Aftershocks

by Marisa Reichardt

  I was meant to be.

  I was a piece of my dad left behind.

  We would be a team.

  She would do everything she could to protect me.

  She would be strong.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  10:48 A.M.

  When I open my eyes, a girl watches me, blocking my exit to the doorway to the street. She looks my age, swimming in a pair of overalls, her long hair hanging in a sloppy braid behind her back. Her gaze drifts to the pile of protein bars and my last water bottle that fell free from my pockets while I rested. I lunge forward on my knees. Scoop them up and shove them back into my sweatshirt. I’m that mom at the park. Protecting her kids and her hibachi grill.

  “Chill,” the girl says, putting her hands up and taking a step away. “I’m not going after your food.”

  I scramble back, the concrete wall scraping my shoulder so much like the rubble.

  “I’m Ava,” she says. “Just wanted to check on you. You okay?”

  I lift my head. Check in with myself. My arm doesn’t hurt. I’m tired but my head is clear. I sit up straight. Square my shoulders. “I’m fine.”

  “So what’s your deal? Are you lost?”

  “A little,” I say.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I know where I am but I don’t know how to get to where I need to go.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Pacific Shore. My mom’s there.” I hope.

  She tightens a loose strap on her overalls. “Look, I can help you if you want.” She nods over her shoulder. “We have a van. It’s not the greatest—you’d have to sit on the floor in the back—but it’s running and my brother and I can take you somewhere if you’re up for it.”

  “Would you get in some random van with you and your brother if you were me?”

  She laughs. “I know it sounds totally sketch, but I swear we’re legit. We just dropped off waters at a shelter and took home some dude who got stuck across town.”

  “What shelter?”

  “Red Cross shelter. At the gym at Francis Middle School.”

  That does sound legit, but getting in a van with people I don’t know isn’t the same as getting in an ambulance or going to a hospital ward for kids who can’t find their parents. The people helping in those places were the people you’d expect to be helping. Two teenagers in the middle of a street full of police cars and looters doesn’t seem like the same thing. But this might be my only chance to get to my mom.

  “Your parents are cool with that? I’m pretty sure my mom wouldn’t be,” I say.

  She shrugs. “Our parents taught us everything we know.”

  “Are they with you?”

  “Nope. They’re disaster volunteers for the Red Cross, so they’re helping out at the shelter by our house.”

  “So it’s just you and your brother?”

  “Yep. Just me and Luke.”

  She waves to him. He’s standing next to a white van that doesn’t have any back windows and is raised up on monster-truck tires that would crush my mom’s Prius in five seconds. It’s basically the poster child for the kind of van you should never get into.

  I watch as Luke lifts a gallon jug of water to his mouth and gulps, his long, shaggy beach hair hanging over his shoulders. The side door of the van is open, and I twist my body to peek inside. I see cases of water and big boxes of snacks like the ones you’d get at Costco. It seems like Ava’s telling the truth. Like they’re driving around, helping people and distributing food.

  I give in. “Okay.” Accepting help is my choice this time. “Thanks.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  10:55 A.M.

  “Next stop, Pacific Shore,” Ava tells her brother. “Ruby needs to find her mom.”

  He grins at me. “I take it you’re Ruby?”

  I nod. “I am. Thanks for helping.”

  “No worries. I’m Luke, by the way.”

  “I know. Ava told me what the two of you have been doing. I’m impressed.”

  He shrugs the same way Ava did. The same way Nurse Cathy did about working all week. Like they wouldn’t have it any other way. And like it’s nothing that deserves special attention, even though I think it does.

  “Ready?” Ava asks me.

  I nod and climb into the back of the van. It’s not a cushy minivan with DVD players and automatic sliding doors like my friends’ parents drove us around in when we were kids. It’s more like a delivery van. There aren’t even seats in the back. So I settle onto the hard metal floor as Ava buckles herself into the driver’s seat and Luke settles into the passenger seat with a pile of road maps in his lap.

