DRY - by Neal Shusterman

SNAPSHOT: JOHN WAYNE

Dalton loves the way planes take off from John Wayne Airport. It’s a real trip. They call it a “modified noise abatement takeoff,” and it was specifically implemented to spare Newport Beach millionaires from having to deal with airport noise. Basically, the plane powers up on the runway with its brakes on, then accelerates at full force into a ridiculously steep takeoff, followed ten seconds later by a sudden leveling off and throttling down of the engines, which sounds, to the uninitiated, like engine failure, causing at least one person on every flight to gasp, or even scream in panic. The plane then coasts out over the back bay, Balboa Island, and the Newport Peninsula before the pilot pushes the engines back to full and resumes the climb-out.

“They oughta call it John Glenn instead of John Wayne,” Dalton once said – because taking off from there was the closest most people would ever get to blasting off into space.

Dalton and his younger sister are regular flyers, visiting their dad, who lives up in Portland, a few times a year – Christmas, Easter, most of the summer, and every other Thanksgiving. Today, however, it’s not just the two of them traveling north. Their mother is coming, too.

“If your dad won’t put me up, I’ll be happy to stay in a hotel,” she says.

“He won’t make you do that,” Dalton tells her, but she doesn’t seem too sure.

A few years back, Dalton’s mom had left him for a loser with nice pecs and a soul patch, who she subsequently kicked to the curb a year later. Live and learn. Anyway, when the marriage went south, his dad went north.

“You understand this is not about your father and me getting back together,” she tells Dalton and his sister, but for kids of divorce, hope springs eternal.

Within minutes of the Tap-Out, his mom had gone online and bought three overpriced tickets on Alaska Air – one of the few airlines that flies nonstop to Portland on a plane that you didn’t have to get out and push.

“Last three tickets,” she told them triumphantly. “You’ve got an hour to pack. Carry-ons only.”

The trip to the airport is bumper-to-bumper. What should be a fifteen-minute ride takes almost an hour.

The parking situation at John Wayne is the first indication that there’s going to be turbulence up ahead. All but one parking structure says FULL. They get one of the last remaining spaces at the far end of the last lot. As they make their way to the terminal, Dalton notes all the cars circling, like it’s a huge game of musical chairs, with no chairs left.

The TSA checkpoint is a madhouse, which never happens here.

“A lot a people are going on vacation,” Dalton’s seven-year-old sister, Sarah, says.

“Yes, honey,” their mom responds absently.

“Where do you think they’re going?”

Their mom sighs, too stressed to continue humoring her, so Dalton looks at the boards, and takes up the slack. “Cabo San Lucas,” he says. “Denver, Dallas, Chicago…”

“My friend Gigi’s from Chicago.”

The security guy double takes on Dalton’s passport, because his hair is brown in the photo, but now it’s bleached blond.

“You sure this is you?”

“Last time I checked,” Dalton responds.

The humorless TSA guy lets them get into the slow-moving crawl to the metal detector, which has issues with his facial rings. Finally they make it through security with just five minutes until boarding starts. Mom is relieved.

“Okay,” she says. “We’re here. We haven’t lost anyone. No missing fingers or toes.”

“I’m thirsty,” Sarah says, but Dalton has already noticed that the concessions they passed all had NO WATER signs up.

“There’ll be something to drink on the plane,” their mother says.

Dalton thinks that might actually be true. After all, these planes all came from somewhere else. And he is getting a bit thirsty himself.

Then, just as they’re about to start boarding, the gate agent comes on the loudspeaker and makes an announcement.

“Unfortunately, we’re oversold on this flight,” she says. “We’re asking for volunteers with flexible travel plans who are willing to take a later flight.”

Sarah tugs her mother’s arm. “Mommy, volunteer!”

“Not this time, baby.”

Dalton grins. Dad always tells them to volunteer because they give away hundreds of dollars in travel vouchers, which is always worth the inconvenience. But not today. Today it’s all about getting out. Which is why they have trouble getting volunteers. The price of the vouchers goes from two hundred dollars to three hundred to five hundred dollars, and still no one is willing to surrender their ticket.

