The Eleventh Plague

TWENTY-ONE

When I woke it was barely light out and freezing. Winter had finally arrived. Even in my sweater, flannel shirt, and jeans, I shivered as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Jenny was sitting on the floor of the barn, dressed in jeans and a black sweater, scribbling away on her sketch pad. “Aren’t you cold?”

She shrugged, focused on the paper in her lap, sketching, frowning, erasing, and starting over again. In the sunlight her black eye from the day before looked even worse, an oil slick spread of blue, black, and gray. I turned on my side and watched her, pulling the blanket up over my shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Drawing,” she said without looking up.

“What?”

“You.”

“Think you could make me taller?”

Jenny smiled. I turned on my back and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.

“What do you do them for? The drawings. Do you sell them or trade them or something?”

“Oh yeah, I supply the entire town with moody line drawings.”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know. Violet found this set of drawing pencils somewhere and gave them to me. Everything seems a little quieter when I draw. Nothing else manages it. If I didn’t, I think a lot more people around here would be sporting black eyes.”

I looked up and traced the dusty lines of the timbers stretching across the ceiling, wishing I had something like that, something that would still the nameless feeling that was growing inside of me like a storm cloud, like something just barely forgotten.

Dad.

It was the first night of my entire life that I had spent apart from him. And for what? I thought bitterly, memories of the night before swarming in. So I could run around having fun while he lay there alone in that house? What if our little prank made things even worse?

I closed my eyes and saw a glint of gold shining in the dark. My grandfather’s fist falling from the sky. Alive or dead, he was still there. His voice still in my ear. Our survival was all on me — and what was I doing about it?

I drew myself up out of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Jenny asked as I slipped one boot on and hunted for the other. “Uh, hello? Question here.”

“I should be out looking for supplies,” I said. “Making camp somewhere.”

“Funny, it seemed like you were making camp here.”

My fingers froze on the strap of my backpack. I stood there stupidly, unable to move. It was like all the bones had tumbled out of my body. How could I make her understand?

“Talk to me, Stephen,” Jenny said quietly. She was looking up at me over the edge of her pad. Her eyes, liquid and sharp at the same time. It was like she was always one step ahead of me. Grandpa had told me a hundred times to keep quiet. To keep things to myself. But I couldn’t anymore.

“I just … I keep thinking I’m going to be …”

“What?”

A white star, crowned in gold, fell, and I shook from its impact. “… punished,” I said.

“For what? Having fun? Being with me? Why would you think that?”

Jenny’s pencil clattered to the floor as she charged across the room and knocked me back onto the bed. She threw her legs over my chest, holding me down.

“Jenny …”

She took both my wrists in her calloused hands, pinning me. Her hair fell down around us like a curtain, blocking out the rest of the world.

“No one is going to be punished for something as dumb as stampeding some pigs or wrestling with me. Not by God, not by anybody.”

“Jenny, let me up.”

“The world is not all on you,” Jenny said, pushing me down, suddenly fierce. “I know it feels that way, but it’s not. Not anymore.” She dipped her head down and kissed me. “Not for either of us. Okay? Now say that the world isn’t going to end if Little Stevie Quinn has some fun.”

“Jenny —”

“Say it! I mean, you did have fun blowing things up and kissing me last night, right?”

Fun wasn’t the word. Not even close. Suddenly Grandpa and that flash of gold seemed far away.

“Say it,” Jenny repeated, a whisper, her face inches from mine. “The world isn’t going to end.”

I watched her lips move and matched them carefully, syllable for syllable. Something about it felt secret and shameful, but I said it anyway.

“The world isn’t going to end.”

Jenny’s lips fell onto mine, and then we lay there gazing dreamily up at the high ceiling for I don’t know how long. One of us would laugh and then the other, for no reason we could put a name to. Thoughts entered my mind and I said them and they all seemed to make sense to her.

The sun mounted steadily outside, filling the barn with an amber light.

“What time do you think it is?” I asked.

“Are you saying time doesn’t cease to have meaning when we’re together?”

“Seriously.”

