Snowflake, AZ Read online

  Snowflake, AZ

  Snowflake, AZ

  Marcus Sedgwick

  AN IMPRINT OF HEAD OF ZEUS

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Zephyr, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  Text copyright © Marcus Sedgwick, 2019

  The moral right of Marcus Sedgwick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organisations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781788542333

  ISBN (E): 9781788542326

  Author Photograph: Maureen Hansman

  Jacket Image credit: Getty Images

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  Inspired in part by my own experience of a disputed illness, and named for a real community afflicted by multiple chemical sensitivities, SNOWFLAKE, AZ is nonetheless a work of fiction. All of the people and animals appearing in these pages, and all of the incidents, events, scenes, and dialogues concerning them, are products of my own imagination and not to be construed as real. What is real is the suffering caused by environmental illness, and the ingenuity required of those who live with it.

  —MS

  For the sensitives.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  SNOWFLAKE, AZ

  Chapter 1

  A: Away

  Chapter 2

  B: But You Don’t Look Sick

  Chapter 3

  C: Canaries

  D: Dead Elf

  Chapter 4

  E: Environmental Illness

  F: Fluoxetine

  Chapter 5

  G: Glyphosate

  H: Hawthorne Effect

  I: I can’t cure you, so you must be mad

  J: Jenny

  Chapter 6

  K: Knight of the Happy Countenance

  L: Learning to Be Someone Else

  M: Metronidazole, God of Pharma

  N: Nocebo

  O: Obviously you know what sex a goat is when you buy him. Or her. Or him.

  P: Polleux

  Q: Quis me liberabit de corpore mortis huius?

  R: Role of the COMT Val158Met Polymorphism

  S: Selfish Gene

  T: Time

  U: Undiagnosis

  V: Voltaire

  W: The Wizard of AZ

  X: Xerotic Fiction

  Y: Yes, there is a thing called science and it can give you answers

  Z: Zanjero

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  About Zephyr

  SNOWFLAKE, AZ

  As I sat on line for the water pump the other day, perched on my plastic barrel, the man behind looked me up and down and said, ‘So what’s your story?’

  I shrugged and told him it was probably the same as anyone else’s, more or less, just perhaps with more gas masks and a goat. We all know what happened to the world, and that’s a story that won’t be forgotten. But not every story happens to everybody in the same way, and that set me thinking that maybe I should write my story down, so there’s a record of what happened to one person.

  All histories take place in the past, and this one is more past than some; it took place in the old days, before what happened. It’s longer than some, too, but it’s gonna take me just as long as it needs to get told. Maybe more than seven days, maybe even seven months. Heaven help me if it takes seven years.

  Chapter 1

  A

  Away

  The goat ate my sneakers. As I recall, that was the first thing. And I can’t promise you for sure, since it’s all so darned long ago now, but I always figured that set down the next seven years of my life. More or less. You can’t be too certain of things like that. But I do know this. I’d been in Snowflake less than ten minutes and already I was wrapped in nothing but a towel on a storm-wet porch, and when I looked around, Socrates had gone and ate up one of my sneakers and was halfway through the second for dessert. Socrates was the goat. By the way.

  There was me. Just off the overnight Greyhound. Halfway around the great nation, till I got to the bus depot in the little town with the funny name, and I thought to myself, well ain’t it supposed to be hot and sunny in Arizona, for it was not. It was hot and wet, and the rain did not want to stop, I could see that without asking. Then I walked near enough eight miles out of town, till I reckoned I was lost, so I started trying to hitch a ride and you don’t get no prizes for thinking that no one stopped, but as it turned out, in the end someone did. Strangest-looking car I’d ever seen. Like an SUV that had gotten shrunk by the rain. Tiny rusty yellow thing. Kinda funny. Mona told me later it was Japanese and that once upon a time hers had been on a Soviet Antarctic expedition, but she might have been funning me. It was always hard to tell with Mona. Anyway, she said it was as good in the desert as it had been for the Ruskies in the snow, and it was even good in monsoon season, Arizona-style, that is.

  So the car stopped and Mona peered out at me through the wound-down window and asked me where I was headed, and when I showed her the postcard with the address on it she said, ‘Bly’s your brother, am I right?’ Then she burst out laughing like she was a Pez dispenser. I didn’t see what was so funny. I was just wondering how she knew who I was.

  So I nodded and said, ‘I’m Ash.’

  Then she said, ‘You sick?’ just like that and outta nothing. And I didn’t understand but maybe I looked all washed up. So anyway, I shook my head and said, ‘No, ma’am, I am not,’ because I figured she was wondering about giving me a ride. And still she kept staring at me, and I felt I had to say something else, so I said, ‘Nothing wrong with me, ma’am. I am perfectly healthy.’ Which I know sounds dumb but I was real desperate for that ride and that’s what I said.

  Then she fixed me and said, ‘Never met no one perfectly healthy,’ and she took one more long look at me and finally she said, ‘Well, I suppose it’s raining’ and shoved the door open.

