But who was on campus and who wasn’t when the earthquake hit? There would’ve been sports teams and band practice and after-school activities. There would’ve been soccer teams on the football field and basketball players in the gym.
I can see it. The buildings of Pacific Shore broken apart like this laundromat.
And all of the people I know who might’ve been inside them.
I think of the girl in my US government class who kicks ass on Model UN. Is she okay, or was she flattened in a car underneath a broken freeway overpass? And the boy who built the robot that won a national contest and a five-hundred-dollar prize. Is he okay, or is he trapped inside the lab at school where the robotics club works on projects deep into the night? What about the college-and-career-center counselor who helped me compose an email to the coach at Cal? Is she okay, or did she get crushed like Charlie?
The water polo team was in the pool. My friends. My teammates. Coach. What happened there? Did Coach tell everyone what to do like he always does? Was he right? Did they listen? Did he make things better or worse? Or could he not help? Because he isn’t okay?
I wonder these things.
My own version of what happened.
But I don’t know if it’s true.
I don’t know what is and isn’t true anymore.
LIES
We huddled underneath the crackling glow of a fluorescent light in the bank parking lot, waiting for the guy with the buzz cut to bring Mila the beer she couldn’t go a weekend without. While we were waiting, Thea took a selfie. Iris sifted through her Snaps. Juliette blew her bangs from her forehead. I envied the skaters at Sundial Circle. Mila de-hiked her skirt and eyed the front door of the liquor store, worrying her hands into knots over the idea that this guy might take off with her alcohol.
“Seriously. What’s the plan now?” Thea asked. “Because there’s no way I’m actually drinking with this dude.”
“Maybe we have a couple with him,” Mila said.
“But he’s old,” Juliette said.
Mila laughed. “We’re practically eighteen. He can’t be more than twenty-one. It’s like three years. Like a freshman and a senior. Big deal.”
“No, really. How are we bailing?” I said. Because I didn’t want to hang out with this guy when I could be kissing Leo at midnight.
“Shh, here he comes.” Mila stood straighter, smoothing and primping. “I promise I’ve got this. It’s a drink, not a date.”
“Are you sure about that? Because I’m not sure he is,” I said.
We watched him cross the street. He was all swagger, cruising through the middle of Sundial Circle, where nobody looked at him. Nobody said hi. He was just a person who was there. But I wanted someone we knew to look. I wanted someone to notice. I wanted them to track him and see him walking toward us, so they’d come, too. Or at least remember.
“Girls,” the guy said once he was standing right in front of us.
“Ladies,” Mila corrected him again.
He ran his hand across his buzz cut. Smiled that big-toothed grin. “Right. Right.”
I could hear the glass bottles clinking together in the paper sack under his arm when he moved. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry to hand it over. Mila made a grab for it, but he pulled it out of her reach. She looked at me for help, but I wasn’t about to wrestle him for beer I didn’t even want. The whole thing had been a waste of time. I was sure there was plenty to drink at the party. Or someone had an older brother or sister home from college who could get something.
“So,” he said.
“So.” Mila eyed the bag. She was all flirty and batty eyelashes and more lip gloss and I was so fed up I could scream.
“So where are we going to drink this?” the guy said.
My friends and I looked at one another, wondering which one of us was going to tell him, No thanks.
“Oh, come on, I did you a favor. Now do me a favor and come hang out with me.” He ran his free hand over his buzz cut. Looked up at the moon in the sky. Sniffed. Looked back at us. Smiled. “This town is completely void of action. Entertain me.”
Iris and Juliette took steps backward like they might make a run for it.
“Um—” Thea started, but Mila cut her off.
“Where do you want to go?” Mila said, blinking at him.
The guy looked around. Over his shoulder, across the drive-through ATM lane, and all the way to Sundial Circle as the wheels of a skateboard smacked down on the sidewalk with a splat. Then he looked the other way, past the old houses that had been transformed into quaint doctors’ offices with their lights turned off for the night.
“Beach?” He switched the package from beneath one arm to the other. His shoulders got broader. His shirt got tighter. His jeans went looser.
“Meet you there?” Iris said.
He scrunched his eyebrows. “Why would you meet me there when we’re already here together?”
“I need to get my car.”
“I watched you walking from a block away.”
Mila smiled. “Did you now?”
He smiled back. “You don’t have a car here.”
Mila took a step forward, her eyes on the beer. Because that’s all she cared about. And if it took going with that guy to get it, she would go. If it meant taking us down with her, she would.
“My car is down the block,” Iris said.
“So’s the beach. Why would you walk down that block to go get your car when you can walk down this block and go to the beach?”
Mila took another step forward. Closer. Too close. “Excellent point,” she said. “Lead the way.”
CHAPTER NINE
1:13 A.M.
Charlie wakes up coughing through the dark. I check my phone. Note the time. It’s been nine hours. I let in that tiny speck of light from the screen. No reception. No texts. No missed calls. Nothing. I should accept that my phone isn’t going to save us.
“I’m so thirsty,” Charlie says.
“Hungry.” A mumble. Because I’m tired, too.
