Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse

by Susan Vaught

His phone buzzed, and he looked at it and frowned. Tapped a few buttons. Frowned again.

  “Your parents?” I asked. “Do you need to go?”

  He shook his head. And then I saw how round and sad his eyes were, and I knew.

  “Touch coming,” I murmured. I leaned forward and put my muddy hand on his wrist. “Jerkface and the cockroaches are sending you bad messages, too. How did they get your number?”

  Springer’s lips trembled. “I gave it to Ryker myself, when I first got to town. Before I knew how he was. He asked me, and I thought he was being friendly, and I was such an idiot.”

  He let out a shaky breath.

  “They started sending you crappy messages as soon as they had the number?”

  He nodded. “Not right away. Just one or two. I showed them to my mom, and she said she hoped they’d stop once they got to know me, and I asked them to stop, and they sort of did until—”

  Everything inside me suddenly felt heavy. “Until you started talking to me. Springer, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he said. “I don’t blame you. It’s them.”

  “They got my number from some guide the school published a long time ago,” I said. “I thought about changing it, but they’d find it sooner or later.”

  The head lamp lit up the place where my dirty fingers touched Springer’s clean skin. I wished Sam-Sam were with us again. I felt sort of halved without him.

  “You said ignoring them works best, right?” His lips stopped trembling, but his chin still moved a little when he said, “That’s what I’m going to do.”

  I patted his wrist, and flakes of muck dropped everywhere. “Do you have social media accounts?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “Dad said those are a waste of time.”

  “Good. One less place they can bother you.”

  Springer looked me in the eyes, surprising me. “They’ve been messing with you since you were little, and you don’t let it get to you. You’re really brave, you know that?”

  “I’m not. I just do what I have to.”

  “I bet you could be a soldier like your mom,” he said.

  My insides got twitchy in a hurry. No, worse than twitchy. More jumpy-icky-hot-cold. “I’m really not brave. I’m not hero material. Just ask anybody.”

  “I don’t have to ask other people,” Springer said.

  I thought about Ryker’s face bleeding from the branch, and Chris’s cold, awful voice, and the threats they made. “I’m not sure I saved anything. Maybe just bought us some time.”

  “Well? That’s something. It’s more than I did.”

  His tone confused me. He seemed pretty set on not hitting people, but now he sounded unsure. Now I really got jumpy-icky-hot-cold-tight-crampy. I counted one of my breaths, then two, then three, and said my three times table to help myself relax, only I couldn’t really relax.

  “Why won’t you hit people, Springer?” I asked.

  “Because I don’t want to grow up to be a bad man.” His answer came out so easy, so quiet, I knew he meant it way down deep, even if he was mad at himself. “I’m big, so I could do a lot of damage, and I don’t want to be like—like them, you know?”

  “I know,” I echoed.

  Echoing was better than what I almost said, which was Well, I don’t want to get hit in the nose, but when I glanced at him, his expression had changed from sad to serious. Even if Springer and I never agreed about whether or not it was okay to hit bullies when they attacked, that was fine by me. I mean, it would have been great if Springer stomped those idiots, but if it bothered him, I was fine if he didn’t. I’d just have to look after him. And when necessary, I’d stomp the bullies for both of us.

  “Thank you for helping with the investigation,” I said, mostly to change the subject. “It’s nice, having a friend.”

  Springer managed a small grin. “Yeah, it really is nice. But you don’t have to thank me. Unless you want me to thank you. Then we’ll be thanking each other all the time, and that’d be weird.”

  I grinned, too, and the mud on my face cracked. “OBWIG,” I said.

  Springer raised his fist. “OBWIG forever!”

  17

  Monday, After the Train Came

  The world shrank to the size of my road.

  Bark!

  The world shrank to the size of my yard.

  Bark!

  The world shrank to the size of the pile of planks and bricks and pipes and spraying water and rain puddles and torn-up mud-splattered everything that was my house.

  Bark!

