by J. L. Esplin
“Because you can’t. It’s a shelter, but that’s it. It won’t do you any good if you don’t have food and water.” Unless you’re looking for a tomb. She doesn’t volunteer the information, so I ask, “Do you have food and water?”
I already know the answer. They are half dehydrated, half starved. And I’m suddenly very aware of what little food I have left in my pack, the two canteens hanging from the sides.…
The girl is still squinting at me like she’s trying to keep something deep inside her from coming out, and the boy’s face is starting to crumble, like he’s on the verge of bawling his eyes out.
Stew calls from the other room in an almost bored voice, “Let’s go!”
Every instinct in my body is telling me to walk away now. Just leave. Don’t ask any more questions. I can’t help them, so what’s the point? But something compels me to turn my head and call back to Stew, “Just trying to be neighborly.” I look back at the girl and press my mouth into a smile, and though she’s still squinting up at me with that same expression on her face, her eyes start to well up a little.
I check out that cobweb on the ceiling for a minute.
Finally, she says in a quiet voice, “We’re just resting for a while. Then we’ll move on. We have somewhere to go.”
I want to feel relieved. Really, I do. I wait for the relief to wash over me, but nothing happens. So I say, “Where? I mean, maybe I can point you in the right direction.”
She hesitates, and then says, “Jim Lockwood’s house? My grandparents know him and said he would take us in. For a while.”
I force myself to nod, but otherwise hold back my reaction to her answer. “Who are your grandparents?” I hear myself ask. Though it doesn’t even matter.
She starts to answer, then tears up for real this time, so I walk out of the bedroom and leave them alone.
I swear it’s ten degrees hotter in the room where Stew is waiting for me. Sunlight filters right through those pathetic window curtains, catching bits of dust suspended in the air. Stew’s sitting on the armrest of a faded old couch, his feet flat on the ground, his forehead dotted with perspiration. He’s taken off his pack, and he’s giving me this look because he overheard everything the girl just told me.
Holding up my hand, I separate my dry lips with my tongue and say, “I’ll hear you out, but then you have to listen to me.”
He says in a not-so-quiet voice, “You gonna leave them here to die?”
Warmth flushes through my chest, and I glance over my shoulder before moving to stand closer to him. “Thanks, Stew,” I say, lowering my voice. “That’s really fair.”
“I’m just wondering,” he says with a shrug, as if he’s not trying to push my buttons.
I go through a mental checklist of our food—it’s a short list, so it doesn’t take long—and we definitely don’t have enough to keep four people alive for three days. I mean, maybe if we were staying in one place, we’d be okay. But walking through a desert in the middle of summer? We’ll burn through a crazy amount of energy. There’s small game out there, wild jackrabbit. But we don’t have time to trap them.
Anyway, I don’t know why I’m even thinking about food when the real problem is water. Or lack of it.
I drag my palm across my mouth, wiping fresh beads of sweat from my upper lip. “I’m not leaving them anywhere, all right? I already warned them not to stay here.”
“Yeah, I heard.” Stew looks up at me with dark eyes that match mine. “They’re going to Jim Lockwood’s.”
I don’t break his stare. It’s just our eyes that match. Any similarity between my brother and me pretty much ends there. “I probably don’t need to remind you,” I say carefully, “but we just scavenged water from a freaking toilet.”
He doesn’t say anything, because, let’s face it, he really doesn’t care.
I feel old anger rising to the surface. I’m the one responsible for getting us across this desert, not him. Stew knows it. And it’s not just because I’m the oldest. The minute I put up the fight to leave home, insisted that it’s totally possible to walk three days across a desert with barely any food and barely any water, we both understood that the responsibility to actually get us to Brighton Ranch alive was mine. And things are already going badly for me.
I’m telling you, it’s like Stew’s hoping I’ll fail, hoping we don’t make it, just so he can prove that he was right all along.
I finally say, “I want to help them. You know I do. But we are in no position to help anyone. I have to get us”—I motion between us—“to Brighton Ranch. Not them. I can’t … do … both.” I emphasize each word so he’ll get how serious I am.
