“Drew,” she whispered, “you can come out now.”
Drew crawled out from under the bed. His cheeks were red.
“You okay?” she asked, trying to sound brave.
“Yeah.” He wiped his eyes. “I’m fine.”
“Are you crying?”
“No.” Drew sniffled and rubbed his eyes with one hand, the wedding photo clutched tight against his chest in the other. “Is it over?”
“Yeah.” Alex glanced over the room, her arms wrapped tight around her rib cage. “I think so.”
Drew rubbed his head where he had bumped it on the bed.
“Let me see.” Alex pushed aside his longish black hair, which he kept growing out in an effort to look cool, and studied the bump. There was a red mark. “I think you’ll be fine. You might have a bruise.”
Alex surveyed the room. A jagged crack two feet long broke the yellow-painted wall. A longer crack split the ceiling. Was the foundation crumbling too?
“Come on,” she said, almost tiptoeing down the hallway. “I think we should go outside.”
Drew ran to his room. “Lulu! Good girl. Good girl. She’s fine!” he yelled.
“Glad to hear it,” Alex said. Having a lizard in the house gave her the creeps, but so did the geckos that sneaked into the house and climbed the walls.
The rest of the house appeared intact. The bookshelves were bolted to the walls, and the cupboards were designed to withstand tremors. With an active volcano on the Big Island and a history of eruptions and landslides, Hawaii was at high risk for earthquakes. The Big Island was on the fault line. An earthquake was less likely on Oahu, but still possible—obviously.
“Come on.” Alex grabbed Drew’s arm. “Let’s go see if everyone else is okay.”
Outside, a few neighbors were already cleaning up damage, but most people were at work on a Monday morning. Telephone poles had fallen down—that must have caused the awful crash. Across the street, a palm tree had fallen right on Mr. Chu’s tiny car, smashing the hood. The Chus’ yard was full of potted plants and palm trees, and Mrs. Chu often shared the avocados and pineapples she grew with her neighbors. Now fallen coconuts littered the ground like balls in some huge croquet game.
Mr. and Mrs. Chu were retired, so they were home most days, and Alex spotted Mrs. Chu as she righted a plant stand. Next to it, a clay pot with intricate flower carvings lay in pieces. Mrs. Chu’s stereo sang with a soloist playing a classical violin piece. She glanced over at them, threw her hands in the air, and then waved.
“Aloha,” Mrs. Chu said.
“Aloha,” Alex yelled and waved back. The Chus had welcomed Alex and her family right after they had moved in. With her dad’s mom in the distant Philippines and her mom’s parents far away in Minnesota, it was like having an extra set of grandparents. “Where is Mr. Chu?”
“Napping.” Mrs. Chu gestured toward their house. “He probably slept through the whole thing.” She made a snoring noise and then laughed. The Chus had lived through several earthquakes, so this was no big deal to them. “How are you enjoying your break from school?”
“Well,” Alex said, looking around, “it was going fine.”
“We’re just lucky no one was hurt,” Mrs. Chu said.
“Good point!” Alex said. “I’ll come over and help you in a minute.” She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and pointed to it. Mrs. Chu nodded.
Alex wanted to get hold of Mom and Dad. Had the earthquake reached their workplaces? She searched for the bars on her phone. No signal. She had heard cell phones sometimes didn’t work in emergencies. She stuffed it back in her pocket.
After helping Mrs. Chu, she could wander down to Sienna’s and see if their house had any damage. If it wasn’t too bad, they could meet Maia at the beach like they’d planned. They’d share snacks and compare notes about who was dating whom and talk about where they were applying to college. Alex was applying to three schools in Minnesota: Concordia College up north, Mankato State, and the University of Minnesota. Her dad had also suggested the University of Hawaii.
She and Simone had talked about being roommates in college so they wouldn’t get stuck with someone super annoying, but that meant they would have to agree on a school. Simone wanted to go to the University of Minnesota-Duluth, but Alex didn’t know if she wanted to move to Duluth. Sienna wanted to get back to the mainland too: she didn’t have a major picked, but she was considering schools in California. Last week she’d been really excited about the creative writing program at Mills College.
