While You Were Gone

by Amy K. Nichols

  “Another,” Richard says, swiping a finger across his tablet. “Death toll at four.”

  “Wearing a hole in the carpet won’t change that,” Dad says. “Sit down.”

  Richard sits on the arm of the couch because he does what Dad tells him to do. It doesn’t stop him from checking for updates, though. His hair is turning gray at the temples. It’ll be white by the time he’s done serving as Dad’s chief of staff. “Christine sent the draft of your public statement.”

  He passes Dad the tablet, then turns up the volume on the news. A reporter stands a safe distance from a military blockade. Behind her, smoke rises from the rubble that used to be Port Royale Way. South of where she’s standing is Jansen Fine Arts Services, where my work is getting prepped for installation. My hands escape their lockdown and I chew on my thumbnail before Mom stops them again.

  “Power is still out for thousands as crews continue to search for survivors. Though the investigation is ongoing, an anonymous government official said a terrorist-detonated EMP is suspected—”

  Dad hands the tablet back to Richard. “Tell Christine this needs more grit. People need to understand the dangers they face.”

  “They?”

  “We. More inspiration, too.” He stands and stretches. “We’re in this together,” he says in his speech-giving voice. “We’ll get through if we all work toward a stable society. There is no room for those who…” His voice fades as he and Richard disappear into the kitchen. Mom picks up the remote and mutes the TV.

  One of the monitors flashes a spinning graphic—PATRIOT DAY PANIC—as the news ticker scrolls across the bottom. The screen shows a replay of the explosion, caught by Spectrum. A rising plume of smoke fills the view from across the mall parking lot. People duck and scatter in every direction. The camera shakes and debris flies as the second blast hits. The whole thing plays again in slow motion. It’s surreal watching with the sound off. Makes it feel like it’s happening somewhere far away. Makes me realize how quiet it is down here, cut off from all the people and noise.

  Mom lets go of my hands and pats me on the knee. “Don’t worry. We’re safe.”

  The last time we were in the bunker, I was a moody twelve-year-old, annoyed that I had to get off the phone to go underground. That was when Red December blew up the light-rail tracks over by Goldwater Field and turned downtown into a total mess. It never crossed my mind that something bad could have actually happened to us that day. With the concrete barricades and closed-off streets around the Executive Tower, it seemed impossible anyone could get close enough to try.

  I don’t know if it’s me that’s changed or the world, but this seems worse. Bigger. Closer to home.

  This time people weren’t just inconvenienced. People died.

  I close my eyes but still see the images in my mind. “I’ll be back,” I mumble as I walk to my room—well, the room that’s considered mine down here in the bunker. I leave the door cracked a smidge so I can hear what’s going on in the main living space, and fish my book bag out from where I stashed it under the bed. After a quick check to make sure the coast is still clear, I sit with my back against the wall, the door almost closed beside me. My hand slips inside the bag and pulls out the slim hardback book. Its corners are worn with age and from me lugging it around, no doubt. The title is scratched up, too, stamped gold against the plain black cover. Retrogressive.

  I know my fascination with the paintings is wrong, and that there’s something not right with my brain that draws me to them, but I can’t help it.

  I open the book and my fingers navigate past the flyleaves and long-winded introduction. They know the way; they’ve done this countless times. The pages are thick and glossy. I flip through until I find the artist that fits: Pablo Picasso. As my eyes take in the feast of line and shape, my hands go quiet, my shoulders relax. I let the painting fill my mind until it’s all I can see and the ugliness out there is erased by this beautiful chaos instead. My finger traces the progression of angles and shadows down to the words. My lips form them silently. Ma Jolie. My pretty girl.

  If anyone saw me with this, if anyone knew my secret—

  Vivian.

  I turn from Picasso over to Ramsey. The faces in his Iterations laugh, scream, cry. I haven’t looked at this one since the night of Bosca’s exhibit. I haven’t been brave enough. Seeing them now brings a flood of emotions. Fear. Anger. Regret.

