I realize how long this is, and I apologize profusely, but YWS won't let me post it in another section because of the 48 hour rule and the deadline is tonight. Anyone who reviews earns my eternal worship and a gift!
The stream is a ten minute walk away, and Graham is quiet the entire time, looking down at the potholed pavement so that he doesn’t have to look at the decay of the city. Our house is on one of the back roads, tucked behind what used to be a dentist office—that’s where we found all the toothpaste. We weave through sidewalks littered with glass and derelict houses overrun with ivy, even scrambling on top of a dumpster once to avoid a rabid dog.
All for poisoned water.
At the outskirts of the city there is a steel and concrete skeleton that was, at one point, a grocery store. Graham and I stop there occasionally to see if there’s anyone inside, because hungry kids gather there like insects to honey, even though common sense should tell them that not much there would still be edible. We lose people fast, and the house gets lonely.
By the entrance, we leave the empty milk cartons used for hauling water. The automatic doors don’t work anymore, so Graham and I pry them open to get inside. We roam past the check-out lines, shouting out into darkness. One of the conveyor belts—check-out station number three—is piled high with useless products never to be rung up, and I dig around for the flashlight and batteries we always leave there. We pass the shelves without saying a word.
I stop in front of a specific aisle and take a couple extra seconds to make sure no one’s there.
Graham looks at me curiously. “Why do you always stop here?”
The beam is muted and yellow, illuminating the dust drifting in the air. I angle the light up so that it reveals the sign above the shelves: Aisle 8, Canned Fruit. “Camille—” I swallow. “Camille said that Lora found us here, eating the last can of strained pineapples.”
“Do you remember that? Lora finding you?”
I let the flashlight’s ray fall and we double back to the entrance. There’s no one here. “Not really. But I remember being with Camille after our parents left. I was four. She was seven.”
His dark eyes dart to my face, gauging my expression. “Your parents deserted a seven and a four year old?”
I shrug. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. I guess they couldn’t afford to take us along.”
“That’s despicable,” he says, his voice low. “How can you say that so casually?”
I drop the flashlight back off at the conveyor belt, for next time, and avoid meeting his gaze. “People do what they have to do to survive. I would.”
“Not if it meant abandoning children to starve! You’d never leave any of the kids, not even to save yourself. You know you wouldn’t.”
I squeeze through the crack between the doors, and we’re back outside, stuffy smog closing in on us from every direction. Images of the kids—my family—flicker in the air like mirages. Lisette and Dex, huddled close together, their eyes sunken and their smiles thin. Even crazy Amelia, scratching at the windowpanes. The very thought of leaving them to die makes me sick to my stomach.
“Graham, I don’t see your parents here either.”
“I never knew my dad," he says, kicking a pebble in the road. “And my mom went crazy from the water and killed herself. She used to hide me under the bed to protect me from the things she saw. I listened to her screaming every night—she didn’t desert me. She wouldn't have, if she knew what was happening.”
I hear the fierce loyalty in his voice, a kind of aching devotion that could very well be his fatal flaw. He wants so badly to believe in the good of humanity, and time after time he’s disappointed. That’s why I don’t have expectations. That way, I’m never surprised when the next tragedy hits.
We walk the rest of the way in silence, sunlight glinting off dusty windows. My footsteps and Camille’s shoes scuff on the asphalt as we go.
*
After filling up the buckets, we lug them back through the city streets and to the house. I walk behind Graham, who puts a hand on the doorknob and keeps walking, expecting it to swing open for him. It doesn’t, though, and he runs into the glass, causing me to run into him.
Some water splashes out of the buckets and onto my hand.
“What? It’s locked?”
“Apparently.” Graham rattles the doorknob again, swearing. His dark curls are matted to his head with sweat, and I can feel the beginning of a sunburn on my nose. Lora never locks the door, especially not during the day—there’s no one to block out but the snatchers, and it takes more than a locked door to keep them away.
“Amelia must have done it,” I say. Amelia is seventeen and completely insane from the water. I can see her locking the front door of the house to keep her hallucinatory predators away.
Graham knocks a couple of times; after a pause, he jabs a finger into the doorbell, even though it hasn’t worked for at least a decade. “We’ll have to go around the back. I think there’s a door that leads to one of the basement rooms.”
“Darn,” I murmur, gratefully depositing the cartons of water by the door. “And I was so hoping to crawl through a window.”
Lora’s house is positioned at the top of a hill so that the front door opens up to what we consider the bottom floor, although there’s an angled cellar area underneath. As we circle back around the side of the house, I realize that we’ve completely neglected the back yard. It’s a jungle of weeds and spiky bushes that look carnivorous.