Alex felt another rumble.
“What is that?” Drew said.
“I’m not sure.” A chill ran up the back of Alex’s neck. Was another earthquake about to hit? No. This rumble felt different, and the usually calm sound of crashing waves seemed closer than normal.
A look of horror crossed Mrs. Chu’s face as she looked past Alex.
Drew pointed behind Alex and shouted, “Look out!”
Alex turned toward the ocean. A wave stretched across it, as wide as she could see and reaching at least two stories high, as high as their house. It was as if an enormous dam had broken—a dam that had been holding in the whole Pacific Ocean—and now a giant wall of water rushed toward them. Alex reached for Drew’s hand. But she only grazed his fingertips, and then he was gone.
4
Alex flailed and tumbled in the water. It was as if she had been thrown into an enormous blender spinning with trees and cars and dirt and glass and plants.
I’m drowning, she thought. I’m going to die. She was powerless against the water. She needed air. Kick your feet, she told herself. Kick your feet. But which way is up? With all the debris swirling around her, she couldn’t tell. Look for the light. Nothing looked like light she should swim toward. Where is the light? Am I going to die?
She kept kicking instinctively but didn’t seem to be moving. Suddenly Alex burst through the surface. She gasped for air and then coughed up water she had inhaled. The waves slapped her face, and she treaded water frantically, looking around for her brother.
“Drew! Drew!”
Mrs. Chu’s house was under water, except for the roof. The roof? What happened? Their whole neighborhood was flooded. Alex didn’t see Mrs. Chu or her tiny, smashed car, or the downed telephone poles. She didn’t see any other people.
Alex’s whole body ached. Was she hurt? The water was cold. She kept swimming, hunting for something solid. She couldn’t get the taste of saltwater out of her mouth no matter how much saliva she spat out. Murky, muddy water swirled around her. Her arm bumped against a dead fish. It was huge—a tuna? The water covered everything but the treetops. She saw some palm trees floating, torn from their roots. Mr. Chu’s car surfaced and crossed the water.
Alex treaded water. “Drew!” she yelled, but she didn’t see her brother anywhere. “Drew!” She shouted again and again, sobbing between each hoarse cry.
What if he died? No. She couldn’t think that way. Where are Mom and Dad? She wanted her parents. Had the tsunami reached as far as the university campus? Had they been able to get to higher ground in time? And what about Sienna? She lived even closer to the ocean. And Maia? What had happened to them? Alex reached for her back pocket, but her phone was gone, taken by the water. It wouldn’t have worked anyway after being submerged for that long. Alex patted down her other pockets in case she had put it into one of those. No . . . wait. She felt something, but it wasn’t her phone. It was a small lump in her front pocket—the lava rock from that morning.
Alex squinted in the sunlight reflecting off the cloudy water. The waves that had always looked clear were now too silty to see through.
“Mrs. Chu!” Alex screamed, hoping her neighbor had survived. She swam hard, dodging downed branches and jagged chunks of who knows what.
“Mrs. Chu!” Alex saw no one in any direction. “Drew!”
The water was changing. She could feel it moving away, like water draining out of a tub. Alex fought the pull, pumping her arms
and legs harder in the opposite direction. The Chus’ smashed-in car floated past her. The tide was sucking the water back out, which could mean another wave. “Drew!” Alex screamed. Where is everybody?
“Drew!” She treaded water in a circle, searching, tears mixing with the seawater on her cheeks. “Drew!” He was a good swimmer, but this wasn’t swimming. This was—
“Alex!” she heard. “Alex!” The sound of splashing came from behind her.
Alex spun around and spotted him, clinging to a downed palm tree near the roof of a house. Whose house? Theirs—or what used to be their house? Was this even still their neighborhood?
“Drew! Wait!” Alex swam toward him, but Drew let go of the palm tree and swam toward her. The current tugged them away from the tree.
“Grab onto something,” she called to him. “It’s pulling!”
Between them, a couch bobbed in the water like a raft.