  ‘You better come along with me,’ she said, and that I did.

  As it fell out, I wasn’t lost at all. I’d come straight to the place. We were in her car for less than ten minutes all told, off the highway and down a dirt road across the bumpy old desert which was going underwater in parts, and it just about gave Mona time to say ‘So I’m Mona’ and not much else. But I could see I was bothering her. Me being there, I mean. She kept glancing sidelong at me. Frowning and such. Plus I had the feeling she was trying not to breathe too much. I found out later what she meant by ‘I suppose it’s raining.’ It didn’t mean she picked me up because I was getting wet. It meant she figured that because I was wet like a fish I might be a tad safer.

  The second we pulled up in front of her house she said, ‘Right, kid, out you get,’ which I did and then she said, ‘Wait here, huh?’ and pointed at the porch where I stood with my bag. Inside the house I heard voices, Mona’s and someone else, but both so low I couldn’t make it out. I dawdled on the porch, wet and wondering what they were saying, because I knew that they were talking about me. That didn’t need no explanation. I snuck a peek through the screen door, and there was Mona and a younger
lady, and they were putting their heads together and figuring out something complicated, as much as I could tell. Hands were getting waved around. Then Mona turned and out she came to the porch and said, ‘To the showers!’ and pointed in the air dramatically and giggled all at once.

  I guess I didn’t move then because I was confused. Because I was already wetter than the ocean.

  Then Mona said to me, real slow, ‘You have to get clean.’

  Real, real slow. Like I was stupid. Which I guess I was, back then. I started to head inside through the screen door and she took a coupla quick steps back and held out her hand like a traffic cop, and then she said, ‘You have to take your clothes off here.’ Again, real slow.

  There was a bit of business then while she explained about off-gassing and venting and the dangers thereof, and about Mary (who was the other lady) being in the house and being super-sensitive and all. Then she explained how they’d be out back looking at Mary’s papers and how the bathroom was just through on the right and how I’d find a towel waiting for me when I got back to the porch. And when I asked why maybe I couldn’t take the towel with me in the first place, Mona explained that I was an ‘unknown quantity’ and they didn’t know if I could follow instructions and right now the instructions were not to touch the towel until I had gotten myself all washed up.

  Then she left and I stood looking out at the bumpy old desert, which was still being pounded by the rain, and it all looked pretty darn empty. I could see some other houses, low single-story ones like Mona’s with metal sidings and dirty red or pale green tin roofs. But they were a good ways off, and I figured that unless they had a telescope trained on this particular porch I was safe enough, so I started pulling my pants down and then Mona stuck her head around the corner of the porch and said, ‘Don’t forget your hair!’ and then went off giggling before I had a chance to pull ’em back up again.

  I set my clothes on a set of metal shelves there on the porch and went inside, hoping to find the bathroom straight off. But I didn’t. First I tried a door on the right and that was the room with the laundry in it, and then straight ahead was the main room, with a kind of a kitchen at one end, and a desk and a bed at the other. Through a door to the back I could see Mona and the other woman, so that was Mary, and they were only just outside on the back porch but they were poring over a bunch of paperwork or something, so even though I was as naked as when I landed on the planet, I stood and wondered where the hell I was.

  What I mean is, the walls were papered with tinfoil. All of ’em. Right around the big room, and the ceiling, and when I finally found the bathroom, it was the same. Tinfoil wallpaper. The whole house. Huh.

  You know, I washed pretty darn good. That thing Mona had said about following instructions, well, I sure was gonna prove I could follow instructions, that I could do what I was bid, so I washed up good. Though not with any kind of shampoo I’d ever seen before. I stood in the bathtub with the shower running, reading the bottle of shampoo and wondering what it all meant about paraben-free and sulfate-free and everything-free and then I was thinking about the tinfoil and then what Mona had said about the possibility that I might go and vent all over ’em. Whatever that was.

  So by the time I got back outside, I was confused all to bits and I was just noticing that my clothes had disappeared and reaching for the towel Mona had left for me when a truck pulled up and out stepped a guy in a faded red T-shirt and wearing a mask, like the kind you wear when you do home improvements or something. And for a split second I wondered if he was here to rob the place but then he pulled the mask off and it was Bly.

  And I don’t know what he thought but I know I was embarrassed enough for both of us, because sure, we used to take baths together, but that was when he was six and I was four, and when he’s twenty and you’re eighteen, it ain’t the same. It surely ain’t. But Bly was always a good kid to me, kinda like a brother. Which is me making a joke, because that’s what he was. My stepbrother, but like we always used to say, what’s the step got to do with it? Yeah, I know I ain’t funny.

  Bly looked away until I was wrapped up and then he ran from the rain and the dog who’d been in the truck with him came too, and they both bounded onto the porch and Bly gave me a quick hug and said ‘hey’ like I’d only seen him yesterday and the dog started licking my toes. Must’ve been the no-nothing shampoo.

