Closer To Heaven by Patrick Sean Lee (books to read romance .txt) 📖

I ran all the way to the park, and then I stopped and pulled out the plastic map, which I had folded once, and then once more so that it would fit into the big pouch of Lashawna’s backpack. I looked back in the direction I had just come from, and then at the map, which I had laid down on the sidewalk. I needed to go left on that street because left was north, and so I did. I looked into the park when I got there, but I didn’t see the cloud, and I was thankful for that. I prayed that it wasn’t waiting somewhere in front of me, north.

            I walked for a long time. I tried not to think about the cloud or Munster or the murderer, so I thought about my school, Vincent James Elementary. My school was marked on the map, and I knew it easily because I was good at spelling its name, and I found it on the map. It was in the opposite direction from Saint Andrew’s and my old house, too. South. I thought about my teacher at Vincent James Elementary, Ms. Terrel. She was very nice, except when you misbehaved, and she was beautiful.

            Ms. Terrel taught us how to add and subtract numbers, like 436 minus 213, instead of 4 minus 2 like we learned from Ms. Abercrombie last year in the second grade. I didn’t like math very much. I liked Social Science best, except for Art, maybe. I liked art better. Ms. Terrel told us about where we lived in Marysville in Social Science. Long ago there weren’t very many houses and neighborhoods in Marysville. Instead, the people who lived here worked on farms that grew my favorite fruit. Not tomatoes! Strawberries. And we learned a little about maps, and I was glad for that on that afternoon, except I didn’t know that north was always up, and south was always down until Jerrick told me.

            I walked and I thought about my school, and when I came to a new street I would say, “Curb,” and when I went over a big crack in the sidewalk I would say, “Crack,” although I didn’t really need to say either of those words. I stopped whenever I came to a new street and looked for it on my plastic map, because if I didn’t, I knew I might turn wrong, and then I would be lost, and I wished my Momma or Daddy were still alive.

            But, they weren’t.

Ms. Terrel made our class draw pictures and color them. One day before the cloud came and killed everyone she had us draw a picture of our families, and so I drew Momma and Daddy and me in front of our house. I colored almost everything Purple and Red and Orange, because Orange is my favorite color. In my picture I was in the middle, and Momma had her dress on, and Daddy was hard to draw because he wore pants. I wasn’t good at drawing pants for some reason, so I colored his legs big black, which made my daddy look like he had big fat legs. We had a tree in front of our house, though I don’t know what kind, but I made it green because leaves are green, except in the Fall when they turn ORANGE sometimes, and fall off onto the lawn, which was also green. Some trees have leaves that stay green all the time and don’t fall, but I don’t know why.

            Jason Smith drew his family, too. He sat next to me at our table. He had three sisters and one younger brother, and he drew all of them, and Jason was one of the boys who Ms. Terrel punished sometimes because he was bad, and he got in trouble when he showed me his picture. He drew a picture of his family, with his daddy and his momma on one side, and all his sisters and one brother on the other. His daddy didn’t have pants on, and Jason drew a you-know-what in between his daddy’s legs. He showed the picture to me and began to giggle, but I didn’t, because it wasn’t nice. Ms. Terrel saw Jason giggling and she came up behind him, and she saw the naughty picture, and so Jason was punished, but I wasn’t.

            I walked and walked and looked at my plastic map a lot. I was very close to the hospital finally. It was only a tiny ways away on my map. I crossed N Tustin Ave., and I could see the tall building that was white not too far away.

It was sunny and not cold and I was hungry, so I sat on a bench at the place where buses stopped and picked people up and dropped them off. I drank some water and ate three crackers with peanut butter and jelly that Jerrick put in Lashawna’s black backpack when we packed it. I’d told him, “This one is the Skippy peanut butter,” and “that one is Ragu spaghetti sauce. I don’t want that.” But he knew, he said, because he “recognized” some jars by their shape, and if he wasn’t sure what they were, he would open them and smell them. As I drank my water and ate the crackers with peanut butter and a little jelly on top, I wondered what Jerrick was doing right at that moment? I wondered if Lashawna was getting skinny and dying because she couldn’t eat? And so I stood up and grabbed my backpack and ran the rest of the way to the hospital.