I stumble my way through overgrown shrubs and grasses that brush against my calves as if nature is whispering to me. Bugs buzz around my face, but swatting at them makes me look ridiculous, and so I just squeeze my mouth shut and hope I don't inhale one. Graham looks back at me at one point and chuckles at my pained expression.
The back door Graham was talking about is more like a flimsy piece of wood barely connected to the hinges, with a wasps’ nest located right above. He grimaces and claws at the branches of ivy covering the door.
“Those are probably poisonous,” I state helpfully.
“Lovely,” he says, tugging away a final strand of the stuff and yanking at the doorknob. It swings open with a deafening creak that can probably be heard upstairs. He wipes his hands on his shorts. “I can already feel a rash forming.”
Inside, the air is damp and heavy, as if a condensed thunderstorm has been brewing. I shiver at a draft that sneaks up behind me and raises goose bumps on my arms—I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be cold.
Graham runs a hand through his hair. “When’s the last time you were down here?”
“Probably—” I wrack my brain. “Years. It never seemed important.”
“Lora never mentions the basement,” he says. The sleek gray walls and harsh fluorescence remind me of interrogation chambers; my heart is hammering in my chest as we leave the empty hallway.
The next room is besieged by overflowing cardboard boxes, the steps leading upstairs tucked in the back corner. Graham makes his way across the room, side-stepping the trash and memorabilia and sounding like an elephant, but I shake my head.
Voices.
“Stop.” He doesn’t hear me at first; I clear my throat and reach forward to snatch his hand. “Wait. Listen.”
He pauses, and then frowns. The sound is coming from upstairs. “They’re probably making breakfast. It’s nearly eight.”
I wave a hand to shush him. “Just don’t make any noise. That’s a man’s voice.”
“Sav—” He looks at me uncertainly, but I shake my head again. I maneuver around a box of disfigured china dolls; they look out at me through unblinking eyes, their expressions haunting and helpless. Behind them is a stack of books. I don’t recognize any of the titles, but they look like they’ve been gathering dust there for centuries.
Camille’s shoes are silent on the tile as I hop over a shoebox full of pencils and toothpaste, and soon I’m at the foot of the staircase. The voices are clearer now, but I can’t tell exactly what they’re saying—one is Lora, I’m positive, sounding agitated. The other is a man.
Graham appears beside me. A frown is tugging at his lips. “Who could that be?”
Lora starts shouting, and I feel my heart skip a beat. “We have to go help her! It must be a snatcher.”
“But why would she let a snatcher in the house? Savannah, wait!” he hisses at me and lunges to grab my wrist before I get away, but I’m already at the top of the staircase, bursting through the door.
At first the light is blinding, and yellow spots dance before my eyes. When my vision settles, I freeze in the doorway.
It’s a snatcher, alright, adorned in the full white coat and dark sunglasses. Everything about his appearance is severe; he looks like the kind of man who can kill you a thousand different ways with his bare hands.
And he’s sitting at the kitchen table with Lora, drinking coffee.
Graham comes up behind me, careening into the kitchen. He stops abruptly at the sight of the two of them. “Lora?”
Lora has her legs crossed and her lips pursed. Her black hair is pulled back in a loose bun, a few stray strands hanging down in her face. I’m not sure exactly how old she is—she won’t tell us—but I’m sure she’s at least thirty-five. Maybe she’s even forty. I’ve seen her in that exact position before, looking contemplative with her legs crossed at that table, but it’s jarring to see it with a stranger—a snatcher—opposite of her.
“You’re the sister,” he says, nodding towards me.
I wonder if there are other sisters. Other little girls that have had to watch their best friends and guardian angels dragged away by scary men, and had to live with the fact that they stood at the front porch and let it happen. I wish I could hit him. “You took Camille four years ago today.”
He nods again. “She’s alive, you know.”
Lora clears her throat, but I beat her to it. “I don’t believe you,” I growl.
“Don’t you want to find out?” He gives me a small smile, but without being able to see his eyes it looks almost predatory.
Of course I want to find out. I look into his sunglasses, and convince myself that snatchers don’t have souls, so lying to them doesn’t count as a sin. “No. I want you to leave us alone.”
Lora brushes some hair out of her face. “Savannah, be civil.”
I turn to her in disbelief. “Have you finally lost it? Why did you let this thing into the house?” I send him a scathing glare, trying to vaporize him into oblivion with sheer hatred. “Who did you come for this time?”
Now, he shrugs. He also looks like the kind of person who’s more into vague physical gestures than extensive explanation. “You,” he says, and then jerks his head toward Graham, who is standing beside me with his arms crossed. “And the boy.”
“Well, go to hell,” Graham pipes up. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
“Look, I’m just trying to help,” he says, and removes his sunglasses for a moment to polish them with his coat. It gives me just enough time to see his eyes—they’re hazel, and they don’t look like the eyes of a soulless demon. He looks tired. “I’m offering to save you from yourself. I have the antidote.”
