He finishes folding and pulls out a journal from his unzipped duffel. I try not to roll my eyes. He’s probably one of those writer types who has to jot down everything he sees so he can shove it into a metaphor in some future story. His journal is black with the same letters stenciled in gold across the front. C. Smith. He opens up to a half-filled page and writes something inside. Then he closes the journal and tucks the ballpoint pen into an elastic band that wraps around the outside.
I fish my phone out of my back pocket and snap a photo of my washing machine suds to send to Leo while I’m thinking up a plan.
I watch the triple dots bounce as he types back to me.
What is that???
I don’t respond because C. Smith abandons his duffel bag to wander the lavender-scented fluffy air of the laundromat, his casual cool in conflict with his perfect khaki pants. The older woman folding laundry in the back corner looks up when he moves—a quick intake of who’s here and where they’re going. My gaze skims across the timer on C. Smith’s dryer, my stomach twisting with urgency when I realize I have only ten minutes left to summon up the courage to get what I came for.
I watch as he balances between his heels and the balls of his feet, checking out the flyers on the bulletin board. Winter sun shimmers through the open door next to him, shooting sparks across the checkered floor streaked with sticky gray stains and shreds of mop strings pushed into the corners. He must not care about the phone number for the woman opening up her house to align people’s chakras on Saturday morning because he turns away to lean his back against a floor-to-ceiling window that frames the cracked asphalt and faded lines of the parking lot. He pushes his hand through his crew cut, and I notice that some of the strands in front are sun faded and nearly white.
I tug on the strings of my sweatshirt hood to bury my face and hide my lurking.
There’s something oddly satisfying about watching someone when they don’t know you’re looking. To be making plans they’ll be involved in but don’t even know yet.
C. Smith crosses his arms over his chest. The sleeves of his shirt ride up to hug buff biceps, and I wonder if he started lifting weights recently or if, like me, he did weight-room workouts for four years of high school, jolting awake to an alarm clock for sports practice before the sun came up.
Six minutes on his dryer. It’s now or never. I take the last sip of the bottled water I brought with me. It goes down too fast and I cough. C. Smith looks my way, acknowledging my presence with a lift of his chin.
I push my stool back and stand up, nervously spinning my championship ring around my finger and back again. Now that I’m standing, I can see I tower over C. Smith. I estimate he barely hits five feet and five inches.
So I slouch.
I would love to be five foot five.
I would love to not stand out.
I would love to be a nameless face in the crowd.
C. Smith has it good.
Or maybe he doesn’t.
Short boys might not have it any better than tall girls.
“Excuse me.” I take a step closer to him.
C. Smith lifts his eyes my way. “Yeah?”
A dog barks in the distance. It’s a little yip at first, but then it gets frantic enough to make us both look out the window.
“I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”
Dogs up and down the block join the barking in a wild cacophony of noise.
Like a warning.
Exactly as I process this thought, the ground rumbles underneath my feet. An empty laundry cart teeters by on its rickety wheels. C. Smith steps away from the window and braces his hands on top of the thick mint-green Formica table a few feet from mine, his neat shirts stacked in his duffel bag inches from his fingers.
We lock eyes.
“Earthquake,” I say.
“Yeah. It feels big.”
I nod. He’s right. This one is bigger than normal. I grip the edge of my table, my fingertips flinching at the rotted bumps of dried gum underneath.
My water bottle bounces to the ground as the alarms of parked cars bleat. An open dryer door bangs with so much force its glass window breaks. C. Smith has his back to the laundromat’s window. I’m facing it, looking out at the ground swelling in the parking lot.
And then there’s a sound like a freight train.
Screeching.
Grinding.
The ground rolls like waves in the ocean. My knuckles go white as I struggle to hang on to the edge of my table.
A flash of movement catches my eye as the woman from the back corner darts out from her workspace, her hands flipping switches on a nearby panel. Washers and dryers stop midcycle. The fluorescent lights above us sputter then shut off as she runs out the door and into the parking lot.
She should not run into the parking lot.
I want to yell at her. Tell her to stop. Turn around. How can one person be so smart and so dumb at the same time?
C. Smith tries to get my attention, yelling incoherent words and waving his arms.
“Duck!” I shout, and dive under my own table in time to see the walls of the building cave in. The windows shatter. Fragments of glass slide across the floor like ice.
I grew up in California and can count on my fingers the number of times an earthquake had actually felt strong enough to make me run for cover. There was one time in kindergarten when Ms. Curtis was reading a story out loud from her big yellow book, and the ABC rug felt like it was going to drop out from under us. She told us to get underneath our desks and put one hand over our heads while holding on to a desk leg with the other. Ms. Curtis scrunched up like a pill bug in the middle of the room, showing us what to do before she rolled up under her own desk. Amanda Friedlander cried and Scotty Cleary peed his pants. I stayed curled up in a ball until the ground stopped shaking.
But then it was over. And just like that, the panic had passed. Nothing was broken. And Ms. Curtis went back to reading.
When I was in second grade, the earth must’ve rattled hard enough to scare my mom because she pulled me out of bed in the middle of the night and dove underneath the dining room table, where I stayed safely tucked against her chest until the ground stilled.
There was another time in middle school. And one more in tenth grade. When I was with Mila. Before everything.
Four times.
Four times in my seventeen years that I’ve ducked for cover because I actually thought my California town had the potential to split open.
Now it’s actually happening.
The air explodes with scraping metal. The doorway caves. Drywall dust thickens like smoke. Chunks of ceiling debris fall and scatter. The table above me cracks and dips in the middle, pinning me down. Locking me in. I push against it, trying to keep it from collapsing and crushing me, but this earthquake is stronger than I am. I clench my eyes shut, ball my fists. I remember what I can. Cover my head. Tuck in my toes. Keep cuts to a minimum. The weight on my chest grows, stunting my breathing. I dare to squint my eyes open, but I can’t see through the smog of chaos. I can’t even pull enough breath into my lungs to scream.
Today will be the end of me.
The ground shakes. The walls fall.
People don’t survive buildings collapsing on them. I’m going to die in a dirty laundromat, decorated all orange and green like a 1970s prom, and my mom won’t know where to look for my body because she doesn’t even know I’m here. I should be at the pool. With my team. With her boyfriend.