Oscar slumped to sit against the wall, Jupiter in his lap. “I want my mom.” His chin quivered dangerously.
I crouched next to him. “I know. I do too.” I really meant it. Babysitting in the best of circumstances was nerve-racking. These were definitely not the best circumstances. Mrs. Pinales hadn’t covered how to deal with a natural disaster, unless you consider feeding a toddler one. I shouldn’t be alone in a damaged house with two younger kids. This was only the second time I’d ever been left alone with anyone! What if I did something wrong and made things even worse? Andrea is probably already on her way back, I told myself. I have to keep things under control for an hour, tops, before one of our moms gets home. But my chest was still tight, and I felt dread like it was right before a big test.
As if to show me I was right to be afraid, we felt a subtle side-to-side shake again, like a shudder. Oscar cried out and grabbed my hand. “An aftershock,” I said, squeezing his. The tremor passed quickly.
A minute later, Zoe came out of the bathroom. “The sink in there is cracked.”
“Good catch. Did you try to use it?” She shook her head. “That’s probably smart.”
“Wait—Oscar, did you use the sink?” she asked. He shook his head, sheepishly. Zoe rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, how many times has Mom told you? Wash your hands after you go to the bathroom. Ew!”
“Maybe right now is the exception to that rule,” I said. “But, yeah, otherwise—wash your hands.” I wrinkled my nose, thinking about how I’d just held his post-bathroom-break hand. I wiped my palm on my leggings. Oscar shrugged.
I hurried inside to pee. At least the toilet flushed normally.
When I came out, the three of us stood in the hallway for a moment. I didn’t know what to do next. Find my phone, then a safe spot; huddle there until Andrea gets back? I didn’t want to hang out in the kitchen, with the floor covered in food and stinky cage shavings, not to mention glass. “I guess let’s go back to the living room,” I said. “Turn on the news, see if there’s any info about what happened.”
Zoe and Oscar trailed me like ducklings through the kitchen again, both giggling at the fridge’s tail. That was funny. I allowed myself to giggle too. And right then, it seemed like maybe everything was going to be okay. It was awful, the damage in the house. It had been scary to experience the shaking. But that was over, we were all unharmed, and soon our parents would start taking care of everything. Including us. “We really do need a picture of the fridge.” I laughed harder, thinking of what Neha would say when I texted it to her. Only then did I remember how we’d left things before the jolt. My smile faded.
Once we made it back to the living room, Zoe ran to the area by the coffee table to grab her tablet, which had ended up halfway under the love seat. She tiptoed back over to the edge of the kitchen to take some pictures.
“Stay off the kitchen floor for now—there’s broken glass.” I started hunting for the TV remote. “Oscar, do you remember where the remote was?”
He shook his head. “Somewhere by the couch. What about Jupiter? He doesn’t have a house anymore.” He pointed at the mangled cage, sitting below the shattered window on the opposite side of the room.
“Hmm. We’ll take turns holding him until your mom gets back.” Their mom—I still hadn’t texted her. I shook my head at my own mistake. Contacting Andrea should’ve happened first after we crawled out from the table, even though it had been a bathroom emergency. She must be super worried, assuming she knew what had happened on Pelling. “Can you keep holding Jupiter while you look for the remote? I’m going to find my phone.”
Oscar nodded, tucking Jupiter into the crook of one arm while he slowly walked around the safe zone of the living room, turning over pillows, papers, and magazines that were now covering the floor, the surfaces of the couches, and the coffee table. “There’s dirt on the carpet,” he said, pointing with his free hand at a spot where a planter had toppled over.
“Okay, maybe stay off that part of the carpet. We should probably all wear shoes…” There was too much to manage at once. I focused on the most important thing, my missing phone, scanning the area around the love seat—that’s where I’d been using it. I felt a pinch in my stomach, remembering my last text. Had Neha written something back and now I’d ignored it for all this time? What if she’d apologized? Maybe she’d understand when I explained what had happened to us.
Had the shaking happened to Neha, too, all the way in Bremerton?