  “Old-school navigation,” he tells me.

  The back of the van smells faintly of surf wax, a reminder of Luke and Ava’s life before The Big One, but right now it’s stuffed with tarps and blankets instead of surfboards. Also food and water. Canned goods. Baby formula. Unopened packages of socks and underwear. Plus the empty wrappers of what they’ve already eaten themselves. My mouth waters at a box of snack-bag chips.

  “Stop it,” I say.

  Ava turns around, alarmed. Like I’m hurt. “What?”

  “Sorry. I’m fine. But . . . would it be obnoxious if I asked for Cheetos?”

  Luke laughs. “Go for it.”

  I rip into a bag like I’ve never had junk food in my life. When the first taste of orange cheese powder hits my tongue, I literally moan with relief. It’s so simple. Normal. I should savor them, but I don’t. I down the whole bag in seconds, then lick the remnant cheese dust from my fingertips. Part of me wants to turn the bag inside out and lick that, too.

  The van bounces hard over a big bump, and I almost bite my own finger. I grab tight on to the back of Luke’s seat to steady myself.

  “Sorry,” Ava says. “Lotsa road damage.”

  “I can handle it,” I say. “It’s better than being in the back of an ambulance, thinking I’m going to die.”

  “Ambulance? What the hell? Are you okay?” Ava asks.

  I make a fist, and no pain shoots to my wound. “I think so.”

  The van’s wheels seem rugged and made for rough terrain. Like they can drive through places other cars wouldn’t be able to go. I keep a hold on Luke’s seat as I’m jostled, my whole body protesting the quick movements. My feet bounce against the floor and I sway. I hope I don’t get carsick.

  “Try to make the next left,” Luke says, looking at his map. “And a right after that.”

  I suck in a breath when we pass two dead bodies in the gutter, like someone just needed to move them out of the way and keep going.

  Luke twists to look at me. “Is this the first time you’re seeing stuff like that?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I was in the hospital. I saw things there.” Bodies in stairwells. And lined up along the side of the building. “But I didn’t think I’d see . . . in the middle of the street.”

  “Better get used to it,” Luke says.

  Ava slams on the brakes.

  I lose my grip on Luke’s seat and bang into the box of canned goods. It pummels my shoulders but keeps me from sliding all the way to the back of the van.

  “Shit. Sorry,” Ava says.

  I scramble up, regain my grip on Luke’s seat, and look out the front window to see what stopped Ava. The street has split, leaving a cavernous hole in its wake.

  “Whoa.”

  “What do I do?” Ava asks Luke.

  He looks at his map, holding his fingertip in place to mark where we are. “Back up. Turn left.”

  We reverse to the first corner behind us and turn. It looks like we’re clear for a while. But then the van climbs a hill and the dilapidated sprawl is everywhere.

  My town. My home. My life. My rubble.

  Roads are split in two, and tar buckles like a wavy ribbon where the neat, yellow-painted line should be. Stop signs bend into the street. Traffic lights don’t flash. I pull my hand to my mouth, stunned into silence as we get closer and closer to the places I
recognize. Where buildings I know are burned-out and blackened. Some slanted. Others are hollowed-out shells. More of them are pieces toppled over on top of one another. The Pacific Shore Movie Theater, where Leo and I saw a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The DMV, where I took my driving test.

  Are people still trapped inside? Crushed? Dead? Dying?

  We drive toward an overpass scrunched up like an accordion. The prongs of the wire fence that would normally run along its sides hang down like tendrils. Precarious. Ready to collapse. Cars have been abandoned in the middle of the road. Some of them are facing the wrong way. Blocking us. We can’t go forward. We have to turn around and try yet another route.

  “It’s like a maze,” Ava says, keeping her eyes on the road.

  “Or a really screwed-up video game,” Luke says, eyes on the map. “But we’re getting better at figuring it out.”

  And then we’re driving past my school. It’s Friday. Classes should be in session. I should be in third period analyzing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. My hair in a bun, still damp and smelling like chlorine from morning practice.

