by Lucin, David
Nicole covered her mouth with her hands.
“Carjacked?” Barbara asked. “Do you have any idea how I would feel if you got hurt? Not to mention how Kevin would feel. He spent a lot of hard-earned money on that car for you.”
“Drop it, Mom,” Sam gripped handfuls of hair in his fists. “Don’t make this about you. And the money? I bought the Tesla with what Dad left me. No offense to Kevin, but he tossed in a few bucks to fix my brakes once. That’s it.”
Kevin faded into the shadows. Did he ever speak? Would Barbara even let him if he tried?
“I can’t listen to you talk to me like this,” Barbara cried. “I can’t. My own son. I just can’t.” With a sniffle, she wiped at her eye and stormed off, up the stairs.
“Sweetie, wait,” Kevin said as he followed her. “Please, wait!”
Fingers interlaced behind his head, Sam paced between the island and the stove. The sound of stomping came from the second floor. Jenn fiddled with the barbecue lighter.
“I’m so sorry,” Nicole said.
“For what?”
She lifted her chin and gestured to the ceiling. “For her. Our mom. She’s under a lot of stress right now. Try not to take anything she says personally.”
“It’s not that bad,” Jenn lied.
Sam snorted, just as his mother did. “Yeah, she is.”
“She’s sick, Sam. Call it depression or anxiety or a million other things. Being combative with her makes it worse.”
“Stop making excuses for her. She’s a nightmare. You know it. I know it. The only one who doesn’t is Kevin. He’s probably just scared of what she’d do if he left, like that time they had a fight.”
Nicole sat on her hands.
“What?” Jenn asked. “What happened?”
“Took a bunch of pills,” Sam said. “Kevin found her, called the ambulance. They had to pump her stomach.”
“She tried something like that when you moved,” Nicole said to Sam. Candlelight flickered on her face. “Wouldn’t eat for days.”
Sam didn’t respond to that. Neither did Jenn. Why hadn’t he told her any of this about his mother? Was he embarrassed? Probably. Nothing else explained it. Still, he could have talked to her. For better or for worse, she wanted to play that role in his life.
Nicole cleared her throat. “Guys,” she started. “What are we going to do? Based on your reaction outside, I’m assuming you were banking on taking the car. To Flagstaff, right? Is it safe there?”
“Safer than here,” Sam said. “We’re screwed now.”
“Have you heard anything about home?” Nicole asked. “About Phoenix? Think our house is still there?”
That made Jenn’s stomach hurt, and something crept into her chest.
Nicole’s gaze drifted over to Sam, then to Jenn. “Oh my God,” she said, her mouth agape. “Sam told me you were from Phoenix. I’m so sorry. I . . . I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”
She stood and wrapped a warm, blanketed arm around Jenn.
Was this what having a sister felt like? Jenn loved her brothers, but they were men and practiced their own brand of tough love. Her father did, too, to some extent. Gary’s version was perhaps the most extreme. Similar to Maria, Nicole could sense an emotion from a thousand miles away.
“It’s fine,” Jenn said through the lump in her throat. “I’m all right.”
They sat for a while, Nicole’s arm around Jenn, Sam rapping his fingers on the countertop. Nicole seemed content to hold Jenn in silence. That was okay.
Finally, Sam spoke up. “We can’t stay here. There’s no police, there’s these drug addicts in town, places are getting robbed, and whatever else. We could walk, but it’d take us days.”
“And we’d be targets,” Jenn added, “since we’d need to carry food and water at least. From the looks of it, both are running low already.”
“A charging station,” Nicole said. “Why don’t we charge the car?”
Sam scratched the stubble on his jawline. “Because the power’s out.”
“Solar power, too?”
“No,” Jenn said. “Not necessarily. My neighbor in Flagstaff, his solar panels still work. So do the solar panels at the police station. The batteries or converters or whatever are fried, not the actual panels themselves.”
“Fried?” Nicole asked.
Sam cut in. “Power surge. From the EMP.”
Nicole scrunched up her face. “The what?”
“Oh, right.” Sam gestured to Jenn. “You handle this one. You’re the science whiz.”
