Transient - Complete Book One (Episodes 1 - 4) (Transient Serial) Page 7

  “Two years,”her mother announced quietly.

  Her father took it well considering. He sat stoic at the dining room table and nodded before looking away. His eyes grew misty but the tears didn’t fall.

  Rae sat beside her mother at the table. They were holding hands on the table top, and she could feel her mom’s leg pressed against her own. Feeling her close beside her made everything more bearable and a little better.

  They had taken an hour together, mother and daughter, before eventually calling Rae’s dad down. Her brother Carl remained asleep upstairs. It was a school night and they could tell him in the morning, or some other day. Her mother had taken her time in the kitchen, boiling water and making citrus green tea for her and Rae. Now the kitchen and dining room smelled like lemons. Rae had only taken a few sips of her tea more to please her mother than herself, and now her cup was cold.

  Finally her father repeated.“Two years...”

  No one responded to that. It would take some time for the news to sink in.

  It was a little over two years but what did two years mean, anyway? To an old man it would seem like the blink of an eye, but for an infant it would be an unimaginably long time. Rae’s desktop computer was two years old. She’d gotten it when she was fourteen. She had been a very different person at fourteen.

  Who will I be at eighteen?

  Her father reached over and held onto her mother’s other hand.

  The silence became unbearable. Rae had a million questions, but did not know where to begin. It was easiest to think in the short term, about today and tomorrow and the day after that.

  Transient…Transient.

  “What about school?”she asked.

  Her father stared at her. At first he seemed not to even see her, but to look through her to something else, as if trying to see into the future to a grown-up Rae who wasn’t there, and never would be. And then the look in his eyes changed and hardened, replacing whatever reverie had seized him.

  “You’re still going to school tomorrow,”he said.

  What’s the point?she thought, but what she said was:“Tammy dropped out.”

  Tammy had been a friend of hers, a couple of years ahead, a senior in high school, but they knew each other from theater. They’d worked on a couple of shows together, A Christmas Carol and Our Town. Tammy wasn’t an actress but liked to do hair and makeup. At sixteen she’d found out her expiration date and stayed in school for another year, but then dropped out as a senior before graduation. She had only a mere five months to live. She told her friends she didn’t want to spend her last days in class. Her parents didn’t make her so one day, without saying goodbye to anyone, Tammy dropped out and no one in the school ever saw her again.

  A few months later the papers reported that Tammy Hollen, age 18, had drowned accidentally off the coast of Catalina Island, on her expiration day as predicted by the cryptograph.

  “You’re not Tammy,”her mother said.“And you still have two years.”

  “For what?”Rae wondered aloud.

  “For whatever you want,”her father said.“Two years is still...a lot of time.”

  And then the tears came and her father stood up from the table and went to the refrigerator. He opened the door and stared at the inside of the fridge for a long time, five or ten minutes.

  Her mother finally said,“Honey, the electricity.”

  “Right.”He reached in and grabbed a bottle of beer, then closed the fridge and drank his beer in the kitchen standing alone in the shadows, and when he was done he tossed the bottle in the recycle bin and sat back down at the table.“Tell me the date again?”

  Rae had it memorized.“February 13, 2018.”

  “Two years,”her father said again, then exhaled.“Baby, that’s still more than a lot of people get. You can do whatever you want.”

  “Children?”she challenged.

  Her parents looked at each other, and her mother squeezed Rae’s hand.

  “If you want to,”her mother said.“We’ll support you.”

  Her father nodded.“Well of course we’ll support your decision, and we’ll both be around to...around to take of it after...if that’s what you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want,”Rae admitted.

  And it was true.

  The news had come so suddenly. Of course, she knew that she would have to take the cryptograph and deal with the results. In her mind she had decided to wait as long as possible, until it was completely mandatory, and she had no choice but to comply. Now that decision had been taken from her. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. It wasn’t supposed to be a surprise.

  Only two more years. I’m not ready for this.

  Her blood seemed to shiver inside her. Yet it wasn’t the date that Rae found so frightening. Or the realisation about being Transient. It was the other line item on the short print-out from the clinic.

  Cause of death: UNKNOWN.

  PART TWO

  TRANSIENT

  Chapter 8

  At four in the morning Rae crawled into bed, but sleep didn’t come. At five she got back up, took a shower and dressed for school. She left quietly and walked the two miles there alone, taking the back way along the housing tracks and avoiding Main Street.

  Three joggers ran past her. The traffic at this hour was mostly bicycles. The newspaper delivery person was finishing her route, weaving her rusty Toyota Camry back and forth on the empty residential streets, tossing newspapers out the car window.

  “Morning!”the lady called out cheerily as she drove past, as if it was just another day. And of course for her it was.

  Rae half-raised a hand in acknowledgment, then lowered her head and kept on walking. She arrived at school before the zero period kids and the morning athletes.

  The school was fenced and the gate to the parking lot was locked. The janitor was wandering over the empty lot, stabbing loose trash with a stick and putting the rubbish in a plastic bin he wheeled behind him. His name was Joe. He was a tall black man, balding except for the tight-trimmed white hair above his ears. Jenny once told her that Joe used to be a boxer, but not everyone on campus believed that. He was heavy and out of shape, but he had long arms and big hands, so Rae thought it might be true.