  “This is my school,” I say, gripping one side each of Ava’s and Luke’s seats.

  Luke rolls down his window. The air smells like chemicals, dust, and blackened smoke. The marquee that’s usually lit up with the constant scroll of good news and important dates is blown out and bent over like the stop signs. The sidewalks are empty of gardeners with leaf blowers or classmates with backpacks and skateboards and Starbucks cups. Entire buildings are no more. Their guts crumbled to the ground. Their skeleton bones scattered.

  “Ours looks about the same,” Ava says.

  “Which school?”

  “Ocean View.”

  “I know your school. We’ve played you in water polo.” I can see their campus and their pool and their hallways. The blue-and-white school-record banners.

  “We haven’t seen a high school that doesn’t look like ours,” Luke says. “But Harbor’s the worst of all of them. They had a fire. Burned everything to the ground.”

  Harbor. Charlie’s high school. Charlie. I press his journal to my chest.

  “I had a friend who went to Harbor.” I knot my hands in my lap. “He was with me before I got rescued. He didn’t make it, but I don’t know if anyone knows he’s there. I want his family to know. I’m sure they’re looking, and I can only imagine how worried they must be.”

  “Maybe we can do something.” Ava looks to Luke. “Can we?”

  Luke shrugs. “We can ask Mom.”

  “I can tell you his name,” I say, my voice ticking up with relief. “The laundromat where we were. He went to Harbor and then Stanford.” My words are tumbling out in a hurry to tell Charlie’s story so it doesn’t get lost to the rubble.

  “If we have his name and know where he was, our mom will probably know what to do,” Ava says. “Whether it’s FEMA or the Red Cross, right, Luke?”

  “I think so. We can definitely try.”

  “Done. It’s our next assignment,” Ava says.

  “Really? Thank you.”

  We round the corner, and I see the makeshift emergency room on the football field. There are four tents set up same as they were for the earthquake drill I didn’t take seriously enough. Where Mila fake-broke her leg and I ate a Tootsie Pop and Coach tagged the dead. I hope other people paid better attention than I did. And I hope it made all the difference and kept them safe.

  Classes were done by the time The Big One hit, but there would’ve still been people on campus doing after-school activities. What happened to the soccer team on this very field? The ground looks fine, free of sinkholes, but there are downed wires and fallen debris from the cracked concrete bleachers. Was everybody okay, or were they the first ones dragged to these tents? Who went to the dead tent? Was Coach here? Did he come running from the pool deck to help? Or was he too hurt to go? Was he helping my teammates instead? I imagine everything broken and people underneath it all. Bloody. Barely breathing. Trapped. Like I was. And Charlie. I hear the screams of terror. I feel the fear.

  It will always live here now.

  I bend down to look through the windshield, eyes wide and unbelieving. Part of me wants to open the door and get out. To touch the devastation. To feel that it’s real, because the sight of it is too hard to believe.

  Ava slows the van to a crawl. Gives me time to look. How can everything we’ve ever known look like this?

  It’s a scene that erases hope.

  “Go, please,” I say, because I can’t look anymore.

  Ava pushes her foot to the gas pedal and the van lurches forward, inching up onto the sidewalk to drive around an orange plastic roadblock that takes up the whole crosswalk.

  I grip the side of Luke’s seat. “Are you allowed to go here?”

  Ava shrugs. “There kind of aren’t any rules anymore.”

  I direct them to my mom’s office, but we can only get within a few blocks of it because the roads are too mangled. Ava kills the engine. Everything goes quiet, but my ears still buzz from the constant vibration of driving in the great big van.

  “Can you get there from here?” Luke asks me.

  I look out and around. The echo of chaos lives here just as it has on every other street I’ve seen today, but I know where I am.

  “I can get there,” I say.

  I open the heavy passenger-side door and jump out.