Stew bites at the side of his dry lips like he’s thinking, then sort of shrugs. “Dad would do both.”
Yeah, my brother knows exactly how to push me.
“Well, Dad’s not here,” I say, forcing the words out calmly so he won’t have the satisfaction of knowing he’s getting to me.
“You gonna at least tell them?” he says.
“Tell them what?” I snap, frustrated that he’s twisting the conversation in another direction.
“You gonna tell them that Jim Lockwood is our dad?”
I hear the floor creak behind me, and shut my eyes for a second before opening them again and meeting my brother’s.
His eyebrows are pinched together like he’s really curious about this. “I mean, before they walk all the way to our place. Are you gonna tell them that our dad isn’t here and everything is gone? The food is gone, the water is gone, and if they thought they were this close to filling that empty pit in their stomachs, they’ve just hit a major setback.”
I was going to tell them. I swear I was.
“Your dad is Jim Lockwood?” says a voice from the bedroom doorway.
I turn and the girl is standing there, holding the boy’s hand so tight I can see her white knuckles from here.
Her eyes are narrowed at me, like she’s accusing me of something—lying, I guess. Even though I was going to tell them.
“Yeah, about that—” I start to say.
“Yep, he’s our dad,” Stew says, pushing away from the couch. He lifts his pack up off the floor, heaves it onto one shoulder.
“Wait,” she says, “where are you going?”
Stew raises his eyebrows at me, like he expects me to answer that question.
Before we left home, I promised myself that I would get my brother across this desert. Promised myself that I’d do whatever it takes.
But I didn’t expect something like this. I didn’t expect a choice between getting my brother to Brighton Ranch alive or helping two complete strangers.
And the worst part is that Stew is right. He’s exactly right. Dad would do both.
2
TWENTY-ONE DAYS AGO. The morning before the blackout, the morning my dad left town, I woke to the sound of him pounding out his usual rhythm on my bedroom door.
It sounded like a marching band was about to bust in.
I winced, groaning at the noise. Flat on my stomach, arm hanging over the side of my mattress, pillow gone to who-knows-where. The door swung open and my dad leaned in, bringing with him the familiar scent of bar soap mixed with his aftershave.
“I’m leaving in fifteen minutes!” he said, tapping the wall to stress this point. “Stewart’s already up—” He stopped, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion as he took in the strange blue tint lighting my room. “What is that doing up there?”
I craned to look back at the flag I’d tacked up over my blinds the night before, cobalt blue with an emblem in the upper left corner. At least, it’d be in the upper left corner if the flag weren’t hanging sideways. Instead, it was in the bottom left corner—a silver star, two sprigs of green sagebrush. A scroll with the words BATTLE BORN written in small block letters.
“Take that down, John. Our state flag is not a curtain.”
“I found it in a box in the garage—”
“I don’t care.
Take it down.” He didn’t sound mad exactly, just kind of frustrated or disappointed.
I sighed and collapsed back down onto my mattress, pressing my palms into my eye sockets. “I didn’t know it was a big deal,” I said, but my dad isn’t the type to stick around and listen to excuses.
“Get a move on, John,” he called back, already halfway down the hallway.
I climbed out of bed and shut my bedroom door before dragging the metal chair from my desk to the window.
“Apparently,” I mumbled, wriggling out the pushpins, “I’m supposed to know every random thing about flags.…”
I folded up the flag as carefully as I knew how and set it on my desk next to a plate of dried-up old pizza. Then I changed into a pair of jeans I picked up off the floor and grabbed the least wrinkly T-shirt I could find in my drawer.
In the kitchen, Dad was eating a bowl of Grape-Nuts cereal over the sink, an open canister of sugar on the counter beside him with a spoon handle sticking out.
I avoided looking at him directly—maybe I didn’t think it was a big deal to turn our state flag into a curtain for my bedroom window, but my dad did. And there was nothing worse than the feeling that I’d disappointed him.
