CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JUNE 21: BEFORE THE FIRST STORM
We’ve never had a storm drill before. At least, I don’t think we have. Sure, we’ve had fire drills, and lockdown drills, and shelter-in-place drills, and evacuation drills, but never a storm drill. There was never any need for it. Maybe in Florida there could be hurricane drills, but in New Jersey we never really get weather horrible enough to require a drill, and if we ever do, it normally travels up the entire East Coast before making its way to us.
But I suppose this is always how it happens. You don’t need a drill until you do.
We didn’t need lockdown drills until we did, and now they’re mandated. At least twice a month. We crouch in the corner, back against the wall, and wait. We wait as the school security guard makes his way down the hallway and jiggles the doorknob. We sit in the dark and wait for the loudspeaker to come on and let us know that we can go back to whatever it is we are learning in calculus.
Ms. Carey is standing at the front of the room, flicking through a PowerPoint presentation half-heartedly. It’s filled with stock photos of menacing clouds and fallen trees and big yellow Caution signs. It’s all going in one ear and out the other.
The shooter drills started in third grade. Either that, or third grade was the year that I was finally able to understand what it all meant.
I remember my teacher sat us down on the rug and told us that we’d have to hide in the corner of the room, between the dots that she had stuck to the classroom’s cabinets. That way we wouldn’t be seen from the hall.
I remember she let us ask her questions afterward, but I’m sure she regretted that decision almost immediately. I raised my hand and asked her what would happen if a shooter broke the glass on the window. She said that the glass was reinforced with wire. Another kid asked her what would happen if a shooter made it through the classroom door. That was when my teacher decided to send us out for recess.
Ms. Carey looks stressed, her cheeks flushed as she gestures wildly toward her presentation. Any change is scary, but this sort of change is terrifying. Knowing that this is just how life is now is terrifying.
When I was in third grade, I didn’t think about what implications a lockdown drill would have on my life. On society. But now, I understand this means that things have gotten bad enough for this to be necessary. And, judging from the papers my dad leaves scattered on the kitchen counter, it only continues to get worse. There’s a storm coming; the papers seem sure of it. And it’ll be bad. They keep testing emergency-alert systems on our phones and running simulations on TV, but the truth is, no one knows what it’ll look like when it comes.
“Sometime during this class period they’re going to announce a weather-related emergency on the loudspeaker,” Ms. Carey says as she pauses on the last slide of her presentation. There’s a picture of smiling stick-figure students on the screen. I fiddle with the eraser of my mechanical pencil. “I’m letting you know now that this is a drill. There’s no need to be alarmed.” My history teacher looks very alarmed. “You are going to line up in single file and make your way into the hall—”
“And I thought that our days of single file were over once we made it to high school.”
I turn around and see the boy in the seat behind me beaming, pleased with himself. The girl beside him leans closer.
“C’mon, Dawson,” she whispers. “I would’ve thought that you enjoyed being bossed around by powerful women.”
I roll my eyes and turn back to the whiteboard at the front of the room.
“Now, it’ll be crowded in the hallway,” my teacher continues as she closes her laptop. “I know that the presentation provided by the school said to sit with your backs against the lockers. Unfortunately, there isn’t quite enough room for that.”
There’s only one high school in town, and it doesn’t take a genius to realize how overcrowded it is. Kids are packed in like sardines, even though the school board claims that there aren’t more than twenty-five students in each class. I count thirty-seven.
“Just try to find a place on the floor, and if you can’t, then stand in an open doorway.”
A hand shoots up in the front of the room. “Should we go inside the lockers if there isn’t enough space? It might be safer.”
Ms. Carey lets out an exasperated sigh. I can’t say that I blame her. “I’m just going off what it says in the memo I got from administration, okay? And in there, it doesn’t say anything about lockers, so please stay out of them.”
The loudspeaker crackles to life above us, right on cue. “Attention, faculty and staff. Attention, faculty and staff, this is a weather-related emergency. A weather-related emergency.” And then, the voice disappears.
It takes a moment before any of us move. It takes us a moment to remember what our teacher told us to do literally ten seconds ago. But then we stand and shuffle across the linoleum floor toward the hallway like a herd of lemmings.
I grab my phone from my desk and slide it into my pocket. I learned the hard way to never leave anything important in the classroom during any type of drill. Once, I left my laptop inside during a fire drill only to discover that it wasn’t actually a drill. Someone had lit a bottle of hand sanitizer on fire in one of the bathrooms. It wasn’t until the fire trucks pulled up that I discovered my error. I had to wait two hours to rescue my computer.
Once we make it into the hallway, I realize that my teacher wasn’t exaggerating. It’s a zoo out here, with too many students pushing and shoving against each other, trying to find room to sit. I can barely see Thea at the other end of the hall, chatting with her friend on the floor as she avoids getting trampled by three members of the football team. It’s not like I see her very often at home either. With Mom and Dad spending more and more time away from each other, working late or seeing friends, she’s taken the opportunity to spend her afternoons and evenings at her boyfriend’s house.
I find a spot by the boys’ bathroom and slowly lower myself into a squat, trying to distance myself from my neighbors. My teacher stands by her classroom door, struggling to get a head count as if she could have somehow lost a student in the three feet we walked from the classroom to the hallway.
A Spanish teacher cups his hands around his mouth. “Remember what we said in the presentation,” he bellows. “Hands over your head!”
