Storm (5 page)

“I mean, he kind of seems just about OK.”

I breathed.

“Though it's hard to tell for sure,” said Sask, settling back into her seat.

Why? Because why? Why? WHY?! IS HE IN A COMA
TOO?!

“Oh yeah? Why?” I asked squeakily.

Saskia turned back around. “I mean, he doesn't exactly speak much, does he?” she said.

Another breath. The Spratt I knew would not shut up.

“Hn,” I said.

“That's it!” she shrieked. “That's what he says ALL the time.”

Hn.

“Like—what DOES that mean?” She laughed. She actually laughed.

I knew exactly what it meant. It meant: “I am thinking.”

“HN!” she shouted.

He'd never shout that. It was a quiet thing.

“It's, like, ‘Darius! There's a fire!'—‘Hn.'”

I forced a panda smile. It hurt.

“Oh, Ruby! I'm so sorry!” blurted Saskia.

About what
now?

“I could see—you know… It seemed like you must have quite liked him…”

I gripped the steering wheel.

“He likes you, that's for sure!”

I swallowed spitlessly. “Yeah?” I said, supercool and not bothered. Casual interest only.

“And I wouldn't blame you if you did like him,” she blundered on. “I mean, he's no Caspar, that's for sure, but…”

I didn't much listen to the next part, as Sask listed all the ways in which Darius was OK in an apocalypse-type situation, but that, really—wow—Caspar had been amazing and…

“You got lucky there, all right…” Saskia said.

• • •

SEE, YOU HAVE TO KNOW—RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW—THAT CASPAR MCCLOUD WAS THE HOTTEST GUY IN THE UNIVERSE AND I HAD—FINALLY—BEEN KISSING HIM ON THE NIGHT THE RAIN FELL AND THAT THE FACT IT EVER EVEN HAPPENED WAS NO THANKS AT ALL TO SASKIA, WHO OH SO TRANSPARENTLY (A BIT LIKE HER UNDERWEAR) HAD THE HOTS FOR HIM AND BASICALLY TRIED TO STEAL HIM RIGHT FROM UNDER MY NOSE AND THEN…AND THEN…OH! OH! THIS GIRL! HOW DOES SHE DO IT?! AFTER CASPAR DIED, HORRIBLY, SHE NABBED THE ONLY BOY LEFT IN THE WORLD, DARIUS SPRATT, WHOM NEITHER OF US WOULD HAVE EVER LOOKED AT PRIOR TO THE GLOBAL MEGADISASTER AND NOW SHE HAS THE GALL TO CALL ME LUCKY WHEN—

“Caspar was in love with me,” I said.

“He was in love with your dad,” she said.

“
Excuse
me
?
”

“Your dad? Old Caz just wanted a record deal, didn't he?”

I drove. A little faster.

“That's ridiculous.”

“That's what we told him! We said your dad was basically a nobody.”

I felt air suck through the gap where my tooth had been.

“In the music industry, I mean. You said it yourself!”

I had—but I had been trying to make it sound like the opposite must have been true. (FAIL.)

“Come on! You knew what Caspar was after! You knew!”

I did not know.

Saskia reached out and touched my arm.

Get off me
, I thought. Get. Off. Me.

“You must have known,” she said more gently—but not gently enough. “Everyone knew…”

Not Leonie
. My best friend wouldn't have known a thing like that and not told me.

“…Zak, Molly, Ronnie…”

No. No. Don't.

“…Leonie.”

My best friend knew a thing like that and didn't tell me?

“Ah, Ruby, you're kidding me!”

“I didn't know,” I muttered.

“
,” said Saskia. “Sorry.”

There was this pause, and then…

“Darius does really like you, though, you know. I even think he's a little in love with you. Hey, he said he wanted to come and look for you, but—”

I snapped. In a controlled way.

“I don't want to talk about him.”

“Yes, but—”

“I said I don't want to talk about him.”

Eurch! Did my voice just go REALLY squeaky or what?

“No, but, Ruby—”

“Look! Sask! It was a horrible time, OK? A lot of horrible things happened, and Darius…was one of them.”

I don't mean that
, I thought.
I don't mean that, and I shouldn't say that, not even to make this stop. And I wish, oh how I wish, that the Spratt were here now going “Hn” about this whole “I'm going to find my dad” plan, because I know, oh how I know, that this is a stupid plan, and I just need someone to have the guts to say that—because I haven't, not even to myself. And then we could have a massive argument and come up with a better plan. But Darius Spratt is not
here.