I was frightened at first because I knew there were hundreds and hundreds of dead people inside, but I also knew I would have to go in and find the jar or bag with the tube coming out of it so that Lashawna could eat and not die. The big glass doors wouldn’t open, and I wondered why, but then I remembered that they opened by themselves whenever people got near them. I pushed as hard as I could, but they wouldn’t move. I took my backpack off. I sat down right there in front of the doors and I wanted to cry. I’d walked so far, but I couldn’t get in, and now Lashawna would starve to death. And suddenly I remembered that the doors went out whenever they opened. I remembered that, and so I stood back up and put my fingers in the tiny crack between the doors. I wished I had fingers like Jerrick’s that were long, but I didn’t. I pulled outward as hard as I could. The door opened a little, but I fell backward onto my behind when it did. The smell came out, and my stomach wanted to throw up my lunch. It was much worse than the smell in my old house, and worse than the smell at the mini-mart, and I didn’t know if I could go into the hospital. I had to, though.

I got up and pulled the door open all the way and went in. I covered my mouth and my nose with my hand, but I started to get dizzy right away, and my head began to ache. In the long hallway lots of people were lying there. Some were men, and some were women, and I saw a little boy who was lying on top of his mother. Germy flies flew around them. The flies flew after me, but I brushed them away and hoped they wouldn’t land on me and make me sick.

I didn’t know what was what, and I didn’t see any rooms with people who had been sick inside them, so I went to the elevators, but then I ran from them because I knew they couldn’t work anymore. I found a door that had STAIR written above it, and so I pulled that door open and went up the stairs to the next floor.

On that floor, which was Number Two, I searched every room. I hoped I’d find a dead body with a tube in it, but I didn’t find any, so I ran back to the stairway and went up to Number Three. I looked in almost every room, but there were no bodies with tubes going into them with food. I ran to the stairway again and went up higher, to Number Four. I searched again and again in every room until I finally saw what Jerrick had told me to look for. I didn’t look at the man lying there with a sheet over part of his body, but not his face, I just ran to the bed and yanked the tube out of his arm. The needle came out, too, but I didn’t care. I would find some scissors or a knife and cut it later. I put the bag with the tube and the needle into my backpack quickly, but I wasn’t finished. I had to find more bags with food in them, and more needles. Jerrick hadn’t said anything about where they would be, so I thought, If I were a doctor, where would I put more bags of food and needles for this dead man who didn’t used to be dead?

In a drawer, maybe…or in the closet on the other side of the room! I ran to the closet and opened it, but it was a bathroom. I left the door open and turned around. I would try the drawers. I looked in every one of them, and in every cabinet, and even under the bed, but there were no other bags or tubes, and so I left the dead man. I ran outside to the place where two dead nurses were lying behind a counter, and one was sticking half in and half out of the opening. Nothing in there either, and I wanted to shake those dead nurses, and yell at them, and make them tell me where the bags with food and the tubes with needles were. I stepped backward and my foot came down on the nurse’s arm, the one sticking half in and half out of the opening, and I felt the nurse’s arm squish. Goo squirted onto my foot. I got sick. I threw up, and I left that room as quickly as I could, holding my tummy.

I’m not sure why, but I looked across the hall and saw a little door. It wasn’t a door into a room where sick people lay. It was too small to go in through. It was open a little, and under it, sitting all sagged over, was another dead nurse. Her head was hanging down, and in her purple hand was a bag. A food bag. I hurried there, being careful not to touch her with my foot, and then I opened the door all the way. Inside were lots of bags and tubes and needles. There was no food in them, but I took six of each of them and stuffed them into my backpack anyway, and then I ran toward the stairway.

I thought maybe Jerrick and me could mush up Rice Krispies and water and pour it into the bags, and then