Suffer the Children (26 page)

“Look at him go,” said Mom.

“He’s a growing boy,” Dad told her.

“I grew two inches last year,” Nate reminded them, his mouth bulging with food.

Dad tapped the notepad and looked at Mom. “So this is everybody.”

“A half pint gives each of them about an hour. So if everybody on the list gives one pint, we’ll have twelve hours with both of them.”

“It’s not a lot. Half a day, total.”

“Do you want to add any more names? Are we missing anybody?”

Dad shook his head. “Wait. What about his teachers?”

Nate perked up at this. They were talking about
him
.

“Everybody’s going to ask them,” Mom said. “We need people we can count on to give. What about Otis?”

“He’s got grandkids to look after.”

“This might be all we can get. We should try to get it all now and store it. People are selling medicine on Craigslist, calling it ‘baby formula.’ The prices are crazy.”

Dad said nothing. He grabbed a cracker off Nate’s plate and chewed it, glaring at nothing like he always did when he and Mom talked about money.

Mom: “If we give them a pint a day, it’ll get us to Christmas.”

Dad nodded.

Mom: “What are we going to do after that?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“Ask them all to give another pint? And another?”

“I said I’ll think of something! Don’t nag me!”

Nate cowered. He hated when they fought in front of him, especially when he was the cause. If he and Megan hadn’t gotten sick, they wouldn’t be so upset.

“I’ll make the calls today once the kids are asleep,” said Mom. She cleared Nate’s plate. “You still hungry?”

The boy stared at his father’s neck, where a vein pulsed.

“Nate? You want more?”

He shook his head.

Dad rose from the table. “I’ll wake up Megan.”

“Nate’s already been up for a while,” said Mom. “Give her a little less than half.”

“All right.” Dad took a bottle out of the refrigerator and trudged upstairs.

“We’ll take a nice walk in the park,” Mom said to Nate. “Would you like that?”

“Are you and Dad going to die too?”

“Of course not. Why do you say that?”

“Dad has cotton taped over his arm. I know what that means. He had a blood test. And both of you look really white.”

Mom hugged him. He hugged her back, his eyes big and watery.

“We’re not sick, Nate. We’re not going to die.”

“But you might.”

“One day, we will. We’re all on borrowed time. But not for a long, long time. Long after you and Megan have grown up. You’ll be a doctor and married with your own kids by then.”

Nate nodded. He knew what borrowing was, but how did one borrow time? Were you supposed to give it back? He liked the sound of it, though. He made a mental note to look for chances to say it with a serious look on his face, like a grown-up.

“If I become a doctor, maybe I could heal you, and then you wouldn’t die.”

“Oh, Nate, you have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you—”

Upstairs, Megan screamed.

Nate wanted to run upstairs and help his sister, but Mom wouldn’t let him go, to the point where she had to forcibly hold him back. The more he struggled, the tighter she hugged him, until he couldn’t breathe.

“I love you, Nate,” Mom whispered in his ear.

“Let me go,” he whined.

The screaming stopped.

Dad came back downstairs with Megan.

“Nate!” she howled with glee.

He smiled with relief. “Hi, Megan.”

Mom was already handing him his coat to put on. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Wait! Dad! The helicopter! Can we bring it?”

“It’s already in the car, sport.”

“Excellent! Come on, let’s go!”

Mom herded the kids into the Durango while Dad went out back to get Major, who bounded into the backseat and spun in a circle, barking until Nate calmed him down with a hug.

“Good boy, good boy,” he said.

The day was looking up. It was cold, but the sun was out. It was a good day for playing. Nate had already forgotten that just minutes ago, he’d been dead.

But his parents argued during the drive, making him tense and edgy. Something about Grandma and Grandpa wanting to spend time with him and Megan if they were going to give medicine. Dad said he didn’t like conditions and demands.

Nate didn’t like it either. Why would Grandpa withhold medicine from him and Megan? On the other hand, all he wanted in return was to see them. What was the big deal?