  “Here,” Luke says, handing me a pen and a pad of paper. I think of Charlie writing in his journal and feel the weight of it underneath my sweatshirt. I pull my hand to my stomach to remind me I’m still carrying his words. “Write down what you know about your friend.”

  I prop Luke’s notebook on my knee and put down the things that matter. “His name was Charleston Smith,” I tell him, “but he went by Charlie because he thought Charleston made him sound like an asshole.”

  Luke laughs. “I like him already.”

  “Right?” I try to keep from tearing up at the memory of my friend and hand the pad of paper back to Luke. “Please find him.”

  Ava nods her head at me. “We’re on it, Ruby. Now you go find your mom.”

  “How do I even thank you for everything you did for me?”

  “You don’t,” Luke says.

  “One day you’ll help someone else when they need it,” Ava says.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  12:02 P.M.

  When I round the corner and first see the building that once housed my mom’s office, it takes everything I have not to sink to the ground in despair. Ten stories have tumbled down. Bits and pieces sit crisscrossed on top of one another like pickup sticks.

  There are rescue workers scattered and dogs poking around. There are trucks in the distance. There are tents. And people. But the insides of the tents are nearly empty. They aren’t filled to capacity like the tents where the big hands and the calm voice brought me. I’m in the belly of downtown where there were so many people. It’s day eight and they’re still looking. It’s a place where you can’t give up. But seeing those almost-empty tents makes my heart stutter. Everything looks done. Over.

  I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. Which building was where? It’s so hard to distinguish anything beyond the piles of concrete and broken walls.

  I push on with purpose. Me and my crusty sweatshirt and my water bottle and Charlie’s journal. I survey the rubble, thinking it makes me look important. Like I’m supposed to be here. But when I take one step too many, I’m stopped by a shout.

  “You can’t go there!” The voice is loud and bold and feels like it’s literally pushing down on my shoulders to keep me from taking another step.

  I turn to see a big man with a big dog. He’s wearing a bright orange vest and holding something that kind of looks like a laptop with a handle on it. A portable radar detector. I’ve seen them on TV. It senses heartbeats and breathing. The dog pads around him, sniffing at the cracks and crevices. Like the dog that found me.

&n
bsp; I take another step forward.

  “I said stop.”

  He’s in front of me now.

  “My mom worked here,” I say. “I have to find her.” I lift my chin, daring him to stop me.

  “You can’t find your mom?” His voice is calmer. Softer. Kinder.

  There’s something about his kindness that makes me want to cry. But I will not break. I will not.

  “No.” I straighten my shoulders. “And I’m sick of people telling me to sit and wait.”

  He nods. “Understandable.”

  The dog brushes past his leg. The man instinctively runs his hand across its head as it goes. It stops at my feet. Sniffs. Won’t move on. It presses its nose to my hand. Nuzzles. I remember the press of a dog’s wet nose finding me in front of the laundromat. The shouts. Stay with me.

  “Are you sure she was in the building when The Big One hit?” he asks.

  “Pretty sure.”

  I look at the rubble. Take in the mess. Weigh the risk. Count the chances.

  “Were there survivors here?”

  “There were. We actually pulled two people out late last night.” He looks like he’s remembering. “Two women.”

  Two women. Last night. “They were alive?”

  “They were critical.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “We sent them by medevac to SHC Med.”

  “Where is that? How do I get there?”

  “It’s about twenty minutes south. On a good day. And . . .” He looks around. “This isn’t exactly a good day.”

  I stare at the ground. I’ve already come so far from the other direction. My legs can barely hold me up anymore. How am I supposed to get somewhere else?

  “Can you take me?”

  He draws in a breath. “I’m not supposed to do stuff like that.”

  I sink. Sit. The dog sits down next to me. Licks my hand. I close my eyes. Lift my face to the sun. Try to collect myself. I remember that sliver of light through the rubble and the way it led me from day to night and day again. I open my eyes. Look right at him. The dog sniffs at my hand. Pulls at the edge of my sweatshirt. Whimpers.