I shut the basement door behind us. “The antidote? To what?”
“To the water madness.”
“I don’t believe you,” I repeat, while Graham says, “Where? What is it?”
I turn to him in shock. “You can’t actually be considering this guy.”
Graham uncrosses his arms and walks to the table, standing over the snatcher’s mug. He picks it up and squints into the coffee. After a moment, he takes a careful sip, and then raises an eyebrow at Lora. “No poison?”
She exhales, laughing. Her laugh is scratchy and hollow, like she’s not quite capable of true laughter anymore. “No poison, Graham. I can’t poison him. I don’t want to.”
“Why?” I demand from across the room. I will not step closer to that man. He is the enemy. “Why did you let him in here?”
Lora lifts up her hands and gives me a sad look. “Because he’s my brother.”
Damn. I wasn’t expecting that one. I look at him again, at his impassive expression, looking like he’s perpetually bored. There’s a bit of resemblance, I have to admit. And I have no reason to doubt Lora--she's been everything to me for eleven years. She may not be the most mushy and sentimental person in the world, but she's no liar.
Graham sets the mug back down on the table like the handle is suddenly red-hot. “Excuse me?”
Lora stands up, the chair screeching against the floor, and she places a hand gently on Graham’s back. I see him stiffen under her touch—that wouldn’t have happened ten minutes ago. “You guys need to go with him,” she murmurs. “He really does have the antidote.”
I shake my head clear and step forwards. “Lora. This doesn’t make any sense.”
“You just don’t want to hear it,” she says flatly. I take a sharp breath—Lora doesn’t often reprimand. “I know you’ve wondered how I’m sane. This is it. I’ve been given the antidote.”
“Why are you still in the city, then, if there’s somewhere else with a cure? Why haven’t we been given the antidote yet?” Graham asks.
“If I didn’t stay in the city, I’d never have found you guys. I’m here to make sure there aren’t any abandoned people still wandering around, hungry. I saved your lives.” She starts sounding a little bit defensive, which is completely unnecessary. Lora is my hero.
“I know,” I say. “But if the snatchers have an antidote, why didn’t you give it to us immediately? Why wait until we’re fifteen?”
The man—her brother?—stands up at this point and looks at his watch like we’re wasting his time. “Because you’re not in much actual danger of going insane until you’re at least fifteen. It’s a chemical balancing thing, hormones, biological timing. You wouldn’t be able to follow the explanation. Now, are you coming or not?”
I’m still standing in the doorway, and Graham is still standing over the table. He turns around and looks at me, his lips pulled into a tight line. “I don’t see how we have much of a choice,” he admits.
I eye the snatcher and shuffle forwards a bit. “You say Camille’s okay?”
He removes his sunglasses and smiles. This time, I can believe it. “Your sister is fine. She’s gotten the antidote. You, on the other hand, will not be fine unless you come with me.”
“And…leave Lora behind?” I try to imagine life without Lora. Nothing comes to mind.
He nods. “Lora stays here. She watches out for people—the little ones, Lisette and Dex, and anyone else she finds in the city.”
Graham wraps his arms around Lora, but only briefly, because he’s supposed to be a man now and men don’t hug for long. Even if it’s the woman who cared for him for most of his life. “You seriously want us to go?” he asks softly. “It’s safe?”
Lora smiles and pats him on the back; he’s a head taller than her, easily. “Yes. It’s safe. Why do you think I let them come and take people, over the years?”
I look her in the eyes and realize that they're the same hazel as the man standing beside her. “I love you, Lora. You’ve raised me. But if this backfires, if he hurts us or if they’ve hurt Camille, I will never forgive you.”
“They haven’t. I love you too. Just go,” she mutters, and rubs my arm gently. I give her a hug, but only briefly—if I hug her for too long and think about what on earth is happening, I might get emotional.
Emotion is weakness, Lora said. And I will not be weak.
“I kept you here in the city with me until you were fifteen, because if I gave you away for the antidote right when I found you, I’d be all alone," she whispers in my ear before I pull away.
I think about that as her brother guides us out the front porch and to his white car, parked in front of the sidewalk. We pass the empty flowerbeds where Camille’s shoes landed, four years ago today, and I remember Lora’s three rules for being taken by the snatchers.
Inside the van, I look at the code on the door. I realize that Lora always asked because she was waiting for this one: her brother’s car. It was how she’d be sure he wasn’t in there. I don’t scream, or cry, or make any noise at all as he opens the door for us.
I climb in after Graham, looking back up at the house. It’s home, but it’s also been hell.
Just before he shuts the door behind me, I take off my shoes and fling them across the lawn. I hope Camille won’t want them back.
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