GONE

©2007 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)

Daria and associated characters are ©2007 MTV Networks

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: The Cuban Missile Crisis boils over in October 1962—and the lives of three sisters change forever. The young Helen, Rita, and Amy Barksdale star in this alternate-history tale of family bonds tested under the worst of worst-case scenarios.

Author’s Notes: The story’s title is the same as that of the last fantasy fiction I wrote for TSR, Inc., and Wizards of the Coast (“Gone,” from the 1999 Dragonlance anthology, Heroes and Fools: Tales of the Fifth Age). Aside from this, the two stories are completely unrelated. Copious additional notes are found at the story’s end.

Acknowledgements: Daria fanfic stalwarts Kara Wild, RedlegRick, Renfield1969, and Lawndale Stalker provided detailed feedback on this story that led to major revisions in the conclusion. Thank you for your excellent help.

*

This is General Power speaking. I am addressing you for the purpose of reemphasizing the seriousness of the situation the nation faces. We are in an advanced state of readiness to meet any emergencies and I feel that we are well prepared. I expect each of you to maintain strict security and use calm judgment during this tense period.

—General Thomas Power, Commander in Chief, USAF Strategic Air Command, transmitted to all SAC Wings on Wednesday, October 24, 1962, at DEFCON 2 (actual quote)

*

Friday, October 26, 1962

Chapter One

Helen Barksdale, twelve and a quarter years old, heard and reached for the ringing alarm clock before she was fully awake. Slapping it off, she groaned, then threw off her covers and sat up in bed. A cold shiver ran down her spine as she hugged herself, goose bumps on her arms. The house was freezing even with the central heat on, and Helen’s bedroom at the end of the hall was the coldest room in the house. Even her sisters called it “The Refrigerator.”

As she stood on the cold wooden floor in her bare feet and rubbed her arms to warm them, a noise caught her attention. It was the sound of water running in the pipes. Someone was already using the bathroom shower. Helen glared as she stalked over to her door and opened it, looking out into the hallway. Yellow light spilled from under a nearby door, the bathroom she shared with her two younger sisters.

Temper boiling, she walked over, turned on the hall light, and banged on the bathroom door with her fist. “Don’t use up all the hot water!” she yelled.

“I can’t hear you!” came her youngest sister’s voice from the other side. The shower kept running.

“You little creep!” Helen yelled. “Shut it off right now, and save some for the rest of us, Amy!”

“Like you save any hot water for me, whale butt?”

“Amy! I’m telling on you for that!” Helen snarled. The little rodent had set her alarm early just to get in and steal the hot water. Helen wrestled with the doorknob, but Amy had locked it. “Mom’s going to paddle your backside good!” she shouted in a fury. “Do you hear me?” Helen hammered on the door with both fists for good measure.

“Stop it, will ya?” her middle sister Rita yelled from her bedroom. “I’m trying to sleep!”

“Amy’s using up the hot water!” Helen told Rita, then turned to shout at the bathroom door. “You better turn it off, four-eyes, or I’ll stuff your head in the toilet!”

The shuffle of feet came from Rita’s room. Rita opened it, squinting as she walked out and past Helen, her short blonde hair looking like a tangled bird’s nest. “I’m telling Mom,” she grumbled, heading down the hall.

“Tell her to get Amy out of the bathroom!” Helen shouted after her, but she knew it was a lost cause. Rita would complain that Helen and Amy were fighting and the noise woke her up, and their mother would make Amy get out of the bathroom, then put Rita in, so Helen would be third and get the cold water. She hammered on the door in frustration. “Get out! Right now!”

“Flintstones!” Amy sang, the shower still running. “Meet the Flintstones! They’re a modern Stone-Age fa-mi-ly!”

“Out! Get out!”

“From the . . . town of Plainfield, and Helen Big Butt is about to screeeeeeam!”

“Amy!” Helen screamed.

“Helen, for the love of mercy!” called her mother from the other side of the family’s ranch house. “It’s six o’clock in the morning!”

“Make Amy get out of the shower so we can have some hot water!” Helen shouted back. “I have a really important day today and I have to get fixed up early! And she said ‘butt,’ too! I heard her!”

Her mother wearily thumped down the hall toward her, wrapped in a bathrobe with huge bunny slippers on her feet. “I can’t believe you girls can’t wake up one single day without screaming your heads off and waking up all Creation! Move!” she said, motioning Helen aside.

Rita came down the hall behind her mother, yawning wide and not watching where she was going. As her mother banged on the bathroom door, Helen was immensely pleased to see Rita walk into the wall and smack her head on the low-set thermostat box.

“Ow!” yelled Rita, grabbing her forehead.

“Get out of there right now!” their mother shouted at the bathroom door.

“I’m coming!” Amy said—and the bathroom door opened a moment later. Amy walked out in her pajamas and bathrobe and big-frame glasses, rubbing her long, dark brown hair with a towel. The shower was still running behind her. “What’s the problem?” she asked with eight-year-old innocence.

“Mommy!” shrieked Rita in tears. “I hit my head!”

“Mercy! Are you all right?” cried their mother, and she tried to pull Rita’s hands from her face to assess the damage.

Helen started past her little sister—then noticed something strange. “Your hair is dry!” she shouted at Amy. “You weren’t even in the shower!” Amy tried to run, but Helen lunged and grabbed her by the right hand—a dry right hand. “Hey! You were goofing around wasting hot water the whole time! You little—!”

