CHAPTER NINETEEN
I am completely and utterly screwed. I keep repeating the sentence over and over again in my head. When I was younger, I begged Dad to let me get a tree house. This isn’t what I had in mind.
Maeve keeps looking back at me, double- and triple-checking to make sure that I don’t turn to dust in front of her eyes. I’m not 100 percent sure that I won’t. A part of me, possibly the worst part of me, wants to laugh right now. Wants to laugh at the utter absurdity of the past couple of days because shit keeps piling up on top of me like the universe thinks it’s funny. It’s the part of me that occasionally lets out a chuckle when I see someone wipe out on the sidewalk. I know it’s a horrible impulse, and maybe that makes me a horrible person, but it sometimes makes things a little bit better.
I slowly sit down on the trunk of the tree.
“We’re royally screwed,” I manage. Maeve stares at me from her place at the corner of the sidewalk.
“I think royally might be a bit of an exaggeration.” She’s not being honest; I can tell by the way she stares at the tree trunk, the grass, anywhere but me.
“Maeve, there’s a hole the size of a Mini Cooper in the side of the building. What do you want me to do? Pretend that I always wanted a second entrance?”
I wait for her to respond, but instead she walks straight up to me and, before I can react, wraps me in a hug. And I let her. I let her hand gingerly glide under my right arm and around my torso. I let her fingers press into my back with a firmness I haven’t felt in a long time. Three hugs in one day—scratch that, a couple of hours—when I haven’t had one in years. And sure, when I hugged Maeve it felt nice, but being held is something entirely different. Her grip around my waist is strong and sure.
But still, I feel the tension swimming in my stomach, tears moments from tumbling down my cheeks. I let my lip tremble as I bury my face in Maeve’s shoulder, taking heaving breath after heaving breath. This was the place that was supposed to be safe when everything else wasn’t. This place is supposed to stay solid for me, because it was here when my home was gone. Now, with another Storm approaching, it matters more than ever.
A tear comes, just one. Hot and salty, slowly inching down my face, dripping onto Maeve’s shoulder. She senses it.
When she pulls away, she doesn’t let go completely. She keeps her arms wrapped around me and loosens up just enough so that she can see my eyes and look at my face.
“Liz,” she says, her voice heavy with sincerity, “let’s go inside. Assess the damage and make a game plan.”
She leads the way toward the front door, not the hole-in-the-wall door, pulling her cart behind her. She hesitates before entering, moving to grab the blue jug and bring it inside with her.
“We don’t have to bring that stuff in now, do we?” I ask, and Maeve crosses her arms.
“Our future selves will thank us if we do.” She stands by the front door and picks off my piece of Nancy Drew tape, which thankfully hasn’t been broken.
From inside, the damage looks worse. The tree branches stretch from the wall to the edge of the front counter, knocking over every shelf and rack of birthday cards in its path. I’m thankful that the tree wasn’t tall enough or close enough to the bookstore to do more damage. Still, the gaping hole is much more than I can handle. Maybe four feet across. Five, if I’m being generous. It’s a middle schooler–sized hole, trapped somewhere between elementary school and puberty.
Maeve vaults over the curved front counter, making her way to the other side of the trunk and inspecting it carefully.
“Expert diagnosis?” I ask, afraid of the answer.
“For once, I’m no expert,” she admits. That’s a first. “But we have two options.”
“And they are?”
“One: We get to work. We remove the tree. We patch the hole. Two: we remove the tree and then head somewhere else to wait out The Storm, just in case.”
“What?” I scoff. “I’m not leaving, Maeve.”
She turns to look at me. “But maybe that’s the safest option. We’ll come back later when there’s no looming threat.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
I shake my head. “That’s not an option. That’s not even on the table in the slightest.”
“But could it be?”
I pause. Leaving this all behind? Opening this place up to the threat of looters? It was hard enough for me to go on our recent expedition. The idea of abandoning the bookstore to the elements is a bit too much. I could lose the one place I have left to call a home, just for a marginally better shot at survival. And who knows? The next place we go to could have an even bigger hole in the wall.
“Not a chance.”
Maeve hesitates as if she wants to argue, but she stops herself. “Fine. We can talk about this later.”
Maeve begins to rip branches off the trunk, sending them flying back out toward the street. The snap of each branch is deafening, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She works furiously, using her whole body weight, every muscle tense and in motion. I feel useless as I pick off the smaller pieces with my good arm. The tiny branches that never quite made it. My arm is healing, I can feel it, but it’ll be a bit longer before it’s fully operational. I stare out the front window as I work, allowing myself to be distracted by the nothing that sits outside the door. If this were a spaghetti western, I’d expect a tumbleweed to come flying through right about now.