Finally the gate agent gives up. She gets on the loudspeaker, calling the names of the last people to buy tickets. Dalton, Sarah, and their mother. Dalton feels a twisting in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” says the gate agent, not sounding sorry at all, “but as the last to purchase, I’m obliged to reschedule you to a later flight.”

Dalton’s mom goes ballistic, and he can’t blame her. This is one time they need to fight the Powers That Be.

“No,” says their mom. “I don’t care what you say! My children and I are getting on that plane!”

“You’ll each receive a five-hundred-dollar travel voucher – that’s fifteen hundred dollars,” the agent says, trying to placate them. Their mom will not be bought.

“My children have court-ordered visitation with their father,” she yells. “If you take them off this flight, you’ll be breaking the law, and I’ll sue!” Of course, this isn’t their father’s time with them, but the agent doesn’t know that.

Even so, all the agent does is apologize, and look for later flights. “There’s a flight tonight at five-thirty… Oh wait, no, that one is full, too… Let’s see.” She continues to hack away at her computer. “Eight-twenty … no…”

Then Dalton turns to his sister and whispers, “Give her the eyes.”

Their mom had always told both Dalton and Sarah that their big blue eyes could melt anyone into a puddle. Not so much Dalton anymore. At an awkward seventeen, a bunch of facial piercings, a biohazard neck tattoo, and what his father calls “weed-whacked hair,” the general public isn’t melted anymore. Only seventeen-year-old girls. But Sarah still has the magical melting effect on hardened adults. So he lifts her up for the agent to get a good look at her.

“Aw, you’re cute as a button,” she says. Then rips three new tickets from the printer. “Here you go – tomorrow morning at six-thirty. That’s the absolute best I can do.”

So they wait. They don’t leave, because the crowd just grows, and they know they’ll never get back through security. They spend the night sleeping in uncomfortable airport chairs, getting sips of water from anyone who’ll share with them, and there aren’t many.

Then, when morning comes, even with confirmed tickets, there’s no room on the six-thirty flight for them. Or the next one. Or the next one.

And they can’t get tickets to flights to other places.

And the airport gets so crowded that extra police are brought in to keep the peace.

And with traffic jams everywhere, trucks with jet fuel can’t get to the airport.

And Dalton, his mother, and sister have to face the fact that they won’t be blasting off anywhere.

 

 

DAY TWO

SUNDAY, JUNE 5TH

2) Kelton

My dad always told me that there are three types of humans on this planet. First there’s the Sheep. The everyday types who live in denial – spoon-fed by the morning news, chewed up by another monotonous workday, and spit back out across the urban streets of the world like a mouthful of funky meatloaf that’s been rotting in the back of the fridge. Basically, the Sheep are the defenseless majority who are completely unwilling to acknowledge the inevitability of real danger, and trust the system to take care of them.

Next you’ve got your Wolves. The bad guys who abide by no societal laws whatsoever but are good at pretending when it suits them. These are the thieves, murderers, rapists, and politicians, who feed on the Sheep until they’re thrown in prison, or better yet, belly up in a landfill alongside sheaves of your grandma’s itchy hand-knit Christmas socks. The ones you ritualistically blow up every year with an M80.

And lastly, you have people like us. The McCrackens. The Herders of the world. Sure, our kind may look a lot like Wolves – large fangs, sharp claws, and the capacity for violence – but what sets us apart from the rest is that we represent the balance between the two. We can navigate the flock freely, with the ability to protect or disown as we see fit. My dad says that we’re the select few with the power of choice, and when real danger arises, we’ll be the ones who survive – and not just because we own a 357 Magnum, three glock G19’s, and a Mossberg pump-action shotgun, but because we’ve been prepping, in every possible badass way, since as long as I can remember, for the inevitable collapse of society as we know it.

It’s Sunday, noon, second day of the Tap-Out. It’s boiling hot, like a forgotten soda can left out on summer solstice. I take to my personal “bug-out.” Namely, the elevated tactical unit I built in the oak tree in our backyard. Some people might call it a tree house, but that would insult its fortified and functional nature. You don’t do infrared reconnaissance and maintain a civilian arsenal in some namby-pamby tree house. It’s nowhere near as cool as our real bug-out, though – a hidden safe house our family built deep in the woods in the event of a nuclear attack, or EMP, or any other end-of-the-world scenario. We all built it together, as a family, a few years back, before my older brother, Brady, left home. If things get bad, I’m sure we’ll go there. But in the meantime, I make do with my tree-bug-out.

