“You don’t need to deal with all this right away, man,” said Liam quietly. “Let’s just go to the community center for now. You can worry about this when your parents get back.”
Ray shook his head, but he also stood up again. He felt completely at a loss.
Suddenly he lurched forward—so fast he almost lost his balance completely. Before he could steady himself, gravity seemed to change its mind, jerking him backward.
Over the rumble of the earth shaking, Liam shouted, “It’s an aftershock!”
13
Ray
Ray and Liam both ended up under the kitchen table. Each of them clung to a table leg as the floor vibrated beneath them. The aftershock felt almost as powerful as the main quake, and it definitely lasted almost as long. Ray counted thirteen seconds.
Cans and bottles rolled across the kitchen floor, banging into Ray’s legs. He was prepared for that.
He wasn’t prepared for the ceiling fan to crash to the floor about a foot from where he was crouched.
As the fan landed, Ray heard a high-pitched shattering noise and a lower, deeper crunch. The fan’s blades turned just slightly, as if a faint breeze was blowing them.
Over the rumbling noise of the actual quake, Ray heard everything his family owned jostling, cracking, groaning under the pressure of this powerful tremor.
When it was over, Ray and Liam climbed out from under the table. Ray stared down at the ceiling fan.
“Ray.”
How are we going to fix all this? he thought. Everything’s ruined. Where do we even start?
“Ray!”
Ray finally looked up at Liam.
“The walls are leaning, Ray. The whole building is leaning. Don’t you see it?”
Ray squinted at a wall. It did look more slanted than usual.
Liam grabbed him by the shoulders. “Listen, man, we need to get out of here! Now!”
Ray knew Liam was right. And yet he couldn’t make himself move. Was this how Sasha felt all the time?
Probably not. Because there was nothing actually wrong with Ray’s legs. Liam proved this by dragging him into the living room.
Ray felt a switch flip inside his brain and suddenly he was able to focus again. “Okay, come on, we’ll take the fire escape.”
“Why—” Liam started to ask.
“Closer than the stairs,” said Liam as he led them to the living room window. “And we can’t trust the elevator.”
The window glass hadn’t held up well against two earthquakes. Ray found a dishcloth lying on the floor and used it to wipe down the sill. Then he climbed out onto the fire escape’s scaffolding, with Liam right behind him.
The sound of the earthquake was gone, but Ray heard a new sound now. A sort of deep groan, as if the whole building was alive and on the verge of puking. Ray clattered down the first flight of fire-escape steps.
He smelled smoke in the air, but he didn’t think it was close by. Another flight of steps—they were at the third floor landing now, dashing across the landing to the next set of stairs.
Was the building starting to shake? Or was the fire escape just rickety? Had to be the fire escape. The scaffolding rattled under Ray’s pounding feet, sending shock waves through the rest of the metal structure.
Ray focused on the ground below. The fire escape was attached to the back of the building, where there was a small parking lot for residents. Ray was relieved to see only a few cars in the lot. That meant hardly anybody was in the building.
Aside from him and Liam.
Ray gripped the railing, but his palm was slick with sweat. He was taking the steps at a run now. He had barely started down the second-to-last set of stairs when his foot slipped.
In his head he saw the fallen ceiling fan, its blades moving in broken confusion. For some reason his brain jumped to that image, instead of picturing his own legs in a twisted heap or his own skull split open.
Liam grabbed him before he fell. He only missed one step. “Easy—you okay?” panted Liam.
“Yeah, thanks.” Ray grabbed the railing with both hands and kept moving.
Okay, no: it wasn’t just the fire escape that was shaking. Something was wrong with the building. It felt as if a shiver was passing through the whole structure.
One more floor to go. They’d reached the ladder that hung straight down over the final drop. Ray swung himself onto it, forced himself to take one rung at a time. When he reached the bottom rung, about five feet off the ground, he jumped the rest of the way.
Liam landed right behind him and grabbed Ray’s arm. “Run!”
Behind them, the building’s groan changed to a roar. Ray sprinted across the parking lot without looking back.
He slowed down when he reached the alley at the end of the parking lot. Liam wheezed to a stop and looked over his shoulder. Then he breathed a long, stretched-out sigh, half in horror, half in awe.
Ray pulled in several deep breaths. Yeah, he did smell smoke. But as he’d thought, it was far away.
He braced himself and turned around to see the damage.
His apartment building had sunk about twenty feet into the ground. The entire first floor had disappeared. The rest of the structure sat at a dramatic slant, leaning at almost a forty-five degree angle.
They stood there, trying to catch their breath. Ray lifted his hands to the top of his head while Liam bent forward, resting his hands on his knees. Ray felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It was a notification. “Hey,” he said. “I think I’ve got service again.”
Liam spent a few more seconds panting while Ray called 9-1-1.
14
Harper
The aftershock had dislodged something above her. One of her arms had a little wriggle room now.
Slowly, slowly she worked that arm toward her jeans pocket, where her phone was. Carefully she teased the phone out. She still wouldn’t be able to get the phone to a spot where she could see it. She’d have to do her best with just her sense of touch.
