THIRTY DAYS BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD

Maeve’s POV Kyle, my older brother stuck his head around the kitchen door while I was dishing out the soup. The wind had been throwing grit at the window over the sink since noon, and the radio on the shelf kept saying the front had reached the valley. “Mae, can you come now to the living room?” He asked carefully. I put the ladle down and turned around so I could have my eyes on him. “What’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong, just come.” He held the door and stared at the floor while I walked past him. Twenty people sat at the long tables and nobody was eating. I’d fed them twice a day for two months and I knew the look they wore when they were hungry. The look on their faces at the moment had nothing to do with hunger. Mom stood up. She had the blue cardigan on, the one with the ruffled end, and she kept turning her wedding ring around with her thumb. “Maeve, honey. Please understand. We have to think about everyone. And with the weather turning, it’s kinder to do this tonight.” “Do what?” Nobody answered. Dad had his glasses pushed up and his eyes on the table. “Do what, Mom?” “You can’t stay here with us anymore, sweetheart. Supplies are low, you keep coming back with less and it just isn’t sustainable.” I laughed, because it had to be a joke. Nobody laughed with me. Nobody looked like they were about to laugh, I had stared at the faces of more than five of them one after the other. “You’re throwing me out into that.” I pointed at the window. The glass was already shivering. “Tonight.” Everyone stared at me as though I had suddenly lost my mind. I needed them to speak and not go silent on me when Mom had just dropped a bombshell on me. “There’s less out there, Mom. The world ended,” I reminded her. “I built this place!” I’d never been that loud in the room. “I poured the floor you’re sitting on! I carried half of you in here!” “Nobody’s saying you didn’t contribute.” She looked me in the eye and said to me. This wasn’t a prank. She was serious about throwing me out. My uncle turned his whole body to face the wall. The woman whose chin I’d stitched suddenly found something very interesting in her bowl that she couldn’t help but have her eyes on it. I went to my father. I dropped to my knees beside his chair. “Dad. Look at me. Please, just at me.” He wouldn’t. His jaw was shaking. He avoided my face as though it was a plague and he’d rather stare at the wall. “Dad, there’s a storm,” I said, and my voice cracked in the middle, in front of all of them. “Your mother’s right, Maeve.” My lips began to tremble. Something in my chest just gave way and I found myself gasping. “I’ll sleep in the shed. You can have my rations. I’ll get the water every day and I won’t eat. I’ll do whatever you want, please.” Kyle’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Mae. Don’t make this harder. You know we love you. This isn’t personal.” Not personal? All I could do was stare at him. He was also with them on this. I had begun to feel cold from within me. He nodded to two of the men. Mr. Harlan from the next farm, and my cousin Rob. Both of them had eaten my food that morning. Without hesitating, they took my arms. I grabbed the leg of the table and held on with both hands. “Mom! Dad! Kyle!” My mother stood in the doorway with her hands over her mouth; she didn’t move. I couldn’t tell if she was crying or smiling as a means of rejoicing. They dragged me. My heels dug two lines in the dirt of the yard, past the beds I’d dug on my knees, past the water tank. At the gate I caught the bars and locked my fingers around them. Kyle took them off one at a time, gently, murmuring “easy, easy,” the way you’d talk to a horse that was spooked. He unclipped the keys from my belt. He lifted the medical bag off my shoulder, then he tucked a granola bar in my apron pocket and smoothed it flat. “I’m sorry, Mae.” He pushed me out. The gate slid shut and the bolt dropped with the click I had greased myself. I threw my whole body at the gate. “Kyle! Kyle, open it, I’ll go in the morning, just not tonight, please; it’s storming!” I hit the steel until my hands couldn’t take it anymore. “Dina! Mom! Dad!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. A curtain moved in the closest window for only a second, then the wind came down the valley and the first sleet hit me in the face. It wasn’t rain. It was thick and gritty, ice with pollen in it, and it stung my eyes and clogged my nose. In less than a minute, my clothes were soaked. The road behind me had vanished under the vines. There wasn’t a tree, or a wall, nothing to get behind. I crouched against the gatepost where the steel blocked a little of the wind and pulled my arms inside my apron. The lamps in those windows were the ones I’d rationed fuel for months. They stayed yellow and warm, and they didn’t flicker once. Every breath felt like I was swallowing glass. The pollen came down in the cold air and I coughed it up in wet, sweet lumps. I couldn’t feel my fingers, then my feet. I shook so hard my teeth cracked together. I clamped my jaw and it only made the shaking worse. I had been thinking somebody was coming. Somebody had to be coming. Mom will come; she’ll bring a blanket and say honey, we made a terrible mistake. Nobody came. The shaking stopped, and that was the part that scared me, because I knew what it meant. I’d taught all of them that, weeks ago while standing next to a whiteboard in that same hall. When the shivering stops, you’re in trouble. Then the warmth comes and you think you’re fine. The warmth came. It spread out from my chest slowly. I thought about every door I had held open with my back against it, and I couldn’t name one person who had ever held one for me. I’d spent my whole life thinking I was making a home. What I made was a house with a gate on it, and I was on the wrong side. “I’m so tired,” I said to the dark. My lips barely moved. I slid down the post and sleet filled the folds of my apron. The lamps were still on. I watched them as long as I could. Then I couldn’t feel the cold anymore.