Dry

by Neal Shusterman

  “If you’re getting this report, and you’re in the Southland right now—there is a mandatory evacuation,” says Anderson Cooper. His image is accompanied by shots of military personnel helping families evacuate onto massive trucks, handing out water to long lines of people. “Evacuation centers are being set up throughout Southern California in school gymnasiums, churches, and malls—but there seems to be a staggering number of people who are choosing not to cooperate with these government mandates.”

  “Look on the bright side,” I say. “At least malls have a purpose again.”

  The next shot shows mobs of people flowing like a human river down a winding mountain road, and disappearing beneath a forest canopy. “These families are making their own way toward Lake Arrowhead and the Big Bear Lake area, but reports on the ground tell us that people who have been entering many of these woodsy areas aren’t coming out on the other side. . . .”

  Everyone watches silently, and then I turn to Kelton. “Hey, bug-out boy—if they’re not making it through the forest, what makes you think we will?”

  “I told you, we’re not going where they’re going.”

  And that’s good—because if all those people aren’t getting to the high lakes, there’s only one of two places they’re going. And neither of them are places you come back from.

  21) Henry

  Dealing with irrational people takes focus, intelligence, and extreme discipline—you have to maintain a sense of true emotional stasis—as outlined in one of my favorite books, Transformative Power, by Pearce Tidwell. One must learn to manage one’s emotional state in order to consistently operate from a place of resourcefulness, thus producing desirable outcomes. You have to be actionary, rather than reactionary.

  Which is why, instead of giving into the god-awful throbbing pain in my right shoulder, I channel it—using the pain as a tool to sharpen my focus. (It really hurts though, sweet Jesus how it hurts.) I won’t allow it to control me. My current agony will not define me. Instead, my profound discomfort will be a springboard that will propel me toward a better reality.

  Until now, I have mostly avoided watching the news; it’s always so manipulative. But now I can’t help but acknowledge that the Tap-Out is a tragedy, and the relief effort a travesty. The cities are clearly hit hardest—the crumbling impoverished areas packed with marginalized people unequipped for societal disaster.

  But there is always opportunity in misfortune. So the question is: How do I turn this to my advantage? Because, after all, you can’t work for the greater good unless you have all of your own ducks in a row first.

  All considered, it may be in my best interest to fly the coop rather than sit on my current nest egg. Then again, if the state of things has really devolved to such a degree, my water must be worth more than ever. Everything that I’ve traded for thus far will be peanuts compared to what my next transactions will bring. I’m busting inside! But I keep my cool. . . . One must never overreact to the spoils of one’s windfall. I decide it’s best to take an inventory of my current “liquid assets,” so I get up and head to my dad’s home office, where the rest of my ÁguaViva is.

  “Where’re you going, Roycroft?” the toughish girl with the perpetual smirk says. I say toughish, because I doubt she’s as tough as she wants everyone to think. But I won’t deny that there may be a screw or two loose.

  “To get more ice,” I reply.

  Which they all buy, because they don’t follow me. They’re still glued to the television screen. I guess with my arm like this, they don’t see me as much of a threat. Which is a big mistake. As long as they underestimate me, I have an advantage.

  I close the door to the office, ensuring my privacy, and pull out the last box of ÁguaViva. It’s a fairly large box, containing two cases. I pry the box open to reveal a new and unexpected wrinkle to my current situation.

  Life is rife with many moments of misfortune, which we must learn to see as opportunities. Misfortune, oh, say, like opening up a box that you think contains forty-eight water bottles, only to find that it’s full of ÁguaViva independent multitiered distributor brochures instead.

  In these situations, one must keep a level head.

  A very. Level. Head.

  I hold on to the one positive in this personal debacle: At least now I won’t have to struggle to make a decision as to whether to stay or go. I don’t have much of a choice now; I’m going to have to leave here. My generator will soon be out of gas anyway—and I can hide my acquired assets in the attic behind the boxes of Christmas ornaments. Except, of course, for the python—but that thing can go for weeks without food, plus I assume it’s well-acclimated to hot climates. Ultimately, a place of greater safety might not be a bad idea—and if Dove Canyon really is the bacterial petri dish my uninvited guests are making it out to be, I’d imagine any place will be better than this.

  In which case, their arrival is a lucky thing indeed.

  But I could have done without the dislocated shoulder.

  I seal up the huge cardboard box as securely as I can with strapping tape. And then I tape it again and again, so it’ll be virtually impossible to open. That’s when one of them comes in. It’s the more reasonable, less snarky of the two girls. The one who’s laying claim to her uncle’s former truck.

  “I thought you were getting ice.”

  “All out,” I say convincingly. “Which reminded me to check my water supply.” I rap on the box and point to the giant ÁguaViva logo on the side.

  There’s a brief lull in the conversation. And I know exactly where this is going. It can only go one way. The truck. They’re not going to leave until they get what they want. There’s four of them and one of me. Clearly I’m not going to be able to overpower them—especially with their psychotic red-haired pit bull around. I just have to write the truck off as a short-term loss leader, because when it comes down to it, I’m no longer in a position to negotiate. But she hasn’t realized that yet, and right now it’s just the two of us. So I beat her to the punch.