  The world shrank to the size of my body and Springer’s body and that tiny, distant, muffled . . .

  Bark!

  Springer said something but I didn’t hear what it was.

  “Shhhhh!” I held up my hand.

  Bark!

  To my left.

  I walked forward, stumbling as busted bits of concrete bit into my ankles. The front door should be here, only it wasn’t. But if it were and I went through it and tried to get to my room, it would be more to the left.

  Ignoring the ache in my ankles, and the hot warm stuff slipping into my sneakers that was probably blood, I climbed on a stack of boards and pink stuff that I figured came out of the attic.

  “. . . Careful . . .” came Springer’s voice.

  He might as well have been in another town.

  Bark!

  Closer than it should have been, not really where my room would be, but that was okay, because a freight train of wind could move a dog cage before dropping a house on it.

  A board stopped me. I reached down and grabbed it, and wiggled it free. I pitched it behind me and grabbed another. Got a splinter in my thumb. It didn’t matter. I got the second piece of a board loose and threw it behind me, too. A chunk of rock went next, then a big wad of attic pink stuff that prickled at my fingertips.

  Bark!

  “I’m coming!” I said, and when I heard my own voice, the world seemed to grow and sound came back and my heart started beating again and I started breathing again and my ankles hurt and my thumb hurt and my fingertips hurt and I grabbed the next board anyway, the rain on my face hiding my tears.

  Then Springer was beside me, sitting down on a bunch of boards, showing me how he was taking off his shoes and his socks, putting his shoes back on, and sliding his socks over his hands.

  I stopped long enough to do that, and with my sock mittens, grabbing stuff and moving stuff got easier. When a board wouldn’t come, or a chunk of brick felt too heavy, Springer helped with his sock mittens.

  Bark!

  Almost there. Almost through some of the pile, maybe making a hole where we could get into what was left of the house, a room, to the cage, and—

  I froze with a brick in my hand.

  Springer pushed up beside me, slipped on some wet pink stuff, got back up—

  I heard it again.

  Not a bark.

  “That’s—” Springer said.

  “Not a dog,” I finished.

  18

  Friday, Three Days Earlier, Morning

  The office was empty early Friday morning. I had ridden in with Dad, because after the walking-to-school-without-permission and water-bottle-fight stuff on Wednesday, and me showing up home looking like a voodoo doll made out of mud Thursday evening, he said he wasn’t feeling trusting. So he’d arranged for me to stay in the office until class started.

  The only good part about all that was, somehow, Springer had beaten me to the school. His mom brought him, he said, because after I told him I had to come in early, he asked her to do it. And before I got there, he’d been trying to sweet-talk Mr. Chiba into giving us the attendance list for the staff meeting that happened on the day the library fund money went missing from Dad’s desk drawer.

  Mr. Chiba hadn’t cracked.

  As we sat side by side, me kicking carpet squares with my freshly washed and very itchy sneakers, and him messing with his phone, he pulled up our list of the senior high students
we needed to question. I glanced at the list.

  “I don’t know where to start,” I admitted. “Got any ideas?”

  Springer glanced toward the front counter, where Mr. Chiba was leaning over and marking things in a book. “I wonder what their class schedule is.”

  Before I could say anything about that, he got up and headed back over to Mr. Chiba’s counter. Mr. Chiba didn’t look up as Springer approached, but after a few seconds, he did—and as I watched the two of them, I realized that sometimes I saw people, right down to the number of hairs escaping ponytails and the exact amount of yellow streaks on their teeth. Sometimes I noticed that their shirts had pointy collars or round collars or no collars, or that boy shirts had buttons on the right and girl shirts had buttons on the left. But sometimes, I didn’t see people at all.

  I had never really processed that Mr. Chiba’s black hair had streaks of silver on both sides. He had lines around his forehead and dark eyes and mouth that made him look grandpa-sweet when he smiled, and he smiled at Springer more than he smiled at most people. That is, when he wasn’t scratching that spot behind his ear.

  He did that a lot when I was around.

