“I’d say more like a Yorkie. She was very yippy.” May laughed with me when we stopped at the foot of my bed. “You’re as good as new,” she complemented.
I beamed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
* * * *
May hand delivered me to my mother, who was waiting just outside my room. “Look at you!” my mother squealed as she enveloped me into her arms.
“Back to normal again,” I joked
My mother kissed my hair. “I’m so glad.” She turned to May. “When will the stitches have to come out?”
May smiled. “They are self-dissolving so we don’t have to take them out.”
“Great,” I commented. I had stitches cut out once. I didn’t want to go there again.
“Sweetheart,” my mother began, “why don’t you go into your room? I’m going to walk May back to the infirmary.”
I peeked inside the empty room. “Where’s Frankie?”
My mother smiled. “It’s a Wednesday, silly. She’s in school.”
“Oh.” I had completely forgotten about school. In the back of my mind, I hoped that she wouldn’t make me go back until next week. “Well, I think I’m going to walk around then. I’m so sick and tired of lying down.”
She gave me a stern look. “You’re not going anywhere by yourself. When I come back, I’ll take you on a walk.”
I placed both of my hands on my hips. “Mom, are you serious! Quit treating me like a child! I’m seventeen years old!”
She wagged her finger at me. “Let’s get two things straight. I don’t care how old you are, you’re always going to be my child. Also, you have just been
through something traumatic and you need to take your time and recover. I don’t want you running around here making yourself sick.” My mother gave May the come-on-back-me-up look. “Right May?”
May nodded. “Listen to your mother, Georgina.”
I sighed, defeated. “Fine. But can’t I walk with you guys?”
My mother smiled. “Sure.” My mother laced an arm through mine and May did the same with the opposite arm.
As we walked through the chilly, empty hallway I thought that it was kind of nice that nobody was around. Even though we were a small group of people it got overly crowded down here
sometimes. Usually the worst when it was around meal times. I wondered why the people here were still so obsessed with food. True, it was a luxury, but we had been eating good for the last two years.
In that moment, I thought of the cannibals and outsiders who lived above us. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. The outsiders, because they would ultimately become a meal for the cannibals. And the cannibals because they were just doing what they had to survive. Eating other humans was grotesque and disgusting, but it made me think of what I would do in their situation. Would I resort to eating my own kind?
A queasy feeling bounced off the walls of my stomach. Never. I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hungry I was, I’d rather starve to death than kill and eat another human. I stole a glance at my mother and May, who were chatting quietly amongst one another. Would they? No. I knew my mother and I knew May. They wouldn’t be able to do it. Then again, you’d be surprised how fast the people you knew could change when they’re starving to death.
Since the Great Famine began, I’d only seen a couple of things that made my heart break in such a way, that the only thing I could think about doing after witnessing it, was curl up in a corner and ball my eyes out.
One time, in particular, was right before the colony had been built. Two little boys, who couldn’t have any older than six and four years old, laid beside a rotting corpse, hysterical. The woman was their mother. “Mommy!” they wailed—all day—and all night.
Nobody cleaned up the body. Nobody cared. They were way too worried about taking care of themselves, and the fermented dead were useless to cannibals. Human organs rotted just like old meat.
Most of the time, I’d sit in the hut with my hands over my ears and my eyes squinted shut, humming quietly to myself to drown out their torturous cries.
During the day it was impossible to avoid them. I couldn’t face them. Somehow, I saw me and Frankie in those little boys. And even being a teenager, I didn’t know how I would survive if I was in their situation. The answer was I wouldn’t have.
Then one night their cries started to weaken. Starvation was sneaking up on them and pretty soon they would join their mother, rotting away from the outside in. That was when I broke. I couldn’t handle it anymore. I needed to feed them. They needed a home. And I swore that I would kneel on the ground until my knees were bloody at my parents feet, begging, until my parents helped them.
First, I did the unthinkable. I stole food from my parents little makeshift garden inside of our hut. Since I took food before the rules were established, I’d gotten away with it. Then, I stalked across the street, in the dead of night, clutching what I could and knelt down to the little boys.