“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“No catch. I know more about you three than you might think. If needed, I can come up with something to explain your whereabouts. Where did you stash your EDCs?”
“Our what?” Birdie draws out the question, as singsong as her name implies.
Never have I ever seen my sister play dumb so well. Ruffling her bangs with her fingertips like some character in a play about babes in the woods.
Starring Birdie Juniper: Lead Ingénue.
“Your Every Day Carries.” Whitlock pats the canvas messenger bag slung across his body twice, as if to say one of these. “Where are they? I’ve never seen any one of you without one.”
“He’s a prepper,” Blue says, cutting straight through the bullshit.
“I’m a realist,” Whitlock counters. “And from what I’ve seen since I got here, so are you. I can’t fault you for leaving my class the way you did, Honey. I understand following protocol. Believe me, that’s my whole life. But you drew the kind of attention to yourself that’s hard to recover from without an advocate on your side. That’s all I was trying to say.”
You can talk to me, he told me. Let me be your confidant.
Confidant. My head shakes reflexively. We don’t have those outside of our group, unless you count Bucky. The first rule of prep club is you don’t talk about prep club. My sisters are my biggest confidantes and right now they look just as perplexed.
Never in a million years did I imagine having to do a surprise threat assessment of Mr. Whitlock, but what choice do I have? We’ve been taught to exercise caution with preppers who aren’t part of our group. Marauders are considered worse than Outsiders, because their interests lie in assessing the stashed assets of other preppers so they can steal them when the SHTF. But Mr. Whitlock, of all people, a prepper? Or worse. A marauder. I don’t know.
THREAT ASSESSMENT:
PRYCE WHITLOCK|5’11” AVERAGE-STRONG BUILD|OPEN SOCIAL GROUP|UNTRUSTING
MOST LIKELY TO: surprise you without warning.
LEAST LIKELY TO: follow the rules of the establishment.
2/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN EMERGENCY SITUATION.
CASUALTY POTENTIAL: low
“They’re in a gym locker,” I tell him. “We’ll go get them.”
I’m mad at myself for not thinking my cautionary plan all the way through. The school can check lockers because they’re school property. Checking our bags requires probable cause. Doing so without viable suspicion would be a fourth amendment violation.
“So you’re just gonna let us go home?” Blue asks.
I hold my breath, unconvinced, waiting for the shiny thing dangling in front of us to be yanked away.
“I’ll think of something to tell Principal Weaver. And the authorities. They may decide they want to talk to you at another time, but I’ll do what I can for now.”
“What about Daniel?” Birdie asks.
I’m leery of how easily she’s fallen into trusting my chemistry teacher. I like Mr. Whitlock, like I said, but trusting him begs me to follow a different set of rules.
“I can only offer the three of you a chance to get out of here before anyone else comes looking for you. I don’t know what they found on Daniel Dobbs, yet. If that’s going to stop you from leaving, that’s fine. I can take you to Principal Weaver’s office now. But if you want me to CYA, you need to collect your EDCs and get out of here. And I suggest you think long and hard about what you’re going to carry inside those bags when you return tomorrow.”
I nod, knowing, even if we leave, this conversation feels far from over.
“Tomorrow, then,” I say. “We’ll go. Thank you.” I pull Birdie by the sleeve because she seems reluctant to move without knowing what’s happening to Daniel.
Mr. Whitlock adjusts the strap on his own EDC, completely straight-faced. “Tomorrow it is.”
BSTS
BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY
WE’RE LATE. MOTHER is standing under the portico with her arms crossed, mouth pulled in a grim frown as we roll up in the station wagon. When she knows we’re home, she walks inside without changing her stoic expression. Since coming here, our mother almost always thinks prepping and safety first, feelings second. Right now, she’s got that disappointed, we-have-work-to-do vibe draped across her shoulders like a tattered shawl.
I stay behind the wheel an extra second, letting the rain flood the windshield in waves. We didn’t do anything wrong. Birdie may have, but that’s not the position I’m planning to take.
“Let me do the talking,” I tell my sisters. “She’s got that look.” Ripe for a dustup with Birdie if my sister doesn’t keep her mouth shut.
“Maybe I can explain,” Birdie offers.
I snap the wagon’s gearshift into Park and whip my head to the back seat. “Can you?” I know it’s snippy, but an hour ago she claimed she couldn’t remember what she’d done. “I’ll do what I can to keep Mother off the scent of your involvement in whatever the hell you were doing. Don’t say a word until she tells us what she knows.”
Blue exits the car quietly, but stares longingly at Achilles’s mew. He doesn’t like to fly in the rain. Falcons need the updraft of wind, and anything more than light rain makes their wings too heavy. Achilles screeches from inside the mew like he senses her presence, and she smiles, knowing he’s safe and sound.
We enter the house rank and file, oldest to youngest, shaking the wet weather onto the ugly brown tiles by the door.
The TV in the living room is tuned to the national news, as always, with the constant chattering of what’s happening around the globe. It underscores our daily existence and keeps us informed, or will keep us informed until something or someone takes us out. The POTUS has been dropping instigating comments about the Supreme Leader of North Korea like they’re fighting over who has the biggest toy collection instead of focusing on the reality of what a nuclear bomb would do to either country. The wood-burning stove is lit. On any other day, it would take the chill from the house, but it’s being replenished by Mother’s icy countenance.
“I tried to reach you girls on the cellphone several times. You know how much I worry when you don’t answer, especially when the weather is like this. Would one of you care to explain?”
So much for waiting until she gives us her intel.
I swipe away the drops of rain sliding down my forehead. “It’s my fault,” I tell her. “There was an incident at the school. I was rushing to leave and left the phone in my locker. In my defense, it was out of battery and needs to be charged anyway.”
I peel off my wet socks, trying to act as natural as possible.
“That part was my fault,” Birdie says, and I wish she’d shut up. “It was my turn to make sure the phone was charged.”
“That’s not the only complication, though, is it?” Mother says. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have received a call from Principal Weaver saying Honey climbed out of her classroom through the air shaft.”
I’m standing in front of her with my back against a proverbial wall. “I did, but only because it sounded like someone was firing a gun, and we got put on lockdown. I did what I was supposed to do. Find Birdie and Blue. Isn’t that why we’ve been training, to be ready to react responsibly during tense situations? BSTS.”