Eliot Strange and the Prince of the Resistance

10) Second Chance

"Second chance?" I ask. "What do you mean second chance?" But, before she can answer, Cindy Lou comes busting into the room.

Cindy is holding her old, ratty baby doll she got from her friend Myrtle. Myrtle who was like Cindy, innocent and sweet, living in a group home before the EMP, but then deserted to fend for themselves after things got crazy.

The innocent and sweet don't survive long in this world. Myrtle died in a hail of bullets, along with Steven's grandmother, at the town library. Cindy said Myrtle loved to read, and she loved her baby dolls. Cindy had one now, but if she didn't quit twisting its head around, it was going to soon be a headless doll.

"Is it true?" she asks. "Are the babies gone. Are the kids gone?"

"I didn't know you knew them, Cindy," I say. "I'm very sorry. They are gone."

"I did know them," she says while the poor baby doll has finally lost its head from the twisting.

"Cindy came to play once, before the kids left, " says Leia who takes the doll from Cindy Lou. "Let me fix your baby for you, honey."

Cindy Lou looks like she might bolt, but then she starts to wail. "Gone, gone, gone. All my friends. Myrtle and Benny Boo and John John. And Granna. All gone."

Leia and I both try to comfort her, but Cindy Lou just continues on and on like a recording of the lost and the gone. Some, I don't know if she even knew or not, or if she just heard others talking about them.

"There's Mr. Newsome, and Steven's Nana, and Sorenson, and Mr. Newsome, and editor Ted, and my bosses at the group home. And....." she continues crying and pauses long enough to get her breath. "And the library ladies, the mean one and the nice one, and the 7 eleven boy, and the man with the kitty cat who is gone now too, and the kitty cat who left a long time ago, and your mama - Eliot, and the cook and the cleaner, and now all my friends on the bus are gone too."

"They are gone," I say. "But we're ok."

I don't think we are ok, but I think Cindy Lou needs to hear that we are.

Cindy Lou just keeps listing the names of the dead and the gone. She continues with the names of the people on the bus. If she doesn't remember their names, she gives them one:

"We say goodbye to bus driver, to the people from the library that awful day, Millicent, Jordan, Big Leo, Little Leo, Baby Leo, Jake, and another Jake too, and boy Taylor and girl Taylor, and those two twins who don't look like the same, and the boy with the snot nose, and the big girl who was a cry baby like my Myrtle, and Cececelia, and Hootie and his blowfish, and Terry, and Lucille Ball, and Sally, and everybody else I can't member their names. They are all gone, but we won't forget them."

"No," says Leia, "We won't."

Cindy sighs really big, once then twice and asks me, "Eliot, why won't people stay with us? Is there something wrong with us?"

"No. Cindy. There's nothing wrong with us," I say, though I am not as certain about myself. Even my own parents are not here with me, and it is not like they didn't have a choice in that.

Just like that, Cindy Lou snaps out of her despair and tells me how many pies she made today.

"You can have some, Elie, even though you got a potty mouth because it will make you feel all better now."

After Cindy leaves to go get me some "deliciously" pie, I ask Leia what she means when she said the kids were her second chance.