First, she held down the power button. She felt it buzz as it turned off. Good—it wasn’t broken. Or at least not completely broken. She turned it back on. For the first time in her life, she regretted having a touchscreen phone. Her dad’s old-school phone with the actual buttons would’ve been much easier to work with.
At least there was no lock on her phone. All she had to do was touch the correct icon on her home screen. But if she hit the wrong icon, or just missed entirely, she’d be stuck. There’d be no way for her to figure out what she’d done wrong or where she’d ended up. She could always start over from scratch, but her phone hadn’t been fully charged when she left school. No telling how many times she’d be able to repeat this process, hoping that she’d get it right at least once, before her phone died on her.
She’d have to make every attempt count.
She closed her eyes and thought about her phone screen. The texting icon was in the lower right corner of the screen. She could probably hit that, considering the position of the phone in her hand. She moved her thumb along the edge of her phone case, then up. Tap.
Her phone was set to “vibrate on tap,” so she felt the little purr her phone made when she hit the icon. Okay, so theoretically, her text feature was now open. She moved her thumb toward the top of the screen—but not too near the top—to where her last text exchange should be. Who had texted her last? Probably Sasha. Sasha was the most patient, the most persistent. She would’ve kept trying to reach out long after Ray and Liam had given up. Tap.
Next she shifted her thumb back down toward the bottom of the screen, where the message box should be. Tap. Now the keyboard should be showing. What should she type? She had to say where she was. But her texts were always full of typos even when she could see the keyboard. Trying to input more than a few letters would probably result in total gibberish. And then autocorrect would probably mangle the message even more. I’m at Neptune Park could easily turn into Who’s a naughty jerk?
Well, she’d
just have to do her best—and trust that Sasha would know what she meant. Tap, tap.
She pictured the location of the SEND key in her mind, hoping the text would go through. A little to the right . . . Tap.
15
Sasha
At first, Sasha thought the aftershock had come and gone without changing much.
And then she smelled it: a scent that reminded her of rotten eggs.
Gas.
Crap. We have a gas leak.
That was how most fires started after earthquakes. Gas leaks turned into explosions, swallowing houses in flames.
Instinctively, Sasha reached for her phone—but she’d never manage to get a call through now. Thanks to the aftershock, the cell towers were probably even more jammed than before.
She would have to take care of this herself.
Okay, there’s a gas leak. What do you do when there’s a gas leak? You shut off the gas.
The gas meter was outside, attached to back of the house. She needed to get to it—fast.
You can do this.
But that had never worked—the you can approach. It was too theoretical. It felt too much as if she was trying to trick herself. Like when teachers said, You can do anything you put your mind to. Bull. You can was what you told people who were failing, people who weren’t making progress.
So instead she told herself, You’re doing this.
That usually worked a lot better.
To shut off the gas valve, she’d need a wrench. Which meant she needed to find her mom’s toolkit.
Sasha wheeled herself over to the hall closet. She pulled up alongside the closet door and braced herself. Everything in the closets has probably shifted, her mom had said. Taking a deep breath, Sasha pulled open the door.
Her mom’s ironing board flew out at her, followed by the iron itself. Sasha managed to use the board as a shield, deflecting the iron, as well as the value pack of tissues that tumbled out of the closet. Everything else seemed to have settled already. Sasha tossed the ironing board to the ground and reached her right hand into the closet, leaning sideways out of her chair to rummage around on the shelves.
The rotten egg smell was getting stronger.
Come on, come on, I know it’s in here somewhere . . . She leaned as far to the side as she could, stretching her arm toward the back of the closet.
Aha.
Her fingers brushed the fabric of the tool bag. With her left hand, which still gripped her wheelchair’s armrest, she pushed her body up and to the right. Her right hand shot forward just a couple more inches. Now she had a decent grip on the bag. She dragged it forward, over the shelf’s remaining clutter—scattered soap bars and spare razors. At last she heaved the bag out of the closet and onto her lap.
The smell of the gas was starting to make her sick to her stomach.
She unzipped the bag and dug around for the wrench. Hammer, screwdriver, pliers, box of drill bits, another screwdriver . . . If this house explodes just because Mom has too many tools . . .
Wrench. Got it.
Sasha flung the toolkit onto the floor, gripped the wrench in her right hand, and spun herself into a 180-degree turn. Move, Hill, move . . .
The path her mom had cleared through the living room was sort of still there. The aftershock had moved the furniture again, but Sasha was able to weave around the obstacles. She shoved open the front door and pushed herself down the slope of cement that had replaced the front steps two years ago.
Wheeling herself on grass always took extra effort. Sasha propelled herself as fast as she could, moving along the side of the house. She pulled up beside the gas meter—the sort-of rectangular gray tank mounted to the siding.
The valve was just a few inches off the ground. She couldn’t reach it from her chair. Time to dismount.
She tossed the wrench to the ground and locked her wheels. Then she braced herself against the wall with one arm and gripped the handle of her chair with the other. “Here we go, Peg.” Yes, she talked to her wheelchair sometimes. Liam talked to his car—and he didn’t even spend sixteen hours a day in it.
