No Safety in Numbers

  The plastic disk buzzed.

  “Let’s get you some more water,” Shay said.

  Nani leaned on both Shay and Preeti as they wound their way into the restaurant.

  M

  A

  R

  C

  O

  After Mike the Moron left, Marco went back to his stakeout. The government must have thought everyone in the mall was an idiot—of course, they’d been right. No one except Marco seemed to have noticed the plywood walls erected overnight around the former PaperClips. Then again, no one else except the girl from the police cruiser knew about the bomb.

  Marco had started his hunt for information as soon as he got a break from the breakfast rush. The plywood wall was a dead giveaway; the only question was how to spy on the place without getting caught. He employed a tried and true method he’d used as a kid to eavesdrop on his sisters. He bought a cheap baby monitor and installed the baby end under a discarded bag at the edge of the plywood wall, mic facing the crack. So far, back in the restaurant, he’d heard very little, but what little he’d heard was fascinating.

  “…air samples within the ducts have yielded no information…”

  “…if there’s anthrax, I want the cops in gloves…” The senator.

  From this, he gleaned that (a) the government had no idea what they were dealing with and (b) they assumed it was a deadly biotoxin. Meaning everyone located where the contaminated air duct let out was royally screwed. At least anthrax wasn’t contagious.

  “Carvajal!” Mr. Seveglia’s hand waved Marco into the manager’s cramped office. “Can I sign you up for an extra shift?”

  Marco switched off the monitor, hid the receiver in the bottom of the host stand, and approached. “Of course, sir,” he said. He could use the extra cash, given that he needed a new bike thanks to Mike the Moron.

  “My man,” Mr. Seveglia said, patting Marco on the arm.

  Of course, the extra work would cut into his stakeout time. He needed a map of the ventilation system. Maybe if he broke into the janitorial offices during his next break…

  “Marco.” It was Trish, the bitchy hostess.

  “Patricia.”

  “Some girl at table fifteen asked for you.”

  This was unprecedented. Marco was not good with people. Especially his peers. His peers tended to be assholes.

  He glanced around the corner and saw that table fifteen was occupied by an old lady, a little kid, and the girl from the police cruiser. Shay.

  Last night he’d blathered on like some drunk moron. Now she expected him to talk with her again. He sighed. At least she was pretty.

  He stalked over to her bench seat. “You wanted to talk?”

  She looked relieved to see him. “Marco, right?”

  Her grandmother said something in a foreign language—not Spanish. The little girl laughed. Shay blushed and made a face at the little girl—Marco assumed that they were sisters.

  “Sorry,” Shay said. “My grandmother doesn’t speak any English.” She seemed to brace herself slightly, as if she’d borne the brunt of sarcastic comments at her grandmother’s lack of fluency. Perhaps they had more in common than Marco had thought.

  “My grandmother’s lived here for thirty years and speaks less than ten words of English,” he said.

  Shay’s face brightened. “So you know what it’s like?”

  “Shopping with her outside of her neighborhood in the Bronx can be described as a cultural experience at best.” Marco ventured a smile. He was not attractive—his sisters had dubbed him scarecrow for his lankiness, and his mother often said that he’d grow into his features, meaning sorry you’re hideous now—but he looked better when he smiled.

  “So how did you two meet?” the sister asked in a sing-songy, playground-taunt voice. Marco responded viscerally to the tone.

  “Can you show me where the bathrooms are?” Shay interjected, eyes flicking toward the sign like she knew where they were and just wanted to get away from the table.

  “This way,” Marco said, stepping as far from the sister as possible.

  “Running off with yet another boy?” the sister mocked.

  Shay flashed her sister a withering glare and followed Marco around the corner. Once hidden from her family’s view, she slumped into the nearest empty chair and dropped her head onto the tabletop.

  “How can you seem so normal?” she said. “Knowing what we know.” Her voice was muffled by her folded arms.

  “What, that we’re caught in a death trap?”

