Page 57 of Five Survive
His head fell to his hands and he buried his face in them, whitening halos of skin where his fingers pressed in.
Red reached, stretching out her fingers, each one too aware of itself and of what she was making them do. She rested her hand on Arthur’s head just for a moment, near the back of his neck. Mom usedto do that to her when she was upset, and Red didn’t even realize until right now that she missed it. She shouldn’t think of her, why did she keep thinking of her tonight?
Arthur glanced up, her hand sliding off. He caught it in one of his waiting hands, squeezed, his fingers warm against the cool of her knuckles.
Too much.
Red’s arm dropped to her side.
She looked around at all of them, at their faces, and there was something new in the air of the RV. Not fear or confusion, they’d had plenty of those. It was despair, plain as she’d ever seen it. And she was an expert in despair.
Reyna was the first to come through it, bending to her knees to pick up the shattered halves of the closet door.
“What are you doing?” Oliver asked her sharply, his finger balanced on the antenna of the walkie-talkie.
“I’m cleaning up,” Reyna said, carrying the pieces of wood toward the back bedroom. “Looks like we’re going to be here awhile.”
Red watched her as she crossed the threshold into the bedroom, chucking the broken door into the gap on the far side of the bed. She returned, making a start on the mirror.
“Maddy?” she asked, gently. “Can you please help me with this? Pick up those larger shards and put them in the trash?”
“Sure.” Maddy sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
“We’re never getting out of here.” Simon slid down on the sofa, next to Arthur. “This is the worst day of my life.”
It wasn’t Red’s, though, was it? No, she didn’t think so, she’d never replace hers. February6, 2017. It wasn’t enough just to lose her mom that way, was it? No, there had to be that last phone call too, still hurting from their argument in the kitchen the day before, about Red notconcentrating in school, about her grades slipping. Mom called the home phone at 7:06p.m., to say she’d be late for dinner. Red was the one who picked up. Red didn’t want to talk to her.Fine,she’d replied, thinkingGoodinstead. Maybe she could go to bed without even seeing her mom tonight, without restarting the fight. But Red restarted it then, she couldn’t help it, bristling when her mom called hersweetie.
“Don’t call me that. I thought I was a disappointment.”
Mom never said that, she wouldn’t. Red was putting words in her mouth. They’d talk about it when Mom got home, that was what she said. But her voice wasn’t normal, and Red thought she must still be angry at her. Disappointed. Did part of her wish Red had never been born? Something interrupted them, a two-tone sound, trilling somewhere in the background behind her mom. A doorbell. Twice.
“Hello,” her mom said to someone else, not Red, because she could never just concentrate on Red for one fucking second, could she? Couldn’t turn the police captain off and just be Mom. That wasn’t fair but Red hadn’t felt like being fair.
“Sweetie. Before I go, I need to ask you something. Can you tell Dad to—”
And then it came, the worst part.
“No,” Red cut her off. “Stop telling me what to do all the time.”
And worse still.
“I hate you.”
Red hung up the phone, cutting off her mom’s voice as she repeated her name.
And guess what? Mom was dead within ten minutes of that phonecall.
“Red?” Oliver said, saving her from the memory, but not from the guilt. That always stayed.
She looked up, just as Oliver reached her, dropping the walkie-talkie into her hand. “Keep cycling through the channels, looking for interference. It’s the only plan we have left now,” he said, darkly, turning away.
Back to hoping for outside help, because the escape plan had gone out the window, which was a funny way to think of it because that was exactly what the plan had been. Red pushed the + button, skipping to the empty static of channel four, then five.
Channel six. She stopped, waiting there. Mom’s channel, from their Cops and Cops game. Stop it, stop thinking about her, Red had no right to be thinking about her. It was her fault Mom was dead, and nothing would fix that, not even the plan. What was it, what was it Mom needed Red to tell her dad? They’d never know, but maybe it would have saved her. It would have saved her and Red said no. Red hung up. Mom was killed, executed, and it was Red’s fault. Only her fault, because the police never found out who shot her. Twice. In the back of the head. On her knees. Thinking about how her daughter hated her and how she hated her back just as hard.
Up and up through the channels, the walkie-talkie fizzing in her hands, holding it too tight.
Reyna and Maddy had finished clearing up the broken mirror, and now Reyna was in the kitchen, taking down six glasses from the cupboard. She filled them with water, one after the other, the running faucet filling the RV with a new kind of music, blocking the static for a few moments.
