Page 35 of A Better World

“They’re calling it idiopathic leukemia,” she said.

“Both kids?” Linda asked as she gulped the water and aspirin. Something was wrong. It tasted like diluted alcohol. But it couldn’t be alcohol. Who would do that? She put the nearly empty glass down. “Is this water?”

Gal lifted her own glass and sipped. “I spiked it with some grain to keep us from sugar-crashing. You’ll have less of a hangover.”

“Grain alcohol?” Linda asked. That wasn’t possible. She’d heard wrong. “That’s crazy. You’re crazy. I could die.”

“It’s what we all do here. You don’t know anything,” Gal said with irritation.

Linda tried to stand. Her legs felt unsteady, as if their bones were a cluster of loosely tied sticks.

“Oh, fine!” Gal said. She jerked Linda’s glass from her hand, returned shortly with it filled, along with a new jug.

“Water?” Linda asked.

“Water!”

Linda drank deeply, refilled. Drank two more like this. Went slow on glass number four, then peeled away a hunk of bread from the loaf. It was stale, a white funk about its crust. Maybe it had been fresh, but not recently. Linda ate around that funk, trying to soak the acid in her stomach.

Across, Gal watched. Her jagged, purple bruise had grown. It seeped across the goose-pimpled side of her upper arm. “God sent you,” she said. “You’re going to help me.”

A laser of logic burned through the swirling dross. “I don’t think that’s true,” Linda said, and then she couldn’t remember why she’d said it. Couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. Then the laser was gone, and everything was churn, and yes, that first glass of water really had been diluted grain alcohol, because it was weaving into her bloodstream.

“You hate them, just like me,” Gal’s voice exclaimed, and though Linda was repelled by the high-pitched sound, she held tight to it.Don’t float away, she thought.Stay awake or something very bad will happen.

“That’s a staggering extrapolation,” she answered, her words slurring.Staggerin’ strapolation. This house wasn’t just cold; the air had a spark of something. It was off, like someone bleeding out on a table after a gunshot. “Why’s it so cold? Don’t they maintain your solar panels?”

“I used to live in your house before Trish left,” Gal said, as if in answer to the question. “I had a car just like yours. Everyone here is the same. They come for the same reasons. They stay for the same reasons. But it changes you. Every day you’re here, you become something else.”

Linda stopped chewing. “My house was your house?”

“Sunset Heights. Great view from the top of that hill.”

Linda felt a swell of unease, but it was hard to remember why she felt it. On the floor, pieces of things: A xylophone without the mallets. A model barnyard missing the top of the barn. A doll wearing a shirt and no pants, her hair cut short. Those upside-down crosses.

“Since we’re friends now, I want to be honest. I left my kids alonetonight. I leave a lot. Since Trish did what she did, it’s too hard for me to look at them.”

“Are they okay?” Linda asked.

“Plymouth Valley either digests people or spits them out.”

“But they’re warm enough?” Linda asked. She considered looking in on the children. But in her condition and at this time of night, she would only frighten them. And she’d heard them just before, doing their primary job, which was breathing.

“Cozy. Sleeping,” Gal answered. “They’re four and six, but they’re super mature.”

“That’s too young to leave them alone,” Linda said.

“Shut up, you dum-dum-dummy,” Gal answered, terse, but without anger.

Linda chewed more bread, but it really tasted off. She was thinking of Poughkeepsie. Houses during the height of the bad times had smelled stale like this. Thirty years later, Poughkeepsie still hadn’t recovered. Orphans had grown up and made more orphans. “I should go.”

“Stay,” Gal pleaded. “Just for a little bit.”

Linda thought that seemed like a bad idea, but she wasn’t ready to stand.

Gal came over and sat down beside her. She patted Linda’s hand, and when Linda didn’t react, she took and held it. She felt warm and sticky like an over-napped toddler. The digital clock on the wall read 1:34 a.m. In Linda’s mind, that awful shadow, the hidden thing with beady eyes, was shambling a path up from the shelter, through broken Poughkeepsie and drowning Kings, to here, this room. It was stalking the halls, hungry.

“Same car. Same house. Same scientist spouse. We’re so practically the same person that we should have the same name.” Gal’s eyes were bleary red. She leaned into Linda, pressed her soft cheek into the crook of her neck. Her body went limp, its hot weightiness pinning Linda to the sunken couch.

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