I’ve got quite my own stockpile of supplies, separate and apart from the stuff Dad has in our safe room. Weapons-wise, I’ve got a paintball gun, a tactical hunting slingshot, and a Wildcat Whisper pellet rifle. As far as supplies go, I have enough Mountain Dew to keep me awake for weeks if need be, not to mention chicken-flavored Top Ramen, my favorite comfort food – because it’s comforting to know that in the event of nuclear fallout, my food has enough MSG and preservatives to out-survive all of mankind.

I look out the fort window and clock someone approaching our house, so I pull out my binoculars to get an ID. The off-brown suit and bolo tie are dead giveaways. It’s Mr. Burnside, the retired business executive who never exactly came to terms with the end of his career. With nothing better to do, he organized a silent coup and took over the Homeowners Association a couple of years back. He’s been running it with an iron fist ever since. We’re pretty sure he’s a fascist. He’s probably here to notify us that our windows are too bulletproof, or that our garage door is too titanium, or that our rooftop aerial drone helipad is too awesome. But upon closer examination I realize that he’s not carrying the usual legal binder full of petitions and cease-and-desist paperwork. Instead he holds a gift, wrapped up neatly with a bow and everything. I’m skeptical, so I climb down and move to the side of the house, crouching behind a hedge where I can see him at the front door.

Burnside mats down his gray combover and knocks four times, then a fifth, because he’s obnoxious like that.

My dad answers, but only opens the door partly. “Good afternoon, Bill. And to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit today?” my dad asks, when he really means, What the hell do YOU want?

Burnside forms a smile through a set of teeth too white to not be fake. “Just checking in on families in the neighborhood.” He looks around our property, feigning enthusiasm. “I have to say, I’m coming to understand and appreciate some of your unique modifications.”

“Such as our greenhouse, which the association is still disputing?” my dad says sharply.

“Water under the bridge,” Burnside says with a cheap wave of the hand, his retirement-earned gold watch and medical ID bracelet jingling together. Not sure what his medical condition is, but five’ll get you ten he didn’t stockpile the medication he needs.

“Haven’t you heard?” my dad says. “There isn’t any water under the bridge.”

Burnside laughs, but rather than cutting the tension it just adds to it. So he hands my dad the gift.

“From me and the wife,” he says. “Just a little something to help bygones be bygones.”

“Well, that’s awfully nice of you, Bill. I assume that means you and the board won’t mind if I upgrade the security fences. I was thinking ten-footers.”

Burnside gets a little bristly, but says, “I’ll have a talk with the board. It shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?” my dad asks, clearly enjoying the power position.

“Well, as I said, I’m out doing rounds to let everyone know that the Homeowners Association is making efforts to pool neighborhood resources. You know, to help each other out in this crisis …”

Rather than responding, my dad waits for him to continue, making him squirm.

“… I’m sure you and your family are doing just fine…” Burnside prods, showing those porcelain teeth again. “But of course there are some others that were caught off guard by this water situation.”

“Exactly what are you asking, Bill?” my dad says, a little less jovial than before.

“We’re asking everyone to make an inventory of supplies,” he says, then adds, “I’m sure there are things you need that other people might have, and vice versa.”

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Isn’t that the basic tenet of socialism, Bill?” my dad says. “Never thought I’d hear something like that coming from a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist like you!”

Boy is my dad enjoying this! Burnside’s smile is starting to resemble a snarl. “No need to be insulting, Richard – we’re all in the same boat here. We should all try to make the best of it.”

“If everyone’s making an inventory, why are we the ones getting a gift?” my dad asks.

Burnside takes a deep breath and releases it. “I know we’ve been adversaries in the past … but a little bit of goodwill on both our parts can go a long way.”

Burnside then turns to go, but before he reaches the end of our walkway, my dad unwraps the present. It’s a bottle of Scotch. The expensive kind.