I stare at the railroad bridge that hovers at the side of the square. It’s rusted and unsightly, and when you walk under it, mysterious liquids tend to drip from overhead. I remember running to the train station on hot summer Friday nights with Thea to meet my dad coming home from work. Everyone would wait on the other side of the bridge until the train disappeared down the track to avoid the strange substances that would drip from the train’s undercarriage. Then, once the train was gone and the passengers began to approach, it immediately turned into a competition to see who could spot Dad and his well-tailored suit first. We’d stand there, sweating slightly in the sweet summer air until he smiled at us, giving us permission to race into his arms.
As I stare at the bridge a figure appears, hesitating in the shadows. It’s too far away for me to make out any specifics, but from where I’m standing I think it’s a man. Possibly someone headed to the bookstore for a trade or to deliver a letter. I’m not really in the right headspace for human interaction right now, but I figure a conversation with a random person has to be more exciting than picking twigs off a tree. So I fix my posture and walk toward the door, ready to greet the new arrival.
But the figure doesn’t move. They just watch, any discernible features concealed by shadow. I stand there, waiting for this person to do something, anything. But they remain, as motionless as a statue.
“Are you seeing that?” I ask, turning to Maeve.
She’ll confirm my suspicions. She’ll laugh about how odd it is and tell me that there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just some stranger, nothing less, nothing more.
“What?” Maeve walks toward me, the floorboards creaking. She wipes her hands on the fabric of her pants.
I turn back to the window, ready to point out the figure underneath the bridge, but when I do, they’re gone.
Maybe I am going insane.
• • •
I don’t sleep well, and not because of the heat this time. An unseasonably cool breeze wafts in through the open window, and I clutch my quilt in my hands, pulling it close to my chin.
I wanted to tell Maeve about the person under the bridge. I wanted to prove to her that they were real, but she has deep circles under her eyes and calluses on her hands. Every breath seems to take its toll. She doesn’t need my inane ideas making things worse.
I continue staring at the ceiling, even though I can hear something rustling behind me. I only sit up in bed when I hear the front door creak shut, my quilt bunching up around my waist. My eyes glance around the room, bouncing over various objects before I realize that Maeve’s spot on the floor is empty. I wait, wondering whether to follow her. Maybe she wants to be alone. Maybe she forgot something in the cart and just remembered it right now, in the middle of the night. I always remember the most ridiculous things at the most ungodly hours. But then I hear the front door slam shut and the faint sound of gravel crunching under feet.
I don’t want to be alone right now. Not in this darkness.
• • •
Maeve sits on the front step, her feet extended out in front of her. She doesn’t look back at me as I carefully make my way through the door, my leg brushing against her back.
“Hey,” I whisper, attempting to preserve the peace that hangs in the air. I sit down beside her and tuck my legs underneath me, the tips of my Converse drawing lines in the dirt. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Not a wink,” she replies, smiling weakly.
“When was the last time you slept?” I ask. “Like, actually slept peacefully. No crazy dreams or anything like that.”
A sharp laugh bursts from her lungs, echoing through the emptiness. “Would it be horrible if I told you I couldn’t remember?” A pause. “Jesus Christ, I feel like I’ve turned into a zombie.”
“Generally, zombies do come with the end of the world.”
“I always thought I’d do well in a zombie apocalypse,” Maeve says. “You, on the other hand, would be the first one dead.”
I feign an arrow shot through my heart. “What are you talking about? I’m essentially a teenage John Wick. I’d be a zombie serial killer. Zombies would teach their zombie children to fear me!”
Maeve laughs. “Okay, Elizabeth Swann.”
We sit in silence for a while, and though I don’t want to ruin the pleasant air between us, I know I’ll burst if I don’t ask the question that’s been festering in my mind for hours.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“What happened before?” My cheeks are turning bright red, but I continue. “What happened to you before you came here?”
Maeve shakes her head. “I’m not sure that I want to talk about it.” I nod, expecting that to be the end of it, but then she clears her throat. She looks out, straight ahead, and takes a deep breath, as if preparing herself to give an impassioned speech. “I used to live with a group that I found about ten miles north of here for seven or eight months. It seemed almost too good to be true, you know?”
And I do know. I know how it feels to be so certain that nothing good will ever happen to you again. I understand what it’s like to believe that the only thing that’s waiting for you in the future is pain.