Carefully, supporting herself with her arms, she heaved herself out of the chair and eased onto the ground. Now she could get at the gas valve. With the wrench, she cranked the valve’s metal notch so that it rotated by 90 degrees.
Done.
Explosion averted.
Getting off the ground was always trickier than getting out of the chair, but she managed it. As her physical therapist liked to say, Never underestimate a lady’s upper-arm strength. The wrench was still lying in the grass, but someone could come back for it later. Sasha wiped the sweat from her brow. She knew she shouldn’t go back inside until the gas company did an inspection, but that could be days from now . . .
Her phone buzzed. A text had come through! Maybe the cell towers were starting to get a handle on the phone traffic.
Sasha expected the text to be from her mom.
But it was from Harper.
All it said was PH.
A feeling of pure relief punched Sasha in the stomach. She dragged in a deep, grateful breath. If Harper had sent a text, Harper was at least alive.
But—PH? What did that mean? Was it just a random pocket-dial, a mistake? Or . . .?
Of course.
She used the video chat app to call Liam again just in case cell service wasn’t completely back yet.
Liam’s panicked face appeared on her phone screen. “Sasha, you won’t believe what just happened—”
“I think I know where Harper is.”
“What? Where?”
“Meet me at Neptune Park as soon as you can.”
Now she just had to find those mountain bike tires.
16
Ray
“What did she mean, ‘Meet me at Neptune Park’?” Ray demanded as he and Liam cut through an alley. “She’s gonna try to get there on her own?”
“You—know Sasha,” gasped Liam. He was seriously out of breath, but so far he still managed to keep up with Ray. “There’s nothing she—wouldn’t try to do.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t she trust us?”
“I don’t think—that’s the point.” Liam drew a wheezy breath. “I think—she thinks—we should all just—be there.”
Ray swallowed. His throat was insanely dry. He hadn’t had a drink of water since lunchtime. “Yeah, I get it. But she did also call 9-1-1, right?”
“Yeah, she said—she’d do that as soon as—we hung up. Obviously if it’s—really bad—we’ll have to—wait for the pros. But like I said—that’s not—really the point—of going over there.”
“Yeah,” Ray said again. He tried to shake the image of his ruined apartment building, now surrounded by emergency vehicles. Tried not to think about what one of the paramedics had said when Ray approached him a minute ago. Gotta deal with one thing at a time, kid. Sorry, but we have to stay here as long as we’re needed. I’m sure they’ll send someone for your friend as soon as they can.
He tried not to think about the fires that he could smell in the air.
He thought about Harper, his friend, who’d gone back to Neptune Park to look for her lucky keychain one more time. Who’d managed to text Sasha two letters—PH.
Prospect Hotel.
The chances that the old building was still standing were slim to none.
Ray tried not to think about that either.
Instead he just thought about Harper, his friend, and how he wasn’t done being friends with her.
17
Sasha
Sasha put the 9-1-1 dispatcher on speakerphone and talked as she worked. By the time the call ended, she’d opened all the windows—to get rid of the gas smell—and switched her wheels. Then she shot her message to her mom: Gas leak, shut off gas, meeting L & R. No need to freak out her mom with the truth, which would’ve been more like Taking unnecessary risks, BRB. She got the spare key from under the yard edging, locked up, and headed for Neptune Park.
The p
ark was half a mile west of Sasha’s house. On an ordinary day, she could get there in ten minutes.
On a day like today, she had no idea how long it would take her. But she was closer than Ray and Liam were right now. And the 9-1-1 dispatcher hadn’t given her confidence that a fire truck was rushing to the scene. Edson’s emergency response capacity was strained to the limits. Residences and businesses were on fire or partially collapsed with people inside. People right under their noses needed help. Dealing with a girl who might be missing and might be stuck inside an abandoned hotel was lower on their priority list.
And even if rescue workers were already combing the hotel, Sasha still had to be there. Even if it took her an hour to get there.
The best thing about Peg the Wheelchair was how lightweight it was. And the worst thing about Peg the Wheelchair was . . . how lightweight it was. Big electric-powered chairs were way harder to tip over. But they were also harder to navigate with. Sasha could steer Peg clear of a lot of obstacles. She would have to count on that.
Because the sidewalks and streets were a mess.
Several times, she just had to backtrack when she ran into a major roadblock. A downed power line. A fire truck parked in front of a flaming house. A flooded street, shimmering with water from a burst pipe somewhere.
But other times, she just plowed through or skirted around the problem spots. Her mountain bike tires could safely absorb most of the cracks in the sidewalk, a lot of grit and pebbles—stuff her ordinary tires couldn’t handle.
And that tree lying across the sidewalk? Easy enough to bypass. She just had to do a little hop over the sidewalk curb, check that no cars were coming, and continue down the middle of the street. At the corner, where the curb was a gentle slope, she got back on the path.
“Miss, are you all right?” a man called from a second-floor window.
Aftershock Page 4
