Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse

by Susan Vaught

  Sam whimpered, and I realized I was holding him too tight.

  “Sorry,” I whispered as I got to the edge of the woods and rushed out into my yard. I picked him up to my face and kissed him, making sure to keep my grip a lot looser, and—

  Flashing lights strobed across my face.

  Blue flashing lights.

  Wha—oh, no!

  Did Dad really call the police on me for running away? He would not do that. He wouldn’t. No.

  But there they were.

  Two police cars sat in my driveway, right behind Dad’s car, lights swirling into the night sky.

  4

  Monday, Seven Days Earlier, Night

  Sam-Sam barked and wriggled in my arms as I held him closer. Sweat broke across the back of my neck.

  Police could arrest kids. I’d seen them do it at school. I bet the handcuffs would hurt. They’d be all metal and cold and terrible.

  As I stood in the back of my yard shaking and hugging my dog, I could feel the icy cuffs biting into the skin of my wrists. I’d seen lots of arrests on television, and that one at AJS after this kid in fifth grade got mad and hit his teacher with a stick. I’d been mad plenty of times, but I never hit a teacher with a stick. I hadn’t ever hit anybody with a stick. Pictures of different sticks went flashing through my brain and I couldn’t stop seeing them.

  The back door opened, and two officers, one light-skinned with red hair and one dark-skinned with really short black hair, came out with Dad and Aunt Gus trailing right behind them, hollering, “This is beyond ridiculous! You people have lost your minds. Who trains you, anyway?”

  “Call Stan,” Dad was saying to her as he walked with the officers.

  Sticks. Stan? Sticks, sticks, sticks—Stan. Oh. Stan Lewoski, Dad’s friend who was a lawyer. Sticks! For a few seconds, my brain kept refusing to do anything but see sticks, but I finally shook my head until my ears buzzed and I processed that I wouldn’t be wearing handcuffs, because Dad was. And Dad wasn’t walking with the officers. They had him by his arms, and they were walking him, and he was telling Aunt Gus to call a lawyer.

  “No!” I ran forward. “Stop! Where are you taking my dad?”

  The redheaded officer let go of Dad and turned toward me.

  “His wife is deployed,” Aunt Gus was saying. “How can you take him away like this? His little girl needs him.”

  “Stop it!” I yelled as loud as I could. Sam wriggled out of my arms and burst ahead of me, barking and barking and setting off Charlie, who woofed and snorted and bashed himself against the closed storm door.

  The redheaded officer seemed to focus on Sam, and his hand drifted toward his hip.

  My aunt jumped in front of him. “Are you a monster? She’s just a little girl—and that’s a Pomeranian, for God’s sake. That dog can’t even bite through your boot.”

  The officer raised his hands in the air, like he was surrendering.

  Sam screeched to a halt in front of him, all fur and yapping and dancing, and Aunt Gus snatched him off the ground, opened the back door, and scooted him inside with Charlie. They both kept barking like the world was ending.

  I stormed right past Aunt Gus and launched myself at the dark-headed officer, swinging both my arms, because I agreed with Charlie and Sam that the world might be ending, and no way were they taking my dad anywhere even if I had to bark, too. My fists connected with fabric and metal and somebody was talking but I couldn’t hear anything because somebody was screaming, and I punched and punched and punched and realized it was me making that screamy sound and I felt like I was three and seeing monsters everywhere and my thoughts couldn’t stop and couldn’t even slow down and my teeth ground together and I screamed anyway, right through my teeth.

  “Jesse, no. Honey, stop.” Aunt Gus, from a thousand miles away. “Let me get her. Don’t touch her! She doesn’t know you and that’ll just make it worse.”

  “Please!” Dad’s voice. “She has issues. Just let me talk to her.”

  Dad. My father. The man in handcuffs. The man these ridiculous, awful people were not taking away. I swung again, twice as hard, both fists, but I hit air.

  “Touch coming!” Aunt Gus shouted.

  Then fingernails dug into my shoulders, pulling me back.

