Meg Rosoff - How I Live Now

Clear October nights were turning into clear October days and though it was cold in the barn, it warmed up outside by midmorning and Piper said it was because the earth still held the heat from summer. So we laid our old blankets against the south wall of the barn and sat in the warmth of the stone wall like old ladies, drinking fermented apple juice watered down with rainwater to make it last, breaking off small pieces of cheese and fruitcake and trying to eat slowly so we didn’t throw up from the shock of real food. It tasted almost too rich to eat and made our stomachs feel dizzy and we just sat there not moving, trying to repair our brains and our bodies with slow swallows of food and water and with peace and idleness and familiar surroundings.

After a few days like this we went to bed deciding that the next morning we would walk back to the house and see what we might find there so I guess that meant we were turning back into something human again.

In the middle of that night I woke up and heard something rustling down below us in the barn and my first thought was Edmond! and my second was Oh god here we go again and my third thought was that maybe it was a rat and we should check that the food was safe but there was something about the way it sounded that was familiar and as I went to sit up I saw Piper’s eyes suddenly wide open and awake and the first smile I’d seen on her face in so long and she whistled in a soft way and The Thing gave a little yip and I almost laughed out loud being the last one to realize it was Jet.

We raced down to him and he was much thinner with a ragged-looking coat but otherwise he seemed fine and happy to see us and he just lay there on his back in the most undignified way, wriggling with pleasure as we rubbed him and hugged him and kissed him and told him how much we’d missed him.

Then I left Piper with him and went over and got a chunk of cheese and one of fruitcake out of the feed bin and fed it to him as slowly as I could though it didn’t seem to matter since he wolfed it down without chewing and it was only not knowing how long we were going to be living on this food that stopped me from giving him all of it, he seemed so hungry.

We were too excited to sleep and neither of us wanted to let Jet out of our sight so we half carried half dragged him up into the loft which he wasn’t exactly wild about but in the end we all three lay down, Jet a little separate from Piper and with Piper’s hand around his front paw for security and me with my hand around Piper’s front paw also for security and that’s how we slept.

The trip down to the house took a lot of strength, physical and mental, and we didn’t have much left. Without saying anything I braced myself for the worst and what we found wasn’t the worst, but the house was pretty well trashed and it was a little like being kicked again when you’re already down.

The lights and telephone were still out. There were no messages, no notes, nothing that told us where to find Edmond and Isaac but on the good side there were also no smashed windows or shit spread around on the walls just for the sake of it. A lot of the furniture had been thrown out in the barn and most of the rest was shoved into the corners of rooms or turned upside down and there were broken dishes everywhere and the ones that weren’t broken were caked and filthy and the toilets were overflowing and there was mud and dirt all over the rugs and I guess the only reason our clothes hadn’t been touched was that they were too small for anyone to have bothered with.

The kitchen was the worst and I guess even army guys like to spend lots of time in the kitchen and the big table was covered with heaps of paper. There were maps drawn on the wall and no food except what I’d found in the pantry that first day and when Piper and I went to check the barn next door there was no sign of the chickens or sheep or any other animals, which didn’t tell us whether they’d been set loose or taken away or served up to the army for lunch.

In the main bedrooms things were a little better with furniture just pushed to one side and fairly clean. I had to hold my breath before opening the door to my little room but stepping inside I was surrounded by those walls pure white and centuries old and everything pretty much the same as the day I left except the daffodils dead and papery in the bottle. I picked up a blanket from the floor and smoothed it onto the bed and looked out the window at the world outside and remembered arriving in a jeep with Edmond.

I could still hear our voices in the walls.

Before I went out I opened the little chest of drawers to find clean clothes all neatly folded and right then I forgot about everything except wanting to be clean.

I looked in the big mirror in the hall which was a mistake because for a minute I didn’t recognize the person I saw there, including how thin I looked and how dirty and how matted my hair was and the next thing I did was to check the water in the taps which it turned out didn’t work without the pump. Piper helped me lug buckets of water up the stairs from the rain barrel in the garden and I filled the bath a little way and with a bar of Aunt Penn’s soap, a bottle of shampoo and a room full of clean clothes I started to reinvent myself as a person.

If you’ve ever worn the same clothes day and night for weeks, you’ll know how amazing it feels when you make your skin silky and smooth again, and how happy you can be just cutting your fingernails and scrubbing the dirt out of your hands and feet with good soap that smells like roses and then putting on clean clothes and brushing your CLEAN hair and letting it dry all soft and whispery-sounding in the sun.

We filled it again for Piper’s turn in the bath and then she made me go up to her bedroom to choose some clothes for her because she didn’t want to go herself. I don’t know what she was scared of but she was adamant that she wouldn’t go, in the way little children are adamant that there might be something hiding in the closet in the dark. I guess she was scared of the ghosts that were creeping all around the house and I couldn’t blame her.

I picked out some clothes for her including a clean white shirt, which I knew was completely impractical but the luxury of being clean and impractical was too much to resist. I also packed a bag with sensible things like jeans and sweaters with hoods and underwear, and socks to wear at night on our hands and feet in case of bugs.

When we were both clean and dressed in new clothes and had moved the furniture back where it belonged as best we could in the sitting room we felt pretty cheered up. I think the best feeling was throwing away the filthy sneakers I’d been wearing every day for over a month now and putting on a pair of loafers from my previous life that felt new and expensive and smelled like leather.

We had to do something about Jet because he kept biting at the burrs stuck in his coat but he was definitely against the idea of a bath and the best we could do was find his dog brush in the mudroom and take it up to the barn and try to clean up the tangled mess of his coat which didn’t please him much either. We also took a bag of dry dog food that was still in the pantry because feeding ourselves was enough of a problem without having to figure out how to feed Jet. It was heavy and a pain to carry but neither of us knew whether he could manage for himself catching squirrels and rabbits.

Back up at the barn I carefully stowed our booty: matches, soap, clean clothes, more blankets, dog food, a single candle I found under a chair, and some books. Collecting anything more than that would have required a second trip and when you’re tired and underfed, two miles cross-country feels like more than enough.

That evening Piper disappeared while I was still sitting outside in the last warmth of the day and after a while I went to find her and she had gone on her own into a corner of the barn wrapped in a blanket hugging Jet and was crying almost silently, her nose and eyes red and swollen and her mouth open as the tears flowed out of her like a bottomless well.