Free What I Didn't See by Karen Joy Fowler

to Yosemite. And now I've got bubonic plague.” Her tone was one of satisfaction. “I think it was the powdered eggs. They made me eat them. I've been sick ever since."
    "Did you see any unusual wildlife there? Did you play with any squirrels?"
    "Oh, right,” she said. “I always play with squirrels. Birds sit on my fingers.” She resumed the stare. “My parents didn't tell you what I saw?"
    "No,” I said.
    "Figures.” Caroline combed her fingers through her hair. “If I had a brush, I could at least rat it. Will you ask the doctors to bring me a brush?"
    "What did you see, Caroline?"
    "Nothing. According to my parents. No big deal.” She looked out at the parking lot. “I saw a boy."
    She wouldn't look at me, but she finished her story. I heard about the mummy bag and the overnight party she missed. I heard about the eggs. Apparently, the altercation over breakfast had escalated, culminating in Caroline's refusal to accompany her parents on a brisk hike to Ireland Lake. She stayed behind, lying on top of her sleeping bag and reading the part of Green Mansions where Abel eats a fine meal of anteater flesh. “After the breakfast I had, my mouth was watering,” she told me. Something made her look up suddenly from her book. She said it wasn't a sound. She said it was a silence.
    A naked boy dipped his hands into the stream and licked the water from his fingers. His fingernails curled toward his palms like claws. “Hey,” Caroline told me she told him. She could see his penis and everything. The boy gave her a quick look and then backed away into the trees. She went back to her book.
    She described him to her family when they returned. “Real dirty,” she said. “Real hairy."
    "You have a very superior attitude,” her mother noted. “It's going to get you in trouble someday."
    "Fine,” said Caroline, feeling superior. “Don't believe me.” She made a vow never to tell her parents anything again. “And I never will,” she told me. “Not if I have to eat powdered eggs until I die."
    * * * *
    At this time there started a plague. It appeared not in one part of the world only, not in one race of men only, and not in any particular season; but it spread over the entire earth, and afflicted all without mercy of both sexes and of every age. It began in Egypt, at Pelusium; thence it spread to Alexandria and to the rest of Egypt; then went to Palestine, and from there over the whole world. ...
    In the second year, in the spring, it reached Byzantium and began in the following manner: To many there appeared phantoms in human form. Those who were so encountered, were struck by a blow from the phantom, and so contracted the disease. Others locked themselves into their houses. But then the phantoms appeared to them in dreams, or they heard voices that told them that they had been selected for death.
    * * * *
    This comes from Procopius's account of the first pandemic, A.D. 541, De Bello Persico , chapter XXII. It's the only explanation I can give you for why Caroline's story made me so uneasy, why I chose not to mention it to anyone. I thought she'd had a fever dream, but thinking this didn't settle me any. I talked to her parents briefly and then went back to Sacramento to write my report.
    We have no way of calculating the deaths in the first pandemic. Gibbon says that during three months, five to ten thousand people died daily in Constantinople, and many Eastern cities were completely abandoned.
    The second pandemic began in 1346. It was the darkest time the planet has known. A third of the world died. The Jews were blamed, and, throughout Europe, pogroms occurred wherever sufficient health remained for the activity. When murdering Jews provided no alleviation, a committee of doctors at the University of Paris concluded the plague was the result of an unfortunate conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars.
    The third pandemic occurred in