“Ouch! Mom!” yelled Amy. “She’s twisting my arm!” She jerked out of Helen’s vengeful grasp and got out of the bathroom.

“Helen!” yelled their mother, turning from Rita. “I’m ashamed of you!” Behind her, Amy stuck out her tongue at Helen.

“It’s my turn in the shower!” shouted Rita. “And I banged my head!”

“It’s an improvement on your regular face!” said Amy. She darted into her room, slammed the door, and locked it one second before Rita got her fingernails into her.

“I got here first!” Helen yelled, having now turned the shower off. “I get it next! I give a speech today in class!”

“You hit your little sister, you wake up the whole house, and for that I’m supposed to reward you?” said her mother. “Go to your room and wait your turn!”

“Is it possible for a man to get any peace at this hour?” roared Helen’s father from down the hall. “Would everyone please just shut the hell up?”

“Walter!” yelled his wife. “Don’t use that kind of language in this house, and keep your voice down!”

“Mom!” shouted Helen. “This isn’t fair!”

“It is too fair!” yelled Rita, walking into the bathroom and crowding Helen aside. “Get out and let me shower!”

“I won’t have any hot water, and I’m giving a speech! I can’t go in front of my whole class without a shower!”

“Helen!” shouted her mother. “I told you to go to your room!”

“God, strike me down!” her father cried in despair.

“Walter! Stop it!”

“Can I use your bathroom, then?” said Helen, holding the towel rack to resist Rita’s efforts to shove her out of the bathroom. “Let me shower there!”

“Your father’s about to use it,” said her mother, pointing out the door. “Go to your room until you can behave like a lady!”

“Ooooh!” Helen stamped out of the bathroom, making sure she bumped Rita hard as she left, then went her room and slammed the door. She threw herself on her bed and pounded the mattress with both fists. “I hate you!” she yelled into her rumpled blankets. “I hate all of you! It’s not fair! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

Several minutes passed with her face buried in the blankets. Life wasn’t fair. It stank like cow manure. Why couldn’t everyone go by the rules? The rules being, Helen gets the shower first because she’s the oldest and gets up so early. Didn’t being the oldest count for anything at all? Rita was a year younger, but she got everything, she always got her way because their mother treated Rita like gold. You were the easiest baby I ever had, their mother always said. Not like Helen, God no, or Amy, who almost killed me—eighteen hours, oh mercy. You were the easiest, Rita, and I love you.

“I wish I was dead,” said Helen into her blankets. “Everything stinks. I hate everything. I wish they’d blow up the world and get it over with. I can’t wait to get out of this town and go to college. I’ll show ‘em. I’ll be on that bus and out of here so fast, their heads will spin. I’m going to make some big changes. I’ll make a difference in this world. They’ll find out. They’ll see.”

She sniffed and pushed herself up on her elbows. It was 6:09 a.m. on Friday morning, the best day of the week—or it would be, except Helen knew she would get only cold water when Rita was done, because Rita took forever and a day in the shower, and God only knew what she was doing in there. And then tonight there would be the Friday Night Dinner That Takes Mom Forever to Make. (Wasn’t there some way to just make a dinner in a couple minutes, like something ready-made, like frozen lasagna? Helen loved lasagna, but they had it only once a season, if that.)

And then there would be the Friday Night Fight for the Big Television Set. It was worse than having Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson duke it out in the front yard. Rita would want to see “Sing Along with Mitch,” and she’d get their mother to sit with her in the living room and they’d both sing those lame songs in their horrible off-key voices, while Amy reminded everyone (in writing) that it was her turn to watch “The Flintstones” on the little TV in the den, so Helen would miss the first half of “Route 66,” and what was the good of watching the second half of a show when you didn’t know anything about the first half? Maybe Dad knew what he was doing when he went down into the basement Friday evenings, beer in hand, to putter with his short-wave radio behind a locked door.

“I hate everything,” Helen grumbled. “I wish they’d go ahead and blow up the world.” She considered other options as well, like leaving home when she was sixteen and lying about her age so she could work as a waitress at a truck stop, and then after earning some money maybe hitch a ride to New York City and find a coffeehouse and meet a guy who wore dark clothes and smoked and was going to college and writing great protest songs, and he’d fall in love with her and they’d travel the country together, righting wrongs and becoming folk heroes, and one day she’d see her family again and they’d all be as miserable as the people in The Grapes of Wrath, but they’d be so surprised they’d drop dead when they saw her—Helen Barksdale (or whatever her name would be after she got married), the All-American Heroine. That would show them.

Helen sighed again and got off the bed. She went to her wall calendar and crossed off the previous day, Thursday the 25th, and looked to remind herself what was in store in just a few hours. Today, she would give a presentation on civil rights and what it meant to Plainfield. It was for her seventh-grade American History class before lunch, and she knew her speech would really upset the bigoted kids and maybe her teacher, Mr. Benedict, too. In moments, everyone would tell a story that started off with, “I heard from my uncle about this Negro who . . .” (except some kids would not say “Negro” and would use that other n-word word instead). That would touch off a fierce argument with the minority of kids, including Helen, who didn’t think there was anything wrong with going to school with Negroes—heck, Plainfield High had three of them, and they were okay. Helen knew she’d give her talk anyway, hang the consequences. If the school called her parents in for a conference, so be it. She had all As and was the best student in Plainfield High School’s junior high section. Let ‘em do their worst.

