Dry

by Neal Shusterman

  “It’s fine now,” Henry says.

  Which is a lie—I’m sure it still aches, but it probably won’t affect his driving. Still, I’m just as wary as Alyssa. “I think Jacqui might have more experience driving,” I suggest.

  “No, I do,” he insists.

  “You’re what? Seventeen,” Jacqui points out. “How much experience could you have?”

  “I’ve been driving since I was thirteen,” he says. “Don’t ask.” So we don’t. After all, he did manage to maneuver us out of the high school. Granted, he damaged a bunch of cars and killed a defenseless tree in the process. Under normal circumstances that would not be considered skilled driving. But these are not normal circumstances.

  I calculate the metrics of it all. “You’ll want to hit the fence with enough speed to break through, but not enough for us to lose control and flip into the channel.”

  “So how fast?” He coughs, trying to hide the little quiver of fear in his voice.

  I weigh the variables and make a guess that sounds far more educated than it actually is. “Thirty miles per hour. And since we don’t have much of a runway, we’ll need to accelerate quickly. Once we get down there, you’ll want to turn left.”

  Henry takes a breath and finds the closest thing he has to a happy place. “Okay, are we ready?”

  “YES, just do it already!” Jacqui yells from the back seat.

  “All right. All right.”

  And like that, we’re off.

  Henry increases pressure on the accelerator. I can hear the tires peeling out beneath us. We rocket forward. My body presses back against the seat with the acceleration. We’re closing the distance between us and the fence quickly—but just before we do, Henry suddenly hits the brakes, bailing, the way I bail from halfpipes.

  But it’s too late. We’re moving too fast.

  We collide with the chain-link fence, but rather than busting through it, it holds . . . and then I realize it’s slowly bending forward. I can hear the metal brackets that hold the fence to the support poles begin to snap. The fence clangs and twangs like a weird musical instrument, and the nose of the truck begins to dip forward, revealing a gorge like a roller-coaster drop.

  The slope is much steeper than it had seemed. We’re going to die, is all I can think. Suspended over the edge, the car hangs in the fence like someone in a hammock—then the fence finally gives way. We fly down the slope, and the nerves in my stomach flutter up into my throat, like I’m about to puke.

  I brace myself, and we hit the level concrete, the shocks absorbing most of it. Still, we’re slammed back into our seats, and everything bounces.

  Henry cranks the wheel left, as instructed, and we fishtail, until he manages to gain control, straightening out, then punches the gas.

  And we’re gliding on the concrete riverbed.

  I look out the window. We’re carving the aqueduct like we’re surfing. After that rough drop, it feels so smooth! I find myself laughing out of disbelief, and Jacqui screams out of excitement. The others are just relieved.

  “That was awesome!” Garrett bursts out, looking to Henry, starry-eyed. But as cool as Garrett thinks Henry is, it doesn’t change the fact that this was wildly dangerous. If we had leveled out with any more speed, or at any steeper an angle, we would have totaled, or even flipped.

  Henry smiles, pleased with himself. “I knew thirty miles per hour was just too fast,” he says—like hitting the brakes was the result of calculation and not fear. But I’m so thankful to be alive right now, he could take credit for the faked lunar landings and I wouldn’t care.

  But then I realize—“The ÁguaViva!” I twist in my seat to get a better look at the truck bed through the rear window.

  “It’s still there,” Jacqui reassures us all.

  “Some of the bottles could have been damaged . . . ,” Garrett notes coyly. “Maybe we should open up the box just to see. . . .” But I know exactly where this is going. I think we all do. Henry puts an end to it.

  “ÁguaViva bottles are made of durable low-density polyethylene, and are BPA-free,” Henry informs us. “I promise you nothing in that box will leak.”

  And although agreeing with Henry on any level makes me cringe, I say, “Besides, we don’t want to open that box until we have no choice.”  Temptation is not our friend right now. There will be more than enough water at the bug-out. We’ll need to save our reserve for emergencies. I’m still surprised that we got that ÁguaViva box back, anyway. I find myself shaking my head and smiling at Jacqui.

