The Testaments(35)

I closed my eyes to shut out the light. I must have dozed off because suddenly it was evening, and Ada was turning on the flatscreen. I guess that was for my benefit—so I would know she’d been telling the truth—but it was brutal. The wreckage of The Clothes Hound—the windows shattered, the door gaping open. Scraps of fabric scattered over the sidewalk. In front, the shell of Melanie’s car, crumpled like a burnt-out marshmallow. Two police cars visible, and the yellow tape they put around disaster areas. No sign of Neil or Melanie, and I was glad: I had a horror of seeing their blackened flesh, the ash of their hair, their singed bones.

The remote was on an end table beside the sofa. I turned off the sound: I didn’t want to hear the anchor’s level voice talking as if this event was the same as a politician getting onto a plane. When the car and the store vanished and the newsman’s head bobbed into view like a joke balloon, I switched the TV off.

Ada came in from the kitchen. She brought me a sandwich on a plate: chicken salad. I said I wasn’t hungry.

“There’s an apple,” she said. “Want that?”

“No thank you.”

“I know this is bizarre,” she said. I said nothing. She went out and came in again. “I got you some birthday cake. It’s chocolate. Vanilla ice cream. Your favourites.” It was on a white plate; there was a plastic fork. How did she know what my favourites were? Melanie must have told her. They must have talked about me. The white plate was dazzling. There was a single candle stuck into the piece of cake. When I was younger I would have made a wish. What would my wish be now? That time would move backwards? That it would be yesterday? I wonder how many people have ever wished that.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I asked. She told me, and I went into it and was sick. Then I lay down on the sofa again and shivered. After a while she brought me some ginger ale. “You need to get your blood sugar up,” she said. She went out of the room, turning off the lights.

It was like being home from school when you had the flu. Other people would cover you up and bring you things to drink; they would be the ones dealing with real life so you didn’t have to. It would be nice to stay like this forever: then I would never have to think about anything again.

In the distance there were the noises of the city: traffic, sirens, a plane overhead. From the kitchen came the sound of Ada rustling around; she had a brisk, light way of moving, as if she walked on her toes. I heard the murmur of her voice, talking on the phone. She was in charge, though what she was in charge of I couldn’t guess; nonetheless I felt lulled and held. Behind my closed eyes I heard the apartment door open, and then pause, and then shut.





23


When I woke up again, it was morning. I didn’t know what time it was. Had I slept in, was I late for school? Then I remembered: school was done. I would never be going back there, or to anywhere else I knew.

I was in one of the Carnarvon bedrooms, with the white duvet covering me, still wearing the T-shirt and leggings, though I didn’t have the socks or shoes on. There was a window, with a roller shade pulled down. I sat up carefully. I saw some red on the pillowcase, but it was only lipstick from yesterday’s red mouth. I was no longer nauseous and dizzy, but I was fuzzy. I scratched my head all over and gave my hair a tug. Once when I had a headache I’d been told by Melanie that pulling your hair increased the circulation to the brain. She said that’s why Neil did it.

After I stood up, I felt more awake. I studied myself in the big wall mirror. I wasn’t the same person as the day before, although I looked similar. I opened the door and went along the hall to the kitchen in my bare feet.

Ada wasn’t there. She was in the living room, sitting in one of the easy chairs with a mug of coffee. On the sofa was the man we’d passed when going in through the side door at SanctuCare.

“You woke up,” said Ada. Adults were in the habit of stating the obvious—You woke up was something Melanie might have said to me, as if it was an accomplishment—and I was disappointed to find that Ada was no exception in this way.

I looked at the man and he looked at me. He was wearing black jeans and sandals and a grey T-shirt that said TWO WORDS, ONE FINGER and a Blue Jays baseball cap. I wondered if he knew what his T-shirt actually meant.

He must have been fifty, but his hair was dark and thick, so maybe he was younger. His face was like creased leather, and he had a scar up the side of his cheek. He smiled at me, showing white teeth with a molar missing on the left. A tooth missing like that makes a person look illegal.

Ada nodded her chin over at the man: “You remember Elijah, from SanctuCare. Friend of Neil’s. He’s here to help. There’s cereal in the kitchen.”

“Then we can talk,” said Elijah.

The cereal was the kind I liked, round Os made from beans. I brought the bowl into the living area and sat down in the other easy chair, and waited for them to speak.

Neither of them said anything. They glanced at each other. I ate two spoonfuls, tentatively, in case my stomach was still unsettled. In my ears I could hear the crunching of the Os.

“Which end first?” said Elijah.

“The deep end,” said Ada.

“Okay,” he said and looked directly at me. “Yesterday was not your birthday.”

I was surprised. “Yes it was,” I said. “The first of May. I turned sixteen.”