  Shay glanced up at Marco like he’d bitten her. He decided to holster his usual mode of response. He wanted to talk to this girl.

  “Having the job makes it easier,” he said, sitting opposite her. “Keeps my mind off things.” He would not say anything about his spy operation.

  “My job isn’t helping me at all.” She waved her hand up, then let it flop back onto her arm.

  “Job?” Marco asked.

  “Taking care of my grandmother and sister,” Shay said. “My grandmother’s diabetic. She needs insulin shots. And my sister is just, well.” Shay looked at him, eyebrows raised. “You have a little sister?”

  “I’m the little brother, so you’ll get no sympathy from me.”

  Shay smiled and in that moment, Marco would have sworn that she was the prettiest girl he had ever seen—in magazines, movies, anywhere.

  “There were cops in the food court asking about sick people,” she continued. “Have the cops come through here?”

  “No cops,” Marco said. He hadn’t seen a cop since being let out of the squad car. The four guys who first arrived on the scene had grilled him for a few hours, but had finally accepted that Marco was not some lone bomber looking for publicity by ratting out his own terrorist attack.

  “People pointed at my grandmother,” Shay said. She stared at the wall. “I had to get her away from there. Why are the cops asking about sick people?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” Marco said, trying to bring back that glowing smile. “The cops were probably just making a routine check.” He didn’t want to upset her more by telling her that if it was anthrax, Grandma would be dead in forty-eight hours.

  “Yeah,” she said, obsessively running her nail across the table. “I guess. But we are being quarantined; that means something.”

  “Probably just bureaucratic bullshit. They’ll let us out soon.” An awkward silence descended. “You go to West Nyack?” he asked, taking a stab into the discursive darkness.

  “No, Stonecliff.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said. “I’d have noticed you.”

  Shay gave him a raised-eyebrow look like she could smell him coming from a mile away. Was he actually flirting?

  “You like it there?” he said.

  “We just moved here,” she said. “Figures I move somewhere just in time to end up in a terrorist attack. Do you think whoever did it is still in the mall?”

  “Sure. The guy probably planted the bomb, then went shoe shopping.” He just couldn’t turn off the sarcasm—Shay did not look amused. He forged ahead. “Where’d you move from?”

  “Jersey,” she said, without adding more. “Why hasn’t the bomb blown up already?”

  “Maybe it did and we’re all dead,” he said.

  “Heaven’s a bit of a disappointment.”

  “Yeah, and the food sucks.”

  She smiled. She got his gallows humor. He felt suddenly grateful for having been trapped in the squad car for all of yesterday.

  “I can’t believe we’re joking about this,” she said, sounding more relieved than angry.

  “Ha!” he said in a fake accent. “I laugh in the face of death!” He felt giddy, talking so much.

  “I knew it,” she said. “You’re a theater nerd.”

  “Film nerd,” he corrected. “Different species entirely.”

  “Too bad.” She flipped her hair, exposing the faded brown lines of leaves curving around her collarbone. “I’m
a theater nerd.”

  He felt a great urge to run his fingertips along the lines of those leaves. “Maybe we’re not so different after all.” It took all the forces of his will to keep from touching her.

  The mall speaker beeped and it was announced that cots were available in the open spaces of the first floor. Marco wondered if Shay might be more comfortable bunking in a booth with him. He wondered how to broach the offer.

  “Shaila!”

  The sister’s voice shattered the moment. Shay jumped from her chair, banging her knee, and bolted around the corner. Marco followed. The grandmother was slumped forward in her seat. Shay slid in beside her and began rubbing her shoulder. She mumbled something in her language, but that old lady did not need to talk. If it really was diabetes, she needed insulin. Or juice. Frida had diabetes, so Marco knew it was one of the two.

  Marco ran into the kitchen and poured some OJ from the dispenser. He brought it back to the table.

  “See if she needs juice,” he said, pushing Nani upright. The skin over her cheekbones was dark as if it were bruised.