  Deconstructing Complacency was set to be the event of the year. The Department of Public Compliance had lifted curfew the day before and people were itching to get out and live again. The line to get into the museum wrapped clear around the building and stretched all the way down to McDowell Road. This was big-time. And Bosca had put me in charge.

  He was in rare form, making demands left and right. Being lead intern, I took the brunt of his drama. The others did whatever they could just to stay away. As the clock ticked down to opening, Bosca got snippy. When he demanded to see the museum director for the hundredth time, I asked Vivian to go instead. Twenty minutes to opening, I still needed to change my clothes and fix my hair. She stormed off, muttering under her breath, resentful that I’d given her something to do. I blew her off, grabbed my things and headed to the restroom.

  I slipped into my dress—a red, strappy design I’d been dying for an excuse to wear—and tried to get myself fancied up. Even with hair pinned up and perfect lipstick, I looked stressed. My forehead was etched with worry and my hands wouldn’t stop moving.

  So instead of returning to the green room, I took the stairs down to the vaults. I knew it was a risk, but I had a few minutes and my feet led the way. With the museum closed and all the Bosca action happening upstairs, the hallways below were empty. Still, I tried to keep my heels quiet as I walked across the concrete floor toward the storage room at the far end. Unlike the passcode-protected vaults full of prized works of art, the reject room’s door is never locked.

  It’s small and crowded in there. I crept around the statue of the man with stick-thin arms and inched past the paintings stacked against the baseboards. Crouching down, I flipped through them. Some are framed, some are just raw canvas. Others are rolled up and stand on end in the corner. I’ve never taken time to investigate those. Whatever they are, like all the other pieces stuffed in the room, they’ve been labeled Retrogressive, unfit for society. They’re dragged out from time to time to be shown as cautionary examples of disorder, illness, depravity, and then put away again for fear of corrupting minds.

  That night, I stopped on Ramsey’s Iterations, a collage of faces exhibiting a range of emotions. Dread, sadness, joy. Rather than disorder, my mind filled with a sense of wonder, a sense of ease, just as it had the other times I’d snuck down there.

  “Eevee?”

  I pushed the paintings away with a gasp.

  Vivian made a disgusted face. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I—”

  She crossed her arms as the disgust turned to a sly grin. “Caught ya, didn’t I?”

  My hands fell limp at my sides. She raised an eyebrow and turned, saying, “What will Bosca think of his little star now?”

  Bosca was angry. Dismayed. He promoted Vivian to lead intern and put me on provisional status.

  My parents don’t know. Yet.

  Which is why I have to make sure the work I present to the jury is acceptable. Not only so I can prove that I’m a good artist and upstanding citizen, but also so I can go somewhere else, like Belford, a place where I wouldn’t be considered different, weird or disgraceful.

  Dad passes by outside. “We need to make them realize it’s for their own good.”

  My hand braces against the door. The other grips the book.

  A second set of footsteps—Richard’s—follows. “They’ll get on board. Trust me. The hardest part of all this will be the cleanup.”

  “When do we get to go back upstairs?” Mom asks.

  “Soon.” Dad’s voice moves from one side of the room to the other. “
They have to make sure the complex is secure first. Where’s Eve?”

  “I think it was too much for her.”

  “Yes, well…” Dad’s voice turns to a mumble and I can’t make out what he says or Mom’s response. The knock on the door startles me. “Eve?”

  My hands fumble as they shove the book back into the bag. The door begins to swing and I press against it with my knee. Too hard. It bangs shut.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yes.” I scramble across the floor and slide the bag back under the bed. “Hang on.” A swipe of my foot and the strap disappears under the dust ruffle. I brush off my jeans and smooth my hair. By the time I open the door, Dad’s over by Mom again. They stop midconversation and stare at me. Richard looks up from his tablet, too. Behind them, the images of the attack flicker across the monitors. “I was…” My hands resume their fidgeting.