“Where’s Stew?” I asked on my way to the cupboard.
Just then, a rumbling sound started up out back, a lawn mower engine turning over.
“He wanted to get it over with,” my dad said with a shrug in his voice.
I rolled my eyes, took down a cereal bowl. That drought-resistant stuff my dad called grass wasn’t exactly growing out of control.
“It’s not even seven A.M.,” I pointed out.
“Best time of day to get something over with, don’t you think?”
What I thought was, Stewart is a suck-up. But I didn’t tell my dad that.
I got a spoon from the drawer and went around to sit at the breakfast bar, facing the sink. I was about to grab for the box of Grape-Nuts—the stuff tasted like cardboard, but if you dumped a bunch of sugar on top, it wasn’t so bad—but froze when I spotted what was sitting next to it. A number 10 can of powdered milk.
I dropped my arm. “Great. We’re out of milk again,” I said matter-of-factly.
My dad’s eyes shifted toward me, then to the can of powdered milk. “That is milk.”
“It’s disgusting.”
“You’re not mixing it right. Put a little more sugar in it.”
“Why can’t you just get real milk?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “That is real milk. But look,” he continued before I could keep carrying on about it, “I’ll grab a jug of milk for you in Alamo on my way home.”
“So … three days from now?” I said, folding my arms on the breakfast bar, pushing them forward so I could rock back and balance the barstool on two legs—something that I knew drives my dad nuts.
He dropped his bowl in the sink, ran the faucet. “I’m sure the Yardleys have milk in their fridge. You could be drinking it by breakfast time tomorrow.”
“Can’t wait.” I slid my unused bowl and spoon across the countertop, and my dad put them back in the cabinet and drawer without missing a beat. “What about our bikes?”
“I promise I’ll get the parts we need and we’ll fix them when I get back.”
“So we have to walk to the Yardleys’.”
“It won’t kill you, John.”
Over the lawn mower rumble out back, I could hear Stew bellowing out lyrics to an old Rush song—listening to Dad’s playlist on that ancient iPod. Total suck-up.
“Remember,” my dad said, starting his usual instructions, “the Yardleys are looking out for you, but they aren’t your babysitters, all right?”
“Not our babysitters. Got it.”
“No lazing around their place in the morning, clean up after yourselves, and come home to take care of your chores here.”
I pushed my stool back farther, resting my chin on my arms. I watched my dad move around the kitchen, clearing off countertops, wiping loose sugar into the sink, his suntanned forearms dark against the rolled sleeves of his crisp white button-down. Clipped to his front pocket, his Ely Granite Company work badge.
I tried to imagine him “lazing around” anywhere.
“You need to take care of that room of yours too,” he added, returning the powdered milk to the top shelf of the pantry. “I don’t want it to look like that when I get back. I haven’t seen your bedroom floor in so long I can’t even remember what it looks like.”
“Brown carpet,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, well, I want to see the brown carpet.”
He came around the breakfast bar and I sat up, letting the stool drop down on all four legs. I twisted to face him but didn’t raise my eyes. The hum of the lawn mower was growing fainter outside, Stew already working his way to the outer edge of our yard.
“You know,” he said, his callused hands low on his hips, “your mom hated powdered milk. Five years, and I couldn’t get her to come around to it.”
“I can’t guess why,” I said dryly, though I always liked when he talked about my mom, the way his voice went kind of soft. I was so little when she died, my only memories of her were his memories of her.
“Watch over your brother, all right?” he said, getting back to it.
I stared at the knot of his thin tie. “Don’t I always.”
He sighed. “John, I know I’ve been gone a lot lately—”
“Fourth work trip in less than two months.”
“—but this job will be over soon and then I won’t be traveling so much. I’ll be working on-site in Ely by the end of August.”
“The end of summer, you mean.”
“We’ve got that trip planned with the Brightons before school starts up again. It’s not like we have nothing to look forward to.”
Stew and I were excited about the trip—Stew especially. Camping with Jess, hiking the Narrows in Zion National Park. But there was no way I was going to admit that to him now.