Jenn turned the barbecue lighter over in her hand some more as she explained what Sophie had told them about the EMP.
When she finished, Sam leaned forward on the island. “The hospital and police station. They never lost power.”
“Must be off the grid, then, so they didn’t get hit with a power surge.”
Sam spoke to Nicole next. “Any chargers in town with solar?”
“There’s chargers everywhere. I can only think of a few that have solar panels, though. The hospital has some, I think. I don’t know if they’ll work or anything. They could be hooked into the grid.”
“Hospital?” Jenn asked. “Payson has a hospital?”
“Barely,” Nicole clarified. “Mom went there last summer when she thought she was having a panic attack. There’s a tiny emergency room and that’s about it. The rest is shut down.”
Sam slapped the countertop. “Lead the way.”
“No,” Nicole said.
Sam looked confused. “What do you mean? Why not? We need to head out.”
“We can’t move Mom like this. She’s exhausted and probably dehydrated.” Nicole held up a plastic water bottle. Only a few sips sloshed around in the bottom. “This is all we have left. We didn’t bring enough in the garage and we were too afraid to leave to get more.”
“It’s only two hours to Flagstaff,” Sam said. “She’ll be fine.”
“You’re not listening to me. She’s hysterical and not thinking straight. Add you and Jenn into the equation and then your car and the water, it’s all too much. She needs to sleep and rehydrate.”
“She’s right,” Jenn said. “It’s like after that first day, when I tried to go to Carla’s at night. Remember? Maria said we needed to rest. You said we needed to rest. It can wait until tomorrow.”
Sam stomped a shoe on the tile floor. “Fine. We’ll stay the night and try in the morning.”
“Good,” Nicole said. “But we should get some more water somehow. We could go to the creek and boil it on the barbecue so it’s safe to drink.”
Jenn pushed out her stool. “Good idea. Any more bottles anywhere?”
Nicole nodded. “There’s some in the recycling.”
“I’ll go grab them,” Sam said. “Then we can get going.”
When he made to pass Nicole, she held out an arm to stop him. “Not you,” she said.
“What? Why?”
“If you leave now, right after coming here, it’ll break Mom. She convinced herself you were dead. I mean, you could have been. We had no way of knowing. I had a feeling you were okay, but you know how she gets. You have to go be with her, even if it’s hard for you. You don’t need to say anything. Just sit there so she can see you’re safe.”
Sam blew out a long breath and put his hands on his hips. Then he smiled, his white teeth glowing in the candlelight. “When did you become the adult in this family?” He pulled his sister in for a hug. “What has Berkeley done to you? It feels like you were still playing with those stupid pony dolls last month.”
“I still doodle horses,” she said into his shirt. “On my tablet at school. My friends think it’s weird.”
“That’s because it is,” Sam said. “I missed you, little sister.”
“I missed you, too, big brother.”
Jenn’s younger brother, Andrew, used to call her “little Jenny.” She hated it. Good thing he helped with her science and math homework. When he left for the war, Jenn’s
grades dipped so sharply that her parents threatened to hire a tutor. She and Andrew shared video games, too, Jenn supposed, but she never much cared for them. Still, she pretended, as best as she could, as a way of spending more time with him. Sometimes they would sit in silence for hours, but that was fine. Being together was all that mattered.
Coming here was worth it. Losing the car was worth it. Being chased and almost shot at was worth it. Sam needed Nicole as Jenn once needed Jason and Andrew. The war destroyed Jenn’s family. She wouldn’t let it destroy Sam’s, too.
She hopped off her stool. “I’ll go to the creek. You guys can stay here. Just tell me where it is.”
“Not a chance,” Nicole said. “I’m coming. That okay with you, Sam?”
“Works for me.”
“Good. I’ll get changed and we’ll leave in like fifteen.”
18
Nicole, in tight-fitting jeans, a black windbreaker, and clean hiking books, coughed into a fist, an awful hacking sound that came from deep in her chest. Hands on her knees, she hunched over and groaned.