  The world changed. Black, then red, then yellow, then hazy light. Outside our house in the dark, just the porch lights, and blue lights flashing and flashing and flashing. Sobs tore out of my throat even though I didn’t feel like crying. No sad, no happy, no good, no bad, no mad—just tears, and hot. My face felt so hot. My ears rang. My throat closed. My hands ached, and I uncurled my fingers.

  The two officers stood pressed against the outer wall of the house as Charlie the bulldog and my Sam-Sam yapped and dug and tried to tear down the universe to get outside to us. I didn’t see Aunt Gus but realized she was holding my shoulders and talking to the dogs.

  My father, hands behind his back, dropped to one knee in front of me, staring into my eyes. For a moment, I stared back, then my brain itched and my stomach lurched and that was too much and I let my gaze slide to the side, until I was focused on the top of a shiny black police boot, reflecting the porch light. That glowing yellow orb in his boot reminded me of a distant sun in some faraway galaxy, all black and quiet and perfectly peaceful, with no wars or jerkfaces or bombs or handcuffs or anything bad.

  I took a deep, slow breath, and my chest shuddered. “Is this because of the fire? Is it illegal to burn tank tops in your own backyard? I can pay the fine. I can clean up from any smoke.”

  “Listen to me, Jesse.” Dad’s voice came out low and sad, but steady. Not shaking, like me. “This is not your fault, it has nothing to do with you, and these officers are just doing their jobs.”

  “Then their jobs are ridiculous!” It felt really good to yell that.

  Dad cleared his throat. “Some money went missing from the library fund last week. Well, a lot of money. All of what I hadn’t deposited this month.”

  He stopped and waited for me to catch up, which was nice, but it also irritated me, because people had to do that, wait for me, especially when I was upset. Aunt Gus kept a firm grip on my shoulder, but she massaged gently, like she was trying to feed the facts straight into my head through my neck muscles.

  “The library fund,” I repeated. “Oh. The thing you’ve raised money for—three years, to buy more books and computers, right?”

  “Yes, about that long.” Dad nodded, and I pretended his arms weren’t pulled around behind his back, and that those cold, awful handcuffs weren’t biting into his wrists. “I put in some donations Friday morning, and all the money was there. Later, though, when the principal went to my desk to get the donations and take them to the bank, he found the collection box empty.”

  I wished I had Sam in my arms, but he was inside barking, probably standing on Charlie’s fat, square head to see out the door. “But how did the money go missing?”

  “Somebody must have taken it out of my desk.” Dad tried to look into my eyes again, but I had to look away, because staring into his brain when something was wrong made my soul hurt and I couldn’t think and I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.

  “It wasn’t you,” I told him, sort of loud, so the police officers would hear it, too.

  “It wasn’t me, honey, but I’m responsible for the money. Since it’s over a few hundred, the principal had to report it missing. That’s AJS policy.”

  I thought about all the detective stories I read. “It looks like you took it, because it was in your desk and now it’s gone.”

  Dad nodded.

  “He knows how to recite Shakespeare,” I said to the police officers. “Men who recite Shakespeare don’t steal library money.”

  When the officers didn’t say anything, I wanted to kick them, but Aunt Gus didn’t let go of my shoulders. The dogs in the house growled for me, at least.

  “Jesse, I need you to stay with Gustine and I need you to be safe and okay,” Dad said.


  Aunt Gus’s fingers pushed harder into my shoulder muscles, applying pressure like a therapist taught her to do a few years ago. Only she didn’t really do it right, so it felt like she was trying to alien nerve-pinch me into being quiet.

  “How long will you be gone?” I asked Dad.

  “I’ll try to be home tomorrow. Stan will help, but it takes time to get papers processed and bail paid.” He got slowly to his feet.

  I pulled away from Aunt Gus, grabbed him around the waist, and hugged him, letting my fingers touch the cold handcuffs behind his back, and willing the metal not to hurt him. My brain flashed pictures of handcuffs and sticks and bombs and Shotgun and shadow-birds flying across the walls of my clubhouse.

  “Go with Aunt Gus and help her look after the dogs,” Dad said, gently moving back from my hug. “It’s time for Sam’s dinner.”