  I figured being around me made him nervous. Lots of people got nervous around me, even when I’d never hit them.

  “Your eye looks better,” Mr. Chiba said. “More green than blue now. It’ll be normal by next week, I hope.”

  “Me too,” Springer said. “Listen, we really need to know about the staff meeting attendance.” Springer gave a little shrug, like everyone knew how important staff meeting schedules were. “Who was absent—that’s the most important thing, for our investigation.”

  Mr. Chiba kept smiling at him, not looking in my direction even a little bit. “I understand what you’re saying. It’s just—” He glanced at Ms. Jorgensen’s closed door. “I really need to get the okay from my boss.”

  “Isn’t Ms. Jorgensen here already?” I asked, then covered my mouth when Mr. Chiba flinched.

  His hand drifted to a thick folder on her desk. “She isn’t,” he admitted.

  Well, that was weird. She had been here yesterday at this time, fussing at Coach Sedon about something outside the senior high entrance. And her work hours covered both junior and senior high, since she was supreme queen mighty principal over both parts of the school, right?

  “Something came up,” Mr. Chiba added, his words coming out too fast. “Personal business again.”

  “Again?” Springer frowned. “So is Ms. Jorgensen away from work a lot?”

  “More than she should be.” It was Mr. Chiba’s turn to cover his mouth. He closed his eyes for a second, too. When he opened them again, Springer kept up his campaign.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Springer said. “I just want to help Jesse so her dad doesn’t ever have to go back to jail. She really needs him, you know?”

  Mr. Chiba’s glance strayed over to me. He scratched behind his ear. I thought about what Springer might do in this situation, and I did my best to smile.

  Mr. Chiba looked away.

  I held back a sigh and wished I had a mirror to see what was wrong with my face. My friendly looks definitely didn’t seem to work like Springer’s did. In fairness, though, he had a really nice grin that made his whole face shiny. When I smiled, I mostly looked like I wanted to bite somebody.

  “Well,” Springer said, “if you really can’t help us with the staff meeting, can you tell us which classes Karen Abelmore, Kevin Aztine, Josh Sharp, Maleka Keston, and Nancy Newsom are in today?”

  “Kevin Aztine moved away last year,” Mr. Chiba said, sounding surprised by the request—so surprised he forgot to tell Springer he couldn’t help us. “Karen Abelmore’s on homeschool because she’s been ill. The other three, I’d have to look—but I shouldn’t. Privacy and all.”

  Springer gave him puppy eyes.

  Mr. Chiba sighed. “I really don’t think Mr. Broadview will have to go back to jail. I think all this will get worked out when he has his hearing next week.”

  Hearing next week?

  Wait.

  My breath went shallow, and the insides of my hands started to itch.

  Hearing.

  Okay, that was definitely a court thing. Was a hearing the same as a trial? Was that when Dad would have to prove he was innocent or get sentenced to jail where I couldn’t see him and he couldn’t come home and he’d leave me and Aunt Gus and Sam-Sam and Charlie all alone?

  I scratched at my hands. The room seemed to lurch in circles. I quit scratching and gripped the arms of my seat and looked at the thin office carpet squares under my tennis shoes. The squares were green. There were twelve squares between my feet and the wall across the room.

  “One, two, three,” I whispered, trying to count the longways squares, because if I could get the right number, I could multiply them by the shortways squares and figure out how many green squares made up this part of the office. Hearing. Guilty. Innocent. Jail. “Four, five, six.” But the front counter got in the way.

  I pushed out of my seat and walked around the wooden counter, pushing through the gate part even though a little bell rang and somebody said something. “Seven, eight.” There. I could almost see the rest of the squares. I walked past the desk where Mr. Chiba was standing, until I could get a good view of the floor near the office windows.

  She does that, said Springer’s voice from somewhere. Numbers and counting things—it helps her not be upset.

  You haven’t known her that long, Mr. Chiba answered, like he was in a dream I was having. How have you figured all this out?

  She told me.

