Susan Pfeffer - The Dead And The Gone

"Julie, run!" Alex yelled.

Julie turned around and saw him. She began running as fast as she could. The man bent over and grabbed the can of pineapple.

"Next time," he said.

Alex gathered Julie in his arms, and pulled her back to Broadway. The man didn't follow them, but they kept running anyway. By the time they entered their building, they were coughing so hard they had to sit for a few minutes before they could move.

Once they could breathe, Alex grabbed Julie by her shoulders and shook her. "Don't ever do that!" he yelled. "Don't ever go off by yourself!"

"I know. I'm sorry." She sobbed. "Alex, I was so scared. I'll never do it again, I swear. Never."

Alex let her go. His throbbing toes were half frozen. To distract himself from thinking about the agony of walking up twelve flights of stairs, he concentrated on what might have happened to his sister. She was worth the pineapple. She was worth the pain.

"Do me a favor," he said. "Go upstairs and get my other shoes. They're in the hall closet. If Bri's up, tell her…" He tried to come up with a reason why he'd need a different pair of shoes. "Tell her I got dead rat all over my shoes."

"No!" Julie said. "I'm not going into the stairwell alone. I won't."

"No one's in the stairwell," Alex said. "Now, do it."

Julie shook her head. "I won't go in there alone," she said.

Alex's feet throbbed. He told himself to calm down. It would be a mistake to send Julie upstairs anyway. She'd tell Bri everything, and that would bring on an attack, and Julie-would run down to get him and he'd still have to climb the twelve flights. He didn't want to think about what might happen if the attack was really bad.

"All right, I'll go," he said. "You wait here."

"No," Julie said. "I'll go upstairs with you. In case he comes back."

"Whatever," Alex said. "I don't care. Just keep quiet, and don't ever tell Bri what happened."

Julie nodded. "I won't tell Bri," she promised. "Just don't ever leave me, Alex."

Friday, November 11

Veterans Day. Alex had forgotten all about it. He and Kevin had gone to the food line only to find out it had been canceled. All he'd been able to get from Harvey was one of the cans of chicken soup and a badly dented can of string beans. And he was down one pair of shoes.

It was impossible to sleep. Alex grabbed the flashlight, got off the sofa bed, and stumbled into the kitchen. They kept everything there, the food and whatever little they still had for bartering. Maybe if he made a list, he'd feel better. Maybe if he searched through every kitchen cabinet, he'd find an unexpected box of something or a can or a five-course dinner tucked away under a spare blanket.

He couldn't even find the spare blanket. Having Bri home meant they'd had to barter almost everything they'd gotten from the other apartments.

Alex thought, not for the first time, how ironic it was that they were living in a sixteen-story building and could only get into four apartments. Five, if you counted their old one. New York City apartments had steel doors and multiple locks, and even though as best he could tell from the lack of sound and the stench of death, everyone was gone and he and his sisters were the only ones living there, they still couldn't get into the deserted apartments.

In spite of himself, he found a piece of paper and a pen and began making a list. Lists no longer comforted him, but he made them anyway when he couldn't sleep. There was no point making a list of what they had, since they didn't have anything. There was no point in making a list of what they would need, since they needed everything. There was no point, but he still made a list.

gone, he wrote on the top of the paper.

Papi

Mami

Carlos

Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Lorraine and their girls

Chris Flynn

Tony

Alex stared at the list and realized he'd barely scratched the surface. There were Uncle Carlos and Aunt Maria, Uncle Jose and Aunt Irene, who'd been with Papi in Milagro del Mar for Nana's funeral. All his cousins were gone. So were the priests from Vincent de Paul, the lay teachers, and the rest of the school staff. His onetime friend Danny O'Brien, plus practically everybody else he'd gone to school with. Mr. Dunlap. Bob, who he never had the chance to swap stories with. Joey from the pizza parlor and the guys he worked with there and the customers who made small talk and left small tips. The New York Yankees. He'd been to their stadium more recently than they had, he guessed. St. John of God Hospital, where

Mami was so excited to get her first job as an operating room technician. Gone. All gone. There wasn't enough paper left in the world to write down everybody and everything that was gone.

What difference did it make, he asked himself. All that mattered was that there was enough food for his sisters to make it until Monday. How long could a can of chicken soup and a dented can of string beans last? Why didn't he throw his shoes at that guy, and keep the pineapple for himself.

Saturday, November 12

"Where's the radio?" Alex asked, after searching the living room for it. If he'd been listening to the radio more regularly, he would have realized Friday was a national holiday and prepared for the possibility of no food line. His sisters' survival depended on his knowing as much as possible.

Julie and Bri exchanged glances.

"What?" he said to Julie. "You got rid of it? You traded it for lipstick? It's my radio and I need it, and you had no business even touching it."

"You always blame me for everything!" Julie cried. "I hate you!" She raced into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

"I'm sick and tired of her doing that," Alex said. "Now what the hell did she do to my radio?"

"She didn't do anything," Bri said. "I did. It's all my fault." "Don't take the blame for her," Alex said. "That won't help Julie any."

"But it is my fault," Bri said. "When you go to school, it gets so lonely in here. So I turn on the radio. I don't even care what they say. I just want to hear voices. And sometimes I fall asleep and I forget to turn the radio off. The batteries died last week. I've been scared to tell you."

Alex tried to remember if there were any more C batteries lying around. He was pretty sure he'd bartered them all.

"I'm sorry," Bri said. "Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"

Get healthy, he thought. Get strong enough so we can leave this hellhole.

"You do enough every day just being here," he said. "I'll go apologize to Julie now."

Monday, November 4

Alex met Kevin outside the building at seven in the morning, the way they always did on Mondays to go body shopping. It was getting harder to find good ones, but Alex needed whatever he could get.

"I guess you'll be going soon," Alex said. "Someplace safe."

Kevin shrugged. "I'm in no hurry," he said.

"You're crazy, you know that:" Alex said. "Where will you go?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "Mom won't leave without Dad, and there's still a lot of stuff to truck out of the city. It'll be awhile."

"But when you leave, it won't be for an evacuation center," Alex said. "You'll go someplace good."

Kevin looked as uncomfortable as Alex had ever seen him. "I asked Dad about you," he said. "And your sisters. Right after Julie's party. He said the evac centers weren't that bad, that you'd be okay there."

"Thanks anyway," Alex said. "I wasn't expecting you to rescue us."

"He doesn't care," Kevin said. "Not about Mom. Not about me. If he did, he would have made us leave months ago. That's how you know if people really love you. The ones who do let you go."