We’re in the house, tea lights flickering around us. We both smell like sweat and earth. We’re low on water, which means our hands stay dirty. There’s a river a quarter of a mile away, so we can wash up there first thing tomorrow morning.
“What do we do now?” I ask Andrew as he opens up a mystery can.
“Oh, Beefaroni.” But there’s no joy in his voice. He doesn’t evenopen the second can and digs in with his fork. He swallows three heaping forkfuls of the room-temperature pasta and hands the can over to me as he opens the second. “I’m going to leave it up to you now,” he says. “Do you still want to stick around with me?”
I choke on my food, looking up at him in surprise. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
Something in my chest constricts. It never occurred to me that he might not feel the same way about me as I do him. It’s not that I’m conceited; I didn’t assume he would like me because of... I don’t know, whatever reason he would like someone. But I thought he felt it, too.
He shrugs and stares down at the can he’s opening. “Wasn’t sure if you were still interested in being friends with a murderer.”
“You’re not a murderer.”
“Pretty sure that’s what they call you when youmurdersomeone. I think two might even make me a spree killer.”
“What happened to you was a mistake.”
He interrupts me. “It didn’t happen to me. It happened to the Fosters.”
“It was an accident. They didn’t evenneedthe food but they were willing to take it from you. Whatever it was that got into them, you didn’t do it. What happened was bad. But that doesn’t make you a bad person.”
He doesn’t say anything, just finishes turning the can opener. The lid of the can sits on top of whatever the contents inside are.
“Henri said something to me,” I say. He looks up at me, interested. “She said sometimes you have to give people a chance. Sometimesthey can surprise you. I think that’s true whether the surprise is good or bad.”
He looks like he thinks about this for a moment, then stares back down at the can in front of him. He uses his fork to pull the top off the can and smiles. “Bad surprise,” he says. He turns it toward me so I can see the contents.
Canned mushrooms.
I scrunch up my face and shudder. “Pass.”
“Come on, give me a good surprise for once.” He holds out the can to me, smiling through the dirt on his face. I notice for the first time there are two clear lines through the dirt on his skin, right under his eyes. I frown and I stick my fork into the can, grabbing a big rubbery forkful of mushrooms and putting them in my mouth.
I grimace, handing him back the can and chewing as fast as I can. He laughs as I swallow the mushrooms.
“All right, you finish the Beefaroni, I’ll eat the mushrooms,” he says.
“That had better be our last can of those.”
He chuckles a few more times as we eat in silence.
His smile gives me a pang in my chest because I know he still doesn’t feel better. Nothing I can say will ever make him feel better. I want to make him happy, but I don’t know how.
I think about what it would be like to actually lean over and kiss him. I want to know if that would make him happy. If it would make me happy, too. Even seeing him eat a forkful of mushrooms doesn’t gross me out.
I watch him chewing as he stares at a picture of the Fosters on thewall. In the photo, the Fosters are all smiling and wearing Mickey Mouse ears in front of Epcot.
Tomorrow morning we’ll head for Reagan National. I can’t stop thinking about it, all the people who might be there, waiting for us. Waiting for some European Union military outfit to show up and save us all.
The idea of leaving gets me homesick.Ifwe were to leave. They might just be here to help get everyone back on their feet, or even just to run tests on us to try to find a cure. It’s all been rumors so far, but if we believed it, other survivors would, too. And they wouldn’t be a settlement, they’d be... nomads, I guess, like Andrew and me. Other survivors on their own might be a good thing.
I can’t help but hope for that because the other option is just me. And I’m scared that after this, I might not be enough for Andrew to be happy.
Andrew
FROM OUTSIDE, REAGAN NATIONAL IS ONE OFthe most nondescript airports I’ve ever seen. It’s bigger than Bradley International in Connecticut, but isn’t this named after the dude everyone had such a boner for in the eighties? Shouldn’t the guy who killed thousands of gay people through inaction have gotten something a little more ostentatious from his right-wing fluffers?
Frankly I’m disappointed.
