“When I win the lottery,” Carmen said, “I’m gonna build state-of-the-art hospitals, all along the border. So future kids like us won’t have to know what it feels like to lose family for stupid reasons.”
“You could name ’em after your dad,” Shy told her.
“And your grandma,” Carmen said. “But not your nephew. ’Cause that medicine’s gonna make him better.”
“Man, I hope you’re right,” Shy said.
It went quiet between them for a few seconds, and Shy thought of something. He’d give back every single second of him hooking up with Carmen last night, as long as he knew they’d keep being friends after the voyage ended. She was way more than just some girl you messed around with.
“Anyways,” Carmen said, standing up. “I’m gonna change into sweats. You can stay if you wanna keep checking your email or whatever.”
“If it’s cool,” Shy said. “Just kick me out whenever you’re ready to crash.”
Carmen went to her dresser, pulled a pair of sweats and a sweatshirt and her toiletry bag. On her way to the bathroom she stopped and patted Shy on the shoulder. “Sorry you have to deal with this disease again,” she said. “It’s bad enough when it’s an adult. But a little kid?”
He locked eyes with her and nodded.
She took her clothes into the bathroom, and Shy just sat there staring at the door as she pulled it closed behind her. He felt nervous being in her room this long. He honestly wanted to respect her whole fiancé situation. But at the same time, he didn’t want to rush off either. Talking to Carmen was making him feel way better.
He got up and went back to her laptop. Checked his email. Nothing.
His thoughts drifted back to the man in the suit as he browsed through Carmen’s music on iTunes. Maybe he should have stayed longer, heard everything the guy had to say. But then he’d started tossing out threats—Shy hadn’t even done anything wrong. That’s when he’d had enough. Hopefully Franco would be able to explain everything in the morning.
Carmen had a ton of world mixes. Some angry chick stuff. Finally he stumbled into some hip-hop he dug and put it on and the beat filled the tiny cabin.
Carmen cracked open the bathroom door and mumbled over her buzzing toothbrush: “I know you didn’t just mess with my music, Sancho.”
“Just switching it up for a sec,” Shy said.
Through the crack in the door, he saw her rinse out her mouth, then tap her electric toothbrush against the miniature sink. “Why do you settle for generic American hip-hop?” she called out over her shoulder as she took out her contacts.
“It’s your music,” he said.
“Brazilian beats are way more raw,” she said.
“I don’t even know what they’re saying, though.” He went back to scanning through her library.
“It’s not about the words, Shy. It’s about the feel.”
When he looked toward the bathroom again, he saw her slipping out of her long black dress, and he froze.
His mouth fell open.
He knew he shouldn’t be seeing what he was seeing, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. Her skin was perfectly brown and soft-looking and she was spilling out of her bra, and she had on a black thong that was barely any material, and all over she was thick except her slim waist and stomach, and she had a tattoo just beneath her belly button, words written in script, too small to make out, and for the first time in Shy’s life a girl was making his heart pound so hard inside his chest he wondered if he was having a heart attack and he wondered if this was how love felt.
Their eyes met in the mirror for a fraction of a second. He quickly cut away and stared back at her computer. He heard the door click shut.
Shy didn’t move for a while.
He just stared at her computer screen and concentrated on the feel of his breaths going in and out of his lungs.
It definitely wasn’t the time to be checking out Carmen. Not when she was being so nice to him. And so supportive about his nephew. If she wanted to be just friends, then he did, too.
But damn.
That perfect sliver he’d just seen of her body.
He couldn’t get it out of his head. Couldn’t stop imagining himself getting up and going to the bathroom door and knocking, her letting him in.
He had to leave.
Now.
Shy stood up and started toward the cabin door, but just then Carmen came out of the bathroom.
She had on a Chargers shirt and a pair of Adidas sweatpants, and they both started talking at the same time:
“Listen—”
“Here’s the deal, Shy—”
They looked at each other.
“I just wanna say—”
“Last night—”
Carmen put a finger to her lips, said: “Let me get this out first, then I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, okay?”
“Okay.” Shy’s heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about last night,” Carmen started. “About why I did what I did. And I’m gonna be honest with you, Shy. There’s maybe a few little feelings on my side.” She took a deep breath and shook her head, went and sat on the edge of her cot.
Shy stayed by the door.
“I mean, you’re definitely a little corny. And you go to the dumb high school back home. But still. You’re from the neighborhood, you know? We get each other without any words. And it’s not like you’re hard to look at.” She paused for a few seconds. “What I’m trying to say is, you got a little something, all right? But I made a commitment to Brett. I’m getting married in a few months. Jesus, I’m getting married.”
“I wanna respect that, Carm.”
“I know you do. But maybe it’s not just you I’m worried about. I don’t even know what I’m doing.”
Shy didn’t know how to respond to that so he just stood there, waiting for her to talk again.
“Sometimes…I don’t even know, Shy. I got all this doubt going through my head. Like, am I messing up here? Am I doing this for the right reasons?”
Shy shoved his hands into his pockets, said: “Everyone probably has those thoughts.”
Carmen looked up at him. “That’s what my mom says. But I don’t know.”
