Wall of Water

by Kristin F. Johnson

  Alex knew all about leaving—leaving her friends, her school, her old neighborhood. She had cried alone in her room many times over the thought that she would barely have time to adjust to Hawaii before having to start all over again at college. She had figured she could be miserable and lonely for a year, or she could make new friends, knowing she would soon be moving away.

  Now, with the tsunami, she didn’t even know if her new friends had survived. She only had two. She didn’t want to lose them. Drew didn’t have many friends either.

  “What if Mom and Dad are dead?” Drew said.

  He asked what she was trying not to think about, but hearing it was worse: the spoken words made it sound more real. Alex squeezed her eyes shut and balled up her fists. She was worried for Mom and Dad, Sienna and Maia, and Mr. and Mrs. Chu. They could all be dead.

  “Come on.” She choked down a sob. “We need to keep moving. It’s getting dark.”

  Drew sniffled quietly. Alex knew he was crying, but if she started crying too, she wouldn’t be able to stop. Instead she tried to focus on getting them to safety.

  Drew’s feet slogging through the water behind her sounded like paddles pulling a canoe toward the shore.

  “You’re doing great,” she said.

  “Do you think anyone will find us?” Drew asked.

  “Of course they will,” Alex said, trying to sound as convincing as possible, but she didn’t look at him when she said it. “Let’s just keep moving.”

  In truth, Alex wasn’t really that optimistic. She just wanted to sound hopeful for Drew, even if it was a lie.

  7

  “Look!” Drew shouted.

  Alex looked up from the dangerously mucky ground. Drew was scrambling toward a boat jammed between some trees and a rock. The name Reel Deal appeared on the stern.

  “Why is that fishing boat so far inland?” Alex said, but she knew the answer. The tsunami had carried it this far. When will we reach the end of the wreckage?

  Drew looked in awe at the boat and ran his hand over the topside. It was the kind of boat their dad had taken them out on once when he went deep-sea fishing.

  Seaweed draped over the edges of the boat, and a palm tree rested against the side like a gangplank.

  “Hello!” Alex yelled. “Hello!” No one answered.

  Drew glanced at Alex and then they raced for the gangplank. Drew limped on his twisted ankle, but he got there before Alex and walked the plank first.

  At the top he struck a pirate pose and declared, “Arrrrrr!”

  “Move it, Captain Hook,” Alex said, climbing up the palm tree after him. On deck, she surveyed the boat. Shipwreck was more like it. The decks had been swabbed clean by the tsunami.

  “Look for anything we can use,” Alex said.

  “Aye-aye.” Drew saluted her.

  “I’m going below to investigate.” Alex climbed down a ladder with only five rungs. Then she had a horrible thought: Where is the owner? What if someone is down here? And what if they are dead? Or alive and furious that we’re on their boat?

  “We shouldn’t be here,” she said aloud, even though Drew couldn’t hear her.

  She cautiously poked a door below deck. It creaked open.

  “Hello?” she said more quietly than before. No one answered. She stepped through the doorway.

  Cabinet doors hung open, and fishing gear, plastic dishes, and vinyl cushions were strewn everywhere. Water dripped across the wooden planks in the floor, which was cracked in several places, showing fiberglass beneath.

  Alex turned back to the door, but a figure loomed up just as she pushed the door open and she screamed.

  It was only Drew.

  “You scared me half to death!” she scolded.

  “Sorry.”

  Alex sighed. “Let’s see what else is on the boat.” She hunted through the rest of the cabinets for anything useful that had survived the tsunami. Life jackets—too late for those. Two beach towels that were soaked through. She laid them out to dry on the boat’s narrow foredeck.

  She felt awkward picking through someone else’s belongings, but she and her brother needed food, even if they had become looters. Alex’s stomach growled. What time was it? She hadn’t eaten anything since the bagel on the beach this morning. Something crinkled at her feet.

  “Score! It’s like we really are pirates,” Alex said, holding up a bag of potato chips.