Over the weekend, she’d finish Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring after doing her homework, then call around and see if anyone wanted to get together Saturday afternoon and talk about important stuff and listen to her Kingston Trio albums. Maybe she could stay at a girlfriend’s house Saturday night, and they could watch “The Defenders,” which Helen loved—a TV show about lawyers who weren’t afraid to take on big cases about real issues. Maybe she should be a lawyer, too, and scare the pants off evildoers all over America. She’d hammer those rotten people, all of them. They’d see.

Except for setting the clocks back one hour, Sunday would be boring, as it always was, but that’s what church was all about: boredom. Helen couldn’t see the use of it. Walt Disney that night would be the one good spot in the day. Monday was the start of the school week cycle all over again, plus it was PTA night. Helen was expected to help serve cookies and punch at PTA, and that meant having to fend off that creepy Mr. Meyer, who kept trying to grab or pinch her rear end while staring at her breasts all the while, and she’d have to smile while everyone complained to her about Negroes and Communists and Democrats. Negroes and Democrats were fine, and frankly, what the heck did anyone really know about Communists, anyway? Had they ever met one? Probably not. Here it was, 1962 and the dawn of a new era of hope and peace and love, and people were acting like it was the Stone Age, like in the Flintstones song, like they should be out beating each other with clubs and rocks.

Helen sighed and shook her head. Halloween was next Wednesday, and she’d be expected to walk Amy and Rita around the whole neighborhood in the freezing cold so they could collect candy and wear dumb costumes. No doubt Rita would again go as a princess (imagine that!) and Amy would wear that hideous black robe and skull mask again and carry around that wooden scythe Dad had made for her, pretending to be the Grim Reaper. “Always good to see a classic,” Dad said every time he saw Amy in that outfit. Why couldn’t Amy wear something like a Wilma Flintstone mask, or Minnie Mouse, or even Amy’s hero, Rocky the Flying Squirrel? She was so weird for a third grader. Helen suspected Amy kept wearing that Grim Reaper costume because she liked the shock value. It creeped out everyone.

Someone banged on her bedroom door. “Shower’s yours, geek!” yelled Rita, who then walked off to her bedroom and locked her door. Helen was too tired to even yell an insult back, which meant she was very tired indeed.

I am tired, she thought, stepping back from her calendar. Her thoughts were as cold as the October wind outside. I’m sick of everything. Just blow up the world. Let’s just throw those bombs around at Cuba and Russia and everywhere, nuke the whole planet. Just blow the whole rotten thing up, and see if I care. Today would be fine.

She got her things and went to the hall bathroom, knowing the hot water would be gone. It was.

Chapter Two

“Save some of the Frosted Flakes for me,” said Rita at the breakfast table, stifling another yawn. Her blonde hair was perfectly coifed in Marilyn Monroe movie-star style, despite the fact that Miss Monroe had killed herself only two months earlier. It’s a remembrance, Rita always said when she was reminded of this, and that was that.

“There’s only enough for one more bowl,” said Helen, pouring the rest of the box’s contents into her bowl.

“Helen,” said her mother, “let Rita have the Frosted Flakes. You can have the Corn Flakes.”

“I don’t want the Corn Flakes!” said Helen. “I had the Frosted Flakes first!”

Her mother got up and took Helen’s bowl before she could grab it back, then put the bowl in front of Rita and took Rita’s empty bowl. “I’ll pour you some Corn Flakes,” she said. “Just put a little sugar on them and they’ll be just like—”

“Mother! Those are my Frosted Flakes!” Helen yelled. “That’s not fair! How can you do that?”

“Helen, keep your voice down!” her mother yelled back. “You’re a young lady now, and I expect you to act like one! What does it matter what you eat? Have some Corn Flakes!”

“I don’t want Corn Flakes!” Helen shouted, standing up and shoving her chair back.

“Here’s a Frosted Flake,” said Rita, picking one out of her bowl and flipping it at Helen.

“Rita!” said her mother—but Helen was faster. Dipping her fingers in her glass of milk, she snapped them at Rita and splattered white droplets all over her sister’s face.

“Aaaaah!” Rita shrieked, also jumping up from her seat.

“Helen!” shouted her mother. “You apologize!”

“She threw something at me first!” Helen shouted back.

“Go to your room!” her mother ordered. “Right now!”

“What about Rita? She threw something, too!”

“I have to fix my hair again, you bozo!” Rita shouted at Helen. “You ruined it!”

“Your hair is fine, dope!” Helen yelled, stamping out of the dining room for her bedroom. She slammed her door, waited three minutes by walking in a circle and watching the clock, then walked back out. Only one person was in the dining room when she returned—Amy, reading a comic book while eating the bowl of Frosted Flakes that Rita had left.

“Hi,” said Amy without looking up. “Did I miss anything?”

“You retard!” Helen snapped. “Those were my Frosted Flakes!”

“Oh,” said Amy, engrossed in the comic. The Amazing Spider-Man, Issue #1, said the cover. “I’m sorry, I thought they were Rita’s.”

Helen hissed, but it was too late to do anything else now that Amy had her germs all over the cereal and she was almost through with the bowl, too. Stamping over to the refrigerator, Helen took out the jelly, stuck a piece of bread in the toaster, and glowered at her little sister.

“Halloween’s next week,” said Amy, turning a page in the comic book. “Know what I’m going to be?”

“Dead,” said Helen, under her breath. She looked down on the kitchen counter at the newspaper her father had brought in earlier. U.S. SHOWS CUBAN MISSILE BASE PHOTOS AT U.N., read the headlines.