“I don’t know,” she said sleepily. “A little after dawn, I guess? Why?”

I turned so our faces were just inches apart on separate pillows. “I want to go back over to the Greens’ for a second. Before everyone gets up.”

“For what?”

“To see Dad. And get some books.”

“Books?”

I paused. I had said it without thinking. I knew the mocking that I was in for, but what could I do? “Some, uh, books Tuttle gave me.”

Jenny chuckled. “He totally got to you with the save the world thing, didn’t he?”

“He did not!”

“He did! You’re going to help usher in a new golden age of mankind.”

“I am not!” I said, and then, when her laughter had faded, “I don’t know. I was mad when I left, so I didn’t take them. But now I guess … I’ve just never had anything like that before. School and stuff, I mean. It’s kind of cool knowing things other than how to avoid dying.”

“No, I get that,” she said, then added with a smirk, “you’re coming back though, right? This isn’t some clever little ploy?”

I laughed, struck for a second by the strange sound of it and how easy it felt when I was with her. Once I got myself together I stood there at the edge of the bed, hands stuffed in my pockets.

How does this work? Do I kiss her before I leave?

Over and over again I was falling into worlds I didn’t know the rules for.

“So … I’ll, uh, see ya later.”

Jenny rolled her eyes at my awkwardness. I took a last look at her lying there in the half-light, then turned toward the door, knowing that if I didn’t leave right away, I never would.

“I want to come with you when you go.”

I stopped in my tracks inches from the door.

“When your dad is better,” she said. “I want to come. I was going to be all subtle about it. At one point I was even going to blackmail you, since I spied on you burying all that stuff of Violet’s that night, but now I thought I’d just come out with it.”

Jenny rose up out of bed and moved toward me.

“Look, like you saw last night, I’m kind of a tactical genius, right? And I know where all the good stuff in this town is, so I could help you pick up some salvage before we go. What do you think?”

Jenny’s face was inches from mine, but I was too stunned to say anything.

“You don’t want me to,” she said flatly. “It’s not that.”

“What? You don’t think I can handle it?” Jenny teased. “I could destroy you in a heartbeat.”

“I know.”

“Don’t worry, Stephen — it’s not like I’m asking you to marry me or anything.”

“No, I didn’t — I just mean …” I struggled, trying to come up with a reason her offer was so confusing. “Why would you want to?”

“Why? Because I can’t live in this stupid twentieth-century museum anymore. I don’t belong here, and neither do you! I want to be out there in the real world. With you.”

“Jenny, it’s not —”

“What? Easy? Safe? Uh, yeah, no kidding. We were out there for ten years before we came here and we saw all the same things you did. Worse, maybe.”

I thought of that morning by the stream. She and Jackson playing cards and all the blood that followed. Who was I to tell her what the real world was?

“I know it will be dangerous,” she said. “I just think sitting here in this barn playing dumb pranks isn’t living. With or without you, I’m leaving. I’d rather it be with you. And I think that’s what you want too.”

She was right. I knew it as soon as she suggested it. I knew exactly what Grandpa would think, what he would say, but right then I didn’t care. The idea of walking out of town without her seemed impossible.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Ha!” she exclaimed. “Nice! It’ll be great, you’ll see. And your dad is totally gonna love me. Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I kind of have a feeling he might.”

Jenny popped up on her toes and kissed me again, holding it longer this time, slipping her arms around my back so our bodies pressed tight together. “Still want to go get those books?”

I smiled. Our foreheads met, making a close little pyramid. “Yep.”

“Jerk.”

“I’ll come back as soon as I get them.”

By the time I got to the door, Jenny already had her sketch pad in her hands, drawing, lost in it. Her dark hair was a tangled mess, and in the growing light of the morning, her skin glowed. Her sweater slipped away from her shoulder, revealing a tiny island chain of freckles. I watched her for a second and then slipped out the door into the cold morning air.

I stood for a moment in the barnyard, then made for a path that cut like an arrow into the woods. Everything seemed golden and crisp around me and I felt I was close to touching something I had never seen, or even hoped for. The future.