Much to Patricia’s surprise, Rosa goes into the pool house—Patricia’s own pool house!—and slams the door in her face.
All the way back into the big house, she isn’t sure how to feel. Fury with Rosa at her ingratitude or fury at Randall for asking her to deliver papers that apparently offer little more than modern-day slavery.
Most of all, she’s angry at herself. She has failed them both.
17.
Ella hates this baby-blue—ugh, prairie dress?—but her mother insisted. They’re dressed up like it’s Nana’s yearly Easter brunch, Ella’s hair blown out soft and shining and Brooklyn dolled up in her favorite pink dress with ribbons in her curls.
“What are we doing?” Ella asks as they pile into the car.
Her mom looks so nice that she’s beginning to feel nervous, and she was already nervous because at any moment her mother could go crazy and try to kill one of them or crash the minivan into oncoming traffic. So whatever they’re doing, it must be really important. Mom hasn’t left her room in over two months—not without making the girls go upstairs and lock themselves in. And she knows how Ella feels about her grandmother.
“We’re going to visit Nana,” Mom says with a creepy calm.
“Yeah, you keep saying that, but you won’t tell us why.”
“Because it’s the right thing to do.”
In the back of Ella’s mind, some dark part of her unfurls and stretches out feelers like a spider testing life beyond the shadows and wonders if Chelsea is hoping she’ll go all Violent on Nana and end…whatever their relationship is. It’s obvious they hate each other, and Ella’s pretty sure her grandmother stopped liking her and possibly even loving her when she was old enough to say no to the dresses and ribbons and speak her mind. She doesn’t even know if Nana is okay, much less if she’s been checking in with Mom, but probably not. Most likely Nana hasn’t thought about them at all.
The past couple of months have been fucking terrible, actually. Ella’s entire life has shrunk down to doing busywork, teaching her sister, babysitting her sister, feeding her sister, cleaning the house, scanning the internet for updates on the Violence, and reading Hayden’s long emails from the county holding facility. They took his phone, but they let the guests—not inmates, not infected, but guests—use a makeshift library once a day if they behave well during their manual labor, and he apparently makes a beeline to send her emails, for some reason. He doesn’t apologize anymore or make excuses or whatever. He just tells her about his day, even though she never answers. Like she’s his fucking diary.
Again, like she’s just…a thing.
A vessel for his thoughts, a witness to his ongoing suffering.
Hayden is housed with other boys ages five to seventeen in the abandoned shell of an old Kmart. They have army cots and mildewy Goodwill blankets, and they have to do all the work to maintain their life on their own, from cooking and cleaning to taking care of the younger kids. Almost every day, the older kids get bussed out to pick up trash or clean public buildings. There are guards in camo with huge guns, but nobody really talks to the boys at all unless someone comes down with a case of the Violence. Then, according to Hayden, the National Guard guys run in and yank the afflicted away from whoever he’s trying to kill and put him in what’s basically a giant dog kennel. Hayden says it looks like something from that first Hannibal movie. If the kid in question can’t chill, they shoot him with tranqs, and then he sleeps it off and wakes up confused. It hasn’t happened to Hayden yet, because as they both know, he doesn’t have the Violence.
The whole thing is more like a bad boarding school than a hospital, and Hayden is stuck taking care of these younger kids and cleaning toilets. Ella is grimly amused by the fact that because of the Violence, she can no longer earn money babysitting while Hayden is forced to babysit for free—plus his charges occasionally go totally feral on him. One little six-year-old tried to bash his brains in with a dictionary. He used to make fun of her for having to do so much for Brooklyn—and yes, she’s with Brooklyn 24/7 now—but maybe Hayden is finally beginning to understand what it’s like, actually having responsibilities.
Ella doesn’t really care what Hayden is going through, but she is slightly interested in the whole setup, since her mom legit has the Violence and her dad is supposedly in another county facility. She can’t believe Hayden is even getting these messages out, but then again, he likes to call himself a hacker, and he once got into the school system and anonymously sent everyone an email of the nudes he found on the now ex-principal’s server, without getting caught.
She also can’t help wondering if her dad also has access to a computer, and if so, if he’s been talking to Mom. Mom hasn’t said anything about it, but then again, she’s been locked in her room for months. He hasn’t sent Ella anything, but why would he? They’re not close. They don’t talk. He doesn’t even know her email address, and she blocked him on Facebook two years ago when she posted a happy, innocent beach pic in her bikini with Olivia and Sophie and he gave her a drunken lecture on not being a slut. Either way, Hayden probably hacked something like an idiot who doesn’t understand that when you’re under government quarantine during a weird pandemic, you shouldn’t hack shit, especially not to talk to someone who’s glad you’re gone.