“Yeah, sort of,” said Amy. “I think I’m going to be the Grim Reaper again.”

“You’re supposed to go as something other than what you really are,” Helen said, flipping the paper over to read the first page below the fold.

“So,” said Amy to her comic book, “you’re not going as a girl dog, then?”

With a sharp intake of breath, Helen dropped the paper and headed for the kitchen table, making a fist—just as her mother came back into the room. Helen slowed and pretended she was merely walking over to get the salt from the table.

“Oh, Amy!” said their mother in annoyance, hands on her hips. “That was Rita’s cereal!”

“Oops,” said Amy, turning another page in her comic book.

“And don’t read at the table,” said her mother, snatching the comic book away. She flipped it into the trashcan. “You shouldn’t read junk like this, anyway.”

“Mom!” Amy screamed. She immediately jumped from her seat and rescued the first-edition comic from its fate, then fled the kitchen for her room.

“Amy! Come back and finish your cereal!” her mother called. She sighed and walked to the refrigerator. “Why can’t we eat a civilized breakfast together like everyone else?” she asked.

“Because Dad left at ten till seven, and Rita took my cereal, then Amy ate it,” said Helen. “That’s why.”

“But you’re having toast!” said her mother. “Why are you so upset about the cereal?”

“Forget it,” Helen grumbled. The toast popped up, and she gingerly took it out to smear jelly on it.

“I’m going into Baltimore this morning,” said her mother, pouring some orange juice for herself. “I might have lunch with your father at Beckman’s Grill if he can get away from the office.”

“You’re taking the bus?”

“I’m taking the bus. Mrs. Hammond next door is driving me over to the bus stop before eight. I should be home by three. I have to do a little shopping.”

For Rita no doubt, thought Helen. You always make special shopping trips for Rita, but not for me. Helen smeared jelly on the toast with angry swipes of the knife: zip zip zip.

“Listen,” said her mother, putting down the orange juice. “I want to talk to you.”

Helen exhaled heavily and put down her toast, ready for another lecture on Behaving Like a Proper Young Woman. “What, Mother?”

“If anything happens—wait, look at me when I’m speaking to you. Listen. Helen, if anything happens, I want you to get Rita and Amy and come home, right away. You hear me?”

Helen frowned at her mother. “What are you talking about?”

Her mother pointed at the newspaper, which Helen had flipped over to reveal the main headline again. “That’s what I’m talking about. You know what I mean. If anything happens, you find Rita and Amy, and you bring them home at once, right here. Don’t stop for anything. You get them and come right home. Nothing else matters.”

This was weird, much too weird. “Why?” Helen asked, her mouth suddenly dry.

“I don’t want my girls out if anything happens,” said her mother.

A last spark of annoyance surfaced in Helen’s mind. “Why don’t you tell Rita to do it? You let her do everything else.”

“Stop it!” her mother snapped. “You’re the oldest, so you’re in charge. You do whatever you have to do, but get them here. That’s all I’m asking. You understand?”

Helen hesitated, almost forgetting what she was trying to do, which was to make toast. A new tone was in her mother’s voice, one Helen did not ever recall hearing before. It sent a cold shiver down her back to hear it. Her mother, who irritated everyone and feared nothing, was afraid. It was more shocking than anything Helen could imagine.

“Sure,” said Helen slowly. “I’ll bring them back.”

“I’m counting on you,” said her mother, pointing at Helen’s chest. “Don’t breathe a word to them. It’s up to you. Whatever you have to do, get—”

“Hey!” shouted Rita, walking back into the kitchen. “What happened to my Frosted Flakes?”

“Amy happened to it,” said Helen, glad to get away from her mother. Her nerves were shot.

“What am I going to eat?” Rita wailed. “I’m starving, Mommy!”

“Helen made some toast,” said their mother. “She’ll share it with you.”

That was the last straw. “Mom, no!” Helen yelled. “I have to eat so I can give my speech! I made that for me!”

“Oh, Helen, for the love of mercy, just share it! The bus comes in ten minutes!”

“This is my toast! Rita can make her own!”

“Mom, please, can I have some toast?” said Rita.

Seeing all was lost, Helen snatched the toast and threw it into the kitchen sink. “There!” she shouted and ran out of the kitchen for her room again. Grabbing her books and ignoring Rita’s shrieks of dismay and her mother’s reprimands, Helen rushed past the kitchen, opened the front door and slammed it behind her. Fighting back tears, she ran down the steps for the end of the driveway, which was where the school bus stopped every morning at 7:20 a.m., give or take three minutes. It was still dark outside, except for a haze of light to the east over the rooftops of the subdivision.

Helen stopped at the road. She had a few minutes to herself, so she wiped her eyes, blew her nose in her handkerchief, and tried using her compact mirror, but it was still too dark out to see herself in it. Snapping her compact shut, she put it back in her purse, and then she realized she’d run out of the house without a coat. She had only her magenta sweater to go with her white blouse and just-below-the-knee powder-blue skirt. Worse, she’d forgotten to make herself a paper-bag lunch, too, so she’d have to spend thirty cents to buy one—or else go back in the house. Thirty cents it was, then.

Groaning, she looked down at her chilled, bare shins. At least her white socks and shoes were unstained, which was a miracle given the way she’d run out of the house through the leaf-filled yard. And her long fingernails were still intact. She’d put pink nail polish on them, stolen from Rita’s room.