“I was the youngest in the group by a few years,” she continues, staring at something hiding in the darkness. “That boy that they were with yesterday hadn’t arrived yet, and it became clear very quickly that they judged me for my age. Everyone except one of them, who’d stand up for me when things got too tense. Who’d check in on me whenever I hid out on my own for too long. She was a friend, a good friend, but everyone else? They judged me. Everything I could do, someone older could obviously do better. They never gave me the chance to prove I was more capable than all of them combined.” I watch as she bites her lip, threatening to break through the skin. “Obviously, I didn’t take that well. I wasn’t the most gracious guest, and I didn’t take kindly to being ordered around. And one day I decided to prove my worth. I set out to go hunting on my own, took Becca’s knife with me. Didn’t tell anyone. I left early in the morning, so that no one would be able to stop me, so that no one would be able to tell me that I shouldn’t go.
“I found a man in the woods, all bloody and bruised. He said that he had been attacked and needed help. He said that his daughter had been taken by his attackers and he didn’t know where she had gone. And so, I abandoned my hunting trip to save the man. I guess I figured that by helping him, the others would see that I was better than they were. Stronger than they were. To take a life is one thing, but to save a life is worth so much more.” Maeve pauses. “I should have known that he was lying. I should have known as soon as he hesitated when I asked him his daughter’s name. Or when he said no when I asked him if he needed bandages. I should have realized, but I didn’t. Instead, I brought him back to camp with me, just like he wanted me to, and let him walk right through our walls. He was gone again in less than two hours, taking most of our weapons and food with him. Anything he could use to survive. And I was left with the blame.
“They said that it was the last straw. A last strike. They set it to a vote, and my friend? The one person I thought would stick up for me and understand why I did what I did? She was the deciding vote. And so they banished me. From their woods too. It didn’t matter to them that those woods are the only place nearby with clean drinking water, or any real wildlife.”
I know I shouldn’t be asking questions right now, but I do anyway. “Then why did you stay in the area? Why not move on to another town?”
Maeve laughs a small laugh. A desperate laugh. “I would have gone far away from here. I would have stayed on my own, would have kept moving, but when the opportunity presented itself, I figured it was safer to have shelter now. Nature doesn’t always adhere to a strict schedule.” She pauses, her brow furrowed. “I was going to loot the bookstore and get back on my feet, but obviously that’s not how it worked out. At the end of the day, I thought the store was far enough away from the woods that it wouldn’t be a problem. I’d worry about defining home later.” She pauses.
“This place became home for me,” I say, my chest suddenly tight. “After The Storm, this became home. I had this coworker with me—a friend—and that was nice too.”
Maeve pauses. “Really?” I realize I’ve never mentioned Eva to Maeve before.
“She was here with me for a while, but then she left.”
“And you cared about her?” Maeve asks, even though she doesn’t look like she wants to know the answer.
“More than she cared for me, I think.”
A few seconds tick by before Maeve finally says, “Oh.” She purses her lips. “Why stay if you have bad memories here? In this town?”
“I’d like to think that the good outweighs the bad. At least by a little bit.”
“But after all of this don’t you…” Maeve’s voice trails off before she finishes, saying, “Maybe we should leave.”
The sudden shift in her tone hits me hard, and it takes a couple of seconds to realize what she’s saying. “What?”
“There’s a Storm coming, and we both have too much history here.”
“We’ve both made it through a Storm before too.”
“But not like this,” she argues. “Not with a hole in the wall and a missing roof.”
“Then we fix it. Like you said.”
“I know. But we don’t have any way of getting more water. I don’t think it’s safe anymore.”
I laugh slightly, like she’s joking. I know she isn’t. “You’ve been hunting in the woods before, right? Even after the banishment?”
But Maeve shakes her head. “We can’t risk it again. I won’t risk your life again.”
I reach out and grab her hand, surprised by my own actions. I lace my fingers around hers and look into her eyes, my insides fluttering as I do.
“Leaving isn’t an option. I’m sorry about everything that happened to you, but now isn’t the time to run. I can’t run again.” A pause. “People like that are the reason we can’t leave. It’s safe here.” Because here, people come and go, but at least they’re alive. Here, it might get lonely sometimes, but now there’s Maeve. And there’s food, and some water. There’s part of a roof over our heads. Away from here, who knows?
I’m not sure if she believes me, but I hope she does. I hope she realizes that she isn’t alone.
But she doesn’t say anything in response.