Chapter Thirty
It’s too quiet. I’m used to the lack of electricity buzz, but the basement’s insulation is like a thick snow blanketing the ground, dousing out the hum of the environment.
I rub the goose bumps out of my arms as Jasper’s feet shuffle on the dusty floor.
I freeze when he pauses mere inches from me—I think. I can’t see shit.
“Care to do the honors?” He hands me the kind of lighter Mom used to buy at the gas station for two bucks.
It’ll give you lung cancer, Mary.
Then let it. Nothing in the world makes me feel this good.
I flick the BIC lighter and look at Jasper through the little orange flame. “What am I supposed to do with this? Stare into your big brown eyes?”
The corners of those big brown eyes crinkle. He points to the wall behind me. “There are sconces along the wall.”
“Oh?”
Goes with the whole dungeon theme, I suppose.
The sconces aren’t unlike those in the church back in Egal.
Though the space was always packed, I often felt more alone there than I do here.
Even with Grandma and Bunny to keep me company.
I couldn’t be open with them, not really.
Not when I was their strength. With Jasper, I can be weak.
He’s already seen me at my most vulnerable. I have nothing to lose.
I light the first sconce and gasp as a golden glow fills the small space. Hundreds of wine bottles line the stone walls, fungus growing between the cracks. This basement used to be beautiful. Maybe it still is.
The room now lit, I trace a finger along the dusty bottles. “How’d you end up in this house anyway?”
“Just like anyone ends up with anything on this side. I took it.”
“By force, or by trade?” I hand the lighter back to Jasper, who drops it into his pocket and then pulls out a banged-up Swiss Army knife, the silver cross fading into the red. He’s silent, and I’m impatient. “Who’d you take it from?”
And still, he doesn’t answer. Instead, he grabs an unlabeled bottle of burgundy wine off the wall. “You like cabernet?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.” Jasper raises an eyebrow. “I was eighteen when the bombs dropped, remember? I couldn’t drink.”
“Most eighteen-year-olds drink, Kota.”
“Most eighteen-year-olds didn’t have an alcoholic dad with a taste for abandonment.”
Jasper uncorks the bottle, and the pop echoes throughout the room. He takes a slug of wine and sits on the dusty floor. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” I sink down next to him and hug my knees into my chest. “My mom died of lung cancer, and my dad left twenty minutes before her funeral. Dropped us on the stoop of Grandma’s house.”
Jasper sets the bottle on the ground opposite me. He drags his gaze to me, eyebrows drawn together. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, reaching for me.
I stretch over his lap and grab the bottle. Take a swig. The wine is acidic in my throat and burns a hole in my stomach, right below my belly button. “Good Lord, this is disgusting. How often do you drink this stuff?”
“I don’t,” Jasper says, snatching the bottle away. “It’s lonely, drinking without a friend.”
A friend. Is that what we are?
Silence lingers in the air like a sopping-wet shirt hanging out to dry. I scan the room, desperate to find something to break it. “Was this cellar full when you found—er, took—the house?”
He shakes his head no. “Whoever owned the home before they flooded Jocassee cleared the place out. In my first few days here, I raided every wine store in Greenville I could find. Went nuts in Total Wine. I figured wine would be a hot trading commodity, and the cellar gave me a place to store, and hide, the bottles.”
“I see,” I say. Jasper hands the bottle back to me.
I take another long swig. Oh, my belly. It’s so warm, like a big, roaring fire.
And my tongue—so heavy. My thoughts dissolve like salt in water.
“I always wondered what happened to him,” I say.
“After Z Day, I mean. My dad never made any attempt to contact us. He could’ve moved to Nebraska for all I know. ”
“Why would anyone willingly move to Nebraska?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. But there was a lot about my dad I didn’t know. Why he left, for one.” Dust falls into my eyelashes as I lean my head against the wall. “And I’ve spent too long wondering what happened to him after Z Day. Wasted too much energy on a man who didn’t spend any on his family.”
He doesn’t deserve my brain space. He doesn’t deserve to be alive, if he is. And yet, I want him to exist. I want him to be out there, somewhere.
