Sophie Littlefield - Banished

Heat, I thought, and humidity and insects, all the things we’d learned about in science. I felt like I was going to throw up. I hadn’t noticed anything yet, except the bad smell, and Rascal had been a young, healthy dog, but how long until his fur began to fall out and his body filled with gases and his skin began to break down?

I pulled my hands away from Prairie’s and covered my face, trying to keep the tears at bay. “I can’t stand to see him,” I whispered. “Don’t make me look at him.”

“He’s outside,” Kaz said. “You’re here , with us. It’s all right.”

I wanted to believe him. He knelt in front of me and Anna leaned in and we all huddled together. Their hands comforted me, patting my shoulders and squeezing my fingers, and it helped. I felt closer to Anna and Kaz than to people I had known my entire life. And as for Prairie-I couldn’t imagine life without her now.

But I knew I was still alone in one important way. I’d done the thing that must never be done, the thing Prairie and my mother had been warned about since childhood. I’d done the unforgivable. And I couldn’t help wondering how many ways I would suffer for it.

I thought of Prairie when her face clouded over with private grief. I recognized the solitary pain at her core. She carried a secret with her too, and I wondered if I would be like her someday, marked with a kind of suffering that other humans couldn’t understand.

“What did you do?” I asked her. I had to know if it was connected to the things that had happened, to the thing I had done. “Why did you leave Gypsum?”

Her face went pale, but it wasn’t surprise I saw on her face. Almost the opposite-a kind of resignation. “Not tonight,” she said, exhaustion making her voice husky. “There’s been enough to deal with tonight for all of us.”

“Stop putting me off,” I protested. “You owe me the truth.”

“I’ll tell you in the morning. I promise. After we’ve all had a chance to rest. The sun will be up in a few hours, and we won’t be able to do what needs to be done unless we get some sleep.”

I wanted to fight her, but fatigue was winning. Despite the shock of learning about Rascal, despite having a whole new nightmare to worry about, I was desperate to close my eyes and let sleep steal in and erase everything, if only for a few hours.

“Promise,” I begged in a whisper.

“I promise.” She looked directly in my eyes when she spoke, and in the pale green depths I saw reflected a shadow of myself.

She stayed in Kaz’s room with me for the rest of the night. I insisted that she take the bed, and when she protested, I curled up in the nest of blankets with Chub. I was asleep before she finished telling me not to worry.

IN THE MORNING she was gone, the bed neatly made and sun streaming through the window when Chub and I woke up. I found her in the kitchen, after I’d taken Chub to the bathroom and washed my face and brushed my teeth.

Before I could demand that she keep her promise and tell me the story, she handed me a travel cup of coffee.

“There’s someone I want you to meet,” she said. “Grab a bagel and you can eat on the way. Anna will watch Chub.”

Anna came into the room just then, her face pale and tired, but she gave me a smile that looked like it took some work. There was no sign of Kaz in the house, and it seemed smaller without his presence.

“Go, go, you two,” she said, giving my arm a little squeeze. “I’m making gulasz , we’ll have big lunch when you get back.”

I wasn’t hungry, but I took a bagel from the platter Anna had set on the table. It had been split and spread with cream cheese studded with dried apricots. Anna pushed a paper napkin into my hands.

“I don’t want to go out there,” I said, hating the way my voice went high and thin, but the horror of last night was stirring and threatening to return. I was desperate to keep the panic under control, but I knew if I had to walk past the creature that used to be Rascal, I’d lose it all over again. “I can’t see him, I just can’t.”

“It’s all right,” Prairie said gently. “He’s gone. He’s… at rest.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “What did you do to him?”

“ I did it,” Anna said. She stepped forward and placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a look that was kind but firm. “It was humane, Hailey. I am nurse, I know what to do. Kaz is burying body in park, a place where there are trees, nice place, forest. When you come back, it will all be over.”

I started to shake, and tears dotted the corners of my eyes. I put my hand up to Anna’s, covering it, trying to find a way to say thank you, but I was afraid my voice would betray me. “All right,” I managed to get out.

“Anna is letting me borrow her car,” Prairie said. “Let’s go, and we can talk on the way.”

We didn’t talk much, though. Anna’s car was only slightly newer than Kaz’s, and it sputtered at every intersection as though it was about to die. Prairie fed it gas, revving the engine, as we made our way through the neighborhoods, away from the lake, back to the cloverleaf and onto the highway.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked as she headed north, away from the distant skyline.

“Not far now.”

A few minutes later, she exited into a neighborhood of tidy brick bungalows and the occasional church or tavern. There were no signs on the brick building she pulled up to. It had neat white shutters at the windows and tulips pushing their way up from planters out front. Long sloping ramps were the only clue to what kind of place it was.

“Is this a nursing home?” I asked as we made our way to the front doors, which glided open at our arrival.

“A convalescent home,” Prairie said. “A very good one, with some of the top doctors in the country on call.”

“Ms. Gordon,” a woman at a desk called out cheerfully. “Vincent’s having a good day. He’ll be so glad you’re here.”

Prairie exchanged a few words with the receptionist as she signed in. Looking over her shoulder, I read Susan Gordon in a neat script.

“And who have you brought with you today?” The woman smiled at me with open curiosity.

“This is Hailey. Her family just moved to the area and joined the church. She’s interested in doing outreach ministry too.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! Hailey, we love our volunteers here. And so do our patients. Especially the ones who don’t have family. Visits just do them a world of good.”

“What was that all about?” I demanded after Prairie thanked the receptionist and guided me across the lobby. We were buzzed through a set of doors and walked down a hallway with a shiny waxed floor and rooms opening up on either side that held hospital beds, many with patients in them. Some sat, others appeared to be asleep. None looked our way.

“I visit every week. I use a fake identity, as you saw. They don’t ask a lot of questions when it’s church people visiting. And I’ve been coming to see Vincent for years, so they’re used to me.”

“Who’s Vincent?”

She slowed as we reached the end of the hallway and took a deep breath. Then she gestured for me to enter the last room on the right.

“Vincent was my boyfriend,” she said as she followed me into the room.

A man sat in the bed, a thin blanket covering his body, his hands folded neatly on its surface. There was something wrong with him. His skin was puffy, with an oily sheen, and his color was off. He had a network of fine scars on his face and also on what I could see of his arms, below the cuffs of his shirt. His dark hair was thin and it hung lank in his face.

But the worst part was his eyes. They stared straight ahead at nothing, blinking slowly every few seconds. They were the emptiest things I’d ever seen. There was no emotion, no evidence of dreams or hopes or plans or disappointments in their depths. As we entered, they flicked over and looked at us without a trace of interest or curiosity, and I had to fight an urge to run from the room and get as far away from him as I could.