  “You were totally insane to go after that box, you know that?”

  And she grins, knowing that I mean it as a compliment—something I’m not sure she’s used to getting.

  “So are you,” she responds. I choose to take it as a compliment as well.

  I wonder what it would’ve been like if I had crossed paths with Jacqui in other circumstances—then again, I highly doubt that would ever happen. This girl lives on a totally different dimensional plane than the rest of us. If the Tap-Out never happened, she would be nothing but a name on an SAT score I couldn’t beat.

  Realizing that my thoughts are no longer nagging anxieties, I finally take a moment to breathe. We all do.

  Jacqui leans forward and turns on the radio. Nothing but emergency broadcasts, telling people where to go, where not to go, and to remain calm. A one-size-fits-all relief effort that doesn’t actually fit anyone.

  “Our uncle has satellite radio,” Alyssa points out, and switches to the satellite stations. Suddenly “Smooth Criminal” assaults our eardrums, which, in this place, in this moment, sounds like the best song in the world. Impulsive as ever, Jacqui reaches forward and opens up the sunroof, then stands, her entire torso protruding dangerously out of it, indulging in the high of another adrenaline rush.

  After a little while, Alyssa tugs at Jacqui’s blouse. “Enough.” And then as soon as Jacqui comes down, Alyssa, all smiles, jumps up and pops her head through, too. Jacqui shoves her like she would a bratty sister. Then Garrett, of course, demands his turn. Sharing. What a concept. If we’re a messed up, dysfunctional family, I guess this can go down as our single functional moment.

  I roll down my window and stick my hand out. I close my eyes and open up my fingers, letting my hand cut through the wind. I look through the window and marvel at the world outside. Hazy afternoon sunlight pours down from the sky. The light glimmers against the concrete path like ribbons of gold . . . and I’m realizing that this is first time we’ve felt relatively free in a long time. Like we weren’t escaping from the place we once called home. Like this wasn’t a suburban apocalypse. I can’t forget the events of the past twenty-four hours, but here, speeding along a concrete wash, I can let them trail behind me, if only for a few moments. It’s the briefest hint that no matter what happened, or happens, life might actually go on.

  It’s Henry who brings us back to reality. “There’s a junction coming up,” he yells over the whipping wind.

  “Stay left,” I tell him.

  It’s Alyssa who points out that we’re heading southwest—toward the shore, not the mountains.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, “we’re traveling a river system. We have to go down this tributary until we reach the main river.

  Henry bears left at the junction.

  “When we reach the main riverbed, we’ll make a hard right, and take that river all the way up to the mountains,” I tell everyone.

  I used to brag to everyone that I had a photographic memory, but this is the true test. The channel we’re in loses its brutal edge, and becomes natural for a while. Wild, like a true riverbed. Then we’re riding on concrete again, in an area more industrial than before.

  Another junction, Henry makes the hard right, and the dashboard compass shows that we’re now heading north. We’re in a much wider channel now: the Santa Ana River, although it’s really just the memory of a river. All Southern California waterways have become like phantom limbs. We might feel that they’re
still there, but it’s just an illusion cast in cement.

  I have a better idea of where we are on the map. There are even some landmarks along the way that help guide us: Angel Stadium, the Honda Center. Which reminds me that we’re not too far from Disneyland. I can’t even imagine what kind of madness is going down there right now. Last year, as a show of community support, and shrewd marketing, they drained their artificial waterways. The jungle cruise became a VR ride. Pirates and Small World were converted to magnetic levitation, and they opened up Grand Canyon Land in the dry moat around Tom Sawyer’s Island. So anyone who thinks they can jump the fence now and suck down the guano-tainted blue-dyed water will have a rude awakening.

  As we travel this expansive concrete channel, it feels to me like the world has torn in two, and we’re traveling the seam of that tear. The chasm between what was, and what will be. We’re no longer part of any world. Or at least I’m not. Everything that used to mean something to me is on the outside, hopelessly out of reach. I think about my brother. I think about my parents. I feel numb now. Like how, after a really bad burn, once the pain subsides, you lose all sensation in the spot. That’s because the nerve endings are dead. And yet, I think right now the best place for me to be is the chasm between the tattered edges of life as we knew it.