“I hate this,” she muttered. Here she was, breakfast-less and lunch-less, freezing her buns off by a dark roadside waiting for a school bus. What if a crazy thrill killer drove by, someone like Charles Starkweather, and he kidnapped her or worse? Would her mother even care? Would Dad come out of the basement long enough to attend the funeral? Would Rita and Amy fight over which one got the best pew in the church? Probably.

Or . . . maybe one sunny morning, Helen would be standing there by the road, waiting for the school bus—when she was sixteen or so—and this nice car would come by, a red Corvette Stingray, and the driver would be a handsome blond guy from California, a lawyer—maybe secretly working for the government, too—and he’d pull over and ask where such-and-such a place was, and he’d be funny and she’d laugh, and he’d offer to drive her to school. Rita and Amy would both happen to be sick that day with scarlet fever, or maybe polio, so Helen would be at the bus stop alone, and she’d say, sure, and she’d get into the Corvette because she knew she could trust this guy, he was a nice man, and off they’d go.

Somehow they wouldn’t quite get to school but would instead stop at a coffee shop somewhere, and he’d tell her about his secret work with President Kennedy, righting wrongs all over America, and he’d fall in love with her and she’d go with him on missions to places like Cuba and the Bahamas and Hawaii, and they’d outsmart the enemies of peace and freedom, and one day they’d drive through Plainfield on their way to Washington, D.C. to meet with the President again and at a stoplight she’d look over, and there on the sidewalk would be her family, destitute and wearing rags, and Helen would wave and smile just as the light turned green and they roared off in the Corvette, and she would hear Rita scream in agony as they left.

That would be wonderful. The very idea thrilled her down to her toes.

The daydream faded as she heard a twig snap behind her. She didn’t turn at once, but instead pretended to yawn as she casually looked back at the house. Someone small was hiding behind the walnut tree in the front yard, with one foot and the edge of her skirt barely visible. Helen turned around as if she’d seen nothing, looking down the two-lane road for the school bus. She waited ten seconds, then said, “Knock it off, you little rodent. I see you behind the tree.”

Amy stepped out from behind the walnut tree and walked only a few feet closer before she stopped in the yard. She was far enough from Helen to have a good head start in case her sister began chasing her. She wore a buttoned-up dark brown coat and white socks with shiny black shoes, holding her books and her Rocky and Bullwinkle lunchbox.

“You can come closer,” said Helen. “I’m not mad.”

“Right,” said Amy, staying where she was.

“Doing anything in school today?” asked Helen.

“We have a field trip,” said Amy. “We’re going to a pumpkin field to pick out pumpkins for Halloween.” She frowned, staring at her big sister. “I bet I can make a jack-o-lantern that looks like your butt, if I can find a pumpkin fat enough.”

“Drop dead,” said Helen amiably.

“You first,” said Amy.

The front door slammed shut, and Rita danced down the front steps. Amy immediately moved to one side to get clear of both sisters, trying not to become trapped if they decided to join forces and chase her. As it was, neither Rita nor Helen showed any inclination to do that. It was just too cold.

Rita had her Marilyn Monroe hairdo protected with a scarf. It was just light enough now to tell she wore her canary yellow dress, the one with the white-checked blouse, covered only by a thick white cotton sweater. Without a trace of fear, she marched up to Helen and stood next to her at the bus stop, shivering a little from the cold wind. She’d remembered to bring her Junior Miss lunch pouch, at least.

“Mom’s really mad at you,” Rita said in a richly satisfied voice. “Wait till you get home tonight.”

“Kiss my ass,” said Helen, who had had enough.

Rita gasped and looked at her with huge eyes. “Oh, you are really going to get it when you get home!” she crowed. “I’m telling!”

Helen turned to her, her voice as cold as the wind. “And I’ll tell Mom you put on a bra when you get to school, and you stuff it with Kleenex until you’re a thirty-four C,” she said in a level voice. “I’ll even get witnesses—two teachers, for sure. I’ll even get copies made of that photo from that guy on the yearbook staff who sold me the negative, the one with your front sticking out like you put grapefruits in there. You know which photo I mean—the one with you smooching Frankie March.”

Rita stepped back but stayed at the bus stop. “You are in so much trouble,” she whispered, but her voice shook.

“So are you,” said Helen in a voice filled with promise. “You wanna tell first, or let me?”

“Bus is coming,” said Amy from the middle of the yard.

“Good,” said Helen. They remained in their standoff until the huge orange-yellow bus pulled up, red lights flashing, and the door opened. Helen let Rita on first, which surprised her sister. Helen then got on, but she stopped at the top of the steps—and waited.

Amy slowly approached the bus. A look of deep anxiety crossed her face as she saw the trap prepared for her. Though she hesitated before boarding, she gave in to the inevitable and climbed the steps, hunching her shoulders for what little protection it would give.

“Hi, rodent,” said Helen, giving her little sister a sharp pinch on the right arm when she got to the top of the steps. Amy jumped and shrieked, but Helen hung on. “Don’t you ever again call me what you called me at breakfast, got that?” Helen snapped, then let Amy go. Turning, Helen walked off to take a seat near the rear of the bus—but halfway there, she turned and pointed at Amy. “And you tell on me, you’ll get it again, double!”