“Sorry,” she said in a thin voice. “The smoke is really bad. We could smell it a bit in the garage, but I didn’t expect it to be like this.”
The smoke made Jenn want to cough, too, but her throat hurt so much already. This must be how Maria felt—fighting for every breath. Hopefully the air quality was better in Flagstaff.
“It’s coming from the city,” Jenn said, remembering her dream, the one where her house in Peoria was on fire. “That’s what my billet thinks, anyway, and he’d know.”
“Was he in the military or something?”
Jenn’s mind conjured an image of Gary in a military uniform. He was stern and disciplined enough for the Marines, though she couldn’t picture him screaming at eighteen-year-old privates. “No,” she said. “A cop in Phoenix. He’s just in love with World War Two.”
Nicole didn’t answer. If her house in Arcadia had somehow survived the bombs, it had most likely succumbed to the fires by now. Nearly three million people lived in the Phoenix metro area—well, had lived. If the smoke was this dense here, only two hours up the road, how could anyone in the city still be alive? Dying in the initial blast might even be preferable to dying of smoke inhalation or terrible burns. Jenn hoped her parents felt no pain.
Carrying a flashlight, Nicole recovered from a coughing fit and led them through a dirt hiking path flanked by bushy trees and thin pines. The ray of white light reflected off the haze the way headlights reflected off winter fog in Flagstaff. Pebbles crunched beneath their shoes, and above, the moon loomed, ablaze in blood-red. Goosebumps spread along Jenn’s forearm.
Her watch read 11:35 p.m. Every minute her eyelids grew heavier, but if she’d pushed this far already, she could push a little farther.
“Just over here.” Nicole stepped off the trail and through some brush, then down a gentle bank. At the bottom lay large, smooth stones interspersed with pebbles and mud. Water, almost still and barely two inches deep, wound around the rocks and pooled in crevices.
Nicole slung off her backpack and set it down on a rock.
“Hardly a creek,” Jenn mused. “Stream at best.”
“It’s seasonal,” Nicole said. “It’s biggest in March, when the snow in the mountains starts to melt. By May it’s mostly dried up.” She pulled a one-gallon milk jug from her bag and angled its mouth into the stream.
Jenn did the same with her own milk jug. The water was cool to the touch and sent a shiver up her spine—a welcome reprieve after hiking across northern Arizona in late April.
“I said it already,” Nicole said after a moment, “but it means a lot that you and Sam came.”
The jug filled, Jenn screwed on the cap and took out a second one. “Of course we came. Why wouldn’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Nicole continued. “I never really doubted you’d come. It’s just hard for Sam.”
“What is?” Jenn asked, then tucked the full bottle in her bag and pulled out a third.
Nicole chewed her nail in a way that reminded Jenn of Sam. “The family. Mom. Sam’s old enough to remember our dad a bit more, too. Guess I got off easy.”
Golden child. “Yeah,” Jenn said, holding in a smile. “He never talks about it much.”
Nicole narrowed her eyes. “He calls me the golden child, doesn’t he?”
Jenn’s cheeks warmed.
Before she could answer, to lie and say that, no, Sam didn’t call her the golden child, Nicole spoke again. “It’s okay. I know I was. I feel bad for not seeing it earlier.” She pulled her milk jug out of the creek and attached the cap. “I’m worried about her. My mom. She’s sick.”
“Sam calls her a narcissist.”
Nicole’s jaw tightened. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean she’s not sick. It’s an illness.” She found another bottle in her bag and forced it into the water with a splash. “Sam doesn’t see it that way. We’ve been trying antidepressants and anxiety medication. Sometimes it works for a bit and she gets a little better. Then it’ll stop and we’ll try something different.” Her shoulders sank as she huffed. “I want to help her. I love Sam, but I hate that he ran away and cut her out of his life.”
“You went to California,” Jenn said, then regretted it. It sounded accusatory, even to her ears. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know.” She flashed Jenn another warm smile. “Berkeley has a good pre-med program. I’m interested in psychology and how the brain works, because of my mom. I want to understand what’s happening to her. I had the grades and Kevin offered to help pay, so I applied. I didn’t really expect to get in, but I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity like that. Plus, it’s been nice to be on my own for once.”