It was super awkward now, and Shy decided he should break the tension somehow. He forced a little grin and told her: “Man, it’s just too bad your guy doesn’t have a cooler name. ‘Brett’ sounds kind of soft, don’t you think?”
“Oh, ’cause ‘Shy’ is so gangster,” Carmen fired back.
They both smiled and Carmen said: “Come give me a friendship hug, all right? Then I’m kicking your ass out of here so I can go to sleep.”
Shy was just starting to move toward Carmen’s open arms when the ship jerked violently.
They stared at each other, neither saying a word.
Heavy footfalls shook the ceiling above them.
Doors opened and closed in the halls.
“Shy?” Carmen said.
He opened his mouth to answer, but before he could get any words out there was an explosion of deafening sound. They both covered their ears and stared at each other, Carmen’s face filling with worry.
The ship alarm.
Shy threw open the cabin door and looked down the hall. Other doors were opening, people gathering in groups, looking at one another, confused. Shy spotted the man in the black suit, Bill, hurrying away from Carmen’s cabin. Like he’d been listening to their conversation through the door. But why? That seemed as bad as breaking into his cabin.
Shy refocused his attention on the alarm and the panic rising in the hall. Maybe the ship had reached the eye of the storm. Or maybe it hit something or there was a fire in the engine room or pirates had stormed the captain’s quarters.
He saw Carmen rush over to her tiny porthole and look outside. “I can’t see anything!” she shouted, turning back to him. “Can you see anything?”
Shy hurried to her side, but all he saw was a thick blur of
rain and choppy waves crashing into each other.
No fire.
No smoke.
No other ships.
The alarm continued as they hurried back to the door, ducked out into the hall. More crew members now gathered there, everyone looking around and shouting over the earsplitting sound. Shy’s throat tightening, his eyes darting every which way.
Then the alarm cut off.
Just as abruptly as it had started.
The ship emcee’s voice came over the loudspeaker:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is an emergency. All passengers and crew members should secure a life jacket from the closet of your cabin and proceed directly to the appropriate muster station. I repeat, all passengers and crew members must secure a life jacket and proceed directly to their muster station.”
Shy and Carmen turned to each other.
He saw in her terrified eyes that this was something serious, and he knew immediately his life would be forever changed.
18
Order in the Normandie Theater
The alarm was blaring again as they raced up the stairs toward the Normandie Theater. Shy’s heart pounding inside his chest and throat, his thoughts all half formed. They were in trouble. He knew that. And he had to get to his and Kevin’s assigned muster station, the balcony area of the theater.
Just yesterday, he’d met with his group of passengers and led them through all the emergency procedures and marched them out to the lifeboats—but never once had he considered that there might be an actual emergency.
He glanced at Carmen, her anxious stare fixed directly ahead as they hurried through the hall. Life-vested passengers all around them now, wide-eyed and clinging to one another, shouting over the alarm.
Carmen broke off from Shy, hurried toward the stage level of the theater, her own muster station.
Shy continued across the corridor, toward the far staircase. He had to get to the third floor. Check on his group. Then he could think. And Kevin would be there, too. But he was slowed by a mob near the elevators. They turned on him with their questions, yelling over one another, the blaring alarm drowning out almost every word.
During training week they’d spent three full days on emergency procedures. Drilled every possible scenario, again and again. But now that it was happening for real, Shy felt totally unprepared.
“I’m sorry,” he told them.
“I don’t know anything,” he told them. “We have to wait for another announcement.”
It wasn’t good enough.
The mob kept shouting at Shy and pressing in on him until he couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved past everyone and broke for the far stairs, climbed two at a time.
Kevin was on the next floor up, barking directions at passengers: “All guests must go to their muster stations! Let’s move it, people! This is an emergency!”
Shy ran up a final flight of stairs, stepped into the hall just outside the theater and repeated Kevin’s exact words to all passengers who were lost. It helped Shy as much as it helped them. Gave him something to focus on. A job. No time to think about the storm or what the ship alarm meant or the supposed eighteen feet of steel keeping them afloat.
Each passenger carried a ship card, which was like a credit card they used for everything on board. Shy flipped over the cards of lost passengers, directed them to the right muster station based on the color code on back. Some of the things he’d learned in training were actually returning to him.
All around were panicked faces, the ship pitching aggressively again, and sometimes a man or woman getting sick right there, in the middle of the hall, and the other passengers stepping around him, over him, through him, and it was all so chaotic and overwhelming, but Shy no longer had time to think about his own fear because he had a job.
Take a card.
Flip it over.
Shout the muster station name and point a direction. “Go!”
He spotted the foul-mouthed Muppet boy sitting against the far wall, rocking back and forth, alone. The kid wasn’t cursing now, he was crying and calling for his mom. Shy grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him up. “What’s your mom’s name?”
“Barbara!” the boy shouted.
“Barbara what?”
“Barbara Pierce!”
Shy dragged the kid into the theater and called this name, over and over, “Barbara Pierce! Mrs. Barbara Pierce!” above the crowd noise and the alarm and the kid’s continual sobbing, until a woman downstairs, in Carmen’s section, started waving her arms frantically and screaming the boy’s name: “Lawrence!”