  Sam. Sam’s dinner. I held my breath, waiting for the officers to grab Dad’s arms again, but they didn’t. Sam-Sam needed his dinner. No matter what I said or did, the police were going to take Dad. But Dad would be home tomorrow. He said so. Sam-Sam. I had to get his dinner. Sam-Sam needed me. Dogs couldn’t fix their own dinner. Poor Sam-Sam. He sounded so stressed. All that barking.

  Keeping their eyes on me, the police officers edged down the back wall of the house, taking Dad away. The dark-headed man put his hand on my father’s back, but nice-like, as if he only wanted to keep Dad from stumbling.

  I watched every movement, every step. My hands curled into fists. I felt small and fuzzy-headed like my dog, who needed dinner, but I wanted to feel tall and full of muscles and looking for trouble like Mom and Shotgun. Mom and Shotgun wouldn’t get shaky and their heads wouldn’t fuzz out and they’d be heroes and go find the bomb, not wait for some lawyer to help Dad.

  My fists uncurled, and my stomach started to ache. I was no hero. I couldn’t be a hero. Not with . . . whatever was wrong with me. There was nothing I could do to keep these people from taking my father away.

  The police officers eased Dad into the backseat of the police car at the end of the driveway, and the blue lights showed me people’s faces in the dark, neighbors on their porches, in their driveways, watching as men in uniforms stole my father, even though Mom wore a uniform, too, and people in uniforms were supposed to always help each other, because Mom said that a lot.

  As the police pulled out of the driveway, taking the blue lights with them, sweeping headlights over the ghostly figures standing in their yards, Aunt Gus warned, “Touch,” then gave my shoulder another squeeze.

  “Come on inside, Jesse,” she said. “I’ve got to make some calls.”

  She let go of me then, and my skin burned where her hands had been. Her voice echoed in my head, the words barely making sense. My legs twitched like they wanted to jump off my body and run after the red taillights of the police cars, run until they could climb in next to my father.

  “No hero,” I whispered, my voice ragged in the night air.

  “Jesse,” Aunt Gus said again, and I turned around and grabbed the door handle.

  Off in the distance, at the dark edge of the woods, shadowy tree branches moved in a way shadowy tree branches weren’t supposed to move.

  When I turned my head to squint at them, I saw something tall with light hair, something probably named Springer, pushing back into the Pond River Forest.

  5

  Monday, When the Train Came

  Three minutes after the town sirens blared, we were on our knees in the corridor between the gym and the main office, heads covered, matching green-shorted butts in the air.

  Usually schools actually let out before tornadic thunderstorms. Except when the weather person completely missed the boat and those tornadic thunderstorms happened all of a sudden, apparently. I blew air out between my lips to keep myself calm, then lifted my head so my arms wouldn’t fall asleep.

  “Jesse Marie Broadview,” Coach Gray hollered from my left side, where she was making sure Ryker couldn’t pull my hair and I couldn’t punch him in the shoulder so hard his neck cracked. “If you don’t keep your head down, I’ll suspend you even if we’re all flattened by this storm!”

  I barely heard her over the roar outside. At first it seemed far away, but with each breath I took, the roar got closer, and soon I felt it in my knees and elbows, and even in my teeth.

  The school seemed to shake.

  The school did shake.

  Cool.

  Okay, maybe a little bit scary, but I didn’t get scared about much, except Dad having to go back to jail, but Springer and Sam and I, we were going to be like Mom and Shotgun and sniff out anything that could blow up and hurt my father. Even though we hadn’t had much luck so far, we were going to figure out the whole stolen-money thing, even if the police couldn’t.

  I turned my head to my right and yelled to Springer, “Tornados really do sound like trains.”

  “We’re gonna get blown to Oz!” Springer didn’t pick his forehead up off his book. “We’re all gonna die!”

  I put my head back under my arms, and waited and wondered if the train that really wasn’t a train would run over all the green butts in the hallway.

  Would that air-train knock us down? Suck us up and spit us out five miles away from here? I’d probably wake up next to a cow.

  I didn’t much like cows.