Her third and final water bottle now full, Jenn twisted on the lid and tucked it into her bag. “I’m worried about Sam,” she said after a moment.
Nicole looked up from the creek. “Why?”
“He’s acting weird.”
“How so?”
Jenn found a dry patch of stone and sat with her arms resting on her knees. “When everything first happened,” she began, “he only wanted to help me and my billets. He didn’t even mention you or your mom. I mean, he knew you were here and probably safe, but I don’t get it. He got into two fights for me.”
“I noticed the cut on his lip.” Nicole screwed the cap on her full jug. “Pretty sure he’s ever been in a fight before.”
“Right? And then today, on our way to the cabin, we heard someone screaming. Sam just took off and tried to help. He didn’t know if it was dangerous or if he could’ve gotten hurt.”
Nicole sat cross-legged in the pebbles. “Believe it or not, that sounds like Sam to me.”
“Really?”
Shaking her head but grinning, Nicole said, “When I was in junior high—I must have been like fifteen or something—there was this guy, Trevor, who kept asking me out. Like a million times I said no, I wasn’t interested, but he kept asking. At the spring dance that year he tried kissing me. I pushed him away and handled it, but when I told Sam, he freaked out. Came to my school without telling me and tried finding Trevor.” She gripped her ankles and rocked back and forth. “To get him to leave, I threatened to call the police.”
Jenn repressed a laugh. If she had heard this story yesterday, she wouldn’t have believed it. Today it seemed less far-fetched.
“Anyway,” Nicole continued. “Deep down, he’s always had that wannabe hero in him.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Jenn said and thought about when Sam stood up for her at Minute Tire.
“I could be wrong.” Nicole laughed a little. “Listen to me. I’ve taken two psych courses and I think I’m Freud or something.”
“That’s okay. A couple days ago, I compared my family to Schrödinger’s cat.”
“How does that even work?”
Jenn carved a line in the mud with the heel of her shoe. “It doesn’t. It was the worst metaphor ever.”
/> “Did Sam hear you say it?”
Jenn nodded yes.
“Ouch,” Nicole joked. “I guess we’re not as smart as we think, huh?” She found a stone and turned it over in her fingers, then tossed it into the water. “Sorry about your family,” she said.
Jenn’s throat tightened. “Me too.”
“I’m here if you want to talk. Like, we just met, so if it’s weird, no problem. You don’t have to—”
Jenn held up a hand to stop her. “No. It’s not weird. I appreciate it. I was thinking about this earlier. It feels like I’ve known you forever already. That’s probably weirder.”
“I don’t think so. Sam’s always so excited when he talks about you. You’re perfect for each other.”
With a flick of her wrist, Jenn brushed imaginary dust off her shoulder. “What can I say? I’m a pretty good catch.”
“You joke about it,” Nicole said, her face stone serious, “but you are.”
Jenn hoped so. Her mind wandered to her argument with Sam, when she used his upbringing against him. The words had fallen out of her mouth, and now, after meeting Nicole, they made her sick. Yes, Sam and Nicole came from a different world—a world without modular housing, metal detectors at school, needles in the park, and hand-me-down clothes—but these were selfless and caring people. Jenn admired that.
“Thanks,” she said. “That means a lot.”
“No problem.” Nicole stood and wiped her hands on the sides of her pants. “Ready to go? We should try and get some sleep tonight.”
“Sure.” Jenn zipped up her backpack. “Lead the way.”
They climbed the bank, toward the hiking path. At the top, Nicole said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
Her eyes found Jenn’s hip. “Where did you get that gun? I mean, I don’t have a problem with it. I’m just not used to seeing them. How did you learn how to use it?”
Jenn touched the pistol’s handle. “My billet, the cop. It’s his and he taught me. I didn’t really want to learn, but he’s an insistent pain in the ass sometimes. I’m not an expert or anything, but I know enough not to shoot myself.”
Nicole adjusted the strap on her backpack. “That’s good. I hope you never have to use it.”