  “I know you’re going to share those,” Drew said. He sat down on the floor of the boat and rummaged through the storage space under a bench built into the hull. “I hope we find someone else soon,” he added.

  “We will,” Alex said. She stopped searching and met his eyes, repeating, “We will. We have to stay positive. Don’t give up.”

  Their mom had hung a plaque on the wall of the house, right where people could see it on the way out the front door. It said, “Don’t forget to be awesome!”

  Awesome. That seemed impossible right now. How could she be awesome walking through the wreckage of a tsunami?

  She prayed they would find their parents. She would feel better now if they ran into anyone at all.

  “Look!” Drew held up a can of flavored water.

  “We’re splitting that,” Alex said, her dry tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  “Hello!” someone yelled.

  “Who’s there?” Alex asked.

  “Hello!” the person yelled again.

  Alex climbed the ladder and looked around.

  “Hello?” Alex yelled. “Is someone there?”

  “Where are you?” the voice yelled.

  Alex knew that voice. “Sienna? Sienna!”

  Drew stopped rummaging as Alex climbed out of the boat and down the tree trunk. Heedless of the wreckage, she ran to Sienna and gave her a huge hug. It was so great to find another person, and someone she knew was even better.

  “Mi amiga,” Sienna said.

  “Mi amiga,” Alex repeated. Then she stepped back for a moment. “I’m worried. Where is everybody? Where’s Maia?”

  “Oh!” Sienna said, “I forgot to tell you. Maia called yesterday and said she couldn’t meet us this morning because her parents had decided to spend the break in L.A. They left last night.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Alex said.

  “Nope.”

  “Wow. That was lucky for them to have missed this.” Alex swept her arm around then shook her head. “My dad said we might visit my grandma in the Philippines this year because we’re so close. If only we had gone there now, we wouldn’t be here. Crazy.”

  “I know,” Sienna said. Alex led her back to the Reel Deal, and they climbed aboard.

  “I’m worried about my parents,” Alex said.

  “Me too. My mom and dad went to work as usual. Nobody had any idea.” Sienna shook her head. Then she looked Alex in the eye. “Don’t worry. They were on higher ground. They’re probably fine. We’ll keep looking. My dad’s probably out doing rescues with his squad.”

  Alex blinked back tears and nodded. They stood there a moment.

  “What happened to your leg?” Alex asked, looking at the gash on Sienna’s left shin. Blood streamed down from the wound.

  “I don’t know. Something cut me.”

  “Wait here,” Alex said.

  Sienna sat down on the deck. Drew was still digging around for more food.

  Alex sorted through the mess again, muttering, “Aren’t they supposed to always have first aid kits on boats?” More bad luck. The rock in her pocket bounced against her leg.

  “It’s okay.” Sienna waved her off. “It’s not bleeding much anymore. I’ll be fine.”

  Alex pulled the bag of potato chips open and thrust the bag toward Sienna. “The first’s for you.”

  Sienna smiled and scooped out a chip, stuffed it into her mouth, and crunched.

  “That is the best thing ever!” She handed the bag back to Alex, who took two chips and passed the bag to Drew, who shoved a handful of chips into his
mouth at once.

  “Eat slowly. We don’t know when we’ll find food again,” Alex said.

  Drew returned the bag to Alex.

  Alex tapped the can of mineral water with her fingernails in an effort to keep it from spraying. They needed every drop of water they could get. She pulled the top and the can opened with a satisfying fizzle. Alex took a couple of sips and handed the can to Drew.

  “Sip. Don’t gulp,” Alex said.

  “I know. Geez.”

  “Well, follow directions,” Alex said.

  Drew took two sips.

  “When will you stop treating me like a kid?”

  “You are a kid.”

  Drew burped just as he answered Alex, “I’m tweeeeeelve. Ahhhhh.” He handed the can to Sienna.

  Alex rolled her eyes.

  “Typical boy,” Sienna said.

  “Alex?” Drew said.

  “Yeah?”

  “What if . . .”

  She knew he was going to ask again about what would happen if they never got rescued. What if they died out in the sun? What if . . .?