  I’m sorry this is hard for her, Springer. And sorry it’s hard for you, too.

  We’ll be okay, Mr. Chiba.

  Somebody touched my wrist.

  I jumped.

  “I’m here,” Springer said, and I looked at him, holding both my hands away so nothing could touch them again.

  “There’s fourteen squares over here,” I told him. “That makes one hundred sixty-eight in this part of the room.” My palms were still itching. Sweat trickled down the side of my face, and I worked not to breathe like I had been running. “I don’t know about the other room. Is a hearing the same as a trial?”

  “I don’t know anything about legal stuff,” Springer said. Then, to Mr. Chiba, “Are the carpet squares in the hall and other rooms the same color as these?”

  Mr. Chiba’s voice sounded shaky when he said, “Yes.”

  Springer nodded. “Jesse may have to count them. I don’t think she knew about this hearing thing, whatever it is.”

  “I see,” Mr. Chiba said. “Well, a hearing is a preliminary step in the trial process. So it’s part of a trial, but not the same thing. Lawyers talk about things in hearings, like evidence and plea deals and diversions, and the judge makes decisions about motions.”

  I dug my nails into my palms and scratched. “One hundred sixty-eight green squares,” I said to Springer, because I couldn’t look at Mr. Chiba because if I looked at him, I’d probably yell and scream until somebody took me home to my dog and my aunt Gus and my dad and maybe even Mom on the phone and I wouldn’t be faking a meltdown. “One hundred sixty-eight. It’s an even number. Twelve times fourteen, that’s how I did it.”

  Springer reached out his hands and turned them both palm up. “Put your hands here so you don’t accidentally scratch yourself too hard.”

  “No,” I said. “That’ll make my brain itch.”

  He looked confused. “Do you try to scratch your brain when it itches?”

  “I—” My breath pulled in and out, in and out as I thought about that question. “Uh, no. I don’t think so.”

  Springer smiled and his face did that shiny thing, and my chest got a little looser with each breath. “Then it’s better than your hands and arms itching, right? ’Cause you won’t make yourself bleed.”

  I put my palms on Springer’s and stared at them.

  My brain did itch.


  I didn’t try to scratch it.

  I just kept breathing and multiplying to get to one sixty-eight. “Two times eighty-four. Three times fifty-six. Four times forty-two.”

  More smiling from Springer. “You are way better at math than I am.”

  “Six times twenty-eight,” I said. “Seven times twenty-four. Eight times twenty-one.”

  When I stopped, Springer bit at his bottom lip. “Nine doesn’t work. But twelve does. Twelve times fourteen.”

  I nodded.

  “My brain doesn’t itch about math,” he said. “It just sort of hurts.”

  “I’m okay now,” I told him. “I think.”

  I took my hands back.

  He let me.

  We both looked at Mr. Chiba.

  His expression said his brain might be itching now. His fingers drummed on the folder on his desk. He said, “I have to go to the restroom. I’m going to trust both of you to sit right here and stay out of trouble.”

  He patted the thick folder and stared at Springer.

  Springer stared back.

  I felt like they were talking without words, but I had no idea what they were saying.

  Mr. Chiba left the main room and walked around us, into the office’s back hall. A second later, I heard a door close.

  Springer hurried over to Mr. Chiba’s desk. “Keep watch,” he told me as he flipped the folder open.

  “For what?” I didn’t know whether to watch the hall or the office door or the folder.

  “Watch for people,” said Springer. “Don’t let any of them in the office.”

  “Okay.” I walked toward the office door, then worried about Mr. Chiba. So I walked back to where Springer was pawing through the folder pictures and taking snaps with his phone, went past him, and glanced down the back hall of the office. All the doors were still closed.

  “Got it.” He tucked his phone in his pocket.

  When I just stood there looking confused and probably still a little itchy, he opened the gate between the desks and the chairs. “Jesse, I got the staff meeting attendance records! That’s what he left on the desk.”

  The alarm buzzed until we shut the gate again.