His stomach flipped when they pulled into the park. Nate scanned the faces of the few kids running around the playground but didn’t see any of his friends.

“I wish Keith was here,” he grumbled.

“I’ll call his mother, and we’ll set something up.”

“Okay.”

Nate was dying to show Keith the helicopter, even though a part of him was glad his best friend wasn’t going to be at the park today, because Keith was also the kind of kid who broke things. He said he was just clumsy, but Nate didn’t believe that. Keith also lied sometimes; Nate often couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth. When Keith promised something, it didn’t mean anything. And whenever Nate believed a lie, he felt stupid, and that wasn’t fair.

Keith was one terrific hockey player, though. Possibly the best ever, in Nate’s view. He could shoot a puck to the moon.

“I’m going to make a snowman,” Megan announced.

“That’s a great idea,” Nate said with a smile.

She beamed at this and kicked the back of Mom’s seat until Mom told her to stop. She said hopefully, “You can help me make it if you want to.”

“Dad and I are going to fly my new helicopter.”

“But
I
want to fly it.”

“You’re too little to fly it. You can watch us, though, okay?”

Megan crossed her arms and turned away with a
humph
.

Dad parked the car and let Major out for a run while Mom got Nate and Megan out. By the time Nate ran around to the back of the car, Dad already had the helicopter in his hands, a sleek olive-green SuperCobra. He begged for details about how it worked. Dad said it could go up, down, left, right, forward, and backward. The lithium battery was charged and good for ten minutes of flying. The transmitter required AA batteries; Dad had already put those in. Dad said it used the latest gyroscope technology to keep stable in the air. He said it was controlled using radio waves, so they could fly it outside.

“And check this out,” said Dad. “You wanted to know if it fired anything, right?”

He pressed a button, and the helicopter’s cannon lit up with a red LED light. The sound of rapid gunfire roared from the toy.

“
Wow
,” Nate whispered. He pictured the helicopter doing a low-level strafing run against a horde of zombies. He needed to fly it
now
; the wait was killing him.

Dad showed him how it worked. Nate took the toy and experimented until soon he had the helicopter buzzing through the air, its LED cannon firing, while Mom videotaped him with her digital camera. Megan demanded a turn until Mom carried her crying to the playground, where she shrugged it off and started playing. Major got a workout barking and chasing the chopper. Major was supposed to be on a leash, but Dad said the park rules didn’t matter anymore. Nate smiled at his dad, who smiled back.

After ten minutes, the helicopter became sluggish, and Dad said it was time to put it away.

“Oh,
man
,” Nate whined. He was just starting to have fun.

“Sorry, sport. We’ll do it again next time.”

“Promise?”

“You bet.”

“Okay.” Nate crouched and scratched Major behind the ears. “Dad? Am I going to die again?”

Dad picked up the helicopter and put the controller in the pocket of his denim jacket. He nodded.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Like in ten minutes?”

“Longer than that.”

“Twenty minutes?”

“Maybe thirty minutes.”

That wasn’t very much time at all. Nate couldn’t understand how he had to die again so soon. He didn’t feel sick at all. He was burning up with energy. He could run and run.

“Why didn’t the medicine work last time?”

“We thought we didn’t give you enough. We were going to give you a lot more. By the time we were ready to wake you up again, the nurse called and said somebody else tried that, and it didn’t work. You’d get more time, but after a while, well, you know.”

Nate nodded. He liked when his dad talked to him like he was a grown-up. He had batteries just like the helicopter. They wore out over time. Medicine recharged them.

“Will you get more?” he asked.

“We will.”

“And wake me up again?”

“That’s right.”

“Promise?”

Dad nodded. “You bet.”

“I don’t want to sleep forever, Dad. I don’t want to be dead.”

“It’s not going to happen.”

“I don’t even dream. There’s just nothing.”

“I’m going to take care of it.”

Nate believed it. He started running.

“Where are you going?” Dad called after him.

“The playground!”

“We have to put this back in the car first.”

“Can you do it, Dad? Please?”

