S. Bodeen - The Fallout

I straightened my arms, keeping the package well out of her reach as she got more and more irritated. Her chin crumpled and she started to cry.

When she saw that getting the box was hopeless, she threw a fist into my stomach.

“Oof.” I doubled over and clutched my stomach, dropping the box.

She grabbed it and ran over to her bed, climbing back in.

When I finally got my breath back, I went and sat on the edge of her bed. “That wasn’t nice,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have taken my package.”

“What’s in it?” I asked, deciding a calm and even voice would be the best way to find out what she was hiding.

She sniffled. “You’ll tell Mom.”

“I promise I won’t. You know it’s only a matter of time before she finds out anyway. It’s pretty hard to keep a secret around here.”

Reese shook her head. “You keep secrets.”

“No, I—”

“Yes, you do! You and Lexie and Eddy all have secrets.” She wiped her eyes. “I just—”

“You what?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Reese, just show me what’s in the box. I won’t tell anyone. Then we can have a secret together.”

She didn’t look completely sold on the idea, but she went over to the desk and got a pair of scissors and cut into the tape. When she unfolded the top of the box, I saw a familiar brown label.

“M&M’s?”

Reese turned the box upside down, dumping out several one-pound bags of the candy. She tossed the box beside them. “There.”

I laughed, but then quickly stopped when I saw the serious look on her face. “Why M&M’s?”

Her eyes filled with tears once more, and I put a hand out to her. She came and put her arms around my neck and cried, snuffling into my shoulder.

After a little bit, when she seemed like she was calming down, I asked, “Reese? What is it?”

She shuddered and then stepped back. She picked up a bag of M&M’s. “Remember in the Compound?”

I nodded. We’d all had a supply of our own favorite treat. “Those were your treat.”

“I ran out.”

I smiled. “We all kind of ran out.” I remembered my own stash of Snickers, and how, after the years went by, each one I unwrapped looked worse and worse, until I finally stopped unwrapping them and simply kept them under my bed. Maybe it made me feel better to know I still had a small piece of the old world there. An inedible piece, but still.

“No,” said Reese. “I ran out two years after we went down there.”

“How?”

“I was sad. And they made me feel better. Remember my store?”

I nodded. For a while in the Compound, before the little ones came along, the yellow room had been Reese’s playroom. She had a cash register and shelves and play money. I’d only seen it once, when I’d been on one of Dad’s early tours of the Compound. I wouldn’t know for certain, because I isolated myself very early on, but I could guess she spent a lot of time playing there.

“I put the candy on the shelves. And sometimes Dad would come and give me real money for them. And it made me feel… normal. Like we were outside and I was just playing. A normal kid. So then I made Mom and Lexie come to my store, too. But I never… I never thought I might run out.” She looked at me.

I knew what she was thinking. Why would anything run out when we’d always had everything we wanted?

She swallowed. “So I kept selling them, making Mom and Dad and Lexie play in my store, and I kept eating them, too, and… then one day they were gone.”

“When was this?” I asked.

She ignored my question. “I looked everywhere. I couldn’t believe that I’d used them all up. I knew Dad had to have more, somewhere.”

I set a hand on her arm and squeezed. “But he didn’t.”

She shook her head and a few tears slid down her cheek. “I didn’t know what to do. Nothing else was like them and…” She shrugged.

“When was this?” I was beginning to put a timeline together in my head, trying to remember when Reese had become… different from who she’d always been.

She didn’t answer my question. Instead, she said, “So I went looking for something else. Something that made me feel happy on the outside.”

I froze. “ Mary Poppins .” When Reese ran out of her favorite candy, the one thing she had left from the outside world that made her feel normal, she reached for another. And that was when she started watching Mary Poppins nonstop. And when she—

“That’s when I started talking like I was British. I wanted to be one of those kids, I wanted to live with Mary Poppins.”

I looked over at her. “I always wondered why.”

She picked up a bag of M&M’s and let them drop on the bed. “See? I’m living proof that candy is bad for you.” She smiled a little.

I hugged her. “How long have you been stockpiling?”

She sat back and looked down. “Awhile.” Then she knelt on the floor beside her bed and lifted up the bed skirt.

I got down beside her.

Boxes packed the entire space beneath her bed. All the same, all obviously from Sugarworld, LLC. “Holy crap,” I said. “Do you even eat any?”

She shook her head. “That’s the weird part. I don’t even want to. I just want to know that they’re there.” She watched for a minute. “I’m a freak.”

“No,” I said, and put my arm around her. “Not at all. This is… this is about the most normal thing I’ve seen in a while. But…”

“What?”

“I think you have enough now. And if you need more, just tell me. I’ll go to Costco or something. Okay?”

She nodded and wiped her eyes, then took a deep breath and smiled. “It’s better than talking in an English accent, right?”

I nodded. “Candy is fine by me.” Then I picked up a bag and opened it, watching for her reaction. She didn’t really seem to care. It was more about having some at her disposal.

So I poured a few into my hand and held them out. She made a face and simply watched as I ate them, then stuffed the bag back into the box along with all the others.

She closed the box and shoved it under her bed. Then she sat back on her heels and tilted her head as she looked at me. “You won’t tell anyone, right?”

I rubbed the top of her head, messing up her hair. “Nope. Just between us.” I stood up and held out my arms to her, then pulled her to her feet.

“Thanks.”

I glanced around. “How have you kept anyone from seeing them? Doesn’t Gram come and vacuum?”

Reese said, “I’ve been cleaning my own room.”

Then I realized. “That’s why you vacuum! Not to help out, but to keep people out of here.”

She shrugged.

“You’re too smart for your own good.” I smiled and went out into the hallway, shutting the door behind me.

I’d been so worried about Reese. But it seemed like she’d found her own harmless, if slightly obsessive, way to deal with her leftover demons. I only wish the rest of us could be placated with several pounds of chocolate with a colorful candy shell.

All day, I avoided Eddy. Even though I was trying to be mature about the whole thing, I had no idea how to approach him. If I went in there begging him to hang out with me, then I’d be exactly the person he had been trying to get away from. But if I went in there all cold and calculated, telling him to hang out with who he wanted to… that wouldn’t work either.

What did I want?

It was easier to think about what I didn’t.

And I didn’t want to be left out. I didn’t want to have to sit there, night after night, knowing my brother was out running around with some guy he barely knew, because that stranger was more fun that I was.