“Thanks again, Bill,” my dad shouts to Burnside with a sly grin. “I bet it will make an excellent Molotov cocktail!”

“On the rocks is best,” Burnside shouts back, completely missing the joke. “We’ll talk.”

 

 

3) Alyssa

I wake up late on Sunday. I had been up most of the night texting friends, trading stories about the day. Mora, who marched on city hall with her family and a few dozen others, demanding satisfaction. Faraz, who spent the day with his dad trying to get their reverse-osmosis water purification system to turn urine into drinking water. Spoiler alert: It didn’t work. And Cassie, who spent the day at her temple filling up water bottles for the elderly. “It’s a mitzvah,” she told me. “And our rabbi’s son is hot.”

Still only half awake, I go into the bathroom and, by force of habit, turn on the shower, then realize I forgot to get a towel. I get one and come back into the bathroom, only to notice that the shower isn’t on. Oh. Right. Now I feel like an idiot. I was even thinking about the Tap-Out when I turned on the shower – but somehow in my glorified monkey brain, I didn’t make the connection that the shower head is a tap, too. It’s not that I didn’t know it wouldn’t be working – of course I did. But when you’re on morning autopilot, routine and muscle memory know no reason. I turn the knobs, not remembering which direction is on and which is off. Until the water comes back on it’s not going to matter anyway.

No showers. What fun this is going to be. I slather on more deodorant than usual and head downstairs.

“Good morning, honey,” Mom says, and tells me breakfast is a quarter of a watermelon that’s been sitting in a corner of our refrigerator for a week. Garrett’s rind is still on his plate like a wide green grin. It’s an odd choice for breakfast, but she points out it has a high liquid content, so consuming it is killing two birds with one stone. And besides, it’s almost lunchtime anyway.

Before the water turned off, my plan for Sunday was to work on my paper on Lord of the Flies. My hypothesis is that had it been a group of girls abandoned on the island instead of boys, it would have gone a lot differently. When I suggested it to the teacher, the boys in class agreed – and were convinced that everyone would have died a lot sooner. My hypothesis was, of course, the opposite. I had procrastinated for over a week in writing the paper, and it was due on Monday. Suddenly it didn’t seem to matter all that much. It was already announced that our school district would be closed tomorrow – and besides, try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to care about who held the conch shell, and who was tormenting Piggy – or Miss Piggy, in my theoretical version.

Still, I figure it’s better to keep busy than to dwell on things. I resolve to seek out normalcy, and decide to hang out with another friend, Sofía Rodriguez, who wasn’t answering texts last night. After a few more unanswered texts, I decide I’ll just go knock on her door like I used to back when we were younger.

I slip outside and head toward her house, one street down from my own. As I walk, I take stock of the current state of my neighborhood. Most every car windshield is flyspecked and covered in dust. A large majority of lawns are neglected, or replanted with succulents. Some people even had their dead lawns painted green, kind of like the way funeral homes put makeup on dead people. The Frivolous Use Initiative wasn’t just about banning water balloons. It also made it illegal to fill up private pools. The pool thing seemed like a good idea at the time – after all, in a time of drought, a pool is an extravagance. But since then, people with pools used the remaining water in them to wash their cars and water their lawns and such. Between that and evaporation, most pools are now totally empty. So what used to be mini neighborhood reservoirs are now all as dry as our sinks.

I arrive at Sofía’s house and see her father strapping suitcases to the roof of their Hyundai. At first I try to tell myself that maybe he’s taking another road trip for business, but as soon as I spot Sofía’s favorite pink weekender bag strapped to the roof, I can’t deny the truth. They’re packing up and heading out.

“Sofía’s inside the house,” her father tells me, without taking even a moment’s break from packing.

I enter their home through the garage door. On the inside everything looks normal. Same hallways. Same blue pastel walls. Same floral print couch. Yet for some reason everything feels different, as if it’s not the same house that I practically grew up playing in… And then I notice why. The TV is off, and the air lacks that sweet smell of Mrs. Rodriguez’s cooking. Family pictures have been taken down, leaving bright squares against the sun-faded walls like shadows of the memories those walls once held. It’s as if the house has been stripped of all those little things that made it a home.