“Grab the couch!” Alex yelled.
They raced toward it, bumping debris in the water. Drew got there first and clutched the back. Alex lunged toward it and caught the arm on the opposite end.
“Hold on!” she yelled, tightening her grip on the couch. The water was cold and cloudy, gray from stirred-up mud and sand. The couch was moving fast now, away from the rooftops.
She inched her way around the couch until she reached Drew. “The water is moving out,” she said. “The tsunami is sucking the water out. We have to let go. We’ll get pulled out with it.”
“No,” Drew said, clinging to the soaked upholstery. “I can’t.” He shivered.
“You have to. You’ll be washed out to sea.” They were already being sucked in that direction. “We’ll swim back to that rooftop,” she said, pointing at a building sticking up out of the floodwaters.
Drew shivered and gripped the couch till his knuckles turned white. He nodded.
“We can do this together. On three,” Alex said, putting her hand on his. “Okay?”
Drew shuddered and said, “Okay.”
“One. Two. Three.”
They pushed off the couch and swam for the building. Alex flailed and pumped her arms. She turned back to see where Drew was. The coach floated out toward the ocean. Drew was right behind her. They were getting closer to the building, but then the water receded even more. Suddenly, Alex could touch her feet on the ground again. She smiled for a second.
Then the shallow water rippled. Alex and Drew caught each other’s eyes. Another massive wave was headed toward them.
5
“Drew! Go under the water!”
“Alex!” Drew screamed.
“Go under!” Alex repeated. “Dive! Now!”
Drew dove, and Alex took a big gulp of air and dove too as the water slammed into them. The second wave was even more tumultuous than the first. She tried swimming away from the surface this time, hoping to avoid more debris that way, but she found herself caught in a tornado of water, driven helplessly through the wreckage.
Finally, she burst through the surface. She opened her eyes into a flood of light and sucked in air, coughing and gasping. She didn’t see Drew. She pushed her long hair off her face and gasped as pain shot down her left arm. She must have injured it in the wave.
Again, the tide tugged her out to sea. She couldn’t let the ocean swallow her. Where was Drew? She searched the wreckage that once was paradise—flooded homes, trees torn up by their roots, a small fishing boat stranded on a rooftop, its bow cracked open by a fallen light pole. A man floated by, hanging onto a mattress. Then Drew shot up out of the water several yards away.
Alex swam toward him, paddling with her one good arm and kicking her legs.
“Drew! Over here!” The water pulled at her again. She needed to grab hold of something, anything. “We need to stay on land! Where should we go?”
Drew looked around. “The tree. Let’s get to the tree!” He scrambled toward a palm tree that seemed intact, though only ten feet of its branches still showed above the water.
They reached the tree and Drew threw a leg over a thick branch. He struggled to pull himself up and then reached out a hand to Alex. His hand shook. Alex fought her way closer to him and grabbed his arm, but nearly pulled him back in the water.
“Hold on,” Alex said. She worked her way down the tree branch to an open section. She swung her legs up and tried to get a grip on the smooth bark, but she kept slipping as the receding water cascaded through the branches. Alex moved down to a thinner part of the branch and finally pulled herself up.
The water level dropped a few feet as she and Drew panted in the branches.
“I want Mom and Dad!” Drew said.
“I know,” Alex said. She wished Mom and Dad were there too.
“What if they’re dead?” Drew burst into sobs.
Alex reached over to clasp a hand on his shoulder. “You can’t think like that. You have to have hope.” Even as Alex said this, she hardly believed it herself. “Mom and Dad would want us to be brave. They would expect us to try, so let’s at least try,” she said. “Or fake it till you make it, as Mom would say.”
Drew nodded. His teeth chattered as he repeated, “Fake it till you m-make it.”
His face carried cuts and bruises, as if the sea had beaten him up. His skateboarder T-shirt was torn in front, showing a scratch etched into his skin. It was a miracle they had survived the tsunami. Alex thought about Mrs. Chu again, and tears sprang into her eyes. Was there any chance they had survived?