  “Do you think Mom and Dad are okay?”

  “I hope so,” Alex said. “Grandma lived through a tsunami. Dad said her whole village was underwater. If she survived that, so can we.”

  “I thought Dad said Grandma’s parents died in that tsunami.”

  Alex sipped the mineral water and stood up without answering him. Sienna sipped from the can and then handed it to Drew.

  “Come on,” Alex said. “If we stay here, we could die in the heat. We need to keep moving.”

  8

  Alex wrapped the beach towel around Sienna’s shoulders and tossed the other towel to Drew.

  “This is the next best thing to sunscreen,” Alex said.

  “What about you?” Sienna said.

  “I’ll be fine for a while.” She held her arm up to Sienna’s for comparison. “I’m way darker than you are.”

  “True,” Sienna said.

  A dead barracuda showed its belly to the sun. Alex had seen one at the university’s aquarium, where her dad held some of his classes. He had been so excited to work with ocean organisms after teaching for so long in the Midwest. Was the university even there anymore? If the university closed because of the disaster, could they go back to Minnesota? What if Dad was on a boat researching fish when the tsunami hit? Sometimes he went out with the local fishermen to learn more for his lectures. Was Dad even alive?

  Alex stepped over a chunk of broken coral. “When we were snorkeling, my dad said you couldn’t touch the coral or you would kill it,” she said. “Look at it now.”

  “I know,” Sienna said. “It’s awful.”

  The coral should have been underwater. Now it had dried up and died. Stepping on the coral seemed disrespectful, even if it was already dead.

  The wreckage stretched as far as Alex could see. The tsunami had clawed its way over the island, devouring everything in its path. In the distance, hills emerged, maybe a mile away.

  “What is that shining?” Sienna said.

  Something glinted on a mound of sand near a fallen palm tree.

  Alex walked closer. “It’s lava rock.”

  Guilt tore at her insides. That couldn’t be what really caused all of this destruction, taking that one measly stone from the beach, right? Never take lava rocks. It’s bad luck, the guide had said. It wasn’t as if she took the rock off the island altogether. And these lava rocks were far away from the beach; they were inland, near the hills.

  They were bound to see someone else soon, weren’t they?

  Alex bent down and picked the rock out from under the broken palm branches. She pressed its sharp edges into her palm and turned it over. One side was smooth, the other rough and cracked. Lava was like that: two-sided. She dropped the rock to the ground and stuffed her hands in her pockets. She pulled out the rock she had taken and stared at it. Through the tsunami, that little rock had stayed in her pocket, as if the bad luck of the rock was sticking to her.

  She thought of dropping the rock right then and there. Would that put things right? This wasn’t where she had picked up the rock. She needed to get the rock back to the ocean, but they were nowhere near the water right now. Her shoulders dropped, and she stuffed the rock back into her pocket. She would have to keep it until she could return it to the ocean.

  Sienna jogged over. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” Alex said. “Just . . . nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Okay.” Sienna shrugged.

  They kept walking, with Drew trailing behind. After a while, the wreckage lightened up. Eventually they reached an area apparently untouched by the tsunami.

  “A road,” Drew said. He ran toward the paved highway, and Alex ran after him. Finally. So the tsunami hadn’t gone over all of Oahu.

  “You know what this means?” Alex said.

  “What?”

  “Mom and Dad. They might be okay. Maybe the water never reached them.” Alex felt a burst of new energy. “Let’s walk along the highway. Someone’s bound to drive by.”

  The sunbaked pavement burned the bottoms of Alex’s bare feet, so she walked on the sand next to the highway instead. Something rumbled in the distance.

  “If that’s another earthquake . . .” Drew said.

  “Shhh . . . listen.” Alex stopped walking. The rumble grew louder. “I think it’s a car. We’ll get them to stop. They have to. Quick! Look presentable.”

  “What?” Drew said. “Presentable. Is that a joke?”

  “Stand up straight,” Alex said.

  In his torn, filthy clothes, Drew looked like he had been in a fight. Sienna didn’t look much better. Alex expected she looked the same.

