for a while as I made the eggs and bacon (on a griddle pan, thank you!), but soon they started picking on one another and generally driving me crazy.
I had this messy kitchen I felt like I should deal with.
“Go find Jake,” I told them. “Ask him what the plan is.”
They went off, kicking boxes and roughhousing and whining and chatting.
I wrapped up a plate of eggs and bacon in tinfoil, wrote a little note on paper from my notebook, and left it on top of the plate. It said something like:
Alex came over eventually. I offered him eggs, but he took a Pop-Tart instead.
“Dean,” he said. “What do you think is happening out there? Really.”
I felt so tired. My eyes ached. Head ached. I didn’t really want to talk about it, but truthfully I was relieved Alex was talking to me at all.
I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes.
“I think that the type Os are killing and marauding through our town. Lots of people are hiding. Some people are blistering up and dying from it.”
Alex nodded.
He took out several sheets of lined paper.
“I’ve been running the numbers,” he said.
I looked at the sheet.
At the top it read PRE-CRISIS POPULATION OF MONUMENT, CO: 7,000.
Then lots of numbers and figures.
And at the bottom: CURRENT ESTIMATED POPULATION: 2,200.
I looked at the paper. At the horrors it speculated about.
I knew how my brother operated. Numbers and figures were therapeutic to him. Fear of things unknown and unquantifiable was what turned my little brother inside out.
“Do you want me to take you through it?” he asked brightly.
“No,” I said. “No. I want you to hide that. Don’t show it to people.”
“It’s just math,” he said. He seemed offended.
“It’s not just math,” I told him. “It’s people.”
We got the kitchen cleaned up. Having no running water, this took some figuring out. The solution was Clorox wipes. Lots and lots of Clorox wipes.
We went back to the Media Department to find everyone screwing off.
Jake and Brayden were playing air hockey. They had busted out a deluxe air hockey table and were going at it. I could see they’d already played Ping-Pong and had a packaged dart board standing at the ready.
“What’s going on, Jake?” I asked.
“BAM! VICTORY!” Jake shouted.
Sahalia cheered. She was watching them play.
“Next game I will own you, Simonsen!” Brayden answered.
Sahalia had changed her clothes and was wearing a really, really short skirt. I don’t know, maybe it was just a scarf tied around her hips. She had on ripped fishnets and absurdly high-heeled boots. Some kind of a tank top over a paper-thin T. She looked like a twenty-year-old fashion model.
She had obviously decided to help herself to whatever she wanted from the store.
And so had the others.
Max and Ulysses were drinking from two-liter bottles of Coke and polishing off one of those five-pound boxes of fancy chocolates. They were joking and laughing, though I still didn’t quite get how they understood each other at all.
Batiste had out a huge set of magic markers and was coloring in a “Bible Stories” coloring book.
Chloe, meanwhile, was in Barbie Heaven. She had one or two of every available Barbie out and ready. She also had a Barbie house and a Barbie sports car and a Barbie pool and a Barbie Jeep and, I don’t know, a Barbie wind farm and a Barbie shoe store and a Barbie NORAD. There were some Bratz thrown in for spice, but in general, it was a Barbie orgy.
Everyone was taking advantage of being locked in a Greenway. Kind of binging.
“Where are the twins?” I asked.
Jake and Brayden didn’t seem to hear.
“Have you guys seen the twins?” I raised my voice.
“No,” Jake said.
That was it. Just no.
“We’re here,” came Henry’s little voice.
In the next aisle they had built a little house out of toy boxes. It was just big enough for them to get inside. I peeked in. They were curled up in there on a blanket, sucking their thumbs and talking to each other.
“I like how her face is when she smiles,” Caroline said.
“Yeah, and I like her brown pants. The soft ones,” Henry answered.
“And her hair.”
“It’s brown,” Henry said. Caroline nodded, dreamy.
They were talking about their mother.
“So there’s no plan?” I asked Jake.
“In a while,” he answered. “We’re starting with a little structured downtime. BAM! BULL’S-EYE!”
I walked away and Alex followed me.
I kicked a box of diapers.
“This is screwed,” I said. “There’s so much work to do. Every single aisle is a freaking disaster zone. Are we supposed to do it all by ourselves?”
Alex put his hand on my arm.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
“It’s not,” I said.
All of a sudden I wanted to cry. I felt my face getting red and my breath felt like it was stuck in my throat.
“It will never be okay again,” I said.
I walked off down an aisle, kicking the broken stuff away as I went.
I looked back.
Alex was just standing there, his shoulders sagging. His thin frame bowed over with the weight of the world.
I had to pull it together. I had to take care of my brother.
I wiped my eyes on the back of my hand.
Then I walked back to him.
“I have an idea,” I said.
“What?”
“Monopoly marathon.”
