Lillian watched Berenike over breakfast. It was like a movie where there was a person who was young in one part of the movie and older in another part. They never appeared in the same scene, though, in a movie. Or maybe it was like a movie with clones, but usually they were both the exact same person, and they were both evil.
This was real life, and it was different. For one thing, they weren’t evil. She was pretty sure about that.
Berenike was like Lillian in a lot of ways, except that she seemed to know what she was doing, and Lillian didn’t. Too much had changed. Their breakfast was instant oatmeal, which somehow Berenike had found. Food had become scarce since everybody—well, not actually everybody—started getting sick and dying. It wasn’t bad, oatmeal with bits of fake banana in it, just add hot water.
The electricity still worked. Berenike slept with a light on to make sure.
“You wanna come in to work again today?” Berenike asked.
“Of course I do.” Lillian put sarcasm into her voice, but it was a joke.
“Well, I’d have to commandeer you if you said no.” More joking.
They sat in Lillian’s kitchen—Lillian’s house, not her mom’s house anymore because her mom’s body had been taken away and they’d never see her again, maybe not even see her buried, but Berenike promised they would go to a ceremony someday soon to remember her.
“She sounds like a good mother,” Berenike had said. Yes, and if Lillian thought about it any more, she’d feel like she should cry—but she wouldn’t be able to cry, which bothered her and she didn’t know why.
Berenike had offered to stay with her, as if Lillian had a choice. Lillian needed someone with her, no matter how uncomfortable it felt to know how hard everything was and how little she could do. She didn’t even know where to find food. But Berenike had wanted to sleep on the sofa.
“No, use my mom’s room. I think some of her clothes might fit you. She was so scared I’d be alone. She’d be glad if she knew about you.” This had made Berenike smile, which she didn’t do a lot. Lillian didn’t smile much, either, especially if she was thinking.
Now she had three big sisters exactly like herself but no mother, which was a lot better than some people. But there was no school yet. People who were immune wore special plastic bracelets, and they both had one. Berenike took her with her to help and gave her important jobs, like unloading a truck. Sometimes the boxes were too heavy, but people would help, and she would tell them what to do—she could tell grown-ups what to do sometimes—and they did what she said. The world was strange and scary and sad and a little bit wonderful.
Yesterday Berenike had left Lillian at a community center for an hour to talk with other children whose parents had died. No one wanted to hug each other because they could spread the virus, so instead they raised their arms in a big circle in front of their body to show when they wanted to give someone a hug. They sat far apart around the edges of the room and talked about how they felt, which turned out to be scared, mostly. They also all felt sad, and the man leading the group explained how they could use their sadness to build memories of love to treasure, and their treasures would comfort them. They could make pictures or write songs and poems and stories.
Lillian had one memory she would make sure she never forgot. Someone banged on the door. Her mother’s body was lying on the floor in the garage where she had collapsed and died just a little while ago. Lillian had no idea what to do. Maybe this was help. They kept saying on the news that people would help.
She opened the door and saw people who had come to arrest her and take her away, which was terrifying, then the police came and there was gunfire and it got even more terrifying, and then she saw someone who looked just like herself but lots older get out of a van. At that moment she knew she’d gone crazy and was seeing things that weren’t real. The older version of herself spoke. It was her own voice. And she said: “I’m your sister.”
Lillian didn’t have a name for that feeling. She said to the other kids, “I don’t know how I felt when my sister said she could take care of me because I didn’t know I had a sister. It wasn’t happy because I’m just not happy these days, but it was good, very good.”
“Relief,” a boy suggested.
“Love,” someone else said.
“Supported.”
“Safe. Wait, no, we can’t be safe, not yet.”
“Rescued,” a girl said.
The feeling had really been safe, at least for that moment. She and her sisters couldn’t get sick, and they’d help each other, and she was sort of safe. And maybe it was love, too. She wanted it to be love.
Berenike had been upstairs with a different group like Lillian’s but for adults, then she talked with people at the community center who she knew. She spent most of her time at an office in City Hall figuring out what the city had and who needed to get it, sometimes making deliveries herself. Once Lillian had watched her talking to someone she had called. It sounded like an argument.
“… And we will come there and load up what we need. We’ll give you a receipt. You can send us a bill.… We can break down the door, and we won’t pay for that.… I am deputized by the mayor as staff of emergency government operations, and I have the authority to