Amy silently took a seat near the front and rubbed her arm, glaring back fiercely through her big-frame glasses. Helen thought she saw tears in Amy’s eyes. Maybe it was just a trick of the overhead aisle lights. A stab of remorse went through her, but it passed when she told herself that Amy deserved it. Call me a girl dog, will she? I’ve got the highest grade-point average in junior high, and she calls me that? She’s lucky she doesn’t get worse. Helen took her seat, wrapped in her self-righteousness like a mummy.

A boy with a crew cut and glasses thicker than Amy’s got on the bus and sat down next to Helen at the next bus stop. He was a freshman and one of the boys on the school’s math club. “You hear the news this morning?” he asked.

She fought down her gag reflex. This boy had the worst breath in Plainfield school history, on the level of First World War chemical weapons. “No,” she said, and she looked out the window to signal she wasn’t interested in talking or breathing his air.

“The Navy caught a Soviet ship sneaking in to Cuba,” he said. “They found missiles on it when they searched it, and Russia’s really mad and is telling us to give the ship back.”

“Whoopee,” said Helen.

“I bet they try something,” said the boy. “I bet they try to get it back. That would be great.”

“Great,” muttered Helen.

“I bet we bomb Castro, too,” said the boy. He pushed his glasses up on his nose with his middle finger. “I hope we fry him good. Dirty Commie. Better dead than red.”

Helen didn’t reply. The sky was brighter in the east, but it was amazing how dreary the landscape looked in the predawn light, the barren fields and bare trees and broken-down barns along the highway. The world was deserted and empty.

The ride to school was otherwise uneventful. The bus first unloaded the smaller children, including third-grader Amy and sixth-grader Rita, in front of Plainfield Elementary. Helen saw Amy walk around to her window, glare up at her, then shout with purest venom above the bus engine and noisy students: “I hope you die!” She walked off immediately after that, lost in the crowd of kids entering school. Helen wrinkled her nose in disgust. Amy was so immature.

Moments later, the bus went into gear and drove around to the front of the adjacent Plainfield High School, where Helen and the remaining students got out and walked up the steps to the doors. By the time she got inside, Helen’s teeth were chattering. She deeply regretted not getting her coat before she ran out.

She went to her locker, traded books around for the first half of her day, and checked her appearance in the mirror she kept hidden under one of her books. Her short brown hair was still in relatively good shape, curled under and bouncy as all get out, thanks to the hairspray she’d used. She touched it up with a comb, then hid the mirror and shut her locker. All she had left to do today was make her speech during third period, right before lunch, and the rest of the day was downhill from there to the weekend.

If she could shake off the knot in her stomach, it would be a perfect day. She remembered her mother’s face as she told Helen to bring her sisters home “if anything happened.” What did she think was going to happen? Nothing would happen. Nothing ever happened in this town. Everything exciting happened in Wilmington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C., at most only a day away over two-lane roads from tiny little Plainfield. Baltimore was closest, to the southeast. Helen had been there twice.

Swallowing, she took a deep breath and held it five seconds. The knot in her stomach eased. She then straightened her spine and lifted her chin. Today would be perfect. Nothing would go wrong. She relaxed a little and headed off for homeroom. Maybe she could bribe Amy with a couple of quarters to forget the pinch and let her watch “Route 66” in uninterrupted bliss. It was a steep price to pay, but worth it.

Chapter Three

The atmosphere in the hallways at Plainfield High was strained that morning. The whole week had been tense, ever since President Kennedy’s televised speech Monday night about the Soviet missile bases in Cuba and how America wouldn’t stand for it. On Wednesday and Thursday, men brought yellow boxes and barrels into the school storage rooms, Civil Defense symbols visible on each container. The boys whispered about war and fallout and Geiger counters and missiles and giant mutant ants. Today, a number of kids walked around with stricken expressions. Helen saw a girl crying as she hid her face. What was going on?

Helen walked to her homeroom class and heard a voice mixed with static as she came in. Most of the guys, the brains and the football players and the delinquents alike, were crowded around the teacher’s desk, listening to a plugged-in radio. The red morning sun peeked through tree branches at the windows.

“What’s going on?” Helen asked the pony-tailed girl in the seat in front of her, the only person she thought of as a close friend. Tiny, blonde Caroline Barkley was a junior varsity cheerleader, the youngest of them all and usually a fountain of chatty fun—but not now.

“I don’t know,” Caroline whispered in an uneasy tone. “Something about the Navy. I think there was a fight.”

A cold finger went down Helen’s spine again. “Where? You mean in Cuba?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to hear about it.” Caroline turned away and buried her face in her notebook, scribbling down answers from a Social Studies homework paper she’d borrowed for copying.

Helen hesitated, then got up and made her way to the front of the room where the guys were standing. She gathered a few strange looks as she went, but most of the class was used to the way Helen stuck her nose into whatever was going on, even if it was supposed to be guy stuff.

“—stated it had no information on casualties,” said the male voice on the radio as she got closer. “The Defense Department will neither confirm nor deny reports of a conflict involving U.S. naval forces and Cuban aircraft. We have been informed that the President might make an announcement this afternoon at one o’clock Eastern time, but we have no word if he’ll discuss these reports. We will break in to regular programming once we have further news on events taking place off the coast of Cuba.”

Pop music came on then, in the middle of an Elvis song. “Turn it up!” said one of the girls in the front row.

The teacher turned the radio off instead. “In your seats!” he shouted. “Let’s get roll call done!”

“Mister Gaines!” shouted a lanky boy on the basketball team. “Can the Russians get a bomb over this far into America? Like anywhere near where we are?”