I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and my stomach feels hollow like a carved-out jack-o’-lantern with all the juicy guts tossed aside. I picture the jack-o’-lanterns I carved as a kid and how, after days of baking in the sun, they’d keel over, caving in on themselves because their insides weren’t full enough to stay upright. I imagine the hours passing in here and my belly rotting from the inside out in the same way. Until I fold over. Empty. Lifeless.
I want a pillowcase full of Halloween candy. Caramel apples. Buttered popcorn.
Halloween means big houses by the beach decorated like haunted pirate ships. With smoke machines and strobe lights and full-size candy bars. My mom would take me door-to-door in my Wonder Woman costume. Or later, in middle school, when my friends and I would come up with a group costume, our parents would let us go out alone. It felt like freedom to walk from one block to the next without our parents trailing behind us, waiting on the sidewalk with their flashlights while we knocked on doors.
Last Halloween, I took care of Mila at a Halloween party. It was in Harper Scott’s backyard. There was a keg and a firepit and a hammock and a crowd. There was a koi pond, too. Mila dumped a can of beer into the water, giggling hysterically.
“Here, fishy fishy,” she cooed, kicking up the water with her fingertip like it was a touch pool at the aquarium. “Wanna get drunk with me? Because Ruby won’t.”
“Stop! Do you want to kill them?”
She stomped her foot, and the spiked heel that went with her cat costume sank into the grass. She lost her balance. Toppled over. Landed on her knees. Spilled the rest of her beer. A crowd gathered because she wouldn’t get up. Couldn’t. She stayed there on all fours and laughed.
Until she was crying.
Everyone watched as she sank onto her back. Balled up into the fetal position.
“What’s wrong?” I’d asked. Panicked.
She pulled me down next to her like she was going to tell me a secret. Like sh
e was finally going to explain what it was she was always trying to numb. She put her hand on my cheek. Looked at me like I was the only one she could spill her truth to.
“What?” I said. “Tell me.”
Her eyes glistened. Watery. Then she burst into laughter. “I can’t feel my feet. Will you carry my shoes?”
“What?” I shook my head. I’d missed something. Surely.
“My shoes.”
She kicked her feet up and down. I was afraid one of her spiked heels would go flying and take someone’s eye out. So I yanked them off. Pulled her up. Made her put her arm around me as she stumbled to the car.
I’d wanted to put a wall up. A barrier that’d block our classmates from seeing her like this. But really? It was just another party. Just another weekend. And no matter how much I tried to protect Mila, everyone had seen her like this too many times to count.
I took her to her house that night. Tucked her into her bed and settled into a sleeping bag on the floor so I could keep an eye on her. I lied to her mom when she knocked on Mila’s bedroom door. I told her she wasn’t feeling well. It was the same excuse as always.
“A bunch of people got sick from this onion dip at the party,” I’d said.
Mila’s mom seemed like she’d believed me. So again, I questioned myself, wondering if I was overreacting. If Mila’s own mom couldn’t see a problem, then why should I be so concerned?
But maybe it was easier to pretend not to see things than to see the truth.
“My toes are freezing,” I say to Charlie. “I need something better than flip-flops.”
“Flip-flops in February. So typical.” He coughs, then wheezes over his breath. He sucks in air. It doesn’t sound good.
“Charlie!”
He coughs some more.
“Charlie!” I say again, that rise of panic in my throat.
He finally sputters to a stop. Like the earthquake.
“Yeah. Still here.” He grunts. “I promise I’m not going anywhere unless you do.”
CHAPTER TEN
2:00 A.M.
My left arm is hot where I cut it. Throbbing. The heartbeat inside of it getting stronger.
Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump.
The bleeding has long stopped, but that heartbeat and that hot, hot heat tell me it’s angry.
“I think I need stitches, Charlie.”
“On your arm?”
“Yeah.”
We’ve been here way longer than I thought we would be. It’s hard to hang on to hope when there’s nobody else on the other side of this rubble. The dark and the cold have slithered in like a shadow. Taking over this space. Taking over me.
High above us helicopter blades swoop and swivel.
Womp, womp, womp.
They never stop. Each rotation is another second ticking away.
What’s taking so long?
Every time I try to move an arm or leg, it goes in slow motion. All of it stiff and wedged in place. What does it mean? To feel like I’m stuck in thick, sticky syrup? And that my arm is hot with a heartbeat?
“Can you have rigor mortis when you’re still alive?” I ask.
“Try to move, even if only to wiggle your fingers or toes. Whatever you can do,” he says. “You need to keep the blood flowing.” He rustles in his space. “Force it.” He talks like he knows something I don’t. Something desperate. Something important.
“Why? What’ll happen if I don’t?”
“Just do it.” He grunts. “If you do it, I’ll feel like I know something. And since I don’t know shit about most things, this’ll make me feel less useless.”
“You aren’t useless.”
I press down on the heat in my arm and feel the warmth seep into my fingertips. Too hot. “I’m a horrible person for saying this, but I’m so glad you’re here, Charleston Smith.”
“I get it, Ruby Tuesday. Your misery loves my company.”
“It does.”