  “Morning, Rae,”he greeted, opening the gate for her.

  “Morning, Joe.”

  She was the first to enter Mrs D’s English class. The room was empty.

  Rae closed the door behind her and went to the back to her assigned seat and waited. She hadn’t slept at all last night, too anxious from the tea and the talk and the tears. Now she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She didn’t want to think about last night. She felt exhausted.

  She put her head down on her desk, and waited, wanting to cry. She heard the door open and close, and people file in, muttering, talking, laughing. She could tell who it was by their voices, or the way they walked, or where they sat. One by one her classmates filed in.

  Rae closed her eyes and waited for the bell to sound. Her mind drifted, and she felt the exhaustion take over.

  Someone touched her shoulder.

  “Rae.”

  It was Jenny’s voice. Rae sat up, realizing that she’d fallen asleep for a moment.

  This is going to be a long day.

  “Hi.”

  “I’m so sorry,”Jenny said, her voice sounding strange.

  “That’s okay,”Rae said raising a tiny smile.“I was just resting.”

  “No, I mean about the test.”

  The test today…Frankenstein

  “I totally forgot about it,”Rae replied, jumping to attention.“I didn’t even study. At least I finished the book though.”

  “I mean the other test.”

  How many tests were there today? Frankenstein, a chem quiz—

  Jenny was looking at her strangely.“The cryptograph I mean.”

  “What about it?”Rae said shortly.

  “I’m so sorry…”

  She knows, Rae realized,
horrified.“What do you mean?”

  “I heard.”

  What - how?

  By now Jenny was almost in tears. Rae glanced around, and saw that some of the other kids were looking at them, as if waiting for something to happen.

  Does everyone know?

  “How?”Rae asked out loud this time.

  “On Cracker,”Jenny sniffed.“It just hit, like, ten minutes ago.”

  Cracker? Oh no…

  If it was on Cracker, then everyone would know. Some of the kids obviously already did. By lunchtime, there wouldn’t be anyone in on campus who hadn’t heard.

  Logan—

  Rae checked his desk, but he wasn’t there.

  “Cracker?”she repeated stupidly, trying to process it.“That’s impossible.”

  Jenny handed Rae her cell phone. It was open to her Cracker feed. Rae scrolled down, looking looking, but it was mostly nonsense, a bunch of stuff about last weekend’s football game which their team had lost, and gossip about Carmen Boyez, the pop star who’d admitted a drug problem two days earlier, and—

  There it was.

  ‘Rae Lennox’s Crypto. D-Row 2. So sad.☹’

  The comment after her name meant. Death-Row, two years. And a stupid sad face. Reading again she saw the crack was by MonsterBear10

  “Who’s that?”she asked Jenny.

  “I don’t know but it’s already got thirty-eight crackbacks.”

  “Forty-three,”Rae corrected, checking.

  Oh God…It’s everywhere.

  But who could possibly know? She had only opened her results last night, and had told her parents a few hours ago, in the middle of the night. She hadn’t told anyone else but now someone named MonsterBear10 was cracking about it all over cyberspace.

  She clicked on MonsterBear10 to see the profile. The pic was of a stuffed teddy bear. It looked familiar, dressed in a blue and white navy uniform shirt, but with red devil horns sticking out of its head. Then she knew.

  Carl…

  It was her younger brother’s account.

  But he’s only ten!

  Way too young to have a Cracker account. Carl had asked their parents last month to sign him up on the computer, but they’d said no but he must have created his own account, probably with the help of his friend Sammy, who already had Cracker and even a blog at the age of nine.

  Carl has a Cracker account. Rae let that sink in first before realising: He must have heard us talking.

  He hadn’t said anything at breakfast earlier when the entire family all sat together chatting about nothing and avoiding the subject so that Carl wouldn’t be stressed out about his sister dying in two years. But he had known all along and when he got to school he’d tweeted about it and now Rae’s life was ruined.

  Completely ruined.

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to die right there and then. Everyone was looking at her. OK not everyone, but at least half a dozen people. Brian and Roger and Cindy and Kylie, and practically everyone. Even the students who didn’t know about the news must have sensed something strange in the air, because the whole classroom quieted down, and no one spoke.

  Then the door opened.

  Logan stepped in. He glanced at Rae, and then his gaze darted away to his desk. He sat down quickly and didn’t look at her. He opened his notebook and his copy of Frankenstein, and started pretending to work, as if he were still writing his paper for class. But she knew he’d already written it.

  Look at me, she thought, and wanted to scream, Look at me!

  But Logan kept his head down and his pen moving frantically, as if he were late with his assignment and the bell was about to ring and he was running out time.

  I’m running out of time.

  He knew. They all knew.

  Rae could feel the tears behind her eyes and she put her head back down on her desk, pretending to be tired, as if a nap could make everything better.

  After English class Logan was first to the door and out into the hall, and Rae had no hope of catching him. She waited for the others to leave and when the room was nearly empty she stood up and gathered her things.

