Megan Abbott - The Fever

“I guess everyone was talking about it,” Gabby said. “The whole school saw.”

Deenie didn’t say anything. She was thinking of Gabby on that stage, the way her body jerked like a pull-string toy. Like a body never moves, not a real body of someone you know.

“Deenie,” she said. “Say something.”

“What did it feel like?” Deenie blurted, her face feeling hotter on the pillow.

Gabby paused. Then her voice dropped low, like she was right there beside her. “There was this shadow,” she said. “I could see it from the corner of my eye, but I wasn’t supposed to look at it.”

Deenie felt her hand go around her own neck.

“If I turned my head to look,” Gabby continued, “something really scary would happen. And I couldn’t look. I could not look.”

Deenie pictured it. That smile on Gabby’s face after, when everyone surrounded her on the stage. Like something painted on her face. A red-moon curve.

“I didn’t look, Deenie,” Gabby whispered. “But it happened anyway.”

I’m okay , she’d said. I really am. I’m fine.

That smile, not a real thing but something set there, to promise you something, to give you a white lie.

He waited until he couldn’t hear the hum of her voice anymore through the floor. Then he knocked on Deenie’s door.

“Hey, honey,” he said, poking his head in.

“Hey,” Deenie said, cross-legged on her bed.

As ever, her bed like a towering nest, always at least two or three books tufted in its folds. Deenie never fell asleep without a book or her phone in her hands. Probably both. When Georgia used to make her clean, Deenie would hoist the bedding over her head, shaking all the books, folders, handouts onto the carpet.

“They told her it might be stress,” Deenie said. “Like you said.”

Walking toward her, his foot caught on her white Pizza House shirt, ruched in the quilt where it hit the floor.

“Well,” he said, picking up the shirt, sprayed with flour and forever damp, “when things like this happen, they can really knock around your body.”

“I guess,” she said, watching him closely. He wondered if he wasn’t supposed to pick up her things. He tossed the shirt onto the bed lightly.

“What about you?” he asked. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That doesn’t seem like Gabby to me.”

“I know, Deenie,” he said. “We just gotta wait and see.”

He sat down at the foot of the bed. She looked expectant, like she wanted something from him, but he had no idea what. He’d seen that look a hundred times before, from her and from her mother.

Then, nodding, she fumbled for her headphones, and he could feel her retreating, her face turning cloudy and inscrutable.

“Dad,” she said, sliding the headphones on, “maybe I shouldn’t go to work on Saturday. With everything that’s going on.”

He looked at her.

“I think maybe I just want to be home.”

He didn’t know what to say, her eyes big and baffling as ever, so he said yes.

The minute her dad left the room, Deenie wanted to jump up and throw the shirt in the laundry basket. She didn’t know why she hadn’t already.

But she didn’t want to touch it or look at it.

It reminded her of the car, and Sean Lurie, the shirt wedged beneath her on the seat.

And then all the other things she didn’t want to think about.

Lise’s face. The lake. Everything.

There was too much already, without thinking about that.

Thursday

Just after six in the morning, Eli stepped into the dark garage, slung his gear bag over the front handlebars of his bike.

As the garage door shuddered open, he saw something move outside, in the driveway.

For a drowsy moment, he thought it might be a deer, like he sometimes saw on the road at night if he rode far out of town, into the thick of Binnorie Woods.

But then he heard a voice, high and quavery, and knew it was a girl.

He ducked under the half-raised garage door and peered out.

All he could see was a powder-blue coat with a furred hood, a frill of blond hair nearly white under the porch light.

“Who’s there?” Eli asked, squinting into the misted driveway.

With a tug, she pulled the hood from her head.

Except it wasn’t a girl. It was Lise Daniels’s mom, the neighbors’ floodlight hot across her.

“Eli?” she called out, hand visored over her eyes. “Is that Eli?”

“It’s me,” he said.

He’d seen her at the house dozens of times to pick up Lise, had seen her at school events, hands always tugging Lise’s ponytail tighter, always calling after her, telling her to call, to hurry, to be on time, to watch out, to be careful. But Eli wasn’t sure she’d ever said a word to him in his life. He knew he’d never said a word to her.

“Eli,” she said, loudly now. “Tell your father I’m sorry I haven’t called him back.”

The halo of her hair, the pink crimp of her mouth. It was weird with moms, how you could see the faces of their daughters trapped in their own faces. Mrs. Daniels’s body was larger, her shoulders round and her cheeks too, but somewhere in there, the neat prettiness of Lise lay half buried.

“Okay. Mrs. Daniels, are you okay?” he asked, and she moved closer to him, coming out from under the flat glare of the floodlight. “Did something happen at the hospital?”

For a moment, the vision of Lise fluttered before him, twirling in her turquoise tights, skirt billowing as she bounded up the school steps.

“I’m not supposed to talk about it,” she said. “I’ve been advised not to speak to anyone associated with the school, and your father is a school employee.”

He wondered how long she’d been standing out here. He thought of her looking up at the second-floor windows, waiting for a light to go on. Once, back when he played JV, he spotted a girl doing that after one of his games. A freshman on her bike, one sneaker flipping the pedal around, gazing up at his bedroom window. Until then, he hadn’t thought girls did those things. When he’d waved, she jumped back on her seat and rode away.

“Oh, Eli,” Mrs. Daniels said, shaking her head hard, her hood shaking too. “You’re going to hear things. But I’m telling you .”

“Maybe you should come inside,” Eli tried, the wheels of his bike retreating from her as if on their own. “I can wake Dad up. I bet he’d want to talk.”

But she shook her head harder, shook that pale nimbus of hair. “There’s no time for that. But I need you to pass along an important message. I’ve always thought of Deenie as a daughter.”

She was moving close to him, as if to ensure they were quiet, though her voice wasn’t quiet but blaring.

“What does this have to do with Deenie?”

“Oh, Eli,” she said, nearly gasping. “It has to do with all of them. All of them. Don’t you see? It’s just begun.”

Before he could say anything, before she could get any closer to him, he heard the door into the garage pop open behind him.

“Eli, who are you—”

“Dad,” Eli said, relieved, waving him over. “Lise’s mom is here.”

“My Lise,” she said, not even acknowledging Eli’s dad, her eyes, crepey and sweat-slicked, fixed on Eli. “It’s already over for her. Now all we can do is hope. But it’s not too late for the others.”

Arm darting out, her red hand clasped him. “What if we can stop it?”

“Sheila,” his dad said, walking toward her. “Did something happen?” He reached out to touch her shoulder gently, but the move startled her. She tripped, stumbling into Eli.