  “We never officially met,” I say, turning on the charm. “I’m Henry.” I extend my left arm to shake, since I can still barely move my right.

  She hesitates, a little skeptical. Understandable. “My name’s Alyssa.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Alyssa.” I smile and clear my throat. “I’ll tell you what. I appreciate the passion that you have for your friends’ and family’s well-being, and can see why you might feel entitled to that truck.”

  She crosses her arms, but she’s still listening.

  “So I’m prepared to give it to you.” I pause for effect. “But only under one condition.”

  She lifts an eyebrow.

  “You take me with you.”

  She thinks it over, but I can already feel things tipping in my favor. I once read in The Thriving Executive by R. J. Sherman that the number one way to sustain a job in this day and age is to make yourself indispensable. Or at least make people think you’re indispensable. She deliberates—and just when I sense that I’ve reached that tipping point where her emotions and better judgment teeter ever so precariously, I give her the gentle tap that ensures which way she’ll fall.

  “I’ll bring this ÁguaViva box,” I say, with an ingratiating smile.

  “We could just take your ÁguaViva,” she points out.

  “True . . . but you’re not that kind of person. The others might be, but you’re not.”

  And I can see by the look in her eye that she’s freefalling toward a unilateral decision. If they take me, they get what they want and I get to ensure my own survival. Another win-win.

  • • •

  The toughish girl, whose name I find out is Jacqui, insists on driving. Fair enough. For now. As we drive down my street, I begin to think I may have totally underestimated the effect of the water shortage on this community.

  It’s one thing to see rioting on TV in dense urban areas that are more prone to social conflagration, but quite a different thing to see homes wi
th broken windows in an upscale community like Dove Canyon. Not that the affluent are any better—I mean, human nature is human nature. However, where personal space is at a premium, tensions are apt to spike much more quickly than in a place where one’s battle cry reaches maybe ten neighbors instead of a hundred. Which means that in the suburbs and exburbs it’s hard to generate the critical mass needed to ignite truly bad behavior.

  Or maybe not.

  Because as we drive off, there’s more evidence of bad behavior than just broken windows. There are shattered mailboxes, cars that have jumped curbs into hedges, and the kind of random debris that one generally doesn’t find in a turnkey community like this one. Not because people here aren’t slobs—I’m sure a lot of them are—but they’re so obsessively worried about their property values that they’d rather die than allow the detritus of civilization to sully their curb appeal.

  “I’m worried about leaving my uncle,” says Alyssa, who sits beside me in the back seat. She’s a buffer between me and the psychotic redheaded kid on her other side. I would have preferred to sit in the front seat, but Alyssa’s brother called it, and if we don’t adhere to the convention of calling shotgun, what rule of law is left to us?

  “Uncle Parsley will be fine,” says Jacqui. “And even if he’s not, there’s nothing you can do about it. You asked him to come and he wouldn’t. End of story.”

  Alyssa accepts the wisdom, but doesn’t seem comforted.

  “Well, he’s got plenty of ÁguaViva,” I point out. “Even if it’s going right through him, he’ll still get the benefits of the electrolytes. In fact, its proprietary formula is proven to improve quality of life.”

  “Great, just what we need,” says Jacqui. “An infomercial with good hair.”

  This is what one calls a backhanded compliment. I choose to see the positive, because that’s how I roll. “That information could save lives,” I tell her. “And so can good hair in the right situation.”

  The truck is still hot. The air-conditioner has been blowing since we got in, but it’s no cooler. Jacqui notices that too, because she starts checking the controls.

  “What’s wrong with this thing?” she asks.

  “That’s right, I forgot—the air-conditioner doesn’t work,” Alyssa informs us. “Our uncle kept saying he was going to get it fixed, but never got around to it.”

  Jacqui glares at her. “You could have told us that before.”

  We all crank down the windows, but it’s just as hot outside as it is in the car. The digital thermometer on the dashboard reads ninety-eight degrees. Body temperature feels so much hotter when it’s outside of your body. Her uncle should have disclosed that the air-conditioner didn’t work when he made the deal with me. Legally you have to disclose things like that.

  Then Alyssa’s brother turns around and asks me, “What sport did you letter in?”

  I point to the patches on my jacket, which is increasingly wrong for the weather, but I refuse to shed it. “This one’s soccer,” I say—which seems to grab Alyssa’s attention, although I can tell she’s trying not to show it. “And this one’s lacrosse.”

  “Lacrosse,” says Jacqui. “I’m not surprised you’re good with a stick.”

  I choose not to comment.

  Alyssa looks at another patch. “Captain of the debate team?”

  I shrug like it’s nothing. “I make a good argument.”

  “How about the tattoos on your wrist?” asks Alyssa’s brother, pointing to the words peeking out from beneath my sleeve. “What are they?”

  “They’re not tattoos,” I tell him. “It’s just standard ink.”

  “So what do they say?”

  I pull up the sleeves of my letterman’s jacket a bit, and try to lift my arm to show him, but my shoulder throbs. My dislocation is a gift that keeps on giving. I’m able to get it high enough for him to see the words, though. He reads them haltingly.