He only had a half hour, and he knew how fast that would go when he was having fun. He wanted to make every second count. He sprinted through the snow until he reached the monkey bars, his lungs working hard to keep up, and swung from one to the next and back again. He fell on the last rung and hit the ground hard but shrugged off the pain. He ran to the slide and went up and down three times as fast as he could. It wasn’t as fun doing these things by himself; he looked hopefully at the other kids. They invited him into a game of tag, and he played with them until their moms pulled them away one by one to go home, saying they had to do this before they turned into pumpkins. Soon it was just him again. He ran to the swings. Today, he was going to swing higher than ever. Kick the sky right in the face.

Dad took pictures and short videos of everything. Nate saw him glance at his watch.

Nate closed his eyes and felt the pull of gravity move from his legs to his head each time he pulled back and soared into the air on the swing. He had to pee real bad but ignored it. When he opened his eyes, he saw Mom holding Megan in her arms.

Megan wasn’t moving. Mom’s mouth smiled at him, but her eyes were sad.

He was running out of time.

It wasn’t fair. Next time, he swore, he’d just sit there and do nothing so time would go by really slowly.

Nate watched his sister. She just lay there in Mom’s arms. She didn’t look like Megan anymore. She looked like a doll somebody made to look like Megan.

He didn’t push at the ground with his feet anymore. His momentum slowed.

Is that what I look like when I’m dead? The whole time, I’m lying on the bed like that staring at nothing? Lights out, nobody home?

He winced as a headache bloomed behind his eyes. The world smelled like burning toast.

“No,” he said.

I don’t want to be a pumpkin.

He leaped from the swing and sprinted across the open field toward the skating rink where he’d died the first time. Major caught up and bounded grinning next to his legs. Mom and Dad yelled at him to come back. Nate ran harder; he wanted to race.

I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m free—

He made it fifty yards before he fell onto the snow.

Darkness. Then not even darkness. Nothing.

He woke up in his bed at home, screaming while his mom hugged him.

20 days after Resurrection

He wanted to draw a picture of Heaven from memory.

The idea came to him while he sat on Mommy’s lap in the rocker. Mommy hugged him and stroked his hair. She’d asked him what he wanted to do today.

Mommy was always hugging him lately and wanting to play with him, but he missed being around other kids, especially when it was really cold or rainy outside. They hated staying inside, but he liked it. He liked playing pretend. Putting on funny glasses. When it was nice outside, it was different. The other kids liked to run and show each other what they could do. Josh often got left out because he couldn’t do the same things.

The other kids were never mean to him. They knew he had a
condition
. They always tried to include him, but he couldn’t keep up. He got tired so easily. So he created LEGO worlds in which he could do
anything. He drew pictures of the things he loved and the things that scared him.

“I want to draw a picture of Heaven,” he said.

He’d lost count of how many times he’d gone to sleep, but every time he woke up, he had a clearer vision of it in his head, while everything else in his life continued to blur. Mommy said weeks had gone by since he’d gotten sick, but it didn’t feel like weeks to him. His memory was slipping; he found himself forgetting the simplest things. But whenever he closed his eyes, Heaven was there. It was white for the most part. White and filled with ghosts. The ghosts weren’t scary at all. They didn’t move. They didn’t even know he was there.

He felt Mommy’s body stiffen and knew he’d said the wrong thing.

“It’s not going to be scary,” he added.

Mommy didn’t like scary drawings. Josh believed she was as terrified of monsters as he was. Monsters weren’t real, he knew, but they scared him anyway. That was the secret power monsters had over you. They made you afraid of the unknown. They
were
the unknown. Even if they never attacked, you knew they
might
, and that was how they scared you.

Sometimes Mommy scared him too. She never hurt him, and she never screamed at him in a scary voice like she did over the phone at people who wouldn’t give her medicine. But the way she talked and moved all the time—happy on the outside, angry and sad on the inside—made him feel unsafe. He could tell the sadness was real and the happiness put on for his benefit. She would never hurt him, but at the same time, she
might
, and that was scary.

When she screamed at the people on the phone, it made him think of thunder.