  A pickup truck came around the curve. Alex’s mouth was dry and her lips cracked from saltwater and sun. She pushed strands of her hair back behind her ears before she waved to the driver, as if that would make a difference.

  9

  The truck slowed to a stop. The driver’s door opened, and a man stepped out. His black hair was longer than Alex’s, past his shoulders. His white tank top had a surfboard on it, and flip-flops slapped his heels as he walked toward them.

  “Aloha,” the man said, raising a hand. “Are there just three of you?”

  “Yes,” Drew said, stepping up.

  “I can fit you in the back.” He jerked a thumb toward his pickup. “I’m finding survivors and driving them to food and to shelter. They set up a hospital in Honolulu. I’ll take you there.”

  Alex felt tears rise in her eyes. “Thank you,” she croaked, and then she coughed.

  When they reached the pickup, the man handed them each an ice-cold bottle of water. Alex pressed it up against her forehead and then against the back of her neck. Then Alex, Sienna, and Drew climbed aboard the rusty pickup, which was once maroon but had faded nearly to pink.

  Wooden benches ran along the two long sides of the truck’s bed. A man and a woman, also in rough shape, were on board already. They slid down the bench to make room.

  “Have you seen a little boy? He’s three years old,” the woman asked before they had even sat down. She held out her phone and showed a photo of a toddler holding a red balloon.

  “Does your phone work?” Alex asked.

  “We tried calling, but we can’t connect. His name is Joseph,” the woman said, still holding out the boy’s picture.

  Dirt smudged the woman’s face, and cuts and bruises marred her arms and legs. Her clothes were torn. The man next to her didn’t look over. Were they together? He put an arm around her shoulder and his other hand on her knee, and his gold wedding band shone in the sun.

  “We took this at his birthday party.” The woman smoothed the picture on the screen with her thumb, as if she was moving Joseph’s mussed hair off his face. “We had a juggler. He loves jugglers.”

  She sounded hopeful. Alex would have to stay hopeful too. Mom and Dad are alive. We will find them soon.


  Joseph had a smudge of white on his face. Frosting, maybe? His photo disappeared as the screensaver came on.

  The woman cradled the phone to her chest. “He likes chocolate cake with white frosting. We told him that not everyone gets to say he spent his third birthday in Hawaii.” A sob escaped the woman, and then she inhaled deeply. The man squeezed her shoulder.

  “Shhh. It’s okay. Shhh,” he said.

  “I haven’t seen him,” Alex said. “I’m sorry.” She looked down, feeling ashamed, and thought of the lava rock. She tugged at her shirt to make sure it covered her pocket. How could nature wreak havoc on a little boy like that?

  She wished again that she had never taken the lava rock. She had lost so many other things—her home, her friends, maybe her parents—but that rock stayed with her like a curse she couldn’t shake. She had to get it back to the ocean, but now they were driving farther away. The guilt was unbearable. From now on, she would be the best rule follower ever.

  “Where are we going?” she asked to no one in particular as the truck jerked forward.

  “Aloha Stadium,” the woman said. Then she turned off her phone and put it inside her purse. “The Red Cross set up a temporary hospital there. They flew in by helicopter because the main airports are all shut down.”

  Alex’s high school graduation was supposed to be held at Aloha Stadium. Now she might not even be able to graduate.

  The man stared down as if studying the ruts in the rusty pickup bed. Worry lines marked his face.

  “We’re looking for our parents,” Drew said. “Michael and Anne Reyes.”

  “Well,” the woman said, “at least you have each other.” She put an arm around her husband and kissed his unshaven cheek.

  Alex intertwined her hand with Drew’s. “We’ll find them,” Alex said. “We will.”

  Drew nodded but didn’t look her in the eye. Now even Sienna stared down at the ruts in the truck bed.

  “And your family,” Alex said to Sienna. “We have to stay hopeful.”

  Alex and Sienna pinky-swore. Alex thought of Mr. and Mrs. Chu again. It was possible they had survived, wasn’t it?