And then I think about my home. About how we keep all of our goofy family photos downstairs for everyone to see – and although I either hate my hair, or my smile, or my clothes in every picture I’m in, I couldn’t imagine having to actually physically take them off the walls.

Sofía emerges from her bedroom, sees me, and gives me a hug, holding me for a second longer than normal, and then pulls back, smiling weakly. “I was going to stop by your house before we left…”

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“South,” she responds. The short response strikes me as odd, because on any other day I couldn’t pay Sofía to keep her mouth shut. I remember that she has grandparents somewhere in Baja – the western peninsula of Mexico – and it all starts to make a little more sense … though I can’t imagine Mexico being any better than Southern California right now. Most of it is a desert, too.

“Have you been watching the news?” she says. “They’re saying even the Los Angeles Aqueduct went dry. It’s been dry for weeks, and they kept it a secret. People are resigning and being fired left and right. They’re saying LA’s water commissioner could be brought up on criminal charges.”

“Why don’t they do something about it instead of spending time blaming people?”

“I know, right? Anyway, my father thinks it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.” She gives a nervous chuckle. “Of course, you know him – he’s always overreacting.”

I laugh, but it’s more of an obligatory laugh than a real one. Mrs. Rodriguez enters the room, Sophia’s five-year-old brother in one arm, a stack of Sofía’s paintings in the other. “Which of your pieces do you want to take?”

“All of them,” Sofía responds, without the slightest hesitation.

She puts the paintings down on a pile of them already resting on the dining room table. “Pick your three favorites.” She kisses her daughter on the head and then smiles warmly to the both of us. Sofía’s mother was always one of those women who was so pretty, people would mistake her and her daughter for sisters. She was youthful in every way. I always loved that about her. But today, she just looks tired.

Sofía sifts through the canvasses. “This one is yours,” she says, turning to me. “You painted it for me back in seventh grade art class. Remember?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It was a birthday present.”

“I think you should keep it,” she says.

“Well, let’s just say I’m borrowing it back. For a week or so.” I correct her.

“Yeah.” Sofía smiles genially, even though her eyes tell a different story. She was always the glass half full type, but something about the way she looks at me now tells me that her optimism is running as empty as her pool.

My dad is that guy who avoids going to doctors at all costs. It’s not that he never gets sick, or has a deathly fear of needles, but I think some part of him thinks that drawing attention to an issue makes it worse. Maybe it makes something imaginary real. And since a vast majority of illnesses eventually go away on their own, most of the time it works for him. It’s how he handles all of his problems, from fights with Mom to a bad fiscal quarter for his business. So tonight he declares a Family Dinner, which is his favorite communal Band-Aid. Sure, throwing lasagna at the issue isn’t always the answer, but I am a firm believer that when Mom and Dad cook together, it has the power to turn any day around. So I make sure to be home precisely at seven-thirty.

As soon as I walk in the door Mom puts me to work, as expected. She hands me an empty pitcher. “Get some water for the table.”

A simple request that suddenly feels like I’ve been charged with a sacred duty.

“Sure,” I respond. I go into the downstairs bathroom and dip the entire pitcher in the tub, and even after a day, there’s still some ice. As soon as I return, I pour everyone a glass.

“Not too much,” Dad says. “I’m thinking we each do six cups a day. I did the math and the amount that we have should actually be enough for about a week at that rate.”

“I thought people were supposed to drink eight cups a day,” Garrett says.

“Think of your two less cups as a long-term investment,” he tells Garrett, who at this point could probably run his own company based entirely on Dad’s cheesy business analogies.

“Plus Kingston needs water, remember? But just a cup twice a day,” Mom adds.

I totally forgot about our dog – and feel guilty about it. I couldn’t imagine rationing something as helpless as an animal. I look to his water bowl and notice that it’s empty, so when no one is looking I pour him a little bit from the pitcher.

Uncle Basil arrives at the table last, and right away chugs his entire glass of water, giving himself a killer brain-freeze.

“Serves you right, Herb,” Mom says, like he’s a little kid. “That’s all you get tonight.”