“Are you moving? Are you keeping the blood flowing?” His breath is hitched with exertion.
I roll inches to my right then inches to my left. Back and forth. I knot my hands into fists and wiggle my toes. I jiggle my legs and arms as much as they’ll give. I imagine the blood flowing through my veins. Feeding my cells. Pumping my heart.
“Tell me something,” I say. “Distract me.”
“You like questions?”
“Depends.”
“Ones that are personal but not too personal?”
“My favorite kind.” I smile, feeling the muscles move in my face, around my bones. Warming.
“What does college look like for you besides water polo? Like will you actually get a degree in something?”
“Ha ha.”
“Now see? Ha ha isn’t technically an answer. You’ve hinted at your plan to be a beast in the pool. Where do you want to go? You said Stanford has a good program.”
“I want to go to Cal.”
“Cal?” he sputters. “Are you saying that to mess with me? You do realize Stanford and Cal are hard-core rivals, right?”
“I’m aware.”
Charlie responds with a tsk. “You’re making this very hard on me, Ruby. I won’t exactly be able to cheer you on at your water polo game when your school is Cal.”
I laugh. “Whatever.”
“Whatever? Okay, fine. In the spirit of continuing to get along in our dire circumstances, let’s dump the college rivalry . . . for now. . . What about books? Do you plan on cracking any? Picking a major?”
“Maybe biology. What was your major?”
“Art stuff. Creative writing. Film or theater. You know, all the things that pay the big bucks.”
“Did you take those classes?”
“Not yet. Freshman year is all about knocking out requirements. But I did try improv.”
“That’s a class?” I flutter my arms as far as they will go. Inches.
“It’s a hobby. I was terrible, by the way. I’m not funny.”
“But you are funny.”
“Not according to my audition.”
I move my legs. Inches up. Inches down. “Is improv really all about being funny? I thought it was about reacting to whatever gets thrown at you.”
“Based on the fact that you already know that, you’d be better at improv than I was.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t have been that bad.” I roll my neck.
“Oh, it was bad. Categorically. Abysmally.”
I curl my toes. “What happened?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes. Please. Tell me about how not funny you are.”
He laughs. “Okay. Fine. So Stanford has this improv comedy troupe and when I went on my college tour, they were performing on the lawn in the middle of the day. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. To just be funny in the middle of the day at such a serious place. My parents had made it out like college would be four years of me putting my head down and working my ass off. Probably because of my scholarship and them being afraid I would screw it up. So to see anything that looked remotely fun was unexpected.”
“And you joined immediately. Left the tour to run off with the improv circus?”
He snorts. “I had to audition. Once I got there. But I didn’t make it, Rubik’s Cube.”
“Groan. That one was really bad, Charleston.”
“Right. See? Not funny. You should have zero ounces of surprise that I didn’t make it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, everyone who wasn’t me was really funny. So sharp. So quick.” He snaps his fingers, and it’s a relief to hear the sound of something so simple. “Their jokes legit made my hands sweat. But it’s spontaneous, so I figured I’d come up with something good in the moment. I hadn’t considered my nerves and my not being funny. Plus, I was in the last group to audition.” He grunts. “It was a disaster.”
“No, Charlie. This is a disaster. Bombing an audition is a party.”
“Now see? That’s a
funny line, Ruby. Please keep improv in mind if you can find the time to do it in between all that eggbeater stuff you like to do.”
“Okay, okay. So it was complete and utter humiliation for Charleston Smith. I want details.”
I hear the scratch of his shuffles. “The scene was supposed to be about moving into your dorm and meeting your roommate and neighbors for the first time. Should’ve been easy enough given the fact that I’d literally just done that. Like two days before. But yeah. I basically froze. There were five of us in the scene. Two of them were pros. Seniors. They were the ones that kept changing the stuff around to help us newbies find our way to the jokes.”
“Makes sense.”
“So the scene turned into this bit about what was in the box I was carrying. The whole thing about improv is that you always have to say ‘Yes, and’ to whatever gets thrown at you. So then one of them says, ‘Why is your box moving?’ Suddenly, I had to act like the box was bouncing all over the place and I couldn’t control it, like I had a living thing in there.”
“I can picture it.”
“But I knew someone was going to ask me what was in the box soon enough.”
“So what was in it?”
“That’s the thing. I had no idea. I didn’t want to come up with something expected.”
“Like a puppy?”
“Like a puppy.” He coughs. “But I couldn’t even focus on what was happening or what anybody else was saying because my brain just kept screaming, What’s in the box, dumbass? I didn’t really hear what anyone else was saying. It was like underwater echo sounds. So I never said what was in the box. I bombed. And when it was over, the seniors said thanks a lot and have a nice life.”
“Brutal.”
“Yeah.” A chuckle. “It wasn’t until I was walking back to my dorm that I realized I didn’t need to be the one to come up with what was in the box. I just thought I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I could’ve dropped the box and let someone else say what was in it. But instead I thought it was all up to me because I was holding the damn box. So welcome to my life, Ruby Tuesday. Freeze in the moment but come up with the perfect solution after the fact.”
Aftershocks Page 6