  The chasm takes many forms as we travel. In some places we have to slow down because there are rocks, branches, and other obstacles that I imagine were swept up in a current when this place actually transported water. Other parts we have to crawl at an excruciatingly slow pace, because of rocks bulldozed into five-foot berms, intentionally formed into a maze designed to direct the flow of water. It’s as if the chasm itself is an obstacle course created to defeat us. But we will not be defeated.

  Another hour in, and we encounter a dam.

  “Was this on your mental map?” Jacqui asks.

  I don’t answer that. Instead I say, “Dams always have an access route for heavy machinery to reach both sides.”  We drive along the face of the dam, then double back for about a hundred yards and find the access path. It’s gated, but the gate is pretty rusty.

  We ram it, doing fifty, which was probably overkill, because the gate flies off its hinges.

  Jacqui whoops with excitement, invigorated. Alyssa endures it, Garrett’s all smiles, and Henry remains all business, keeping his hands gripping the wheel at ten and two. Me, I’m still numb. Crashing the gate barely raised my resting heart rate.

  The gate on the other side of the dam is open, so Henry doesn’t have to do a repeat performance as we descend the accessway. We find ourselves in a sprawling flood basin, which means we’ve crossed from Orange into Riverside County.

  Now my eyelids are becoming heavy. It must be the sleep debt I owe my body—the accumulated hours of missed rest over the past four days. Then I imagine the water debt we’ve all worked up by now. We were hydrated yesterday, but we’ve also been sweating a great deal in this heat. The last water we had was just the little bit that Alyssa’s uncle gave us early this morning. Now it’s way into the afternoon—almost evening. Water deprivation in hundred-degree heat doubles, maybe triples the dehydration clock. I’ll be glad when the sun sets. I can only hope we’ll reach the bug-out by then.

  There’s a smell of smoke in this flood basin. Faint, but constant. Probably from the various brush fires we heard about on the news. Bad air tends to settle in basins.

  “Is this it?” Henry asks. “Is the bug-out somewhere around here?”

  “Not even close,” I tell him. “We’re in the Prado flood control basin. Three rivers feed into here—or at least they used to. Take the left-most one.”

  “Great,” says Jacqui. “Let’s find out what’s behind door number one.”

  We bounce and rattle over the dusty tumbleweed-ridden terrain, until we see another concrete channel up ahead, not quite as wide as the Santa Ana River. This one has sides that are straight up and down, no slope at all. There’s the normal stuff you’d expect to see in a drainage ditch: old tires, rusty shopping carts, broken sofas that seem to have fallen from space—a brand new obstacle course. There’s not enough junk to stop us, just to keep us on edge as we weave a serpentine path around it all.

  “This is like the crap that gets caught behind furniture cushions,” Jacqui comments, “but on a cosmic scale.”

  There’s more graffiti on the walls of the ditch here, too. Colorful tags like “Rong” and “OrGie” and “Stoops,” and others so stylized they seem written in an alien language, adding to the feeling that we’re in a completely different world.

  About an hour into this channel, we come across people who have set up camp on either side of the aqueduct, and it doesn’t look like a new occurrence. There are dozens of pitched tent dwellings made of tarps and blankets and makeshift supports, like some sort of skid row. I think of what Jacqui said, and realize that it’s not only things that get lost behind the cushions of the world. People do, too.

  With the sun sinking low and shadows getting long, the place looks even more eerie than it would in the bright light of this hot day. The closer we get, the clearer it becomes that this is a permanent homeless encampment. If it is, they definitely haven’t read The Art of War, which points out that setting up camp in a ditch is a death wish. High ground offers visibility, low ground leaves you open for an ambush. Still, I get the feeling that ambush is not high on their list of worries.

  Alyssa keeps her gaze straight ahead. “Don’t slow down,” she says.

  “I wasn’t intending to,” says Henry.