  I laughed at the dog and looked at Bly and then I said, ‘So, how are you?’ and he shook his head and looked away and I felt bad for asking but, hell, that was why I’d come all this darned distance.

  Then we stood looking at each other and grinning because it was great to see him and I guess it had been more than a while and then his face suddenly went all funny-looking and he shouted, ‘Socrates!’ That was when I turned and just around the corner of the house saw a goat finishing off my sneakers.

  Mona told me later why he was called Socrates. It was on account of the Greek philosopher (approx. 470 BC to 399 BC, she told me, which was a kinda weird thing to say. She even said ‘approx’). Seems the old Socrates had this trick, they call it Socratic irony, which was where he pretended to be dumb while he debated with someone, but really he was much smarter than them, and by letting them run on and on and then by him saying one or two apparently dumb (but in point of fact smart) things, he’d make them look stupid. Mona said it was the same with the goat. And he sure was smarter than he looked, because he’d taken my sneakers off of the shelf where I’d left them and gone out of sight around the side of the house to get to work on ’em without interruption.

  And it was still raining, soft and silver on the grey-red desert. Mona said it was all right and I could go inside now, so I did, in my towel, and Bly disappeared straightways off and went to get a shower because he said he’d been with the normies.

  I said ‘er, hello’ to Mary, and Mary said hello back. She had a roll of papers in her hand that she waved at Bly as he went, and she said ‘morons!’ and Bly said, ‘Ain’t that the truth’ and I thought ‘what?’ because I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.

  Mary was skinny, like Mona, but she had wavy brown hair while Mona’s was goose-gray, and longer. Mona was tiny, at least I thought so for an age, until I realized she often just acted tiny. If that sounds stupid, I can’t explain it no better. Like, if she stood up and slowed down, she wasn’t so tiny after all. And when she slowed down I could see she’d once been real pretty, still was, I guess, but you never got to see that because she was always rushing around in a blur. Almost always. She was maybe fifty-something, which I figured was old, but Mary was only old to me because I was a kid then. I don’t know for sure, maybe she was early thirties. Ancient. Now I know better what ancient feels like; I guess most of us do.

  Mona couldn’t seem to make one whole sentence without laughing at the end of it, or maybe halfway through, but Mary didn’t barely smile, just a tiny bit when she said hello, like she was scared. Which it turned out she was, of me, because after about ten minutes she looked at Mona and Mona looked at her and nodded and then they told me I was still giving something off that was upsetting Mary, but Mary said, ‘It’s okay, I have stuff to do, and anyway, thanks for the tea and all.’

  She picked up the stack of papers and I only found out later what that was about, namely she was having trouble with her health insurance company. Anyway, after she went that left me looking at the floor, mostly, and Mona looking at me, smiling. Then the smile went a little and she said, ‘Hey, did Bly tell you your mother was here?’ and I said ‘nope’ and she said, ‘He didn’t tell you yet?’ and I shook my head and was thinking what-the-heck-my-mom-was-here but out loud I said, ‘Oh. Uh, when was that?’

  Mona said, ‘Recently,’ and when I asked how long that was, she thought and said, ‘About six months.’

  Then Bly came out of the shower, and he’d changed his clothes, so I asked Mona if I could have my clothes back and she said, ‘Sure,’ but she didn’t get up to get them or anything and so then I asked ‘when?’ a
nd she said ‘soon.’ Then I asked how long soon was and she thought about it and said, ‘About six months.’ Then she thought some more and added, ‘I guess. It sort of depends.’ And then she laughed.

  Bly looked at me and tried to explain how my clothes would need to be off-gassed for a few months, which meant getting all the chemicals out of them and getting ’em safe to wear again. When I asked what that meant, he said they’d leave them in a tub of water in the yard, and after that they’d dry them out in the sun, and then they’d be okay.

  I looked at him and said ‘for six months’ and he just shrugged.

  So then I was ready to ask a question, which was ‘where the hell am I?’ (only I didn’t say hell) and Mona chuckled at my bad language and said, ‘You’re here!’ and when I asked where ‘here’ was, she said, ‘Away. Here is Away.’ I guess I looked confused again because she explained, ‘That’s what they told us. All of us, sooner or later.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘The people. Normies. Any people. Sooner or later, they’d say, “If you don’t like the darned world so much, why don’t you go away?” So we did. We went here. Away.’

  She giggled and said, ‘Let’s have that tea,’ and Bly went off and came back after five minutes with some clothes to wear which were his and weren’t so bad, just a little big for me, but the only shoes they could find was a pair of work boots that were approximately sixteen sizes too big, and when I put them on Mona said if only they could paint my nose red I could join the circus, so I decided I wasn’t going to be leaving any day soon until I had some proper-sized shoes back.

  Then Mona said, ‘I wonder what will happen next.’ And laughed.

  Chapter 2

  B

  But You Don’t Look Sick