it go as the bus approached so the other kids wouldn’t see.
He drew up to the end of the driveway and pulled the lever to open the door. “Hey,” he said, because that was all he could think of. “Hey, good morning.”
It seemed like their turn to talk, but they didn’t say anything. Danny let his eyes quickly graze their faces; their expressions were nothing he could read. None of the trains on Thomas ever looked like these two did. The Thomas trains were happy or sad or cross, but this was something else, like the blank screen on the TV when the cable wasn’t working. The girl’s eyes were puffy and red, her hair kind of smooshed-looking. Timothy had a runny nose he kept rubbing with the back of his wrist. Their clothing was all wrinkled and stained.
“We heard you honking,” the girl said. Her voice was hoarse and shaky, like she hadn’t used it in a while. “We were hiding in the cellar. We ran out of food two days ago.”
Danny shrugged. “I had Lucky Charms. But just with water. They’re no good that way.”
“Is there anybody else left?” the girl asked.
“Left where?”
“Left alive.”
Danny didn’t know how to answer that. The question seemed too big. Maybe there wasn’t; he’d seen a lot of bodies. But he didn’t want to say so, not with Timothy there.
He glanced at the boy, who so far had said nothing, just kept nervously rubbing his nose with his wrist. “Hey, Timbo. You got allergies? I have those sometimes.”
“Our parents are in Telluride,” the boy stated. He was looking at his sneakers. “Consuela was with us. But she left.”
Danny didn’t know who Consuela was. It was hard when people didn’t answer your question but instead answered some other question you hadn’t even thought of.
“Okay,” said Danny.
“She’s in the backyard.”
“How can she be in the backyard if she left?”
The boy’s eyes widened. “Because she’s dead.”
For a couple of seconds, nobody said anything. Danny wondered why they hadn’t gotten on the bus yet, if maybe he’d have to ask them.
“Everybody’s supposed to go to Mile High,” the girl said. “We heard it on the radio.”
“What’s at Mile High?”
“The Army. They said it’s safe there.”
From what Danny had seen, the Army was pretty much dead, too. But Mile High would give them someplace to go. He hadn’t really thought of that before. Where was he going?
“I’m April,” the girl said.
She looked like an April. It was funny how some names were like that. They just seemed to fit.
“I’m Danny,” he said.
“I know,” said April. “Just please, Danny? Get us the hell out of here.”
7
The color wasn’t right, Lila decided. No, it wasn’t right at all.
The shade was called “buttercream.” On the sample from the store it was a soft, faded yellow, like old linen. But now, as Lila stood back to inspect her work, dripping roller in hand—honestly, she was making such a mess; why couldn’t David do these things?—it looked more like: well, what? A lemon. An electrified lemon. Maybe in a kitchen it would have been all right, a bright, sunny kitchen with windows looking out to a garden. But not in a nursery. My God, she thought, a color like that, the baby wouldn’t sleep a wink.
How depressing. All her hard work wasted. Hauling the ladder up the stairs from the basement, laying the drop cloths, lowering herself onto her hands and knees to tape off the baseboards, only to find she’d have to go back to the store and start over. She’d planned to have the room done by lunch, leaving enough time for the paint to dry before she hung the wallpaper border, a repeating pattern of scenes from Beatrix Potter. David thought the border was silly—“sentimental” was the word he’d used—but Lila didn’t care. She’d loved the stories of Peter Rabbit when she was a girl, crawling onto her father’s lap or snuggling down in bed to hear, for the hundredth time, the tale of Peter’s escape from Mr. McGregor’s garden. The yard of their house in Wellesley had been bordered by a hedgerow, and for years—long after she should have stopped believing in such things—she’d patiently searched it for a rabbit in a little blue jacket.
But now Peter Rabbit would have to wait. A wave of exhaustion enfolded her; she needed to get off her feet. The fumes were making her dizzy, too. Something seemed to be wrong with the AC, although with the baby, she always felt a little