I turn to Jasper. “Where were you when the bombs dropped? Was your family with you?”
Jasper wipes his mouth with his sleeve, and a splotch of red stains the gray fabric. He bites his lip, now maroon. “It’s a dark story. You sure you want to hear it?”
“You don’t think I can handle it. Is that what you mean?” Jasper opens his mouth to speak, but I hold a finger up to his lips. “No, please. Let’s talk about the dark series of events I’ve been through the past two days.”
I count the events on my fingers, one by one. “First, I watched my friend get killed. I watched you almost get killed—by a wild boar, no less. I found out that Chandler, my leader, the person I lived to serve for two years, thinks I’m worthless.”
I stop counting fingers and grab the bottle back from Jasper. “Oh! And I ate rabbit, and now I’m sick in the head because it was the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, and every chew, every swallow, felt like eating a piece of my sister.”
I chug. Keep talking. “Even though I’ve been through all of that, even though being in Macoby for only two days made me realize I’ve been a sheep for two years.
Even though I want—need—to be with my grandma and sister again, I don’t want to go back.
I can’t. But look at me, Jasper, look at me.
I’m fine.” My last words come out in a slur, and my heart drums in my ears.
“I can handle whatever ‘dark’ story you’re about to tell me. ”
Jasper extends a palm toward me, and for a second, I think he’s going to lay a hand on my cheek, but he doesn’t. He takes my hand.
“You don’t think you’re worthless, do you?”
“Is that all you got from that monologue?” I rip my hand away. “I wasn’t asking for your pity.”
“I wasn’t pitying you.” Jasper shakes his head. “You’re not worthless. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
“Whatever,” I say. “Your turn—tell me your story.”
Jasper twiddles his fingers, then exhales, and his breath stinks like fermented fruit. “You know how, the few days before the bombs dropped, the air was so thick and heavy, you could taste the doom?”
I nod. Of course I remember. Even lunch conversations and Instagram and dread in my friends’ eyes pointed toward doom. A war was coming.
Jasper continues, “The day the bombs dropped, my dad said we should board up the windows with plywood. We had a couple sheets in the garage—my mom was a big DIYer—but not enough for all the windows. My brother stayed back to help my dad while my sister and I went out to get more. We were gone for maybe an hour. Of course, Home Depot was fresh out of plywood ’cause it seemed like everyone had the same idea as us.
Anyway, when we got home, our front door was wide open. ”
He clenches his jaw. “When my sister and I went inside . . . my dad, my mom, and my brother were all dead. They’d been shot. Multiple times, each of them.” Jasper’s chest heaves as he takes a shaky breath.
I can tell from his sallow face that the words hurt coming out. “My best friend was standing in the living room, shaking, staring at their bodies. Holding a rifle.” He bites his quivering lower lip before clearing his throat.
“ ‘Why?’ I asked Jamie. He said, ‘I had to. My parents are dead, and I never had any brothers and sisters like you. The world’s ending, and I’m going to be alone. But you—you had everything. A family. A home. And if I have to do this alone, so do you.’ ”
Jasper pauses. “What Jamie didn’t understand was that he was my family, too.
But it was too late. His eyes were wild.
He was looking at me but he wasn’t seeing me.
Every inch of his body vibrated. I don’t know if he was overcome with anger, or loss, or if he had a psychotic break, or what.
But he killed them. He killed three of the four people I loved most in this world. ”
I don’t say a word. I have none.
“If they’d died differently, would it hurt less?”
I blow out a breath. “I’ve lost three family members in three different ways. I don’t know if the how matters so much as them being gone.”
He takes a swig of the wine. “It matters,” he says. “There’s more I haven’t told you yet.”
“Keep going,” I say. Am I the first person he’s ever told this to? I must be. I lay a hand on his back. His breaths are short, scattered. “I’m here.”
“I shot Jamie before he could kill my sister, too. His gun wasn’t cocked, but I couldn’t take the risk. I just shot him, right through the heart. I feel no remorse. But then . . . they all came back. All of them, all at once.”