  She keeps her eyes forward, refusing to even look at the people in the encampment. It seems out of character for her, and makes me think about how she agreed with my father yesterday. Either you give everything, or nothing at all—and I realize why she’s refusing to look. For a girl like her, whose first instinct is always to fix a situation, the “nothing at all” choice isn’t easy. It’s painful. But after everything that’s happened, she realizes that her and Garrett’s survival requires the kind of aggressive hardness she usually reserves for the soccer field. Today there’s no taking a knee for the players who fall.

  As we slowly drive through the encampment, some of those lost souls emerge from their tents and watch us go by. They don’t stop us, they don’t bother us, they just watch. I think they’re just being vigilant—making sure we don’t stop to harass them. I look at their weathered faces, their worn clothes, and I wonder what their stories are and how they landed here. If there’s anyone thinking about them, or wishing them well. Then I realize that by the way they’re looking at us, they’re wondering the same.

  Soon we’re past, and I hear Alyssa release a breath of relief.

  “How much farther?” Henry asks, about forty-five minutes past the homeless encampment.

  While it’s not quite dusk, the entire channel is now in shadows. I squint. There’s absolutely no signage on these aqueducts, let alone the fact that I can barely see, now that the sun has practically gone down.

  “Just keep going,” I tell him. “Eventually we’ll get to the Foothill Freeway. The Angeles National Forest is just past that.

  The compass now reads northwest, and everything feels right—until we pass into a tunnel that at first I think is just another underpass—but there’s no other side. We’re suddenly in complete darkness. Henry hits the brakes, and we come to stop.

  “Turn on the headlights!” Alyssa says.

  “I can’t find them!”

  I can hear Henry frantically scratching away at dials until he eventually finds the headlights. He flicks them on, and for the briefest, crazy instant, I expect to see something like a T. rex glaring through the windshield. I don’t know why my brain dredges up that image, but when the lights flash on, I jump. Of course there’s nothing there. Nothing but a drainage culvert. All we can really see are the ribbed walls around us, flaking with dried moss, and the tunnel ahead lit by our headlights. Correction. HeadLIGHT. Only one is working. Great. So much for nighttime vis
ibility.

  “So,” Jacqui says to me, “is this part of the urban river experience, or are we lost?”

  “Quiet, I’m thinking.”

  Like I said, I’d only been to the bug-out a couple of times—but we took normal roads. Dad had once brought us this way virtually, in an annoyingly detailed PowerPoint, but I think I would have remembered the endless black tunnel portion of the presentation.

  “We must have missed a turn,” I am forced to admit. And the thing is, I have no idea where that turn would have been. I know we took the correct path out of the flood basin. That was hours back. If there was a hidden fork it could be anywhere between here and there.

  Then I begin to wonder if the walls deeper in the tunnel might be moist. What if there’s water down here? Which makes me think about the many species of animals that have most likely infested these parts, no matter how contaminated the water. Then I think about how many humans might have wandered in with the same intentions, and I realize that my brain short-circuited and kicked out the wrong image. It’s not dinosaurs we need to be worrying about . . . it’s people.

  “Turn around,” I tell Henry. “Get us out of here.”

  But a U-turn is an impossibility. Henry kicks the car in reverse, and we roll backward until we’re out of the tunnel. It’s twilight now. Harder to see much of anything, and the channel is still too narrow to make a turn, so we reverse back the way we came. Slowly. Carefully, with nothing to guide us but our dim red taillights. Half an hour later, we still haven’t found another fork.

  “Are you sure we weren’t just supposed to go straight?” Alyssa asks. “Through the tunnel?”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “No,” I say. “I don’t know,” I finally admit.

  “Maybe we can just back our way into the homeless camp,” Jacqui says, oozing sarcasm. “I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to help us.”

  We continue to wind backwards for a few more minutes, then Alyssa cries out.

  “There! Do you see it?”

  And there it is: a spur in the channel heading off to the right, due north. The mouth is choked with weeds, and there’s some bright graffiti to the left—which pulled our attention the first time we passed. I’m incredibly relieved. If we couldn’t find it, I had no idea what we would do.