Page 14 of Spread Me
Mads takes charge. Kinsey knows she should be thankful for that—she’s in no state to decide what the team should do next, can’t be even the slightest bit objective about Domino. But she’s not thankful. She’s embarrassed. It’s degrading. She’s supposed to lead this team, she’s supposed to know what she’s doing. She’s the one who decides their next steps.
But she can’t right now, can she? Her legs are shaking and she can’t feel her fingers all the way and every time she looks at the freestanding kitchenette in the corner of the canteen, some part of her insists that she should stick her hand down the drain and turn on the garbage disposal. She knows that pureeing her hand wouldn’t fix anything, but it would create a new problem, and at least if she’s dealing with a new problem she isn’t dealing withthisproblem.
“We need to find out what’s happening to Dom,” Mads says, tugging one of Saskia’s many blankets across their shoulders. “We need to know what’s causing the… the symptoms.”
“The eyes,” Jacques corrects. He stands up abruptly and walks over to the kitchenette. Kinsey thinks for a moment that he might be about to do the garbage disposal thing himself—maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all?—but then he opens a cabinet and removes a half-empty handle of white rum. He sloshes some of it into a mug without pretending to consider how much he’s pouring. “The eyes,” he says again, ripping open a packet of powdered apple cider mix and dumping it into the mug. He stirs with his finger, then takes a long drink.
“That can’t taste good,” Kinsey whispers.
Saskia frowns. “I don’t think it even dissolved all the way.”
Nkrumah leans forward and slaps her palm down onto the coffee table. “That’s why we have to figure out what’s wrong with Domino.”
Everyone looks at her with equal confusion. “What,” Saskia says, “because Jacques is drinking sludge?”
“Because maybe it’s not dissolved all the way,” Nkrumah says. Her eyes are alight with hope. “Maybe whatever’s in them, we can get it out again.”
“You’re not getting the powder out of this rum,” Jacques says, licking his teeth. “It’s not dissolved all the way, but it’s not the same as it was, you know? They’re part of the same fucked-up thing now. We have to accept it.”
The ceiling overhead rattles and all of them look up, startled.
“Can’t be another sandstorm already, can it?” Kinsey mutters.
“What’s Weatherman say?” Saskia asks.
They all look at each other, blank-faced. Jacques sighs and walks to the door with his mug of sludge. “I’ll just take a look outside.”
“Be careful,” Mads says, running their broad, blunt-fingered hands across their face. “Nkrumah’s right,” they say. “We gotta see if we can help Dom. They have to be hurting right now. Kinsey, I know you’re upset,” they add, “but you and I both know that none of this is how Domino would act if they were in their right mind.”
“I know.” She’s not sure if that’s true or not, but she knows it’s the right sound to make, so she makes it.
They all sit in silence until Jacques returns to the room, his now-empty mug hanging at his side in one slack hand. His face is grim. “It’s another one. And it looks big.”
“How big?” Nkrumah asks.
Before Jacques can answer, the ceiling rattles again, harder this time. It sounds like a giant is banging on the roof with one furious fist, trying to get inside.
“No fieldwork for the next day or so, that’s for sure,” he answers. “It’s still on the horizon but the wind’s already here, so I figure it’s a big one. Can’t imagine it’ll be gentle.”
“So we’re stuck inside. Wi-Fi and phone lines are still down, and nobody’s going to come fix anything with another storm rolling through. The only person who can read Weatherman reliably is covered in eyelids, so we can’t risk fieldwork between storms, either. That makes this an easy decision—we’ll focus on Domino, since we can’t do shit else anyhow. We’ll go back to the exam room and get some samples from them,” Mads says. They sound so reasonable. It makes Kinsey want to hit them. “You all do what you do best. You examine, you study, you identify, you catalog. And then I get to do what I do best. I treat them.”
“And then they’re back to normal,” Kinsey says, trying not to sound regretful.
Saskia nods. “And we all forget this ever happened.”
When the team returns to their vantage point outside the exam room window, Domino is sitting cross-legged in the center of the room. They’re wearing their button-down again. It hangs open in the front, loose. Kinsey scans what she can see of their skin and spots no eyes, no mouths, nothing out of the ordinary. Panic flutters briefly beneath her collarbones—what if her team rescinds their belief in her, what if they decide it was all just a moment of shared delusion?—but then she looks up at Domino’s face, and her worry vanishes.
There’s no denying that something’s wrong with them. Their expression no longer has the open, earnest guilelessness it had before, when they were insisting that Kinsey was imagining things. Now, their typically animated face is utterly still, their eyes flat as dropped pennies.
Jacques shakes his head slowly at the sight of them. “Something’s not right,” he mutters. “That ain’t them.”
“So,” Domino says to the gathered team. “That was embarrassing.”
Mads addresses them first. “No need to be embarrassed, D. You’re sick, that’s all. Can I come into the room?”
“Nah.” Their mouth snaps into a too-wide grin. Kinsey counts three canines on each side. “But Kinsey can.”
Nkrumah grabs Kinsey’s arm down low, where Domino won’t be able to see. “Don’t,” she whispers through clenched teeth. Then, louder: “I’ll go.”