  Mom opens her mouth to say something to me but turns to Dad instead. “You were saying?”

  Richard looks back down at his tablet. Dad picks up the remote. “I’m afraid we’re down here until security decides we’re safe.”

  “Well, I wish they’d hurry,” Mom says with a sigh. “I just want everything to go back to normal.”

  “It will.” Dad turns up the volume on Barcelona. “It always does.”

  Next thing I know, I’m lying on a tarp under a tree with the world imploding around me. Sirens scream. Smoke chokes the air. People stumble past. Beside me, a woman holds a bloody cloth to her head. Beyond her, medics load a gurney into the back of an ambulance. Everything is loud and hot and close. And none of it is familiar.

  I push myself up and see my own hands wrapped in gauze. What happened? I close my eyes and think back.

  I dodged Brent’s truck. Walked to school. Grabbed a quick smoke before going to class. Got there late—

  A slamming door makes me jump. The ambulance bounds over the curb and its siren wails. A woman crouches in front of me. “Welcome back.” Her smile is grim. She unslings the stethoscope from around her neck and presses it against my chest. Holds two fingers on my wrist to check my pulse.

  These aren’t my clothes. “Where’s my jacket?”

  She shakes her head and puts the stethoscope back around her neck. Pulls a penlight from her pocket and flashes it over my eyes. “That’s your sweatshirt behind you, isn’t it? We used it for a pillow. Dizzy?”

  “No.”

  “Pain anywhere?”

  “Chest feels tight.”

  “Asthma?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Probably reacting to all the soot in the air.”

  “What’s wrong with my hands?”

  “Superficial lacerations. Compliance officer said you were climbing a fence when the bomb went off. You got scraped up pretty good when you landed. Lucky nothing’s broken.” She taps my knees and elbows with the side of the penlight. “I’d send you over to Harbor Samaritan, but they’re full up. What’s your name?”

  “Danny.”

  “Did you come here with anyone, Danny?”

  I shake my head.

  “Officers are working on contacting your family. Hang tight.” She pats me on the knee and goes to help a woman with a cut on her leg hobbling toward the tarp.

  I lift the gauze to look at my palms. Road rash. Fingers scraped up, but nothing too—

  What the—?

  I hold my arms out in front of me. They should be covered in red-pink scars from Brent’s cigar. But—

  Everything blurs. The people, the noise. It melts away until all I see is me.

  I stretch my fingers wide. The scars are gone. The calluses, too. And my long hair. I’ve never seen these clothes before, not even the sweatshirt the nurse said was mine. The world around me moves in slow motion.

  Think, Ogden. You walked in late to English. Sat in your chair. Put your head down and fell asleep.

  Fell.

  I fell. There was darkness and a pulling. Then the floor was gone and I fell through. I thought I was dying. But I didn’t die.

  I landed.

  Here.

  And the scars are gone.

  Someone calls my name. I look up through the sea of people. When I hear it again, I push myself up to stand. A cop walks toward me, the same one I saw before. His mouth is a thin line, his eyes searching. He stops to let a person in a wheelchair pass, then sees me and nods. He motions behind him for someone to follow. I try to see past him but there are too many—

  “Whoa there.” A medic catches me.

  “S’okay.” I shake my head and free my arm. Beyond the cop, a tall man in sunglasses walks into view. He holds out his hand to the woman on his right.

  It can’t be.

  I take a step, sure the ground won’t be there, and trip over the woman with the bleeding head. “Sorry.” I don’t stop. I just keep walking toward them and they keep walking toward me until the space between us is gone and we’re standing face to face. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out.

  My parents are dead. I watched their coffins go into the ground.

  Mom wraps her arms around me. “Oh, Danny. We thought we’d lost you.”