  Shay leaned back, allowing him to reach over and dribble juice into Grandma’s slack mouth. Nothing.

  “Why isn’t it working?” the sister whined.

  Time for Plan B.

  Marco stood on a chair. “Excuse me!” he shouted. “There is a patron in this restaurant in need of insulin. Does anyone have insulin?”

  The room went silent. People looked at each other like they weren’t sure whether insulin was a bad thing to have. When some people refused to look at him, he decided those were the ones who probably had it. He hopped off the chair and raced to the nearest coward.

  “If you have insulin, give it to me.” He pointed to where Shay sat with her grandmother. “That woman could die.”

  The man hunched his shoulders over his triple-decker burger. “I don’t have any insulin, so bug off.”

  Marco felt the old anger well up inside. He knew this guy had insulin. The jerk just wouldn’t help.

  Before he had a chance to explode all over this asshole, a young woman stepped forward. “Here,” she said, handing him a vial and needle. “I got some this morning from the guards.”

  Marco took a deep breath. “Thanks,” he said. He looked down at the jerk, who was stuffing a bite of burger into his mouth. “At least some people aren’t entirely selfish.”

  He raced back to Shay’s table. “Get up!” he shouted. Shay slid out of his way. Marco jammed the needle into the bottle and withdrew the dose Frida took—he had no idea what this old lady’s scrip said, but hell if they had a lot of time to figure that out.

  Marco knelt next to the old lady, lifted the flimsy fabric of her wrap, and jammed the needle into her upper arm. He watched her face, waiting for a sign that she’d revived. But then someone grabbed his shoulders and pulled him away from the woman.

  Marco was dropped into the next booth by a person—man, woman, who knew?—in a blue, plastic hazmat suit. Some people in the restaurant screamed. Marco glanced around for where Shay was. She and her sister were being held by two security guards.

  “Everyone, stay calm,” the hazmat person said, sounding disturbingly like Darth Vader. “I am from a federal emergency medical team. We will evacuate this woman for treatment.”

  A fork dropped onto a plate. Otherwise, the room was silent. Marco was fairly sure everyone’s brains were processing the same thought: Why was a dude in a hazmat suit in the Grill’n’Shake? But Marco knew exactly why this person was in a suit. He was from the Outside; he had not been contaminated by the bomb.

  Shay screamed. “No!” She wriggled in the guard’s grasp. “She’s just diabetic!”

  A guard rolled in a gurney and, with the others’ help, hefted the grandmother onto it. They pushed it down the aisle and out of the restaurant. Shay and her sister stumbled, sobbing, after them.

  Once the medical team cleared the entryway, people went back to eating as if nothing had happened. Amazing, the herd’s ability to forget the disturbance of their peace. Some patrons even congratulated Marco on saving the old lady’s life. How blind were they? Grandma was in some serious shit—exactly what kind of shit was the mystery in need of solving.

  Marco found Mr. Seveglia in the kitchen interrogating the line cook about supplies.

  “Sir?” Marco asked. “The girl who left with that old lady is a friend. Can I go see what happened to her?”

  Mr. Seveglia glanced up at the clock above the freezer door. “We got the dinner rush starting in five,” he said. “Get your tables cleaned and ready. You can find her when you’re done with your shift.”

  Marco felt that anger inside him once more, but tamped it down. He couldn’t blow up at the manager. He needed his job. He’d try to find Shay after closing, around eleven. It wasn’t like she could go anywhere.

  DAY

  THREE

  MONDAY

  R

  Y

  A

  N

  Ryan ran all the way to Baxter’s Books, that’s how much he wanted to see Shay. He’d started at a walk, but as he thought of her, of getting to spend a whole day in her presence, he’d ended up taking the stairs two at a time up the escalator and burst, breathless and smiling, into the wet coffee stink of the bookstore. Now he had twenty minutes to kill. He decided to check if they stocked any Tagore.

