“I think it’s okay.”
“Good. When we get out of here, we’ll go to a nice hospital and get it all cleaned up just to be safe.”
“A hospital? I don’t want to go to a hospital.” My heart races with panic. I hate hospitals. Hospitals are where people go to die. “I’m not going to the hospital.”
“Fine. I won’t force you.”
Charlie drags in a labored breath then coughs. It’s hard to ignore the fact that we don’t have water. I’m lucky. I drank a water right before the earthquake. But I could easily down another gallon.
“When’s the last time you had water, Charlie?”
“Lunchtime. Does your throat feel like you swallowed protein powder straight?”
“Worse.” I know there’s plenty of time before we have to start worrying about water but it’s hard not to think about it when the air scratches my throat with every inhale.
I keep telling myself it’s only a matter of time. That we won’t have to wait much longer to be rescued. I tell myself this even though the sirens are spinning in the distance now. Away from here. Away from us.
I can guess where they are instead.
Downtown.
My mom’s office.
Firefighters in heavy coats, brandishing flashlights and whistles while dogs pad their way across the concrete slabs, pressing their noses to the rubble of fallen buildings. I’ve only seen images like that on TV, happening in places far from home. Haiti. Mexico. Japan. Even though everyone thinks California is earthquake country, the temblors we have are mostly small. News coverage generally consists of a local reporter at a grocery store talking to a manager who’s pointing out all the stuff that had fallen off the shelves. Even the Ridgecrest quake we had on the Fourth of July, which registered relatively big at a magnitude 7.1, didn’t do a lot of damage. I was at the beach with Leo, where I’d felt nothing, but my mom was home and said it had only made our shutters sway.
The worst damage I’d seen was from Northridge, in 1994, when whole apartment buildings crumbled to the ground. Or San Francisco, in 1989, when the upper level of the bridge collapsed, crushing cars and people on the lower deck. But I wasn’t alive then. Those earthquakes aren’t a part of my history like they are for my mom. She remembers them. But to me, they’re only pictures on the TV or online. And those earthquakes weren’t The Big One. Even though The Big One is supposed to happen, even though I’ve grown up being told we’re overdue and we should be ready for it to take place in my lifetime, the actual big earthquakes I’ve known have happened to other people. In other places. Far away from here.
I should’ve known better. Nothing is ever so far away that it’s impossible.
I took an emergency earthquake kit to every first day of school from preschool through eighth grade, but the water bottles, thermal blanket, and seven-day supply of nutritional protein bars weren’t real. The ground never shook hard enough for teachers to have to distribute them. Those kits were something I held in my hands for five minutes then handed to my teacher to stash away in the back of the classroom where they were forgotten about until they were returned to us on the last day of school nine months later.
Charlie grunts, and I can hear the shuffle of something—his arm or leg—as he tries to move. He sucks in a breath. Hisses through his teeth.
The pain in my arm has a heartbeat. Does Charlie’s? I pat the ground around me. Hard and gritty. I remember the stains on this floor and the way it looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. The wads of gum stuck along the edges of the tables. I’m lying on top of this and underneath that now. I’m living and breathing in filth. All of it seeping into me.
I need a distraction.
I need to think about something to keep me from focusing on the thump, thump, thump of my body.
I think of the safest place. Home. With its warm blankets and hot showers. My mom in the kitchen and the TV buzzing. And then I see Coach Sanchez there and my stomach knots.
“Are you from here?” I ask Charlie.
“Here-ish.”
Wait. Was he my classmate? Should I know him? “Did you go to Pacific Shore?”
“Harbor.”
“Ah, sure. Harbor. The charter school nobody wanted.”
He laughs. “Yeah. Our motto was ‘Better than public, too many losers for private.’ ” Another laugh. “I take it you went to Pacific.”
“Not did. Still do.”
“Oh. You’re even younger than I thought.” He coughs. “I didn’t think kids from Pacific knew how to do their own laundry.”
“Wow.”
“Sorry. Just bitter. I wanted to go to Pacific.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“My parents said no.” A grunt. “Their favorite word.”
My mom says yes to everything because she wants me to live a life of experience. She says yes to things she probably shouldn’t. But I’m glad she pushes me out of my comfort zone. “That sucks.”
“They’re parents. Ones who aren’t thrilled I’m not at college right now. I’ve got a full scholarship. What a waste, right?”
“Wait. You finally got out of here and you decided to come back? Why?”
“Had to.”
“What do you mean you had to?”
“There was some . . . stuff that happened. I’d rather not get into it.” He coughs. “But my parents were so pissed they wouldn’t let me come home, so I’ve been crashing on my brother’s couch. You’d think they’d give him a hard time for not having some illustrious career by now, but I guess since he works at the Apple Store in the Pacific Pavilion mall they think he’s an actual genius.”
“So you dropped out of college to sleep on your brother’s couch?”
He laughs. “I sound like a real loser when you put it like that.”
“Are you?”
“Probably.”
“When I get out of this town, I’m never coming back.” Some coaches have already talked to me about playing for them in college. I can’t wait to go. I don’t want to be someone who never leaves this place, finishing high school only to scoop ice cream at the same shop they’ve worked at since they were fifteen.
“I get it.”
“I didn’t actually come to the laundromat to do laundry,” I blurt.
“Because you can’t, right? Ha! I knew Pacific Shore kids didn’t know how to work those fancy buttons.” He sounds so satisfied that it makes me smile.
“I guess I walked right into that one.”
“You kind of did, Ruby’s Diner.” He laughs again. “So why did you come here if you’re not a couch-surfing college dropout like me?”
“Truth?”
“Sure. Why the hell not?”
“The laundromat’s where my friends and I find deadbeats to buy us beer.”
“And I was your deadbeat?”
“You were a contender.” I jiggle my right foot, trying to shake out the pins and needles that numb my toes.
“I may be a deadbeat, but I’m only nineteen. And even if I were twenty-one, I wouldn’t have contributed to the corruption of a minor. Especially one who can’t even do her own laundry.”