“John,” my dad said again. And this time he waited so long that I finally lifted my eyes to meet his. Dark eyes. Like mine, like my brother’s. “You just can’t use it as a curtain,” he said, talking about that flag again.
“Dad, I know—”
“But if you want to hang it properly, emblem upright, ‘Battle Born’ where you can actually read it…”
I dropped my eyes. He closed the short distance between us and I felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder.
“I think it’d look pretty good on your bedroom wall,” he said, gripping the back of my neck, pulling my head to his chest.
It was just a flag. I didn’t care. Wasn’t even sure I wanted it in my room anymore. But for just a few seconds, I let him hold my head there, listening to his strong heartbeat against my ear.
* * *
Door to door, it was only about a mile’s walk to the Yardleys’ place. We’d left our house around sunset, after an exciting day of chores, arguing over the Xbox, and playing H-O-R-S-E on the driveway until we couldn’t stand the heat.
I still hadn’t gotten around to cleaning my room.
Mr. Yardley answered the door with his one-year-old baby, Freddy, on his hip, and cradled in his other arm, a big bowl of microwaved popcorn for the movie marathon we’d planned. “Finally!” he said. “I thought you guys would never get here.”
Stewart flashed me an I told you so look. “John made us wait,” he said, pushing past me with that overstuffed pillow of his.
“They aren’t our babysitters, Stew,” I called after him, as if I weren’t only following Dad’s instructions.
Mr. Yardley raised an eyebrow at that, the corner of his mouth tugging up in a grin. “Definitely not babysitters.”
“We walked here,” I said, closing the door on my way in. “That’s what took so long.”
“Bikes still out of commission? I could have picked you up.”
“It’s fine. My dad was technically right, it didn’t kill me.”
&nb
sp; Mr. Yardley laughed, giving Freddy a little bounce to stop him from fussing. “I’m guessing Jim gave you his ‘personal responsibility’ lecture before he left?”
“Pretty much,” I said. The morning conversation with my dad replayed in my mind, and I couldn’t help but add, “He expects too much from me sometimes.”
“Could be,” Mr. Yardley said. “Or maybe he’s just got a knack for knowing what you’re capable of before you even know it yourself.”
I stopped short of rolling my eyes, and half a grin slid onto Mr. Yardley’s face. “Okay, don’t give me that look. Your only responsibility tonight is to eat a lot of popcorn.”
“That, I can do,” I said, following him to the back of the house, making faces at Freddy, who pulled his two fingers out of his mouth long enough to babble a J sound.
“John,” I pronounced for him. He rewarded me with a slobbery grin, clapping his chubby hands before plugging his fingers back into his mouth.
Their house was set up like a mirror image of ours—one story, but with the bedrooms in the front, and the kitchen open to a great big family room in the back. They had this old sectional that took up half their family room, so soft and comfortable you could barely sit on it without sinking down and drifting off to sleep.
“Davis, why are you eating that right before my dinner is ready?” Mrs. Yardley said from the kitchen. She dropped the towel she’d been drying her hands with, marched over, and wrestled the bowl of popcorn out of Mr. Yardley’s grip.
“I have room for both,” he said teasingly, grabbing half a handful before she could get it completely out of reach.
She sort of smiled and rolled her eyes at the same time. Then she looked at me and said, “I’ve been craving homemade ice cream for weeks.”
My eyebrows went up. “Oh yeah?” I was trying not to stare at her belly. She looked about ready to pop open with that second baby.
“Davis finally got me one of those old-fashioned ice cream makers. Only,” she added under her breath, “it just looks old-fashioned. It has a motor that does all the work. Come see.”
So while Mr. Yardley set up the Blu-ray player for our marathon and Stew stacked wooden blocks on the family room rug for Freddy to knock over, I went into the kitchen to see this ice cream maker. It looked like a giant wooden bucket. But inside was a stainless steel cylinder, tall and skinny with a motor on top that churned the ice cream inside. The space between the cylinder and the bucket was packed with melting ice.