  Early Friday evening, we’re finally released from our confinement. Taking the elevator from the bunker all the way to the top floor feels like being reborn. Dad retreats to his office. I stop to look out over the city before joining Mom in the kitchen. She goes on and on about how good it is to be back upstairs, how we all must be starving, how she doesn’t understand why some people refuse to integrate into society. Meanwhile, I prepare green beans. When she’s said all she can say about the bad things in the world, she starts in on me wanting to study abroad.

  “It’s so far away,” she says, flipping the tilapia fillets. “Why not choose something closer?”

  I think the things I can’t say: Because it’s far away and because over there they don’t censor art. But what I say to her is, “Because it’s the best.”

  “Well, your father and I still aren’t convinced.”

  Gripping the knife, I pulverize the beans.

  “How about we see if you get in and then decide?”

  I’m so annoyed I can’t answer. In fact, I don’t say anything the rest of the time we’re in the kitchen, or after we’ve gotten dinner ready.

  The dining table is ridiculously long for a family of three, but necessary for dinners with dignitaries. Mom and I sit across from each other at one end, waiting for Dad to join us. He’s always on the phone. Just part of the job when you’re the gov. Mom turns pages in a manila folder beside her plate. She’s always reading boring papers and proposals. Just part of the job when you’re a lobbyist. A candle sits on the table, its light competing with the chandelier overhead. I watch the flame’s reflection in the window overlooking Phoenix. The city stretches out in a shimmering grid of gold and silver lights. It’s beautiful. But the darkness hides an ugly truth: Part of the city is without power. A mall lies in smoldering ruins. That’s on the other side of the Executive Tower, though, so we don’t have to think about it while we eat. Out of sight, out of mind.

  “We need to go shopping,” Mom says, breaking the silence but not looking up from her work. “Governor’s Gala is just around the corner.”

  The thought feels like grit in my mouth. “They’re still going to have it? Even with everything going on?”

  “Of course,” she says. “It’s a tradition. I think you should go with Chad. He’s a nice kid.”

  “Mom, I told you before—”

  Dad’s entrance rescues me from having to explain for the thousandth time that I don’t want to go with Chad to the gala, or anywhere, ever. “Fine. Keep me posted.” He tucks his phone into his pocket, opens the media cabinet on the wall and turns on the flat screen. President Coradetti stands at a podium, a flag-lined hallway behind him. His face is stern.

  “…because what happened in Phoenix could happen anywhere. The truth is, there are forces strategizing against our great nation. Individuals
and organizations actively plotting to harm our people. They are ruthless. They are heart—” The lights flicker and the television glitches.

  “What was that?” Mom asks.

  “Fluctuation in the power grid,” Dad says, waving his hand to quiet her. “It’s to be expected.”

  The president unfreezes. “…will not stop until they’ve unraveled the very fabric of our society. We cannot and will not let that happen. I am working closely with Governor Solomon and security agencies to ensure the safety and well-being of the good people of Arizona. We will move through this dark and dangerous time toward a better tomorrow, but only if we stand together and stand strong. Thank you.” The presidential seal fills the screen before it returns to regular news.

  Dad mutes the TV and sits at the head of the table. I watch the reporter’s lips move, waiting for the lights to flicker again. Dad sighs. “How am I going to follow that speech?”

  “You’re going to be great.” Mom puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “I just don’t think anyone realizes the pressure….”

  “You were made for times like this. And we’ll be right there to support you. Right, Eve?”

  Behind her, scenes of military personnel and cleanup crews move across the screen. I force myself to smile. “Of course. You’ve got this.”

  He smiles. “Where would I be without my girls? Is this creole tilapia? You must really love me.” He winks at Mom and digs in. My own fish remains untouched. I push it around a little with my fork.

  “Eve,” he says, his face and emotions back in check, “I received word that school is no longer on lockdown. Jonas can take you back straight from the press conference tomorrow.”

  I exhale. Loud.

  “Yes, yes, we know,” he says. “You can’t wait to get away.”