monsters. They can be held off. They can be killed. They can be defended against. She could’ve helped us, easily. Their house had all the bottom windows boarded up. Connies can’t climb ladders or rip off boards. They’re stupid and uncoordinated. All anyone had to do was hole up and wait—the president had already ordered the massive containment forces that would begin the restructuring. Only a few weeks after we went to Tony’s house begging for shelter, the Centers for Disease Control had pinpointed the source of the Contamination, protein water produced by a single company. ThinPro. It had something to do with the protein in the water, taken from a contaminated source. Basically, they’d all gotten something like mad cow disease, but worse. Much worse.
“I think she’s in bed,” Tony adds. “I think it’s okay.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I didn’t pay attention to the time.”
I know I should tell Tony about the Connie that almostgot me, or at least the trig homework that’s still sitting in front of me. He’d help me with that, even if he can’t do anything about the fact my heart is still skipping beats every once in a while, and my hands are still sweating.
“I don’t think she heard the phone ring,” he says.
Boys don’t talk the way girls do. When I first started going out with Tony, we’d spend hours on the phone with me telling him about everything I’d done in the hours I wasn’t with him. I’d talk, he’d listen. In the background I’d hear the stutter of gunfire from one of his video games, hear him mutter “Yesssss!” into the phone, though he wasn’t replying to me.
I don’t have as much to say as I used to. I see Tony in school every other day when we share an English lit class, but the time we used to spend together during study hall and in the hours after school, at football games, at dances, all that’s gone. I work instead of going on dates. Even if his mother did allow him a little more freedom, the curfew’s in effect starting at 8 o’clock. Even if I didn’t have Opal to take care of, there’d be little time to spend with Tony. It’s no wonder he’s been complaining.
“I miss you.” I mean it.
Tony and I have known each other since elementary school, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I started thinking he was cute. We hung out at the pool the summer between sophomore and junior years, and by the time we went back to school, we were a couple. He’s funny, he’ssmart, he’s sweet. He’s good. Tony’s good, and I don’t want to lose him, because he’s the only good thing I have left in my life.
“Ditch work tomorrow,” he says at once. “I’ll cut out of fifth period. Meet you someplace. We’ll hang out.”
I want to so much, it hurts. “I can’t.”
“Velvet.” Tony has a way of saying my name, so soft and low, it sounds like my name is
made
of velvet. He knows he can get me to do just about anything. “C’mon. What’s one day?”
One day’s less pay, that’s what it is. The chance of losing my job, too. Just because it’s crap work doesn’t mean there aren’t a dozen other people waiting for it. I hate that I’m only seventeen and thinking this way. I hate that Tony’s a few months older than I am, and yet can’t understand why I do.
He lived through the Contamination, too. He saw the news reports, the looting and rioting in the street, or at least the aftermath of them. He’s seen Connies lurching down the streets with people running and screaming in front of them, or chasing after to hunt them down. Tony’s seen the memorials the same as I have, as everyone has. But I feel like he hasn’t really lived through it the way I have, with his two parents, his house, his cell phone, with nothing changed, really, except a few more rules and some inconveniences to deal with. So he can’t get pizza bagels from the supermarket, or stay up late watching soft-core skin flickson cable. So he can’t be on the streets