The Eleventh Plague

SIXTEEN

The next morning before school I helped Violet carry tin buckets of hot water from the fire out back to a white tub in the bathroom upstairs. She said she figured I must be dying for a bath — meaning she was dying for me to take a bath but wanted to save my feelings. It was a good effort. And a few whiffs of myself confirmed that it was probably past due.

Once we were done and she was gone, I stripped and lowered myself into the tub. The homemade lye soap Violet gave me felt like it was taking a layer of skin off with the dirt. As I scrubbed, I thought how easy it must have been when she and my dad were my age, back before the Collapse. Turn a faucet and out came hot water. Flick a switch and there was light. It must have seemed like magic.

When I was done, Violet came back in with a razor and a pair of scissors. She cut my hair and shaved the light fall of whiskers on my cheeks, then sent me off to Jenny’s room. There I found a pair of nearly new-looking jeans, a red button-up shirt, and a handmade black wool sweater. There was even a slightly scuffed pair of brown hiking boots. On the floor next to the bed were my old clothes: a dirty, heavily patched heap of greasy cloth I had been wearing almost daily for the last year or two. I knew every hole, every tear, every patch, wrinkle, and worn spot.

I lifted my old pants and turned them over. Sewn on the right knee was a rectangular scrap of red cloth with gold ducks on it. Dad had put the patch on when I’d worn through the knee a few months ago. The square of cloth had come from one of Mom’s old dresses, her favorite one. After she died, Grandpa had insisted we trade her clothes away, but Dad had kept that one dress, hiding it like I hid my books.

Standing there, I didn’t think I could do it — throw aside these old things for the new. I told myself I was being crazy. If I’d come across these new clothes on the trail, I’d have taken them. And if I’d come across my old clothes, I would’ve walked right on by.

“Stephen?” Violet called from downstairs. “You okay?”

I dressed quickly in the new clothes before heading out into the hall. When I turned to close the door, there were my old clothes, blue and black with a flash of red and gold. Dad’s knife lying on top in its sheath.

They’re just clothes, I told myself and shut the door. When I came downstairs, Violet was sitting at Dad’s side with a bowl of oatmeal in her lap. “Hey, Violet, I …”

When Violet turned back, I saw the feeding tube down Dad’s throat. He lay there, his mouth unnaturally wide, his teeth clamped down on the hard plastic. Something shuddered inside me, seeing him like that. Part of me wanted to run over and tear it out of him, to make her leave him alone, but I marshaled myself and crossed the floor slowly until I was just behind her.

“How’s he doing?”

Violet spooned the last bit of food down the tube.

“About the same,” she said. “I wish I could say more, but without tests …”

“I’ve been talking to him at night.”

“That’s good.” Violet looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “You look really great, Stephen.”

I pulled awkwardly at the new clothes. “Thanks.”

“You ready?”

Jackson had just come down the stairs and was standing behind me.

I moved to the bed and squeezed Dad’s hand tight. “Thanks,” I said again to Violet before leaving with Jackson.

“Mr. Waverly!” Jackson announced cheerily as Martin and an extremely bleary-looking Derrick joined us. Jackson clapped him on the back. “How’s it going, buddy?! Rough night last night?”

“Ugghhhh,” Derrick groaned and halfheartedly pushed Jackson away. He trudged along behind us, grumbling as we made our way to school.

“You playing today?” Martin asked me.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Stunk pretty badly at the end of the game yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Derrick said. “In fact, I think he was lying when he told me he was descended from a real New York Yankee. Don’t let him play, Martin.”

“We’re not letting you play,” Jackson said.

“Why not?”

“You’re a mess.”

“Quinn, buddy, I was just kidding about how much you suck. Defend me here. Am I a mess?”

I regarded Derrick carefully. His hair was a greasy tumbleweed. All his clothes were rumpled. “Definitely. A total mess.”

“Ha!” Martin laughed and punched me in the arm. “I liked you better when you didn’t talk,” Derrick grumbled.

Carrie and Wendy mixed in with us at the bottom of the hill as we all filed in behind the mass of little ones.

“Lookin’ awful snazzy there, Steve,” Carrie said with a grin.

“Oh,” I said, looking down at my new clothes, strangely embarrassed. “Thanks. Marcus’s old things.”

Wendy reached across and drew her finger across the hair that fell just above my eyebrows. “Your hair’s out of your face too,” she said. “I can see your eyes.”

I didn’t know what to say. She was wearing a pink and white sweater and jeans, her hair loose and flowing coppery over her shoulders. I was surprised to find myself nervous as she fell into place next to me.