  It hadn’t been easy ditching Mike and Drew. Mike had become a bit of a tyrant after the three of them had been stalked by the Tarrytown guys for all of yesterday evening. Lucky for Ryan, it was announced at Lights On that stations had been set up at three locations in the mall for people to register to have their places of employment or schools notified of their detainment. Knowing Mike and Drew would never volunteer to be put on a government list, Ryan had the perfect excuse to escape alone. Mike had told Ryan to put his name on the list and get his ass back to the Abercrombie.

  “I promised your brother I’d watch out for you,” he said, holding up his phone. Mike had texted Thad about the situation and that he and Drew had things under control.

  “I feel extremely watched out for,” Ryan had said as he left.

  One entire bookshelf was devoted to Rabindranath Tagore. There were books of essays, letters, novels, stories, and some giant thing called The Oxford Tagore Translations. Ryan pulled out the smallest, least-intimidating paperback. It flipped open to a weird-looking poem called “Palm-tree.” Ryan liked the simplicity of the thing. The tree thought about flying when the wind blew through it, but when the wind stopped, the tree remembered it was stuck in the dirt and was cool with that.

  Ryan understood that tree. Here, in the thick silence between the bookshelves, he could read poetry, he could dream of having a girl like Shay. Out there, he had to stay focused. He could date girls, but only the safe ones, the ones who didn’t ask for too much, who could be fit between practices and games. He’d only spent a half hour with Shay, but already he knew she was anything but safe, and yet she was all that he wanted.

  The store speaker beeped. “Will Ryan please come to the information desk.”

  She’s here. Ryan left the book on the shelf and ran for the information desk. “I’m Ryan,” he said, glancing around to see where she’d gone. The guy behind the counter handed him the phone. It was Shay.

  “I’m sorry I’m calling late,” she said.

  Ryan hadn’t even noticed. “No problem,” he said. “I found some more Tagore.”

  “He’s the best,” Shay said, her last word stretching into a yawn. She continued, “I can’t meet you today. My grandmother—she has diabetes and is in the infirmary.”

  Ryan slumped against the counter. “Oh, that’s rough,” he said. He tried to sound like he cared more about her grandmother’s welfare than the fact that she wasn’t going to meet him. He didn’t think he’d succeeded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No, hey,” he said, too fast. “No problem. I’ll catch you some other time.”

  She d
idn’t say anything for a moment. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess we can’t get away from each other.”

  “No,” he said. He felt like if their conversation were a car, it had turned onto the wrong street.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said. “Bye.”

  She hung up before he could think of anything to say. Ryan handed the phone back to the guy. “Thanks,” he said.

  He was not sure what had just happened, but it hadn’t been good.

  Whenever Ryan felt bad, he liked to rock climb. Something about the experience of relying on his own muscles, of hanging far above everyone else, calmed whatever confusion swirled around inside him. Like when his parents fought. When they started to get into it with each other, Ryan instantly got onto his bike and rode to the climbing gym.

  Like now. He needed to be on the wall. He hoped the sales guys at Shep’s were still letting people up.

  Just outside Baxter’s, across from the Grill’n’Shake, a cop and a person in a hazmat suit sat behind a table. There was no sign on the table, just what looked like a tackle box, a metal case full of vials, and an empty chair next to the hazmat guy. Ryan walked on the opposite side of the hall as he passed.

  The mall speakers squealed.

  “Patrons of the Shops at Stonecliff, stations have been established throughout the mall staffed by members of the security team. Some of these individuals are wearing plastic suits for their and your own safety. Please do not be alarmed by the suits.

  “You are asked to make your way to the nearest station for a blood test. Everyone must get tested. The police officers at each station have a list of all the people in the mall as compiled on the first evening of the security situation. You must be marked as having completed the testing before you will be allowed to leave the mall. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Ryan didn’t trust this for a second. He speed-walked down the hall, away from what he now realized was a testing station. He wanted as much distance between himself and the hazmat guy as possible. He had to climb; when he’d calmed down, he’d find the guys. They would know what to do.