Chapter 5: Ryan

Sheila took the package of diapers from Ryan’s arms. Her face hung low, and he could tell how tired she was, but she never failed to thank him for helping her out.

“I really appreciate this, you guys,” she said to him and Rodrigo as they settled on the couch. “It’s amazing how expensive these things can be.”

“One day we’ll be able to buy you diapers instead of having to jack them,” Rodrigo said. He pulled off his shoes and tossed them towards the door, letting them fall against each other in a miniature pile. “And then we’ll all live in a castle made of gold.”

Ryan snickered, extending his legs in a cat-like stretch. “Gold’s for suckers. Make it a candy castle and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“You’ve got yourself a dream is more like it,” Sheila said, sitting in the ratty recliner across from them.

The toddler on Sheila’s lap stared at the two men blankly then broke out in a wide, toothless smile that reminded Ryan of an old person who wasn’t sure what was going on but was happy about it just the same. A couple years back when Sheila got pregnant, he and Rodrigo had been the only ones she would talk to about the situation. Most of the pack members had a real animal approach to the gestation of life: pregnancy equaled a baby. Sheila wasn’t sure what she wanted to do and knew that neither of them would pressure her in either direction.

Seeing the toothless smile, Ryan thought she couldn’t possibly regret her decision but the next time he had to steal diapers because there wasn’t enough cash for even basic necessities, his opinion would flip. The kid seemed happy, and Sheila seemed happy. Still, everyone knew that there was more to the equation than just that.

“How would you guys feel about me and the little one staying at your place for a while?” Sheila asked, shifting the toddler to her other leg.

“I guess that depends on how long,” Ryan answered. “I don’t really think we’re set up for a baby.”

“We’re more set up than this place,” Rodrigo said snidely.

“A dumpster filled with unblocked electrical outlets and sharp corners would be more suited than this place,” Sheila added. She leaned back into the recliner, the toddler still sitting upright on her thighs. “Honestly, the baby-proof thing is the least of my concerns. I just...I can’t live with these guys anymore.”

Sheila was five years older than Ryan and Rodrigo and considering that they didn’t last in the main house for half as long, they saw where she was coming from. Ryan assumed that when she first moved in, the place was wild but not slovenly. Sheila wasn’t the type to complain about some dishes in the sink or a party that went late but living in complete filth and being the only one who did anything about it, was bound to take its toll. She was also, Ryan had deduced from hearing snippets of conversation, the main source of income for the house. He wondered just how easily the pack was going to let her go.

Nurses among pack members were somewhat common. Sheila’s mother and her aunt had both been nurses; they pointed her in that direction when she was stumbling from black out to black out. She took to it well and liked the work for the first few years but being the pack nurse was a full-time job in and of itself. Slowly her paying hours dwindled until the current day where she found herself intermittently employed at an urgent care office that didn’t pay anywhere close to the high-pressure jobs she had held previously.

Ryan had been under Sheila’s care in an emergency room once; he saw how perfectly she reacted to the chaos of the unpredictable. His situation wasn’t completely dire, but he had been knocked off his bike by a car driven by their rival pack and his head connected with a stone wall by the park. A lady walking her dog found him close to fifteen minutes later, his consciousness slipping in and out. When he woke up fully, Sheila’s face hovered over him, but he could only see her eyes. His brain pulsed with too much pressure, and his vision had trouble landing on a focus. The flat, white light above Sheila sometimes came in sharp and clear; other times Sheila’s dark eyes framed by her surgical mask and sterile cap were the only thing he could see.

“I know you,” he told her as she shined a penlight into each dilated pupil. “I think I do. I think we know each other.”

Later, he heard that she had answered him softly with a confirmation to his ramblings but at the time, he thought she said nothing. But she smiled, and it twitched under her mask, crested upwards the corners of her eyes. To Ryan, that had been the only response he needed.

Rodrigo firmly believed Sheila would have done better in life if she had left the main house and struck out on her own. A few others lived off by themselves the way Ryan and Rodrigo did but they behaved pretty much like everyone at the main house.

“If Sheila got her own place or if the three of us got a place together, that would be ideal,” Rodrigo said a long time back before Sheila got pregnant. “The pack expects the nurses to martyr themselves. Eventually, Sheila’s going to have too much to do at home that she’ll quit going to work.”

As he often was, Rodrigo was right. His prescience was seen among the pack as a preternatural gift, among a supernatural tribe those are found occasionally, but he insisted it was simple at first sight, not second. His prophecies, as he referred to them in utter jest, were not visions thrust upon him but educated guesses he made by paying attention.

“We all have patterns,” he would say when awed pack members demanded to know what was coming next. “I’m not reading tea leaves here. I’m just pointing out patterns.”

If Rodrigo was the only one making the decision, Sheila would have been moving into their place that night. Ryan was well aware of how frightened his friend was for Sheila. Not that she was in any immediate danger but that the situation around her had become untenable, and fixing it was out of her hands. Too many women in the pack had spent their lives and energy trying to make things better only to be used up and laughed at. Sheila, Rodrigo promised Ryan, was bound to be next.

“We don’t have to stay for very long,” Sheila was saying as Ryan ran the proposition through his mind in a futile loop. “It feels impossible to get ahead living here. There’s... too much to deal with.”

“You’re being polite,” Ryan said but he knew the decision was already made. Sheila had protected and supported them when they needed to, and now, he figured, it was time to repay her in kind.

No moves or plans were made that night. Just spitballing like that, daydreaming in their quiet way, brightened Sheila’s face. Ryan thought she looked years younger by the time they were heading back out to go home. The kid was smiling a lot too, but she was always smiling. At least from what Ryan had seen.

They decided to walk instead of hopping on the train as it rolled past them, clacking down the middle of the street on its terminal by the ocean. It amazed Ryan how comfortable people got with the fantastical, with the surreal that simply became day-to-day life. A train that moved like a snake cutting a swath through a cluster of hous; a train that ended its ride by the beach, by the very edge of the world from where he stood. It was magical and beautiful with fresh eyes but once you lived alongside it, it was just the N train. It was how people got to work and got home.

“If we told people that we existed,” Ryan started, watching the glistening windows of the train undulating along the hills and valleys, “how long before you think they’d accept it as everyday stuff?”

“Longer than we’d survive,” Rodrigo said darkly. “My guess is they’d kill a lot of us before we could convince them we’re alright.”

“Ok, fine. If we were part of normal society, if we could be, do you think that’d be better or worse than how we live now?”

Rodrigo made a sad laugh noise in the back of his throat and shook his head. Ryan’s face grew hot; a flash of anger sparked like a bottle rocket inside of him, bursting upward in a blast then fading in the cooling glow of embers still hot enough to burn. “What? What’s funny?”

“Ryan,” Rodrigo said in a soft, calculated tone, “we’re already part of society and it doesn’t do us any good. Humans aren’t the issue. They aren’t the danger to us. We are.” His sights were fixed on the train now so close to the dunes of the beach that if it wasn’t for the lights inside of it, neither of them would be able to spot it. “We don’t need to be accepted by society. We don’t need to live like normal humans. We need to stop destroying each other. That’s the only way things will get better for us.”