Once we got to school we all split up and the rest of that morning was pretty uneventful. Tuttle lectured and while everyone else was struggling to stay awake I leaned over my paper and took careful notes. He talked about math and poetry and the Holy Roman Empire. I had no idea there was so much world out there to learn about. At noon he let us out for lunch.

It had grown colder in the past few hours and some clouds had begun to pile up, signs of fall moving headlong toward winter. All of us spilled out onto the yard, pulling our lunches out of bags and buckets. The little ones immediately swarmed around the slide and swing sets, fighting over who got to do what first.

“Okay!” Martin announced as he pulled a wrinkled sheet of paper out of his back pocket. “Time to make the lineup! Waverly is benched!”

“What? No way!”

“Quinn is taking your place.”

“You know,” Derrick said. “You people don’t appreciate me. I’m gonna start hanging out with Will Henry.”

“Oh go take a bath, Derrick,” Wendy said.

I laughed and the lineup talk went on. They all seemed so comfortable with each other, laughing and joking, trading mock punches. I looked around at everyone else in the school yard as they ate their lunches in their own small groups. The inside jokes and chatter of each one joined with the others into a low roar that somehow didn’t seem as grating as it had just a few days earlier.

I turned back to the negotiations, and when I did, I saw Jenny. She was sitting under the big sycamore, facing away from the school, in her torn-up jeans and Red Army jacket with her knees pulled up in front of her, sketching furiously in her sketch pad.

My body tensed immediately. The note. I had almost forgotten. I tried to stay calm, nibbling at my sandwich and keeping my eye on her, waiting for an opportunity. All the noise and movement below her — the laughing and yelling and flirting, the squeak of the old swing sets — didn’t seem to distract her in the least. She drew with great looping strokes and slashes, leaning down into the pad like she was wrestling with it and just barely winning.

When she was done, Jenny dropped the sketch pad on the grass and stretched out against the tree. She reached up and tucked a length of hair behind her ear, leaving the rest of it to blow over her face like smoke drifting over beach sand.

“I don’t know why she even bothers coming.”

Jackson had moved out of the lineup negotiations and was eyeing Jenny too.

“Does she always just sit up there drawing and stuff?”

“No, that one’s new,” he said. “She just started coming to school again the other day.”

Up the hill Jenny leaned over her sketch pad, erasing, drawing again. I thought of that lone horse, locked in the classroom.

“Sometimes I wish …” Jackson’s forehead wrinkled, his lips hardening into a tense slit as he watched her. Whatever he was going to say, he pulled it back before it could get loose.

“What?”

“Sometimes I wish she would go,” Jackson said, his voice a harsh whisper. “Just leave. Before she does something that gets us all thrown out of here.”

“Would they really do that?”

Jackson eyed me a moment like he was trying to make a decision.

“There was a family,” he said, “a few years back. The Krycheks. Had a little girl, like nine, I think. Mr. Krychek used to be a soldier, but all he did was drink by the time he got here. He hid it pretty well for a while, but it got worse. One night he was drinking out in the woods and tried to build a fire. It went out of control and got within a few feet of spreading to the houses. Caleb called a meeting about it the next day. Mom and Dad tried to speak up for them, but Caleb had more than half the town ready to vote against them and anyone willing to stand up for them. In the end it was pretty much unanimous.”

“Your parents …?”

“Dad voted to send them away. He didn’t want to but … I mean, the guy was dangerous, right? What choice did he have? Let the whole town get destroyed? Get us thrown out too?”

“What about your mom?”

Jackson’s eyes went unfocused as he drew his fingertip aimlessly through the dirt. “She was … sick, I think. Didn’t make the vote that day.”

“What happened to them? The Krycheks?”

Jackson didn’t look up. He shrugged. “Dad and some others insisted they at least give them some supplies but … it was the middle of January.”

He didn’t need to say any more. Middle of the winter and the dad a drunk and dragging along a nine-year-old. Only one thing could have happened. I looked down at the remains of my sandwich but wasn’t hungry anymore. I could see that family clear as anything, huddled together and snow-blind, making their slow way out of town. A sick shudder went right through me.

I jumped as the bell rang and everyone started packing up their lunch things and heading inside.

“Let’s go!” Derrick shouted, throwing up his arms. “It’s time to learn, people!”

Jackson lingered by the door. “You coming?” he asked. “Yeah,” I said. “Sure. Just a second. I’ll catch up.” The doors slammed behind them and the yard was quiet and empty.

Just me and Jenny.