“Are you guys looking for the remote?” Zoe asked, from the edge of the living room. She held up the black cylinder. “It got all the way over here.”
“That’s wild,” I said. “Turn on the TV—let’s check the news.”
Zoe carefully made her way to stand next to where I was searching, on hands and knees, for my phone. We were all moving around like we were in a game of The Floor Is Lava. Come on, where is it? When I didn’t hear the television make its turning-on blip, I paused in a squat.
“It’s not working,” Zoe said, pressing random buttons.
“Could the batteries have run out?”
She shook her head. “Mom put in new ones last week.”
“Hmm. Let me see?” She handed me the remote, and I pressed the red power button hard, then again. Nothing. “Wait a minute.” I stood all the way up and walked to the edge of the kitchen, studying the overhead light. Wasn’t that on before the shaking started? Now it was off. I scanned the walls for a switch, then started flipping them all. Nothing turned on, nothing turned off. A chill ran down my spine.
The power was out.
Andrea needs to know what’s going on here. Now. I could look for my phone later—I’d first call her on the landline. I carefully crossed the kitchen floor, avoiding a big puddle of debris that had formed, with shards of glass and chunks of plaster mixed in along with syrups and cereal and spices. The base part of the phone wasn’t turned on, because of the power outage, but hopefully the handset had been fully charged when it went off. The list of emergency numbers was posted right next to the phone, with Andrea’s cell and the kids’ dad’s number as well as the pediatrician, dentist, vet, poison control, and even the number for my house, I guess since we’re the closest neighbors and Mr. Aranita is gone a lot. I clicked the handset on and punched in Andrea’s number, but when I put the phone to my ear, it was dead silent. Not even a dial tone. I clicked it off, then back on. Nope. Nothing. My breathing felt shallow again.
Calm down. This isn’t a huge deal, I told myself. The phone line is probably connected to the power or something. It’ll be back on soon. Anyway, I could still call Andrea on my cell; I just had to find it. Clutching the list of emergency numbers in one hand, I returned to searching for my phone. Outside, evening was slipping into night, and the light was fading fast. Soon it would be totally dark in the house.
“Okay, we’re going to race—the person who finds my phone gets to eat a bowl of ice cream. Before dinner, even!” I figured that wasn’t a bad idea, if the power was out and everything in the Franken-fridge’s freezer compartment was going to melt anyway.
“I’m going to find it!” they shouted, almost in unison. So that was an even-better idea, because I’d found a way to distract the kids from the disaster—literally—around us.
“Ready, set, go!” Oscar, still cradling Jupiter, used his free arm to start tossing everything on the floor up into the air. Normally that would create a huge mess, but it really made no difference now. Everything about this is so weird. I had another impulse to text Neha and tell her. The other time I babysat, I sent her regular updates on what the Matlock kids were doing and how the snack situation was panning out. But now I couldn’t text Neha any updates—not just because my phone was MIA, but because our friendship had been shaken up almost as strongly as the house. At least it was still standing. I hoped Neha and I would be too.
Then two things happened at once.
And Zoe screamed. At first, I thought she must be really upset about not getting ice cream, which was silly, because obviously it was bound to melt and we’d been through a real trauma, so we would all eat as much as we wanted. I was only going to let Oscar have first pick of the flavors. Maybe I should’ve made that clear.
But then I saw her near the windows, where she’d been crawling in the hunt for my phone. She was sitting on her heels, eyes squeezed shut, clutching her right forearm with her left hand. When she opened her eyes and turned to me, she lifted her hands and I saw. The light caught the glass sticking out of her arm, making it sparkle. A line of red was trickling down, pooling near her elbow.
“Freeze! Everybody stop right where you are!” I shouted. I didn’t like blood. I didn’t even like looking at grainy pictures of it in the first aid workbook. During that part of the class, I had shielded my eyes while Neha shook her head. “It’s just blood; it’s not a big deal.” But it made my stomach turn to see it.
I could not turn my head from this. “Zoe,” I said, faking calm as best as I could. “Carefully come to the kitchen.” She nodded and whimpered, and then she slowly walked over to where the carpet ended and the tiles started. A few droplets of blood left a trail behind her. I swallowed hard. This is my fault. I made them crawl around in a room full of hazards. What was I thinking?