The class laughed nervously. “Not likely,” said the homeroom teacher, frowning at his attendance roster as he checked off names. “I used to work at a school in New Mexico, near that White Sands missile-testing place. Rockets aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.”

“You worked with missiles?” someone else asked. “Wow!”

“No, I didn’t say that!” said Mr. Gaines irritably. “I said I worked near the place where they tested them. Missiles have a mind of their own. You shoot ‘em off, they’ll go anyplace. We’ve got nothing to worry about. The Reds don’t have any missiles around here, anyway.”

“They got those ones in Cuba,” someone reminded him. “And the Russians got bombers.”

“Yeah!” cried several other people.

“The Cuban missiles aren’t ready to be fired,” said Mr. Gaines, looking more irritated. “We found them in time. And planes—we’ll shoot down anything that gets into our airspace. The Russians haven’t—hey! McNeil, Arthur, Donaldson, the rest of you—sit down, or I’ll get out my board of education and educate your rear ends!”

Helen took her seat and pulled out the notes for her civil rights speech to study them. Her mind wouldn’t cooperate, however. Her attention jumped from word to work on the index cards, seeing them as collections of letters but not as words with meanings. This horse hockey about Cuba was getting on her last nerve. She remembered her wish this morning that this would happen, that there would be a war and the world would blow up, but what was wished for in righteous anger was pure nightmare now. When she realized she’d stared at the name “James Meredith” for half a minute and couldn’t remember who he was even though she knew who he was, she gave up and tucked her index cards in her American History book.

Mr. Gaines let the class talk in low voices once roll was called and the morning announcements were made over the intercom. Plainfield had an away football game that night, and everyone was encouraged to come out and support them. Classroom chatter turned to pro football and the usual all-guys argument over whether Green Bay, New York, or Dallas had the better team.

It was a blessing when the first-period bell rang. Helen gathered her books and set out for General Math. The teacher, Mrs. Williamson, was a thin, elderly woman capable of boring to death even the most devoted students, so Helen took the time to relax and daydream a little. As often happened when Helen was bored, she began to think about romance—and sex.

Careful to keep her math book open in front of her, she focused on the stapler on Mrs. Williamson’s desk and thought about the book she’d discovered last week in Rita’s bedroom under her mattress. Helen found it while searching for Rita’s diary for future blackmail material. The book was a far better find than the diary for blackmail purposes, but Helen became so attached to the volume, she couldn’t imagine turning it over to their mother. It was Sex and the Single Girl, by Helen Gurley Brown. A sex book, and another Helen had written it! Thrilled, Helen went through the book like lightning, soaking up the information. A single woman having sex! For fun! Any guy she wanted! Without getting married and having a baby! It was beyond imagining, too incredible to be true.

Just thinking about it made her edgy, but not in a bad way. It got her imagination pumping. What if she was at the drugstore having a root beer float one day, and Rita and Amy were off with Mother shopping in Lehman’s Department Store across the street, and this rakish guy with dark hair sat down nearby and ordered a hamburger. He’d be muscular and tall and look like he was having the best time of his life. She’d watch him, and he’d notice her watching him, and he’d smile and ask how she was doing, and they’d sit together and talk, and he’d pay for her float and show her his black Corvette Stingray parked out front.

You live around here? she’d ask him.

Nah, I’m from California, he’d say. Hollywood.

Hollywood? Really?

Yeah, I work in the movies, stunt-car driver. Pay’s good, the work’s fun. A little dangerous, but that makes it fun.

He’d laugh. He’d be so at ease, he’d put her at ease, and she’d laugh with him.

And after they drove around in his black Corvette for a while, racing other cars and maybe righting a wrong here and there, she’d ask to see where he was staying, after letting it drop that she was on The Pill (the details on how she was able to do that were not important), and he’d have a room in a hotel, nicer than the no-tell motel down the road that the high-school seniors were rumored to use, and the room would have scenic windows with a nice, clean room with a big white bed, and they’d walk into his room and he’d slowly shut the door and take her in his strong arms and then—

Things got a little dark at this point in the fantasy because Helen wasn’t exactly sure what was supposed to happen, but she was a knot of tension, practically dancing in her seat in a fever. Her brain had shut down, processing nothing except for a need to do something she couldn’t name, a need that reached out into every part of her body from her head and feet to her—

FLASH

Helen jerked and blinked, wide awake and back in math class. A brilliant flash of light had gone through the room, which meant—

Without thinking, Helen threw herself out of her desk and dropped to the floor, ducking and covering as she had been taught all her childhood to do. She steeled herself for the heat and blast and flying glass and falling walls.

Everyone began to laugh. “What are you doing?” said the guy who sat behind her. “Are you nuts?”

Shaking all over, Helen slowly straightened and looked around. The whole class was laughing at her. Mrs. Williamson was at the windows, opening them as she always did to send some cold air around the room and wake up the sleepy students, and as she pulled another window open, the sunlight flashed on the pane exactly like the previous flash of light.

Helen stood up and took a seat at her desk, her face burning with shame. Her daydream was a shambles.

“Goodness, what is everyone carrying on about?” Mrs. Williamson asked from the windows. “You should be studying now! Miss Barksdale, is there a problem?”

“I dropped something,” she mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

Mrs. Williamson stared at her a moment more, then went back to opening windows. Other students snickered and watched Helen for the rest of the period, waiting to see if she’d do something else crazy.