  “Con-fla-gration. De-tri-tus.”

  “My words of the day.”

  Alyssa looks at me, a bit amused. “You write vocabulary words on your arm?”

  “ ‘One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilizing or it will die,’ ” I say, quoting Evelyn Waugh. Not that I know who Evelyn Waugh is, but knowing the source of a quote is what counts. “By the time it fades, the word is permanently committed to memory.”

  “I got a few words I’d like to write on your arm,” says Jacqui.

  As we come to the gate of my community, I can see that it’s blocked by a barricade of sorts; another sign of how deep the crisis has cut. It must have been designed by a committee because it’s a fairly pathetic barrier. Like something beavers might have erected if they had opposable thumbs and lots of upper body strength.

  “I forgot about that,” says Jacqui.

  “Maybe we can just roll over it,” suggests psycho-ginger. “This truck has a pretty high chassis.”

  “Why risk damaging her uncle’s truck?” I say. “We’ll get out and dismantle it.”

  It’s really the only reasonable course of action, but by saying it first, it helps to move me a few inches closer to a position of leadership.

  We all get out to clear a path to the gate. I’m not as effective as I’d like to be, however, and Jacqui notices.

  “What’s the matter, Roycroft? Is heavy lifting beneath your pay grade?”

  “Leave him alone,” says Garrett. “His shoulder’s messed up.”

  I grin and give her a one-shouldered shrug.

  With enough of a path cleared, we get back into the truck. I get back in next to Alyssa. It’s a bit cramped in the back, but to be honest, I don’t mind.

  “Look at that,” I say as we drive out of the gate. “Someone actually abandoned a BMW by the side of the road.”

  “Yeah,” says Jacqui. “What idiots.”

  As we pull away from Dove Canyon, I take a moment to do a more in-depth assessment of my travel companions.

  Alyssa seems to be the one calling the shots, although Jacqui wants to be. Then there’s Alyssa’s little brother, who stood up for me back at the gate, so I think I’ve already won him over. And then there’s the crazy kid. He’s the part of this equation I wish would just cancel out. I know the type. Angry. Sadistic. Sociopathic. He’s probably a drop-out, on the way to being a career criminal. Drug dealer type. Yeah. The kind of guy who beats up Eagle Scouts for fun.

  I won’t even try to gain his confidence. For now I focus on Jacqui. I try to decipher her. A lot of people probably think she’s Latina because of her complexion, but she’s not. Her intonations and body language point elsewhere. Her eyes and the cast of her brow feel more European.

  She catches me in the rearview mirror watching her, so I don’t shy away from it.

  “Italian?” I ask, taking a wild guess.

  “Greek,” she answers. “But I can’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  “Greco-Roman, then,” I say. “I wasn’t entirely wrong.” Then I add, “You have a classic look. If  Venus de Milo had arms, she’d look like you.”

  “If Venus de Milo had arms, she’d slap you around,” she responds.

  “How about us?” asks Alyssa’s brother.

  “Garrett, don’t even bother,” Alyssa says. “Nobody gets it right.”

  But still Garrett waits for me to try. I’m on shaky ground here, because, considering the volatile nature of our society, if I get it wrong, I’m likely to offend.

  “I would say your family hails from multiple continents.”

  Alyssa is impressed. “That’s . . . sort of right.”

  Then Garrett chimes in with: “We’re a quarter Dutch, a quarter French-Canadian, a quarter Jamaican, and a quarter Ukrainian!”

  “A fine melting pot!” I say. “What my father would call ‘a full-flavored stew.’ ” Actually, my father would call them “mutts” but my father can be an asshole. His is a tree I strive to fall increasingly farther from. “Anyway,” I say, “it’s a much broader genealogy than your Viking f
riend here.”

  “We’re not Scandinavian!” snaps Kelton. “We’re Scottish and English. I have an ancestor who came over on the Mayflower.”

  “Really?” I ask. “A rat or a roach?”

  Which I feel safe saying because Alyssa’s between us—although he might make me pay for it later when no one else is looking. But it makes Garrett laugh, and Garrett’s laughter makes Alyssa smile, so it’s worth the risk. With the exception of Mr. Mayflower, I’m beginning to feel at home with this little group. They say that intense communal experiences can create lasting friendships. I think there’s real opportunity here.

  “What about you?” Alyssa asks.

  “I have no idea,” I tell her. “I’m adopted.”

  • • •

  As we drive, the desolation around us makes it hard to keep spirits up. Everywhere things seem as hopeless as my neighborhood. At least the people out here don’t have dysentery, I think—but if “not having dysentery” is where the bar is set, that’s pretty low.

  Morale is everything in difficult times—it’s the only thing that can keep stress from becoming toxic—but morale doesn’t just happen. It starts with management and trickles all the way down. I see it as my responsibility to ignore the emptiness of the streets, the nonfunctional stoplights, and the occasional clusters of walking dead. You can’t get caught up in that kind of stuff. If my decisions reflected this abysmal reality, how could things ever get better? I realize that this group needs more than just a competent leader. They need a hero. I resolve to do my best to rise to the occasion.