“What I mean is…” (We were just loosely affiliated? It meant nothing?) “…I just really don't want to talk about him, OK?”

“OK,” said Saskia.

It didn't feel OK, but she went quiet for a bit anyway; well, fairly quiet. I could see her cringing at the sights on and around the road; sometimes she'd mutter, “Oh
,” and cover her mouth as she looked away.

Finally, “It's dreadful, isn't it?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

Like, really, that was another thing I didn't want to talk about: the stuff you see.

“I mean, they're just everywhere you look,” she pointed out.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Yesterday,” she told me solemnly, “I saw one that was
practically a
skeleton
.”

Honestly, I almost laughed. It came out like this horrible kind of sniggering snort.

“
, Ruby!” she said. “That's
so
not funny.”

I stopped the car. I had to. I stopped it in the middle of the road, and I turned to her and—what I wanted to do was just shout at her. Shout that I did so obviously KNOW that it wasn't funny, but that, HEY! I'd been looking at stuff like that—AND WORSE—for months (apparently—apart from during the suspected coma, obviously) and that, yes, it was awful, but going on about it being awful wasn't going to make it any less awful and would, in fact, ONLY MAKE IT WORSE.

But when I turned around…all I saw was how frightened and horrified she was. All I saw was…myself, I suppose. How I imagined I might have been if I hadn't had to look at all this stuff day in, day out for months (apart from during the coma).

“I know it's not,” I said—very
gently, considering. “Try not to look, and try not to think about it.”

I wanted to add, “AND JUST BASICALLY DON'T TALK ABOUT IT,” but I didn't have the heart.

She nodded, like it was the most sensible thing anyone had ever said.

And—maybe there is a God?—she also stopped talking about it.

She stopped talking altogether. BECAUSE SHE FELL ASLEEP.

I can't tell you how much I resented that. I can't tell you how much I wanted to sleep myself…but I don't like being stuck in a car when the rain is coming… And the rain? It was coming.

So I carried on driving, trying to outrun it yet again.

And I heard Sask mumbling scared mumblings in her sleep.

And I thought maybe surviving an apocalypse is not a competition. Maybe no one has had a worse time than anyone else. People have just had…the time that they had.

That's what I thought.

She woke up as we came into Bristol over the suspension bridge.

I took that route because it was a route I knew, but I suppose I took a risk going that way because if some other genius like me had tried it, the bridge could have been completely blocked now, and I really would have had to try to reverse, and although I am now a brilliant driver (“
Dar said you were goo
d
”) the very thought of that height—of that drop below—scared me just even thinking about it.

As did the sky. The cirrocumulus stratiformus had got depressed about the lack of action and had sunk and massed and was now cooking up trouble at a much lower level. Not great.

Sask woke up. “Ruby! What are you doing?” she asked—at almost exactly the same spot on the bridge where the Spratt had freaked out. I bumped coolly over the remains.

“We need to get another car,” I told her.

She leaned over me to look at the gas gauge.

“No!” she said. “Let's just keep going!”

I glared at her then. I did. “That'd be a stupid thing to do,” I told her.

Be kind, Ruby
, I thought.
Try to be kind. She doesn't
know.

“Trust me,” I said. “It's better if we look for another car now. It's better not to wait.”

She wanted to say stuff, but I said more first. “You would
not
like it if we ran out of gas on the highway.”

Well, I definitely wouldn't like it. I've got a bit of an
emotional issue
about it, etc.

“It's better to be safe than sorry,” I said. Ha! Priceless! Vintage stepdad speak!

Saskia didn't like it one bit, I could tell, but at least she shut up, and I could concentrate.

What you want, when you're car hunting, is a street packed with them or a lovely—but not too spaciously arranged—housing development. Otherwise, you're going to waste a lot of time walking and waste emergency reserves of adrenaline getting stressed out. (You never know when you are going to need that adrenaline to RUN.) Annoyingly, the way I decided to drive, it all started looking a little hopeless—the houses getting bigger and bigger, with fewer and fewer cars.

“This doesn't look great, Ruby,” said Saskia, like she knew—or like she'd worked out fast what I'd learned through scary, horrible experience.

“I can see that,” I said.

I did a U-ey. Midturn, I saw a pink thing. Bright
pink.