Chapter Eleven Page One, Mary and Dani, Their Houses

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Mary checked the clock and rose. She rifled through the scrambled thoughts of the previous night, trying to sort them into coherent piles. She remembered that Neil had left. She grabbed her phone and thought about texting him, hey, or something. She had a mild hangover. She scolded herself for not having more water before going to sleep, instead of scolding herself for having had as much alcohol as she had.

            She walked out of her room. She couldn’t remember if Hana had left or not. She looked in the living room, and then in the driveway. Hana was nowhere to be found. She sighed in relief. She checked to see how much she had to clean up. But there wasn’t anything she could find. They’d only used three glasses the entire night, and Hana seemed to have taken whatever was left of the handle they’d been drinking out of.

            Mary took aspirin, grabbed a glass of water, and sat down in front of the television. She watched a few shows. She checked her phone again and saw nothing. She shrugged and typed hey and sent it to Neil.

            Hey arrived thirty seconds later, in reply.

            How’re you feeling?

      I’m doing alright. You?

      I’m ok, Mary texted back. She wasn’t sure what else to say.

            When it was three in the afternoon she did some homework.

She wondered when dinner would be, and sent a text to her dad. When will you be back?

She finished her homework around four and saw that she hadn’t gotten a reply from her dad yet. She went on her computer. She checked an image aggregation site. She browsed the photography for a few hours, focusing mostly on images of deserts for a time.

Around four thirty she resent her last text to her dad. She wasn’t sure if he’d gotten it or not.

Dani awoke around ten and went for a run. She passed by Mary’s house, Neil’s house, and Dave’s house, before returning to her own. She showered. Around two, she found Will in the kitchen.

“Hey, chicken face,” she said.

“Hey, you’re alive. That’s cool. I’m glad she didn’t come and eat you guys,” he said, “I did something right.”

“Give it a rest,” Dani said. She had no time for Will pretending to have done something good. “What are you doing today?” She asked, “Wait, don’t answer that. I already know the answer.”

“Oh yeah?” He asked.

“Doing nothing and making up stupid stories,” she said.

“Oh, burn, or whatever,” he said, “I’m starting to really regret saving your life.”

“Bring it, guy,” she said, “You and me, let’s have a fight. Like the pugilist gods of yore.”

“That’s dumb,” Will said, “Also I’d totally annihilate you. Mom and dad have never given you any training, have they?”

“No,” Dani said. It bothered her immensely. She knew it was part of their continued efforts to train Will to be the hero that would save the world from the apocalypse, but Dani still thought it was stupid. “So, seriously, are you doing anything today?”

“No,” Will said, “I’m exhausted from being a hero.”

“Ha-ha,” Dani said, “I’m really getting anxious about this day coming up. It feels like there’s nothing to do today.”

“Right,” Will said, “If you wanna do something stupid, you can always head down to the warehouse on North Street, Downtown, and start asking about briefcases.”

“Ok,” Dani said, “Is that related to that stupid story you made up?”

“It’s related to that story that I didn’t make up because it was real and actually happened,” he said.

“Neat, I’ll go check it out, right now, just let me get ready real quick and I’ll be going down there and asking about briefcases and girls who want to eat people.”

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