The Seventh Day by Tara Brown writing as A.E. Watson

second to
recall everything that happened yesterday. The fuzz starts to melt away as my
vision returns and giggling tickles at my ears. Distant giggling.
    I glance around the vehicle, realizing the
girls are gone. I open the door and jump out, almost hanging myself with the seat
belt. “JOEY!” I press the belt button, releasing myself, and grab the gun.
Songa is still in my left hand when I round the vehicle and see the three girls
stacking rocks and laughing.
    I drop to my knees, catching my breath.
“Wha-what happened?”
    Joey stands there, startled, looking at the
gun in my hand. I tuck it behind my back and in my pants, praying I don't shoot
my ass off like my dad always said I would. “What happened?” I ask again.
    “What happened where?” Joey looks at her
friends, shaking her head. Julia frowns. “We were playing.”
    “You screamed my name, Jo. I heard it. You
woke me up.”
    She looks confused. “I never screamed.”
    They all look the same, lost in my
question—even Furgus, who comes bounding over to me like a big sloppy
dog. He too seems to have forgotten the prior day’s activities.
    “Weird. So you’re okay?” I clear my throat,
seeing my breath in front of my face. I try to calm myself after the startling
wake up.
    “We’re fine.” Joey glances around us. “We
were playing with Gus.”
    She’s right. We’re fine because it appears
that we are alone on the hill, as far as this section of cabins goes. I can’t
believe our aunt and uncle haven’t come to the cabin. I had hoped they would be
here. Older male cousins were a happy thought.
    I get up, trying
to rationalize a hundred things as the feelings from the day before hit me. I
have to remember that we are here and we are safe. That's the important thing.
I can’t control a single other thing.
    “Help me unload.” I get the keys from the
SUV and go open the door to the cabin.
    It’s stale. No one has been here all year
long. The summers up at Red Mountain are a touch sad. They try to do the whole
ecotourism up here but it sucks. Montana has some amazing summer mountain
experiences but ours is pretty lame. Our town, Laurel, is close to Billings. We
are considered a suburb of the city, but we are more like a crappy little town
than a suburb. The only benefit is the short drive to a ski hill and the city.
Our town is almost in the middle of the drive for the city dwellers.
    I look down at the fact I’m holding a gun
and a stuffed animal and assume that’s a sign of the times. I’m seventeen—a
child compared to the problems I’m facing, and yet, old enough to hold a gun
and mean business if I have to, I guess.
    If Joey could do it to our mother, I could
do it too. Maybe not our mother. I think we would all
be infected right now, had it been me holding the gun.
    The cabin is empty but I feel like the
shadows in it still taunt me. My footsteps on the floorboards squeak as I creep
about. I’m relieved to see it is as it was when I was last here. The bedroom on
the main floor is dusty but clean otherwise. The loft bedrooms are spotless,
apart from some evidence of squirrels or mice.
    The little kitchen and dining room are just
as clean as we would have left them, if the cabin were still ours.
    When my father turned down a better paying
private-sector job in the city, my mother made him sell our cabin to her
brother as punishment. She said we needed the money.
    I knew then it wasn’t true. She just wanted
him to suffer. She wanted us all to suffer. She wanted things her way.
    I hate the emotions that are tied with
that. I hate that I still think she’s selfish, regardless of the fact she’s possibly
dying alone in a closet.
    Joey and the girls start loading the
massive living room with food and bags. They all look funny, still in an uneasy
way. Lissie starts to cry when she sees me coming down the rickety loft stairs.
“I want my mom. I want to know if she’s okay.” This makes Julia start, which in
turn makes Joey cry. The three