As the water receded, Alex realized they were near the beach. She saw the remains of the Aloha Café: its thatched roof and tiki torches were gone. She looked for the three trees where she and Sienna and Maia hung their hammocks, but she couldn’t find them.
“Are we the only ones?” Drew said. “Do you think the water went over the whole island?”
Alex sighed. “I don’t know.” She looked inland, toward the center of Oahu. Hills rose into mountainous terrain. That had to be the safest place on the island. That’s where they would find other survivors. “I do know that we need to get to higher ground. That’s where we’ll be safe.” Alex pointed toward the mountains. “Come on.”
6
“Why did we have to move here?” Drew said, climbing over a pile of broken branches.
Alex could hear the sadness in his voice. She didn’t want to make him feel worse, but she did have plenty of complaints about moving to Hawaii. Drew was barely holding his tears back, so she kept her criticism of Mom and Dad’s decision to herself.
They walked for what seemed like hours across downed branches and deep puddles. A dead horse lay on its side in the water. They had gone horseback riding when they first arrived in Hawaii. The trail guide took them way up the steep hills, but the ranch was on the low ground. The horse probably didn’t stand a chance.
An overturned white sailboat with Mer-maiden Voyage painted in blue on its side sat atop a downed palm tree. Alex stepped over part of a mangled deck chair. The tsunami had ripped the flip-flops off her feet, and her bare feet sloshed through mud.
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
Drew stopped and sobbed in place.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
“Lulu. She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I know you loved her.”
Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
“Ah!” Alex had stepped on something sharp. She hopped on one foot and held Drew’s shoulder to keep her balance as she looked at the bottom of her foot. A sliver of wood stuck at an angle. She bit her lip and tugged at the sliver. “Ow!” she cried as it came free, blood rising in its place. “There. I think I got it out.” She set her foot down and kept walking. At first her foot stung, but then the pain eased up.
She had nothing else to protect her feet while she walked. Inches of muddy, opaque water still covered the ground, making it impossible to see where they stepped. If something else cut her feet, she would have a hard time continuing, but they needed to keep going. They had to get t
o Mom and Dad.
“Ow!” Drew yelled.
“Now what?” Alex asked.
Drew was holding his right foot. “I twisted my ankle.”
“Walk it off,” she said, offering him her shoulder to lean on.
“Ah. It hurts.”
“I know,” Alex said. “Just try.”
Drew reached for her shoulder but then said, “You’re bleeding.” He pointed a shaky arm at a bloodstain now growing on the front of her white tank top, seeping down toward the green gecko on the front. Cuts crisscrossed all over her arms and legs, but now the ache in her arm intensified.
Alex twisted around carefully and found a piece of clear glass stuck in her arm. Her hands shook and her heart pounded as she reached for the glass and gripped it. Her breath came in rapid gasps, but she squeezed her eyes shut and yanked the glass out. Sobbing, she tossed it in the water. This is a nightmare. She longed to be home in frigid Minnesota, where being bundled up in a sweater and fleece blanket made the coldest days cozy. But she had to keep going. She took Drew’s hand and guided him on.
When they had first landed in Hawaii, the warm air was like a blanket. Now, trudging through the muck in water-soaked clothes, that same air felt humid, stifling. Slogging through the water was like walking with weights strapped to her ankles.
She tried to think of something better. Mom and Dad, especially Dad, were always asking Alex what she wanted to be and what she wanted to major in in college. She wasn’t all that interested in marine biology, or any other kind of biology, but she didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings by saying that. She loved writing. Mom said if Alex loved what she did for work, then she would never work a day in her life because work wouldn’t feel like work. Mom said writers usually majored in English. It was a lot of reading and writing papers. If the tsunami had struck in another six months, Alex wouldn’t have even been here. She would have been away at college. But then who would have helped Drew today?
When they first moved in, Mrs. Chu had told her that people might not be very friendly until they had been there at least a year. “People are afraid you won’t like living on the island. They’re afraid you will move,” Mrs. Chu said. “They don’t want to get too attached. It makes them sad if you leave.”
Wall of Water Page 2
