“Neoplasm—you mean like cancer?”
“Aha. Not just any cancer. This one has a mind of its own, goes where it pleases. you never know what you’re going to get with OWN.” He laughs, snorts. “OWN. I wish I’d thought of that.” He snaps his fingers at me. “You get a dose of this and you get OWNed.” He takes in my blank look. “It’s hacker slang, meaning you take some of this and it’s taking over your body.”
“Is that what you’ve been giving the mice?”
“It’s not like people are lining up to volunteer.”
I remember the flu shot Dr. Scott gave me, and I wonder if I’ve been OWNed.
That afternoon I hand in my two weeks’ notice. When I get home I call Jesse and give him his story, because some things are bigger than a nondisclosure agreement.
“But it’s freezing,” Jenny complains a week later. She’s regressed. I have become both parent and sister to a petulant teenager.
“Fine,
She hesitates, weighs the situation, because she knows she asked me to make Mom’s pancake recipe, so I’m already doing her a favor. With a sigh that comes all the way from her feet, she snatches up the quarters I laid out on the counter, shrugs into her coat, winds a scarf around her neck, and slams the door so hard the frame shivers.
It’s no big thing, just the newspaper. You know, the newspaper that should contain Jesse’s article. The one that would make him different-good to his disapproving father. I need to know what he’s written. Every day I’ve been down at that newspaper dispenser, depositing my quarters, flicking aside the pages of the
One at a time, the pancakes turn that perfect pale gold. Soon I have two neat stacks that want to be eaten. Jenny isn’t back. The way she’s been acting, she should have been flouncing in by now, complaining of the cold. I experience a shiver that has nothing to do with the weather.
Porkchop, the day doorman, is in the lobby peering through the glass. There’s a mouth-sized patch of mist on the glass below his nose. I think he’ll turn when my footsteps tap across the floor, but he keeps on staring through the door.
He grunts when I ask him about Jenny.
“Saw her leave, but she hasn’t come back yet. She stomped on through here with her nose in the air.” He looks abashed. “Sorry, ma’am, I know she’s your sister.”
“What’s going on?”
“Don’t rightly know. There was a noise but I don’t see anything.”
I inch up to the glass door beside him, peer through. The world outside my window is dead. A ghost town. Light wind rolls suburban tumbleweed down the street. The
Cold seeps through the windows, absconds with the heat.
Porkchop clears his throat. “Friday’s my last day. This place can’t support two doormen with just five apartments being occupied. Can’t support one. Don’t know if Mo said anything, but he’s a goner, too.”
A plastic bag rolls by. The letters have faded to yellow. When Porkchop’s words register, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Just five?”
“Uh-huh. Herb Crenshaw passed couple of days ago. His wife last week. Their son’s over in India or someplace they wear bandages on their heads. The way the news is, I doubt the kid even knows yet. Hell, could be he’s dead, too.”
He leans forward until his nose presses against the glass.
“Huh, look at that. Someone lost their scarf. Dim days, Miss Marshall. Dim days indeed. And they’re only getting darker. Those scientists did something to the weather, because this ain’t right. We’ve been playing God and now God’s having His fun with us.” His mouth keeps on flapping, but his words fade to static, because that scarf—I know that scarf. Last time I saw it, Jenny was winding it around her neck, tucking the ends into her coat.
“Miss Marshall? You okay?”
No, I’m not.
Maybe I shove him out of the way, or maybe he steps aside. Later on, when I think about it, I can’t remember how it happened. One way or another, I push through that door to where the arctic wind bites my face. I go right, because that’s the direction from which the scarf blew. I go right, because that’s where the newspaper dispensers are. I don’t have far to go.
There’s a heap on the ground wearing Jenny’s coat and I hope it’s not her, that some homeless person stole her clothes. But what are the odds they’d have her same hair?
Oh God… I can’t take this. I can’t. Mom and Dad are bad enough, but losing this other part of me is something I cannot bear. I don’t have strength enough to hold this hurt.
“Jenny,” I whimper. “Jenny? Get up. Please, get up.”
She doesn’t. She just lies there in a dead heap, the red circle on her forehead signaling that this is The End of sisterhood. I am orphaned in every way.
“Jenny?” I kneel in her bloody halo, lift her head and cradle it in my lap. I try but I can’t scoop her brains back into her head. I keep trying, but the hole is too wide and the pink stew pours out faster than I can ladle it back in.
My mind cracks like the jar when I beat it with the hammer.
Fractured thoughts from a madwoman’s head. I can’t believe she did this to me. How dare she leave me alone? My sister deserted me. Fuck you, bitch. Fuck you for not just coming down here when I asked the first time.
Fuck you. My balled-up fists press into my brow bone. Her head is heavy in my lap like a cantaloupe. There’s a growing ache in my head that won’t quit. Fuck you, Jenny.
“You idiot!” I scream. “We were always supposed to be there for each other! I wasn’t looking out for you so you could die, too!”
I keep yelling, pelt her with my anger. Then there are voices, and a moment later hands and arms grabbing me, pulling me away from Jenny.
“No, no, no. That’s my sister.”
“Go look for the shooter,” someone says.
“Leave us alone,” I cry. “I’ve got no one else.”
But the hands don’t care; they just keep tugging me further away from what’s left of my family.
Why would anyone shoot Jenny?
I am staring down the barrel of a long, dark channel. The light at the other end rushes toward me as the passage compresses, then telescopes to some unfathomable distance. Time and space shift. Rationally, I know I’m still sitting in that warehouse, separated from the Swiss by olive oil. Knowing that doesn’t make the tunnel feel any less real. Is this what it’s like to die? Is everyone I’ve lost waiting for me at the other end? Have they forgiven me? Do they still care for me like I care for them?
“George Pope? Why do you care about him? He’s dead.”
His voice is jubilant. “Is he? Good. I do hope it was painful. Do you know?”
“Know what?”
“Did he die in great pain? Was it this disease that took his life—this disease he helped create?”
“No,” I say. “It was quick.”
“How quick?”
“Tell me what you found inside Lisa.”
“I found nothing inside her. Nothing. Her womb was empty. Yours is, too.”
Who knew the sun could be so cold? Its brittle glare paints my face, filtered through murky glass. I am in a plain room with a stained wood door, no bars, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t a cell. Iron does not make this a prison.
“I need a newspaper,” I tell the woman who brings my lunch.