Shy led the boy to the stairs, made the handoff, watched the mom wrap her son in a tight bear hug, her face wet with tears and relieved, and right then Shy decided something: This was what he had to do. Help people. Because when he helped people, he didn’t try to guess what was happening and he didn’t worry. He just acted.
He turned back to his muster station and shouted for everyone to line up, recalling many of the faces from yesterday’s departure, when he’d led them through the safety rules and marched them to the lifeboats off the Lido Deck—back when the lifeboats seemed like nothing more than decoration and all the faces he saw were full of excitement. The faces he looked at now were frantic and bloodless and lost.
“What’s happening?” they shouted at Shy.
“Where’s the captain?”
“We need to speak to the captain!”
“Why aren’t they telling us anything?”
“Please!” Shy shouted back, feeling more in charge now. “Right now we gotta line up! Like yesterday! Come on, guys, let’s go!”
The alarm cut out again.
Every passenger stopped in their tracks.
The entire theater went perfectly silent for a few long seconds, everyone looking around at each other, looking at Shy, but soon the quiet was broken, and the hum of conversation picked back up, the ship still bucking underneath them.
Shy moved to the balcony to see what was happening. The theater curtain opened and the movie screen lit up, but all it showed was static.
He spotted Carmen, standing off to the side of the stage with Vlad, one of the security guards.
Just the two of them.
Vlad talking and Carmen listening.
Her face suddenly fell and she grabbed at Vlad’s uniform shirt and let out a piercing scream that filled the entire theater.
Everyone turned to her.
Shy leaned over the railing and shouted Carmen’s name.
She didn’t look up, but covered her face and dropped to her knees, sobbing.
19
The Big One
The ship emcee came on over the intercom again, his normally enthusiastic voice now slow and measured: “Ladies and gentlemen. There has been a major earthquake east of Los Angeles.”
Shy looked around at the gasping crowd.
“A catastrophic earthquake. We’re still gathering information at this time, but we’ve been informed that its size is beyond anything previously recorded on the Richter scale. The epicenter appears to be near Palm Springs, but the effects are much more widespread, reaching all the way into Mexico.”
Shy gripped the railing.
If the earthquake affected Mexico, it affected San Diego, too. Which meant Otay Mesa.
His body went cold as he thought of his family.
“We have been advised to discontinue the voyage until we regain satellite connection. Again, ladies and gentlemen. Approximately thirty-five minutes ago, a catastrophic earthquake hit California and we have been advised…”
Shy only caught bits and pieces of the rest of the announcement. Something about connecting to a news feed. About passengers remaining in their muster stations and the threat of rough seas. Mostly, though, Shy tried to make sense of his own jumbled thoughts.
An earthquake in California.
Off the Richter scale.
It was the “Big One” everyone had always talked about.
And how bad was “catast
rophic”? Did that mean everyone was dead? Was his family dead? Had all the buildings been leveled? He tried to imagine his street back home. His high school and apartment complex. The hospital where his mom and sister sat waiting for the medicine to fix Miguel.
Shy’s breathing started going way too fast, like he was hyperventilating. Because his thoughts now turned to the ship. All the way out here with no protection. The storm tossing them around and the waves growing and what did the emcee mean by a threat of rough seas? Wasn’t it rough already?
Shy kneeled down and tried to calm his breathing but he couldn’t. They had to hurry and get to Hawaii. Or turn around and go back home. They couldn’t just sit out here in the middle of the ocean; they had to do something.
Soon as the announcement ended, the hysterical voices of passengers were all around Shy and people were crying and anxiously punching numbers into useless cell phones and holding each other and shouting demands at Shy and Kevin, and all Shy could do was stand up and ask everyone to remain calm and line up, like they did when he’d led them through the safety exercise, but how could anyone be calm after what they’d just been told?
Shy imagined his mom.
His sister and Miguel.
His grandma.
But he no longer needed to worry about his grandma, because his grandma was dead.
And would he be dead, too, if he was back home? Had the cruise ship saved his life? Maybe the captain was right to have them sit out here and wait. Maybe there was nowhere else to go.
Shy helped herd all the passengers into theater seats, and then he hurried back to the balcony. Carmen was still there, now huddling against the wall and crying into her hands. He leaned over the railing to call down to her, but just as he opened his mouth, the giant movie screen flickered into a grainy picture above the crowded stage.
Everyone turned to it.
Carmen pulled her hands away from her face, looked up.
A mess of war-zone-like footage came into focus. Shot from a helicopter. It was hard to tell what they were seeing at first, but gradually it became clear.
The words “San Francisco” appeared at the bottom of the screen, but it didn’t look like San Francisco. It looked like a foreign city that had just been bombed. Or CGI in a movie. Leveled buildings reduced to hills of concrete and protruding metal stakes. Thick clouds of dust rose off the wreckage and smoke billowed from fires that burned over the caved-in streets. And everywhere the camera went it showed overturned cars, motionless bodies pinned underneath or hanging out of busted windshields. And in the background the Golden Gate Bridge was no longer a bridge but a mess of hanging cables and two crumbled sections that ran straight down into the bay.
The Living Page 9
