White Horse

The list is up. I don’t know who puts it there, only that they do. Today there are over a hundred names—and this list is just for our city, not the country. The violence is escalating. Or they’re dying from the same disease that’s killing people here. I can’t tell. The papers are silent about everything except our victories. They ply us with a steady stream of celebrity gossip, feel-good stories, and minor grievances to keep us from asking What? Where? Why? The news channels are more of the same—those that haven’t gone dark.

Jenny squeezes my fingers until the bones are nearly crushed to crumbs. I wince but I don’t say anything, nor do I pull away. She needs to give pain and I need to accept it. Because if I see Nick’s name up there, I’m going to take shelter in that physical hurt.

We join the cluster of some hundred heads and wait our turn.

This is the worst part: the waiting. It’s relative: if we see a name we recognize, that becomes the worst part. We’ve seen some. Mostly people we knew in school or worked with in some distant time. Those days we walk away with our heads hung low, not speaking until we reach the bottom of the steps. We go, we sip coffee on a street corner, silent until one of us says, “I hope it didn’t hurt.” War being war, I figure there’s a fifty percent chance of that being true. You can either go quick in a single blast or make a grab for life’s tail and hold on while it tries to shake you off like a pissed-off tiger.

“He won’t be there,” I say.

“He won’t be there,” she parrots.

People peel away from the front. We inch closer. They wear temporary smiles. Tomorrow they’ll be back, tense with fear. I envy them; they already know they’ll return.

An anguished cry cuts through the crowd. I flinch, because even though it’s expected, I still hope that we’ll all walk away wearing that transient smile. I am a fool.

“No, no. It’s a lie,” the woman shrieks. Hysteria has her in its grasp. “They’re wrong.” She makes to tear the list from the wall but is stopped by the people behind her. They shove her aside and insert themselves in her place. “Fuck you!” she screams. “Fuck you with a chain saw! I hope your sons, fathers, and husbands are dead. Why should I be the only one? Fuck you.”

I move to break from the pack, comfort her, but Jenny holds me fast. “Stay with me,” she whispers.

The woman picks up a stack of free newspapers, a local publication filled with upcoming events around town. They’re two months old now, remnants of a time when a concert or festival sounded like it mattered.

“Fuck you.” She flings a paper at the nearest person. “And fuck you.” Another paper aimed at someone else. “Fuck you and her.” More papers. Finally she tosses the remainder across the crowd. “Fuck you all!” She drags the last word out until there’s no more breath to carry it.

Some watch her shuffle away, too broken to be humiliated by her actions. The rest don’t dare glance at her because they know how easily they could break. Words on a page could make them her.

When it’s our turn at the head of the line, Jenny grips my hand tighter. The pink of my fingers fades to white.

“I can’t look.” She always says this and yet she always stares at the list unblinking until she doesn’t find Mark’s name.

It’s my finger that glides down the page, sticking on any name with a similar formation to Mark’s. We’re looking for Nugent. Mark D. Nugent. I enter the Ns and shoot right out the other side without glimpsing his name.

Jenny clutches my arm. “He’s not there. He’s not there. Check again.”

But I’m already on the move, falling down the list, falling, falling until I hit R. Ramirez, Rittiman, Roberts. No Rose.

“He’s not there, Jen.”

“Check again.”

Feet shuffle behind us. I glance quickly at the Ns again. “Mark’s fine.”

Jenny’s smile shaves five years from her face. “He’s fine.”

Neither of us says today.

Afterward, we perform our new ritual. We buy coffee at a nearby cafe and hang out on the street corner that will carry us in different directions.

“Who are you looking for? On the list,” Jenny asks.

My hands tense and I realize I’ve been hugging the cup too tight between my fingers. The cup is hot, the coffee even hotter, and the warmth seeps into my skin. I’m shivering. I look up at the darkening sky. It shouldn’t be this cold in October.

I look back at Jenny. She’s giving me that look like I’m holding out on her—and I am.

“No one.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s nothing. Just a friend.” But he’s not even that, although I felt it was true. There’s a gap in my heart, or maybe just my soul, large enough to park a city bus.

“I know that look.”

I say nothing.

“It’s the one I get every day when I know Mark is safe for another day. That’s when I can let my guard down and feel hope again. That’s why I like drinking coffee afterward, because that’s the real beginning of my day. Tomorrow morning the deathwatch starts all over again.” I go to speak but she stops me. “It’s a deathwatch, Zoe. We both know it.”

When you have a sister, you hold a mirror in your hands.

ELEVEN

DATE: NOW

To watch Lisa is to stare into Alice’s looking glass. Nothing about her is quite as it should be. Each day her fingerhold on reality slips a little more, dipping another inch of her essence into dark waters. She faces the sea, always wearing a secretive smile that fades if anyone approaches.

She holds vigil at the stern, feet in ballet’s first position, hands resting lightly on the rail. Her hair is a greasy mass pinned to her scalp, the result of not enough shampoo and too many weeks of rainwater. Her spine is distinct and prominent, its own creature, one I half expect to see flick its tail independent of her movements. A steady diet of thin air and canned foods has carved the meat from our bones, leaving us just enough to live on. Each time I glimpse myself in the ferry’s sliding glass doors, I can’t believe I’m seeing me. The ragamuffin person with stick legs is not who I am. In my mind, I am robust and healthy, with flesh that threatens to sprawl if I take that third cookie.

I need to eat more. We all do. War and disease have cured obesity too well.

“Hey,” I say, to warn her of my approach. “Do you want to hear something neat?”

She shakes her head. Keeps staring at what we left behind.

“There’s land. It’s a long thin strip of not much at the moment, but the captain says it’s spectacular to watch it come into focus.”

She dips down in a rigid plie. “And then what?”

“When we get there?”

“What happens when we get there?”

“I have to go north.”

“And me?”

“I told you. You can come, too.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

I swallow slow, consider the words on my internal Scrabble board. If I push them into the wrong formation, something will be lost.