-eyes (Amy) weirdo rat fink
Sister Issues R: Mom’s favorite H: picks flaws, bossy H: domineering, bossy
gets her way won’t help w/ homework rigid, orders me around
A: smart mouth A: troublemaker R: ignores me
no respect, weird insulting shallow, no mind of own
Favorite Toys Bear (hidden in closet) Barbie & Ken Bugs Bunny doll
(won’t play with toys) Fashion toys Annie Oakley outfit and guns
Stuffed animals (display) Secret agent/superhero toys
6:00 wake up, shower, dress (Rita/Helen/Amy)
6:50 father leaves for work after coffee
7:00 girl’s fast breakfast
7:20 bus comes
7:40 arrive at school
8:00 homeroom, sunrise
8:30 1st period
9:30 2nd period
10:30 3rd period
11:30 lunch—4th period (alternates)
1:00 5th period
2:00 6th period
3:00 school out
3:30 arrive home on bus
6:15 father home from work
6:30 dinner/supper
6:50 sunset
9:00 Amy bedtime (8:00 Sun-Thu)
10:00 Helen/Rita bedtime (9:00 Sun-Thu)
11:00 Parents to bed
Halloween: next week, Wednesday, October 31st.
Daylight Savings Time changes on Sunday, October 28: set clocks back 1 hour
Moon: sliver crescent (not visible in story)
Plainfield: Maryland/Virginia/Pennsylvania area (state not defined, NW of and close to Baltimore)
Interstate system not completed, only begun—two-lane roads everywhere
Plainfield High School (junior (7-8) and senior high (9-12) separate)
Plainfield Elementary School (adjacent (1-6))
“College Bored” (Helen’s age clue)
“The Daria Hunter” (Helen’s age clue)
“I Don’t” (Helen, Rita, Amy: relationship, childhood)
“That Was Then, This Is Dumb” (Helen’s age clue)
“Through a Lens Darkly” (Helen, Amy: relationship)
“Aunt Nauseum” (Helen, Rita, Amy: relationship, childhood)
The Daria Diaries (Helen’s astrological sign)
Original: collected 1/26/04; modified 12/5/04,
07/25/06, 10/02/06, 08/18/08
FINIS