Jackson’s story hung with me. Now more than ever I had to be careful. If Jenny was going to be a threat to me, I needed to deal with it. I looked around, making sure I was alone before stalking up the hill. Jenny didn’t notice me as I drew near, too busy sketching the landscape in front of her. The trees looked almost alive on her paper, caught in mid-sway against the gray clouds, the horizon ominous in the distance.

“You’re different,” she said without turning. “Your clothes and hair and stuff.”

I froze. Jenny looked me up and down over her shoulder. Her dark eyes made me feel like I was a fish wriggling on the end of a spear.

“It was, uh … Violet. She gave me some clothes.”

“Figures,” Jenny smirked. “You look like one of them now. You come up here for a reason?”

I cleared my throat and tried to force myself back to business. “The note.”

“Which note?” she asked innocently. “A? B? C major?”

“Your note.”

“Oh, my note!”

“Jenny, whatever you think you saw —”

“Oh please,” Jenny said with a flirtatious lilt. “Let’s not play games that aren’t any fun.”

I felt my legs go weak. My mind was wiped clear like Tuttle’s blackboard. Jenny chuckled.

“I need to know what you want,” I said, trying to find the steel in my voice that was always in Grandpa’s, but only managed what sounded like a strained squeak. For a second I thought Jenny would laugh, but she didn’t. She dropped her pencil and shifted around, looking up at me like she was awaiting a lecture.

“Have you always been a scavenger?” she asked.

“I’m not —”

“Salvager. Whatever. You go north to south, right? To those trade gatherings?”

“Jenny, the note. I —”

“Do you take the same route every time or do you mix it up?”

One time Dad told me about how when they were building the railroads way back when, there would sometimes be a mountain in their way and they’d have to decide whether to load it up with dynamite and blow it up or just go around. I had the feeling that this was one of those times and I was pretty sure I didn’t have anywhere near enough dynamite for the first option. If I wanted the information, it looked like I was going to have to play along.

“It changes.”

“Why?”

“If you keep to one path, people can predict it. Set ambushes.”

“Smart. How close do you get to the coast?”

“Not close.”

“Why? Is it dangerous?”

“Some. Mostly it’s just rubble.”

“What about the West Coast? What have you heard about it?”

“Nobody goes there anymore,” I said.

“Why?”

I gave her a look like it was obvious.

“What? Because that’s where my scary Chinese brothers and sisters are?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Jenny —”

“You ever seen them?”

“No.”

“So what are they doing out there?”

Jenny chewed on the end of her pencil, squinting a little in the sun.

“You like your life, Quinn?” she asked, throwing me off base with the sudden change in tack. “Wandering about this war-torn land of ours?”

No one had ever asked me anything like that before. Did I like my life? What kind of question was that? “It’s just … it’s my life.”

“Well, it’s not a rock. You can have an opinion about it.”

“You like yours?”

“I like parts of it.”

“Which ones?”

“The parts where I get to break things.”

“Why? Because that makes you feel like you’re in control of something?”

For the very first time, I stopped her cold. It took everything in me not to throw my arms into the air in celebration. Jenny looked up at me blank-eyed, wriggling on a spear of her own. Slowly a smile grew at the corners of her lips.

“Oh Stephen,” she said. “You are a pistol.”

“What do you want, Jenny?”

Jenny’s eyes glinted in the sunlight.

“I want a lot of things, Quinn. I’m just trying to decide which of them you can provide.” She flicked her eyes to our left. “Uh-oh. Feel like a tussle?”

“Huh?” I turned and there was Will Henry, the redheaded giant, and one of the slug twins barreling our way.

“Come on,” I said, backing away down the hill. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

“No, seriously, Jenny. They’re trying to get me thrown —” But Jenny wasn’t listening. She jumped up and ran right at them. Will stormed on ahead.

“This isn’t about you, Jenny,” he said.

“Is it about the uses of symbolism in Melville’s Moby-Dick?”

“What?”

As Will stopped to figure that one out, Jenny punched him in the face. A hard right, slamming into his jaw. It rocked him, but he came right back at her. Jenny laughed and danced away.

I edged back down the hill toward school. If Jenny wanted to fight, that was her business. I needed to play it safe, for me and Dad. For the Greens.

“This is my town,” Will spat. “People like you and the spy aren’t welcome, Chink.”

Will planted both hands on Jenny’s chest and shoved her to the ground. She landed with a dull thump.