“As zombies?”
He nods. “I had no idea what was happening. I couldn’t pull the trigger. I never believed in God, but at that moment, I hoped.”
“Oh, Jasper . . .”
“My sister’s never been an optimist. She may not have had the language for what they were yet, but she knew they were gone.
So she went into the kitchen, grabbed my mom’s favorite butcher knife, and killed my family—again.
I don’t know how many times she had to stab them until she realized the brain was the only way to strike them down.
And the next words she said to me, I will never forget: Strike without mercy. ” He wipes his hand down his face.
“Oh my god. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
I’m quiet for a moment. “Do you know where your sister went? If she’s still alive?”
Jasper gulps down the rest of the wine bottle and stares at its empty contents. “Alive and well, on the other side of the Split.” He throws the bottle against the stone wall, and it smashes into a million shards.
“Sorry—what?”
Jasper stands, wobbles, and pulls a bottle of white wine off the wall. “Care to try something sweet?”
“Um . . .”
No. I don’t give a shit about the wine. I want to know more.
I want to know you. I want to comfort you and hold you and tell you that I’m here for you, that it will all be okay.
That I’m alone, and you are, too, but at least now we can lean on each other.
And I want to play a game of twenty questions because who is your sister, and what if I know her?
Jasper pops the cork and studies me with those brown eyes. Almond-shaped eyes with thick, dark lashes. Eyes that—
The puzzle pieces. They snap into place. Suddenly, everything makes sense.
It’s a small world, after all.
Just this morning, Chandler blew up Greeley’s Jeep.
“It’s her,” I say. “Your sister. Chandler is your sister.”
Jasper nods.
“That’s why you and Greeley are so close. They were together . . . ?”
“Engaged. They’d been together for eight years, since college. Chandler didn’t just leave me behind—she left Greeley, too.”
“What do you mean, she left?”
“Chief and his son, Macoby, were our next-door neighbors. Greeley, Chandler, Chief, and I found the Split together. We were only there for a couple weeks before others started to find the Split. The community operated as we do now: on trades. But naturally, some people had more than others, and that pissed off a vocal minority. Chief is a natural leader, but the first few months the Split was formed were rocky. There were raids. Chandler took advantage of that; she banded together a group and promised pure equality—and no guns.” Jasper falls silent.
Uniformity fosters unity. After a beat, he says, “But I think Chandler just wanted control. It took a couple months, but soon we slapped together the wall and formed the Split. A way for two ideologies to exist within one community.”
Jasper downs half the new bottle in a single gulp. I beckon to him with my hand. “Give me that, please.” The wine is saccharine, like a floral perfume, as it slides down my throat.
Jasper's version of the events that created the Split isn't what is taught in Egal. There, it’s widely believed that the violent Macs were forcefully separated from the peaceful Egals. I should have questioned the sentiment; I should have known there is never just one side to the story.
For a while, Jasper and I stare at one another, each of us processing. I don’t know what to say, if I should even say anything at all. The wine showers through my veins like a rainstorm, drenching any coherent thoughts I have and washing them away into the gutters of my mind.
From me, two bottles later: “Chandler’s a major bitch.”
From Jasper: “Hey, that’s my sister you’re talking about.”
I elbow him in the ribs. “Seriously?”
“No.”
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve. “But she also saved you, right?” And me. Chandler saved me. The room spins around me. Or maybe I spin around the room. Either way. “So . . . I can’t really hate her. I hate what she’s done, and I hate the choices she’s making, but I don’t hate her.”
“Neither do I,” he says, letting out a deep sigh. One that I think he’s been holding since Z Day.
“Jasper?”
“Yeah?”
I open my mouth. I want to tell him that, despite the circumstances, I’m glad we found each other, and even when I go home, he’ll have me on his side.
I want to tell him that I forgive him and that I no longer feel like a prisoner here, but the words won’t come out.
Instead, I settle for this: “You’re a good person.
I’d like us to be friends, if that’s all right with you. ”
“That’s more than all right with me.”