“It’s healthier to drink all your fluids ten minutes before you eat,” he counters. “It allows your body to process the water separate from your food and absorb more nutrients.” And whether that’s true or not, I decide to write it off as bro-science. I think Uncle Basil gets all of his scientific factoids from his beer buddies. That, coupled with the only A he ever got in school, in biology, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for misinformation.

Despite Basil’s words, everyone else takes their water slow. Perhaps because no one likes looking at an empty glass, which is true even when there’s not a water shortage.

The lasagna is extra tough tonight, being that Mom boiled the pasta in Dad’s red sauce in an attempt to use as little water as possible. Dad waits for our reactions before tasting it himself.

“I love it. Nice and crunchy,” Garrett tells Dad. Of course he’d love it. Garrett, for some reason, hasn’t really shed certain strange juvenile habits, like secretly eating cherry Chap Stick and raw pasta. Not necessarily together.

“It’s good,” I tell him with a smile. Unfortunately, Dad always knows when I’m lying, but I’m sure he appreciates the gesture…

After a few minutes of awkward crunching, Basil goes ahead and breaks the silence. “At least the water’s cold,” he says, which makes everyone crack up, eventually growing into uncontrollable giggles. It’s the kind of laughter that forces its way out like a bad case of hiccups. It makes me feel a little bit better, and though at first I just kind of played with my food, the more I eat, the more the meal is starting to grow on me.

That’s when the lights suddenly flicker off.

And then back on again.

It was only dark for a second. Maybe not even that, but it’s enough to make everyone stop eating. Everyone is frozen. What’s that expression? Waiting for the other shoe to drop? But it doesn’t. The lights are on, they stay on. But it doesn’t change the fact that they blinked. And now all the clocks angrily think that it’s 12:00! 12:00! 12:00!

I finally look to Dad, and I see for the first time my father truly starting to worry. It’s that maybe-I-should-see-a-doctor face – a line I’ve only heard him say once, five minutes before he was rushed to the hospital with appendicitis.

So now we all sit there, silent, forks in hand, trapped at the dinner table. And for some reason I can’t bring myself to look anyone else in the eye, so I put my head down and I eat. After a few seconds, I realize that everyone else is doing the same. Shoveling food into their mouths like scared animals. And it goes on like that until our plates are empty. Not because we’re that hungry, but because none of us wants to see that look on Dad’s face again.

I’m just getting ready for bed a few hours later when I hear movement outside. Uncle Basil. My bedroom window looks out into the street, so I have the luxury of hearing his every coming and going. I check the clock. Midnight is a strange time for Basil to go anywhere. I travel downstairs, and when I get there I find him loading up the back of his truck.

“I didn’t want to wake you,” he says, already seeming guilty about something.

“You’re leaving?” I ask.

He looks to me warmly. “It’ll just be for a few nights,” he says, though the giant suitcase full of clothes tells me otherwise. Just like with Sofía. “Besides,” he continues, “I’ve already eaten you out of house and home. I don’t want to use up all of your guys’ water, too.”

Uncle Basil has always been a little sensitive about having to stay with us this past year. And this whole Tap-Out thing is another added dimension to his dependence on us. But I think the power threatening to go out was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Daphne’s place. She’s still in that big house over in Dove Canyon. Says they still have water there. Not sure how long that’ll last, though, but at least it’s something,” he says, looking down.

I smirk. “Are you talking about the water, or you and Daphne?”

He chuckles. “Either/or,” he says.

Daphne is his on-again–off-again girlfriend. They’d been together since before his farm failed. They moved down here right at the beginning of the “Big Bail,” which is what they called the mass exodus from the Central Valley’s farming communities. Daphne always refused to allow us to call him “Uncle Basil” in her presence. It was all Herb, all the time – which makes me think that deep down, she really does love him, even though they keep breaking up.

“Well,” I say, “I hope the Tap-Out helps bring you two back together.”

“She’s not doing it for me,” he admits. “She’s doing it for you.”

“Me?”

“All of you. To keep me from being a burden on your mom and dad.”

“You’re not a burden…”

He smiles. “Thanks for saying so, Alyssa.”

I give him a tight hug goodbye, and watch him drive off. Then I go back inside, sad to see him leave like this, but at the same time, a little less worried than before. The fact that there’s running water anywhere gives me hope that things might not be so bad after all.