For Zoe and Ava.
Always stick together. No matter what.
Mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb?
—PINK FLOYD
Dear Bucky,
We’re moving again. To Washington State, where the average rainfall is forty-nine inches per year. It’s strange, considering how much Mother hates the rain. During downpours or when it rains for days, even if it’s just off and on, her mood is so melancholy she’ll mope and keep us close until it lets up. You’d think we were made of something dissolvable in water. Not sugar, but maybe salt. I looked it up on the internet at school and I think she has something called SAD. Seasonal Affective Disorder. It doesn’t need its long diagnosis because sad is exactly right. But this makes our fifth move in ten years. Not that I need to tell you that. You know. We’ll be the new girls again. Yay! That was sarcastic, if you didn’t figure it out. I hate being the new girls. I hate thinking maybe we’ll fit in this time, even though I know we won’t. I used to hope. But hope can’t be trusted. Hope contradicts reality. That’s why we prep. And since we’ve never met anyone else with fifty cans of soup or beans stored at their house, not to mention gallons upon gallons of water, I think this move might be the closest thing to hope we’ll ever have. Do you think Mother wants us to take all the food we have in storage? Probably. Maybe we’ll eat some of it straight from the cans on the road trip to the prepper compound. Did I mention that? That’s why we’re moving this time. Mother found a group who were looking to add a family with a nurse at their helm. She thinks being around like-minded people will help give us a sense of community. They call the group we’re joining The Nest. That sounds cozy enough, I guess. They grow their own food and have farm animals, which Blue will love.
It’ll be different than just stockpiling water and food. We’ll learn how to hunt and defend ourselves against enemy invasion in the event of war, EMP, a viral pandemic … whatever. I don’t know if you’ve been watching the news, but our president has his finger on the button of some scary stuff. I don’t trust him. See, there’s no hope. Anyway, Mother says it will be like camp. We’ll learn how to survive in the woods, bake bread, can our own vegetables. She’s trying to make it sound like this amazing adventure that will change our lives, but Birdie isn’t buying into it. I think it’s because she doesn’t want to leave the boy she has a crush on in her geometry class. You know Birdie. There’s always a boy du jour. Not me, though. None of the boys at this school seemed to like me. Not in a girlfriend way. I didn’t see anybody worth liking, either, to be honest. And I’m not sure Blue even thinks about boys, so that’s no worry. It doesn’t matter. Birdie will come around. We have each other, and that’s what matters in the end. And we have you. You get to come with us. I have to go. Mother is calling for me to help clean out the garage. Stay tuned.
Love,
Honey
EVENTUALLY, WE ALL HAVE TO LEAVE THE NEST.
ATL
ATTEMPT TO LOCATE
THE END IS DRAWING NEAR. Either my sister Birdie pulls her act together and finds her Every Day Carry, or we’re leaving without it. She can deal with the consequences if today is the day the shit hits the fan. I shouldn’t joke. You never know. But it’s stupid, really, since Birdie is usually the one who’s most prepared, at least physically. The prize for most prepared emotionally goes to our youngest sister, Blue. She’s the one least likely to get flustered. A calm blue sea with hair to match, which is why it’s unusual to see her in a flurry, tossing saggy, beige couch cushions aside and sliding heavy wooden furniture around to help Birdie search. Not me. I’m waiting with my arms crossed. If Birdie wants to fly out at night to meet Daniel Dobbs from The Burrow, she should have prepped her EDC before squeezing her bedraggled butt through the window and down the cucumber trellis last night.
It’s funny how Blue is the most unflappable. When you think about it, logically, that trait should belong to Birdie based on her name. Are names logical? I don’t know. Maybe Blue’s, but not mine. Women spend their whole lives cringing whenever someone calls them honey. Not me. No sirree. Mother named me Honey at the outset, so I don’t get to be offended. As the oldest, I don’t get to be anything except Responsible, Reactive, and Ready. The three big Rs. Even if that only means having a good comeback ready when necessary, which is more often than you’d think.
“Today will be the day she needs it,” Blue says. She’s prone to matter-of-fact statements. There isn’t an aggressive bone in her body. She’s just self-assured and has clear … opinions. Sure. Let’s call them that.
I flick my eyes to them and sigh. “We have to go, Birdie. Blue and I have our bags. Just stick to the evacuation plan if needed. We got you.”
Birdie blows a curtain of thick bangs away from eyes dark as a storm, deepened more at the moment by her annoyance with me. “Seriously, Honey? You’re not even gonna attempt to help me attempt to locate my EDC? You heard Blue.”
I heard her. And it’s not that Blue’s proclamations don’t often come true. They do. Out of all us weirds, she’s at the top. It’s just the world as we know it hasn’t ended in the ten years we’ve been preppers. Not when it was just us stockpiling food and water. And not in the year we’ve lived in The Nest.
I roll my own, less contemptuous brown eyes at Birdie and walk out. Blue is right in a way, and so is Birdie. Preparedness is the root of prepping. But I’ll bet my favorite Gerber folding knife, dollars to doughnuts, my sister left her EDC outside last night. Love makes you do stupid things. Not that I’d know. God forbid I have time for a boyfriend. Even if I did, none of the Burrow Boys appeals to me, and Outsiders are off-limits. For me, it’s a zero-sum game.
I hear Birdie grumble, “Typical,” as I walk to the kitchen and it puts a hitch in my step. As long as they’re following me, it doesn’t matter. I wait one second, two … expecting them to walk through the doorway and grab their lunches from the table.
Guess not.
Mother glances up from the self-inflicted palm wound she’s treating with homemade antibiotics, concocted in our kitchen from bread mold left to grow in the large bay window. The plants filling the same space provide necessary humidity for the process, turning that windowsill into Mother’s makeshift laboratory. Complete with microscope and glass beakers. A mix of aluminum and copper pots hang above her head from an oval rack, and bundles of drying herbs are hanging from the wooden rafters. Some of the pots in this kitchen are used for cooking, others for her medicinal experiments. We’ve had to learn which is which.
Typical.
Sure, Birdie. That’s us Junipers in a nutshell.
“You could be more patient.” Mother’s expression is serious, despite the youthful brown freckles covering her face, including her thinning lips. “You remember when you were a junior, all the things you had to worry about: SATs, driving, piled on top of threats of global warming, economic collapse, a possible viral flu pandemic. You never know how long you girls will have with each other. None of us do. You could be the last girls on this compound. All we can do is prepare, not predict.”