DAY ZERO

what Tobey said

"What happened to Elena?" Theo asked.

"She was taken," David said. "By bad people."

Eli sat up. "But did you save her? Did you bring her back grandpa?"

Old David looked at him.

"That's for you to decide after I finish the story."

Eli opened his mouth.

"After," David said.

Eli closed it.

They'd been driving for about ten minutes when David looked in the mirror.

"Are you sure this is where they went." David asked.

"it's just a hunch, this is the only direction I see." Kai replies

David nods.

Tobey was sitting with his elbow on the window, chin on his fist. Not talking. Not drumming his fingers. Just sitting there watching the road go by.

"What's wrong?" David asked.

"Nothing."

"Tobey."

He shifted in his seat. "I'm just worried about her. Elena."

"You haven't even seen her yet."

"I know that."

David glanced at the road then back at the mirror. "We're all worried. But we'll find her."

"How are you so sure though." It wasn't really a question. "What if there's twenty of them? What if they're armed and we show up with four people and it goes wrong?" He paused. "What if she's already dead."

"Tobey—"

"I'm serious." His voice was flat. Not loud, not dramatic. Just flat. "It's not just Elena either. You saw those marks. There were more kids in that school. Five, ten, we don't even know. And somewhere out there their parents are waiting exactly like Derek and Tanisha are waiting. Maybe alive. Maybe not." He looked out the window. "So why are we calm. How are you just driving like everything's fine."

Nobody said anything.

The road was straight and empty ahead of them. A billboard for something that didn't matter anymore leaned at an angle on the shoulder, half the advertisement peeled away.

Lia turned around in her seat.

"I hear you," she said.

Tobey looked at her.

"I'm not saying you're wrong. You're not wrong." She settled back slightly. "But I know that feeling you have right now. That thing where you can't stop thinking about what happens to people when there's no one there for them." She paused. "I know it well."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

She was quiet for a moment. Then she started talking.

She was seventeen, it was her birthday when she got sick.

It started slow. A fever that hung around too long, then some tests, then more tests, then a doctor asking her parents to step outside for a few minutes. She sat in the examination room and looked at the ceiling and waited.

Her family wasn't rich but they were okay. Stable was the word for it. Her father worked, her mother worked, there was always food and the rent was always paid. It wasn't exciting but it was solid. She'd never had reason to think about it until it started falling apart.

The treatment she needed was expensive. Her father didn't say that. He came back into the room with her mother and they both smiled and said everything was going to be fine and she believed them.

She didn't know about the loan sharks until later. Much later.

She didn't know he'd borrowed money he couldn't pay back, or that the interest kept climbing, or that he was working three jobs and two extra shifts just to keep ahead of it. He never came home complaining. He ate dinner and asked about her day and went to bed and got up and did it again. She had absolutely no idea.

He got sick about eight months in. His body just ran out. He died on a Tuesday and she sat next to his bed and held his hand and still didn't fully understand what he'd done to get her that treatment.

Her mother tried to keep going. Picked up the debt, picked up the extra work, kept the same face her husband had kept. But grief does something to a person's body when they don't deal with it. It finds places to sit. It gets heavy.

Her mother lasted eight months.

Her last words were quiet.

Your father and I are so sorry. You'll have to continue without us.

She had tears on her face when she said it.

Lia stopped talking.

The car was quiet except for the engine.

"The orphanage I ended up in had a small hospital unit," she said. "I started working there. Learning what I could. Staying useful." She shrugged slightly. "I didn't have anyone for a long time. No friends, no family. Just work."

She glanced at David beside her.

"Until about a year later," she said.

David kept his eyes on the road.

He was thinking about his bedroom at Meridian Hill. The size of it. The way food just appeared at mealtimes. The school fees his father paid without blinking, the clothes, the car that took him places, all of it just there because it was supposed to be there.

He'd walked out of that house thinking he had it hard.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"Don't be," Lia said. "Yours is different I still support you."

"Still."

She looked out her window and didn't say anything else.

In the back Tobey was looking at his hands in his lap. He'd stopped watching the road. He had that look he sometimes got underneath all the noise, the one that didn't match the rest of him.

Nobody brought up what he'd said. Nobody told him he was wrong or that it would be fine or gave him a speech about hope. He'd said what he said and it sat in the car with all of them and they let it.

Kai was watching the road on his side. He'd been quiet the whole time.

David drove.

After a while Tobey picked his head up and went back to watching the road.

"Where do you think they took them," he said.

Back to business. That was Tobey.

"Don't know yet," David said. "But we're going to find out."

Tobey nodded. Went back to the window.

The road kept coming.