“Wait right here,” I said, my voice trembling, once she was in the kitchen. I hurried over to Oscar, still frozen by the love seat, watching us. I scooped him up. His legs and bare feet dangled almost to the floor as I held him up by his armpits and walked us both back to the kitchen tiles.
“Don’t move from this spot.” He nodded, nuzzling Jupiter. Then I led Zoe over to the sink. I forced myself to look again at her arm. The cut was bad. It was on the inside of her forearm, closer to her elbow than to her wrist, with glass still poking out of it. There was a lot of blood. She might need stitches.
I cleared my throat, trying to make my voice sound as soothing as Ms. Whalen’s had during the yoga lesson. “I’m going to rinse off the…blood. Then I’m going to make sure the glass is out, and we’ll put on a bandage, and it’ll all be fine.” I paused. “Do you know where the Band-Aids are?”
Zoe, unlike me, couldn’t stop staring at her arm. Her voice trembled as she said, “In the drawer next to the sink.”
“Okay. That’s great.” I turned the tap on. Cold water or hot? I think you’re supposed to rinse wounds with cold. Hot might hurt. I guided her arm under the water, adjusting the stream so it was gentle but still strong enough to rinse out any bad stuff. The drawer was already open, and once I flung away a bag of marshmallows that had fallen into it from a cupboard, I found a box of bandages of assorted sizes. Luckily, all the little ones were used up and only the extra-larges were left, the size people hope they’ll never have to use. One would be big enough to cover the cut, deeper than it was long. I dug around in the drawer, but there wasn’t any antibiotic ointment, as far as I could tell.
I turned off the water. The blood didn’t stop flowing, so it was hard to see if it was clean of dirt. What if she cut an artery? Aren’t there arteries in your arm? That chunk of glass still stuck out. “Close your eyes,” I said, because she was staring at it. Zoe squeezed them shut, and before I could think too much and lose my nerve, I pulled the glass out. Zoe winced and gasped. The piece was almost an inch long, sharp like a knife. I shouldn’t have let them crawl around like that. I’m the worst babysitter.
After rinsing the wound again, I grabbed a paper towel from the roll mounted over the sink and blotted her arm dry. The towel darkened with red, and I thought I might throw up. But I kept going, reaching for the bandage. This was no time to be squeamish.
The first bandage started reddening right away, so I stuck on another one. That seemed to hold it back. “Done,” I said, even though I wasn’t convinced the bandages would last. “Why don’t you sit down and keep your arm up?” You’re supposed to elevate a wound to stop bleeding. And something else…apply direct pressure! “Press on it.” I took her hand and touched it to the area around the bandage. “Not so much it hurts. Just enough to help it stop.” Tears rolled down Zoe’s face.
Looking at the blood-soaked paper towels made me dizzy. I wanted to cry too. Actually, I wanted to go to sleep, to slip away into a happy—or at least boring—dream, which seemed like the only way I could escape what was happening around me. But I couldn’t. I was there, I was in charge, and I’d already made one really awful mistake. Mrs. Pinales’s words sounded in my head, like a reprimand: “The first thing to do in an emergency is get an adult.” I blinked and glanced up. Oscar was still watching us, warily, from the edge of the kitchen, holding my phone. There was a clear-ish path from his spot to where we sat, next to the sink. I motioned him over. He handed me my phone.
I didn’t realize how dim it had gotten until I pressed the home button and the screen lit up. Outside, the sun must’ve dropped beyond the tree line. It was already past seven, and the house would get very dark, very fast. “As soon as I call your mom, let’s find a flashlight.”
I swiped to unlock my phone, realizing that the blank lock screen meant no texts had come through the entire time it had been missing. Nobody messaged me? Neha never wrote back? And my mom didn’t call? A nervous chill made me shudder, but I ignored it. My phone was working fine. It looked like I had bars. Was it really possible that nobody else knew yet what had happened on Pelling?
