Radiation Children

8

I wish the story went like this: 

The little girl was saved by her older sister. 

Or like this: 

The older sister was brave. She knew exactly what to do and she didn't scream. She carried her sister out of Walmart as zombies closed in, like a hero or a knight in shining armor, and everything was okay. She kept herself together the whole time while her sister bled out in her arms.  

It actually happened like this: 

The older sister had no idea what to do so she turned to ice. 

Numb and horribly, horribly cold. Fragile as blood spattered and then gushed, gushed like a river rapid from the wound in Lucia's shoulder. Glass shattered in the distance, evidence that the bullet hadn't completely lodged itself into her shoulder, but it was a distant sound. Pieces of me fell, the ice breaking off in small, sharp fragments. Lucia fell. I caught her. The jugs of chlorine and brake fluid clattered to the ground. 

Lucia's splutter belonged to a drowning little girl, and perhaps she was drowning in her own blood, or her shock. She crumpled over herself. Kept spluttering. Gasping. 

My vision had gone black at the edges. I whispered, "Holy shit" as I picked her up and then grabbed the chlorine and brake fluid containers. It was a balancing act and it was complicated. I thought Oh shit oh shit oh shit until my mind froze over with my body, too. 

Zombies appeared behind me, growling, staggering over broken shelves and food. 

* * * 

It was the summer before junior year; the sun glared white and hot on the pavement and everything smelled like chlorine and nylon swimsuits. 

Heidi and I were lounging on plastic chairs beside the town pool. James and Markus were in the water, racing each other across the deep end with other almost-juniors from school. The busiest time of the pool was right after lunch, and the chairs around us slowly filled with people...mothers smeared sunblock on anxious kids, a group of college-aged girls were adjusting their chairs to face the sun, a trio of small boys splashed each other in the shallow end. Behind us, where a chain-link fence separated the pool from the outfield of a recreational baseball diamond, some prepubescent middle schoolers were playing wall-ball, much to the dismay of their parents. 

Heidi leaned over, lifted up her sunglasses, and said, "See that girl over there? The one with the curly blond hair and the tankini?" She nodded towards the girl on the opposite side of the pool. I had seen her around school and vaguely remembered that she was in art class with me last semester, but I didn't know her name. She sat perched on the deep end, talking to another girl I didn't recognize, lifting her pale feet in and out of the water. 

"What about her?" 

"She's keeps looking at James. And smirking. And gesturing to him while she talks to her friend. Not subtly." 

I closed my book, dropped it onto my stomach, and sat up. "You think she likes him?" 

"Only one way to find out." Heidi cupped her hands around her mouth, sucked in a deep breath, and yelled, "Hey, James!" 

James stopped his breaststroke in the middle of the race, looked at Heidi's direction, and yelled back, "I'm in the middle of something!" 

"You just lost the race!" I called. 

"Fantastic observation!" James swam to the other end of the pool, vaulted himself out of the water, and walked over to us. His skin was tanner since the summer had started, but that didn't stop the sun from attacking his shoulders and nose with a vengeance. With the sunburn, he looked like a summer-hyped young boy rather than a gangly sixteen-year-old obsessed with sci-fi movies. He snagged Heidi's towel. She protested, and he flicked water on her.