I stared at it uneasily. This was it. This was where al the scary movie stuff would start happening and there would be no way to cal for help.
“What…what do we do now?”
Mom pushed herself off the couch. “I think I saw an actual phone book someplace.”
“What good wil that do? There’s no network.”
Her laugh carried across the hal . “There’s a landline in the kitchen.”
I’d noticed the olive green phone on the wal when we’d first walked through the house. It was one of those old rotary ones with the round plate you swung in a circle to enter the numbers and a spiral cord that hung almost al the way to the floor.
“Does it actual y work?” I asked, trailing after her curiously.
Mom laughed again, her amusement tinkling through the house and almost making it feel like home. She pul ed a surprisingly slim yel ow pages from a cabinet drawer and blew off a layer of dust.
“Mom, that thing has to be a decade old.”
She flipped through the sections, undeterred.
“Looks like our choices are pizza or…pizza.”
“Pizza it is,” I said, leaning against her shoulder to read the ads.
“Which sounds better—Big Mike’s Pizza Haven or Slice of Bliss?”
“Bliss me, baby,” Dad voted, groaning as he flipped over. “I feel like Big Mike has already done a number on me today.”
Mom reached for the phone before pausing and pul ing out her trusty rol of disinfecting wipes. She’d been carrying them around the house al day, wiping down handles and cabinet doors. She cleaned off the handset, then began dialing. I liked the clicking stutter of the numbers rol ing back.
“Hi, we’re new to the area and wondered if you deliver out to the west side of town…we’re on Milner Avenue?” She recited the address and listened for a long moment to his response. “Perfect! We’d like to order a large pepperoni and mushroom. And—we weren’t able to check online—do you have any salads?…Great! The Garden Melody, family-sized.”
From the living room, Dad groaned. I curled the cord around one finger, watching as my skin turned purple, then white.
“And garlic knots, if you have them.”
He cheered.
“Better make that a double order,” she said, rol ing her eyes at me with a grin.
“Okay…yes…Cash. That’s perfect….Thanks! We’l see you soon.” She hung up the phone with a victorious click. “Here in thirty. Apparently they’re not far. Just down Davis Way,” she said, joining Dad on the floor. “Oh. This was a mistake. Throw me a pil ow, Mil ie? Or twelve?”
I tossed a pair at her.
“So…” I waited til she and Dad were situated comfortably, listening to the seconds tick by, marked by the grandfather clock in the hal .
“Tomorrow…Big day.”
They were both due at the hospital lab at nine on the dot, leaving me here to start making headway on al of the house stuff. It had sounded terribly impressive at first—I would be the one deciding where everything went, creating order from the chaos.
Now, looking around, it just felt like a lot of work.
“Big day,” Dad agreed. “Look, Mil s—I know it feels like we’re leaving you in the lurch…”
I scanned the wal of boxes waiting to be unpacked. “It is a little overwhelming.”
“And it’s so not how we wanted this to happen,” Mom said, rushing in.
“This outbreak has just…derailed a lot of stuff. We’re so, so fortunate to have this set of problems and not others,” she added quickly. “But I do want to ful y acknowledge this is not ideal for you. But…we’re going to be home al weekend to help. We’re certainly not expecting you to do this al yourself.”
“But if we came home tomorrow night to a total y straightened house and a gourmet meal…” Dad waggled his eyebrows at me.
Mom swatted at him with one of the pil ows. “Steve!”
I picked at the label on the nearest box. LIVING ROOM—BOOKS. “It’l be fine. I’l just…choose a room and start opening stuff, right?”
“I’d go with the kitchen,” Dad recommended.
“Yeah, about that. We don’t have any food,” I pointed out.
“We’l order groceries,” Mom promised. “I’l do it on my lunch break at the lab. And the cable company is supposed to be out here tomorrow, so we’l be up and running soon.”
“And that’s…safe?” I asked, an uncomfortable knot lodging beneath my sternum. I didn’t want to admit how much the idea of germs now scared me.
Particularly to my parents, who were around them daily. “I mean, I thought the whole reason Aunt Carla couldn’t come help us was because we’re supposed to be social distancing, or whatever.”
“That’s true, but Carla is staying away more for her protection than ours.”
Mom’s sister had lupus, which could make it harder to fight COVID if she was infected. Corona. I stil wasn’t sure what term I was supposed to be using. No one else seemed to either.
“And the cable company assured me they’re taking every precaution.
Masks, gloves, the works.”
“They have masks?”
There’d been reports of shortages.
Mom shrugged. “Wear yours, just to be safe.”
We fel into silence, each thinking of the day to come. The gears of the grandfather clock wound up to count out the quarter hour. The sump pump thunked again.
The doorbel rang.
“That was fast.” Dad started to hoist himself up but crashed back. “Nope.
Not happening.”
“Mil , can you get it? There’re a couple of twenties in my wal et,” Mom said, rubbing at her hip.
It wasn’t until I stomped to the front of the house that I realized how dark it had gotten. Guiltily, I flicked the outdoor lights on, il uminating an empty porch. Opening the door, I peered out into the dusky twilight.
Spring peepers sang their little frog songs, and I was certain it was the prelude for a machete-waving maniac to come striding around the corner.
“Hey there,” a voice cal ed out from the yard.
I tensed, then immediately shook it off. Neither Jason nor Michael Myers were known for their chatty banter.
I real y was going to have to stop it with the scary movies living out here.
“Sorry we didn’t have the light on,” I said, squinting. A form came out of the darkness. “Oh.”
The guy’s mask covered his face from the bridge of his nose down to his chin. It was homemade, with a floral print, probably created from the remnants of a fabric scrap bin. He was tal and lanky and looked about my age—as far as I could tel .
“Didn’t want to startle you,” he said, gesturing to the mask with his shoulder. His hands were ful of boxes and the bag of salad was looped around his forearm.
“I like the flowers.”
He laughed. “My mom made it for me. I begged her to get some cooler fabric. They’ve got to make something with the Pistons logo, right?”
“You like basketbal ?” I asked, instantly warming.
“Yeah. It sucks they put the season on hold. I mean…there was no way we were going to make the playoffs this year, but stil …”