Velveteen (7 page)

I guess it must’ve been the same with Daddy, not being able to understand, and maybe that’s why she’d made him leave, because although he knew about Mama’s sadness, he didn’t really understand how big it was or how deep inside her it went.

I think he really only finally did understand it after I died.

I stayed in bed for the next several days, except to go to the bathroom or to eat. Mama and Daddy had stopped going to work, but not because of Ben Nicholas (or any of the other animals), and also not so they could stay with me. They were scared.

I could hear their voices, low and serious in the kitchen, not fighting anymore. They smelled only of fear then, not anger. And I guess they finally got tired of the endless ringing of the phone because they turned it off.

But they couldn’t turn off the people waiting outside of our house.

A couple times I got up out of bed to peek out the window, and I could see in the faces of them out there that the world was getting sicker and sicker.

Eventually, with all our curtains closed all the time and no one going in or out through the front door, they must’ve gotten bored and wandered away. For maybe a day or two it was quiet.

Then they started coming back again, except this time they weren’t shouting no more. They moaned.

I went out into the garden one night after everyone had fallen asleep and I found where Mama had buried Ben Nicholas the second time and I dug him up again. His belly was fat and smooshy like a balloon and he smelled different, less like the sickness he’d had and more like dirt and old garbage. But I didn’t mind this smell, because it wasn’t so bad to me anymore.

This time I didn’t bring him inside for Mama to find and take him away again. Instead, I made him a nice little secret bed behind the shed and covered him up in fresh leaves until I could figure out what to do. Poor, little Ben Nicholas. Dead, just like poor little Remy.

So much death.

Why couldn’t there be such a thing as a vampire rabbit?

The people in front of the house looked just like the workers on the side of the road that time we’d gone to the beach. I watched them for the next couple days, keeping the window closed like Daddy told me to. Keeping the curtains closed and the lights off, too. I watched them bite someone who tried to run, but he fell down and I knew he was dead. No one came to pick him up or take him away. No one came to bury him in the ground, like they did Remy. But they didn’t have to. He finally just got up on his own and walked away.

He was all better.

I knew Ben Nicholas wasn’t going to come back, not like those people outside, because

there are no such things as zombie rabbits

he’d had the wrong disease—
we
had the wrong disease.

It was too late for me to make Ben Nicholas not dead, but that didn’t mean it was too late to help him. All I needed was

a long, long time

more time. Enough to make him Real. Because that’s how nursery magic works: it takes

forever

a long, long time.

And the right disease.

I don’t remember Mama and Daddy putting me in the car, the day we tried to leave the island, but I do remember the drive. The windows were rolled up tight because they were afraid that the people would try to get in. The car was full of my dying smell, full of Mama’s sickness — and Daddy’s, too, because he was also sick by then — though it was still sleeping inside their bones. They were talking low and fast in the front seats, not exactly arguing. Even so, their sharp whispers felt like fingernails on my skin. I tried not to listen, but I didn’t have my pillow and couldn’t block my ears.

“
We have to turn around, Lyssa!”

“We’ll all die if we don’t get off the island.”

“We’re going to die if we keep trying. We waited too long.”

“You don’t know—”

“They’re checking IDs at the bridge. You know we won’t get through, not now. Not us.”

I wanted to tell them to turn around. I didn’t want to leave Ben Nicholas behind. But I was too tired, too weak.

Then, sometime later:

“—one bite. No cure. That’s how it goes.”

No cure.
Just like Miss Ronica had said. They were talking about me.

“No, Rame! I won’t believe it. There has to be some way.”

“There isn’t.”

We were surrounded by then. The cars weren’t moving and they were all around us. I watched the walking ones stop a man who was running. He was quickly pushed down as they bit him. He didn’t stay down for long before he got up and started biting someone else. Then that person wasn’t sick no more, either.

“Don’t look, honey,” Mama whispered. I thought she was talking to me, but she was talking to Daddy. He was quietly crying as we drove very slowly across someone’s front yard, pushing people down and rolling over them. It was a very bumpy ride.

The next thing I knew we were home again, and I was in bed. Shivering, even though it was baking hot in my room. My mouth was dry. The sickness outside was beginning to go away. Now there was more sickness inside than out.

Mama and Daddy were hiding somewhere upstairs. Not yet quite

dead

ready to stop running.

I struggled to lift the blankets off my body, to get up and out of bed. I fought the terrible weariness in my bones, the fire in my muscles, the tears pouring from my eyes.

For you, Ben Nicholas.

I tried to push away the roar inside my head.

I needed more time.

I made sure to find a very slow one. Not much older than me. I didn’t want her to bite me too much. It hurt real bad at first, and I might’ve screamed when it happened, but then it stopped feeling like anything at all.

Pretty soon, I wasn’t sick no more.

This time, when the door to my room opens, I’m ready for

mama?

the light.

I try to speak, but my tongue and lips don’t work. But it doesn’t matter, because she’s not Mama. It’s not her heartbeat I hear; it’s not her smell. This one is sick with that old disease I remember from before.

Just like the other heartbeat and the other smell, the last time the window broke. He was sick, too, but one thing he wasn’t was Daddy.

Does that mean it’s not yet time? The door is open, so—

first things first

I reach out to

cure her

touch the girl’s arm, to ask her if she’s seen my Mama.

please

But her scream startles me, wakens

hunger

something deep down inside of me that I haven’t felt in

forever

so long, and I’m not expecting it when she pulls her arm away and disappears back into the hallway. The memory of

blood

sadness fills me, but all I can seem to feel is

hunger

hollow.

I stare at the open door. It doesn’t close. It must be time to

bite

find Ben Nicholas.

Behind the shed.

And then

cure

No!

First things first.