  Nope. No cows.

  And Sam-Sam—he was home alone with nobody but old grunty Gus for company, and he probably didn’t even know tornados sounded like trains, and those sirens probably scared him. I lifted my head and started to get up.

  “Stay down!” Coach Gray grabbed my arm and pulled me back where I had been, pushing my head toward the floor.

  The train-not-train roared like a dragon and made my teeth and eyeballs and bones shake along with the school.

  As soon as Coach Gray let me go, I reached over and tapped Springer’s knuckles so he’d know it was okay to hold my hand.

  He whimpered and squeezed my fingers.

  The ceiling fell on top of us.

  6

  Tuesday, Six Days Earlier, Morning

  I was supposed to be in school, but I wasn’t in school because I couldn’t even think about school because Dad wasn’t home like he was supposed to be and the world wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and no. When the alarm beeped at five and five thirty and five forty and five fifty and six and six ten, I pulled the covers over my head, and I counted out loud up to fifteen and back down again, because fifteen was a good number, and it was three sets of five, and fives were pretty nice, and I liked how the word f-i-v-e looked when I wrote it.

  Aunt Gus didn’t try to get me out of my room, and she must have heard me counting and called the counselors at Fort Campbell, because a few minutes later, my phone that never got taken because Dad got arrested made a Skype tone. I pushed my covers into a cave and lay on my belly over my pillow with Sam-Sam beside me, talking to Mom.

  “I’m not having a meltdown,” I told her, which was mostly but not totally true. “I’m too old for meltdowns now and that therapist from last year taught me how to count and use pictures in my head and I do that instead, usually.”

  “That’s good,” Mom said. “But Gustine said you were counting really loud, and you’re not at school like you’re supposed to be, so I figured you were upset.”

  I tried to look Mom in the eyes over the phone, but I got that itchy feeling behind my forehead and my thoughts went fuzzy and I had to stop. “I’m too old for meltdowns but I’m not too old to kick jerkfaces in the knees and get arrested like Dad. I can’t do jerkfaces today.”

  Mom looked like a military painting in her desert fatigues, with nothing but a brown canvas wall behind her. That was all I ever saw, since the soldiers had a special communications tent with talking stations, and the army made sure nobody could see anything they shouldn’t.

  “Is that little snot still bothering you?” Mom asked in that tone of voice she probably used to announce bombs being located, serious and
dangerous, every syllable pronounced so clearly it was hard to believe she was 6,500 miles from my bed cave, and not on some movie set right down the road.

  “He bothers everybody,” I said, “but don’t call AJS.”

  Sam edged up next to me, licking my cheek as Mom asked, “Why not?”

  I worked on giving Mom my best mom face, as stern and soldiery as I could make it. “Sam-Sam and I can do it. We’ll handle Jerkface and his cockroaches like you and Shotgun handle bombs so they don’t hurt soldiers. It’ll be like hero practice.”

  “Shotgun and I have a lot of help,” Mom said. “And I don’t mind helping you, Jesse.”

  “That’s Private Jesse Broadview to you,” I said. Sam licked my chin until I nosed him aside. “What would Uncle Jesse have done with bullies?”

  Mom didn’t even hesitate. “Well, he would have tried to joke them out of it, and if that didn’t work, he probably would have cracked their jaws.”

  “I really can take care of myself, Mom. Just like Uncle Jesse did. And sorry Aunt Gus bothered you so early about all the Dad stuff, and me not going to school.”

  “It’s not early here,” Mom said, her face so tiny on my phone’s screen, even though I could imagine her full-sized if I shut my eyes, but I didn’t shut my eyes, because I didn’t know when I’d get to see her again.

  Mom brushed a fly off her shoulder. “It’s afternoon. Can’t you see the sweat on my face?”

  “No,” I said, but when she winked at me, I saw that, and told her so.

  “I know it’s bad right now, baby. I mean Private Broadview.” Mom pulled off her desert camo cap, adjusted her dark hair into a better ponytail, tucked it on top of her head, then put the sand-colored camo cap back in place, leaving not a single hair scraggling out, even around her ears.