I didn’t even think. I just launched myself at him, slipping a fist past him and landing it in his stomach. He made a satisfying oof sound but recovered fast, throwing a punch that connected squarely with my jaw and spun me around. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with a mouth full of grass. My head was ringing. I rolled over and all I could see was a wide expanse of cloudy sky cut in half by the dark shadow of Will Henry towering over me.

“You. Don’t. Belong. Here,” he growled.

Something behind me roared and Jenny flew past me, throwing herself at Will, her fingers stretched out like claws. He tried to shrink out of the way, but she got her arms around his neck and forced him to the ground. My vision was still a little hazy, but I could make out the two guys who were behind Will stepping forward and reaching for Jenny. I forced myself up, taking a fistful of dirt and grass with me. I threw the clump in Big Red’s face and threw myself at the other one, using my body like a battering ram. I hit the slug twin full in the chest with my shoulder and he went down. Once we were on the ground, I brought my knee up between his legs. He howled, then curled up on his side, moaning.

I pulled myself on top of him, cocked my fist, and gave him a good one right on the nose. There was a sick crunch and blood spurted out between us. I reared back again, but someone’s hands were on my shoulders, pulling me up and away from him.

It was the big redhead. He was strong but slow. I wriggled out of his grasp and got to my feet, backing away and getting my hands up in front of my face. I could hear another fight going on to my left. I wanted to look and see how Jenny was doing, to see if she needed help, but I had troubles of my own. Big Red was sizing me up, deciding on his next move. It was probably the dumbest thing he could have done. While he was thinking, I was moving.

I threw myself at him headfirst, right into his stomach. Even though I was pretty sure I knocked the wind out of him, he didn’t go down. I kept pushing forward, hoping to get him off balance, but he grabbed my shoulders and used my momentum to toss me down instead. I hit with a thud, my head slamming into the dirt. I reeled again and a wave of nausea hit me. I reached for my knife, realizing too late that it was sitting on Jenny’s floor guarding a pile of old clothes.

I tried to get up, but my arms felt like jelly, and before I could do anything else, Big Red was down on one knee beside me. He pulled his fist back, blocking out everything else in my vision. It was a pale comet hurtling toward me.

But then a look of surprise came over his face and his whole body shot back away from me, like he’d been grabbed up by an angel. There was shouting and a commotion, but my head was too swimmy to make it all out.

Someone grabbed my shoulder and tried to push me up, but it was no use. I was like a rag doll filled with lead.

There was a voice in my ear, close and rushed. “Come on, get up. We have to get out of here.”

The world snapped into focus. Jenny was leaning over me. Her bottom lip was split and trailing blood down her chin and neck, soaking the top of her T-shirt. Her right eye was surrounded by a red and black bruise and nearly swollen shut.

“Did we win?”

“Ha! You are a pistol, Stephen,” she said as she pulled me up. “Now let’s get out of here.”

“Jenny Tan!”

“Oh crap.”

Tuttle stormed up the hill toward us, clutching his wooden ruler like a sword. He was being led by the second of the slug twins. I saw the plan immediately: Will starts a fight, then sends one of them to get Tuttle, no doubt blaming it on me and Jenny. Idiot, I cursed myself.

He was followed by a group of students, all excited to see what was going on. In the middle of the pack were Derrick, Martin, and, finally, Jackson. As soon as Jackson saw Jenny and me together, he stopped cold. The group broke around him, but he didn’t move.

He was staring at my hands.

They were covered in dirt and bruises and blood. The new clothes Violet had given me just that morning were torn and stained. Jackson looked from me to Jenny and back again, his body rigid with anger, his hands knotted into fists. I knew what was going through his head. The last straw. A calm day was smashed to pieces and maybe this time it would lead to a vote that would turn his world upside down. I wanted to say something, tell Jackson it wasn’t my fault, that it was Jenny, that it was Will, that everything would be okay, but before I could do anything, Tuttle barked, “Enough. Detention for both of you.”

“But what about them?” Jenny asked.

Tuttle ignored her. He whirled around, sending the mass of kids behind him scurrying back toward the school. Jackson didn’t move at first, but then Martin tapped him on the shoulder, whispered something, and pulled him away.

“You’re done,” Will said as he passed me, flashing that easy wolfish grin. He and his friends strolled down the hill in Tuttle’s wake.

My hand curled into a fist so tight I nearly broke a bone.

“Easy, tiger,” Jenny said. She laid her hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away.

“Get away from me.”

“Oh come on. We’ll get ours.”

“Our what?”

Jenny’s lips brushed my ear as she whispered, “Revenge, Stephen. We’ll get our revenge.”

“I don’t want revenge,” I said, pushing away from her down the hill. “I just want you to leave me alone.”