Except, if it was nearing dark, shouldn’t my mom have gotten home from work already? And why hadn’t she texted when she saw I hadn’t updated her on my babysitting “adventures”?
I pressed Andrea’s number in the list of recent calls. I held the phone to my ear, waiting for her to pick up. But the call didn’t go through. I put it on speaker and listened to a few unfamiliar blip noises, but it wouldn’t connect. I pressed end and checked my bars. Now they’d disappeared.
“No service,” I muttered. The network was probably overloaded. Maybe the earthquake had rattled a cell tower or something. Zoe was eyeing me with concern. But the Wi-Fi symbol was still at the top of my screen. “I’ll text.”
I typed it out quickly, all in one superlong message so there would be fewer to send:
Hi Andrea, I don’t know if you already heard but I think we had an earthquake or something on Pelling. There was all this shaking, now the power’s out and the phone too. I’m sorry there’s a lot of damage inside from things that fell and Zoe got a cut. It looks bad. Can you come home right now? Also where are the flashlights and stuff? It’s getting dark.
The zippy green line showed that the text was sending, and my shoulders relaxed with relief. My mom sometimes gets on my case for texting too much: “Every time I look at you, I only see the top of your head, because your face is looking down. You’re transfixed by that phone! At least swap it out for a book once in a while.” I would take great pleasure in pointing out how, in this case, texting saved the day when every other form of communication failed us. Although I suppose I didn’t try any passenger pigeons.
The green line stalled at about 80 percent sent, but that didn’t worry me. It did that a lot when using Wi-Fi instead of the cell network. I held the phone over my head, waving my arm back and forth, to try to wake up the signal. I checked the screen again. No movement. Now the Wi-Fi icon had disappeared too. If the router used electricity… My pulse started speeding up again. I walked closer to one of the windows.
“Is your phone broken?” Zoe asked. Tears coursed down her cheeks. Oscar, eyes big and fearful, was biting his thumbnail. Even Jupiter, on Oscar’s lap, still looked wary.
“No, it’s just slow,” I reassured. The signals were probably cutting in and out. There was nothing I could do but wait—and keep the kids calm. “Hey, le
t’s get you that ice cream.” I sent a shorter message to my mom:
Mom help emergency please come over if you get this
I placed my phone on the countertop nearest the window, after turning the ringer on and the volume up as loud as possible. I nudged the fridge with my toe to make sure it was stable in its new, middle-of-the-floor home. It seemed fine. I opened the freezer door and, waving away the cloud of cold air, quickly scanned the cartons. “Mint Moose Tracks and Salted Caramel.”
“Mint Moose!”
“Caramel.” Zoe’s voice wavered.
Thank goodness they didn’t want the same flavor. I pulled out the cartons and quickly shut the door. Luckily there wasn’t a ton of food in the freezer. Just the ice cream, some vacuum-sealed packages of fish and garden veggies, a box of freezer-burned Popsicles, one packaged burrito, and frozen berries. “Spoons?” I asked.
Zoe nodded toward a drawer behind me. It was already open, the spoons jostled with the forks and knives inside. I didn’t want to go hunting for bowls. “You guys can eat straight out of the cartons.”
“Aren’t you having some?” Zoe asked, when I took out only two.
I shook my head. “I’m going to let my stomach settle.” I was too nervous even for ice cream. And, looking at her bandages, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I handed a spoon to Oscar, then realized Zoe couldn’t apply pressure to her arm and eat at the same time. “Just a second, then I’ll help you eat.” I went back to the counter to check on my phone.
Message delivery failed. Try again? I sucked in my breath.
“What’s wrong?” Zoe quickly asked.
“I guess my phone isn’t working after all.” Oscar dropped his spoon with a clatter. I hurried back to them, to head off a meltdown. I slid down next to Zoe, replacing her left hand with mine over the bandage. I could feel that it was moist. What if it never stops bleeding? With my other hand, I opened the carton for her and held it out so she could eat. “But I’m trying to send the text again. We probably need to give it a minute. I’m sure everybody is texting right now.”
The Disaster Days Page 4