  “Rae?”It was Mrs D. She sounded concerned.“Is something wrong?”

  “No, I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”She nodded, glad that someone seemed to care.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really?”

  “Well, my door is always open. If you need to talk.”Then she added,“Whatever it is, I’m sure things will get better.”

  She doesn’t know. I’m going to die in two years. That doesn’t get better. That doesn’t get worse. It doesn’t change. There’s nothing I can do. It will never get better.

  She stepped out of the classroom and into the hallway. It was crowded with students coming and going, some pacing themselves, other darting madly down the hall and a few loitering at their lockers, taking their chances with the impending bell.

  Rae walked into the hall and she felt the crowd open. People moved out of her way as if she were Moses parting the red sea. Or had some kind of infectious disease or something.

  Some turned and gave her a look. Looks of concern, of pity, some of outright disgust. And fear.

  It’s not the plague. You can’t catch it.

  Yet people moved away like she was some kind of pariah, and some of her friends coming in the other direction saw it and said nothing.

  Transient.

  All around her, Rae could see kids with cell phones in hand, texting or tweeting. Some were just getting the news. Others hadn’t heard yet, and perhaps a few had been in on it since the first posting.

  She didn’t understand it. But she’d seen it happen before. When April found out she had two years to live, people stopped talking to her and hanging out with her. No one asked her to the dance or the prom. When she came to the homecoming game, no one sat next to her. There was a circle of empty space around her like a cloud or a barrier, a dead zone that no one was willing to cross.

  Not even me.

  Should could have befriended April then, but she hadn’t. She’d watched the girl from a distance and saw the social isolation, her sense of ostracism, of being an outcast in school. April needed a friend.

  I could have been that friend for her.

  Rae kept to herself during Chem class and Trig. She had quizzes in both and the teachers didn’t call on her, so it was easy enough to sit in the back and not say anything. She pretended to take notes, but she was really writing nothing, just nonsense words. No one spoke to her or looked at her, and because she sat in the back of the class it seemed natural enough.

  When the bell rang for lunch, she went to her locker and then to the cafeteria. She got a burger and fries and a drink, with some chips from the vending machine, then went outside to the patio. She saw Jenny sitting with Logan at the girls table.

  What is he doing there?

  As Rae approached, she overheard Jenny saying,“I’ve got till I’m forty-five. I thought that Interim was bad, but now I feel like one of the lucky ones. I mean, that’s almost twenty more years. Job, marriage, kids.”

  “Hey,”Rae said, and they all turned to look at her.

  The conversation died, not only at the girls table, but at nearby tables as well.

  I’m not Typhoid Mary.

  Logan stood up.“Hey, wish I could hang, but I told the coach I’d meet up with him at lunch.”

  Rae saw that he had a pasta dish he hadn’t even touched. He took the tray into his hands and motioned for her to sit.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll see you, then,”Rae said lamely.

  God, that was stupid.

  Logan smiled awkwardly then left with his unfinished meal.

  Rae sat down across from Jenny.“What was that about?”

  “What?”Jenny was playing innocent.“What do you mean?”

  I saw you sitting with him yesterday, too, she wanted to say.Instead she went with:“I was hoping we could all hang out.”<
br />
  “He had something to talk to the coach about.”

  “Really?”

  Jenny had a guilty look on her face.“What do you want me to say, Rae?”

  “Something. Anything. I’m not sure it even matters. No one wants to even talk to me.”

  “You know how it is,”Jenny said flatly.

  “No. How is it?”

  “It’s…different. I don’t know.”

  “Jenny we’re best friends. Best friends tell each other everything.”

  “I think we’re all still dealing with it…”

  “And you think I’m not? I don’t know what to feel, what to say, what to think.”Rae felt the blood rising to her cheeks. She closed her eyes, waiting for the emotions to pass. They didn’t.“I just want to talk to someone.”

  “I’m here for you,”Jenny said.

  “Are you?”

  “Of course I am. Don’t worry about Logan. He doesn’t know what to say. He wanted my advice, and I didn’t know what to tell him. He said you guys had a great date, and—”

  “It wasn’t a date.”

  “Right, I know that. But he had fun with you, Rae, he really did. And I think he’s devastated.”

  “He didn’t seem devastated.”

  “He doesn’t show it. He’s a guy, and he’s a jock and he can’t afford to show it, not at lunch, not at school. But he feels these things very deeply, he’s a got a good heart and a deep soul and—”

  “And he’s hot as hell, I get it.”Now Rae was feeling angry.

  Jenny stood up.“Listen, I’m sorry, I really am. You’re my best friend, Rae. And I keep thinking about all those things we talked about, like going to college together, and maybe rooming in a dorm, and how our kids would be best friends. And…it’s not going to happen now, and I hate that. I don’t want you to go, but I’m not the one leaving you, Rae, don’t you get that? It’s not me, it’s you. You’re leaving, and I’ll still be here, and I don’t know what to do about that, about when you’re gone and I don’t…I just…God, I hate this. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”Jenny ran off in tears, not even bothering to take her tray.