The second-period bell rang after a million years of this torture. She made it to her Home Economics class and took her seat, grateful that no one here had been in General Math a few minutes ago. Caroline the tiny cheerleader took the seat ahead of Helen. Snapping gum in her mouth, Caroline grinned at Helen, her blonde ponytail bouncing in its usual perky way.

“Wanna piece?” Caroline asked, holding out a stick of gum.

Helen shook her head. “No, thanks. How was your morning?”

“Oh, it got better. French is always fun. I wish I understood what everyone was saying, though.”

Helen smiled. Caroline wasn’t very bright, but she made everyone around her feel good and was immensely popular. Perhaps because Caroline was no threat to Helen’s first-place position in grade-point averages, Helen thought of her fondly and depended on her high spirits to lift Helen’s own. Helen was also more honest with Caroline than with anyone else alive.

“I fell out of my desk last period, in math,” Helen said, reddening again. “It embarrassed me to death.”

“Oh, no! Are you okay? I think they make these desk seats too high.”

“I’m okay. It was just something stupid. Hey, what are you doing tonight? Oh, right—the game.”

“Yeah. We have to be on the bus at . . .” Caroline’s voice trailed off as she looked at the doorway. “Who’s that?” she asked.

Helen looked. She recognized the mother of one of the other girls in Home Ec, standing in the doorway and talking in a loud whisper to the teacher, Miss Barnes. “That’s Sally’s mom,” Helen said. “What’s she doing?”

Miss Barnes turned back to the all-girl class with an anxious look. “Sally?” she called, and made a come-hither motion with her hand. “Get your things, please. Your mother’s here to pick you up.”

“What? Where are we going?” Sally asked.

“Come on!” her mother called, waving. “Get your things right now!”

“Is something happening?” Miss Barnes asked her mother, but her mother did not answer. Sally got her books and walked uncertainly for the door, where her mother put her arm around her and guided her away at a rapid pace.

The starting bell for class rang. Miss Barnes sighed and shut the door. “Well,” she said, walking to the front of the room, “as promised, today we’re going to make a grocery list.” She stopped at the blackboard and wrote OUR LIST on the board in white chalk. “Okay, let’s say you’re shopping for a family of four. There’s you, your husband, and two children, one six years old and one a baby. What kinds of things will you need?”

Hands shot up all over the room. Call on me, call on me! thought Helen, prepared to talk about ready-to-eat lasagna.

“Emily,” said Miss Barnes, pointing somewhere else.

“Diapers,” said Emily, “tons of them.”

“Right,” said Miss Barnes with a smile, “but I should have been more specific. We’re just going to the grocery store today. Look at the four basic food groups and think about it. Let’s say you’re all out of—”

Someone knocked on the door. Miss Barnes sighed again. “Julie, would you get that, please?”

Julie, whose chair was closest to the door, answered it, then stepped back. “It’s Dorothy’s mom,” she said, looking at Dorothy, the tallest girl in the class.

Abruptly, Dorothy’s mother—a short, frumpy woman with graying hair and a faded print dress—pushed past Julie and walked into the room. Without a word, she grabbed her daughter and pulled her out of her seat, heading for the door.

“Mom!” said Dorothy as she was dragged along. “What’s going on?”

“Excuse me!” cried Miss Barnes. “Excuse me, Mrs. Hastings? Mrs. Hastings, please!”

Dorothy’s mother did not stop. She pulled Dorothy out the door and was gone down the hall at a half run, pulling her protesting daughter behind her. Everyone stared at the open door and listened to the sound of the footsteps retreating.

“Class,” said Miss Barnes, putting down the chalk, “I’ll be right back. Stay in your seats, please.” She strode quickly for the classroom door and headed down the hall.

“Where’s she going?” someone asked.

Julie got up and peeked out the door. “She went in the junior high office,” she said. “Some other teachers are there, too.”

“Maybe she’s going to report Dorothy’s mom,” said someone else. “She’s weird.”

“Yeah,” said several other girls. Talk broke down at that point into dozens of small conversations, everyone looking nervously at the door, where Julie kept watch.

Helen noticed that Caroline was clutching her stomach and appeared ill. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Caroline shook her head. “No,” she said in a weak voice. “I’m scared. Something’s wrong, I know it.”

Helen put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay,” she said, but she wasn’t sure she believed that. “Things are fine, really. People are just acting strange today. Everything’s under control, though. I’m sure of it.”

Caroline nodded, but she covered her mouth with her hand and shut her eyes. “I can’t stand this,” she whispered. “It makes me so scared. I wish they would stop it.”

“Shhh,” said Helen. She got up and crouched on the floor by Caroline’s desk, taking her hand from her stomach. “It’ll be all right, okay? Listen, it’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine.”

A tear fell from Caroline’s chin and splashed on Helen’s hands. Caroline hid a sob, but everyone heard it anyway. Within moments, other girls came over to offer comfort until Caroline was swamped with well-wishers. Uncomfortable, Helen felt she was getting in the way, so she pulled back and let Caroline’s other friends move in.

And, as she did, she thought about Rita and Amy.

If anything happens, you find Rita and Amy, and you bring them home at once, right here. Don’t stop for anything. You get them and come right home. Nothing else matters.

Helen stepped back toward the door. Her eyes were on Caroline’s ponytail, all that was visible of her through the crowd.

You’re the oldest, so you’re in charge. You do whatever you have to do, but get them here. That’s all I’m asking, okay?