We all pause, whispers rippling through the crowd. A few kids look around, waiting to see if their friends will obey the instruction, not wanting to be the only one who looks stupid. Eventually, everyone falls into line, and we follow his directions.
I clasp my hands around my head and brace for nonexistent impact.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I stare at Maeve as she hands me a sawed-off piece of wood. We’ve got a system going: she cuts and I throw, sending each part of the tree through the hole in the wall. Teamwork makes the dream work, or whatever.
She pauses to wipe a drop of sweat from her brow, the slight breeze coming through the hole doing nothing to stop the might of the summer sun. I can feel the heat, too, making my arm itch underneath its slightly dirty bandages. I’ll have to change it out later, and I’m sure Maeve will insist on helping.
Part of me squirms inside from the floating feeling she gives me. A smaller part of me wishes I’d never let myself need her. Because I do. That’s the truth and it washes over me, like it will drown me and leave me for dead. I need Maeve, even though I swore I would never need anyone ever again.
I’ve been down this road before. Waking up every morning and knowing someone will be there, until they aren’t, and they leave like everyone else does, and you’re alone. Eva left because I couldn’t get her to stay, and now I’ve gone and let Maeve in. I can only hope that she needs me too.
In a sudden moment of weakness, I move toward her and give her a peck on the cheek.
Maeve turns to me, a small smile on her lips. “What was that for?”
I don’t know what that was for. It just felt necessary. So I tell her the truth. “I don’t know. It sorta felt right.”
“Sorta felt right.” Maeve laughs. “Is it possible that I’ve made the unflappable Liz Flannery tongue-tied?”
“I’m hardly unflappable.”
Maeve blushes before turning back to the remnants of the tree and the hole in the wall. I want to say something else, do something else, to make this last longer, but I don’t know what.
She pauses as she reaches down toward another log, ready to pass it over. Then she straightens her spine and turns back toward me.
“I liked it, you know,” she says.
With that, she’s back to work, as if she hasn’t just dropped a major revelation on me. I lean against the counter so that my legs don’t turn to jelly beneath me.
“We’re practically domestic,” Maeve says as she hands me another piece of wood.
“Domestic?”
“Yeah,” she confirms, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “I bring home the bacon, and you wait on me hand and foot like a good wife.”
“Wife?” I say, my voice slightly strangled. “I think that mentality is slightly toxic. I’d like to believe we’ve moved past the 1960s as a society.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“I am trying it,” I retort.
Maeve finally turns toward me, her eyebrows raised.
“You’re telling me that you don’t enjoy this?”
“What, being your dutiful assistant?”
“You’re doing more than assisting,” Maeve corrects. “You’re boosting morale. That’s equally important.”
“It’s not the same.”
A grin appears on her face as she takes a step toward me, hopping onto the counter beside me. She rests her head on my shoulder. I’m the perfect height for that sort of thing.
“Fine. If you want to be in charge, then you should teach me something.”
“Like what?” I ask, wondering what I could possibly teach Maeve.
“Teach me to shelve books,” she responds, gesturing at a pile of books at the end of the counter. “I’m sure you have an incredibly complex system.”
Maeve wiggles off the counter, landing on her feet and striding over to the pile to give it an inspection.
“It’s all alphabetical,” I mutter. “It’s nothing groundbreaking.”
“Hey! For our ancestors, the alphabet was pretty darn groundbreaking.”
The way the sun filters in through the front window makes the room glow with golden light. And it also makes Maeve look even prettier, even though she’s sort of sweaty and her hands are covered with sawdust.
I’m the type of person who avoids going near water at the beach because I hate it when sand sticks to my feet. I’m the type of person who avoids getting into a pool because I don’t want to be wet later in the day. But with Maeve, I’m okay with the sweat and the sawdust, especially because I also probably don’t smell the best. How good can either of us smell if we’ve gone days without a proper bath?
So I lean in just a little bit as Maeve continues monologuing about the alphabet and carpentry. She sounds like me, ranting about minuscule facts from the books on the shelves.
She pauses, eyebrows raised, but doesn’t ask a question. I don’t give her an opportunity, kissing her once again before she has a chance. She doesn’t pull away, wrapping her sawdusty hand around my waist and pulling me close until I have to break away to take a breath.
“You know, the word alphabet comes from the first two letters of the Latin alphabet,” I offer.
“Is that your version of a romantic comment?”
I smile. “Alpha and beta.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Maeve replies. “Where did you find that nugget of wisdom? 100 Ways to Romance Women?”
“Nah. The eleventh volume of Fun Facts for Kids! Naturally. You should read it sometime.”
“You know I don’t do that sort of thing.”
I grin. “One day I’ll find something on these shelves that’ll float your boat. I swear.”
“Sure you will.”
Now it’s Maeve’s turn to lean toward me, cradling the back of my head as our lips touch. I wrap my good arm around her torso and return the favor.
The front door slams open with a gust of wind, no doubt the fault of the busted lock, but I ignore it, pulling Maeve even closer to me.
Eventually, we break apart, Maeve giggling at some nonexistent joke. I’m just about to make some witty comment when I hear a voice.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Maeve’s cheeks turn bright red as we both turn to face our unexpected visitor. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust to the bright light streaming in through the front windows, but then, I realize who I’m staring at.
Her blond hair in a braid down her back. The tattoo next to her ear of ivy, just barely visible. As I take in each detail, my heart twinges.
She breaks the silence for me.
“Hi, Liz.” There’s that voice. That all-too-familiar voice.
“Hi, Eva,” I manage. “Long time no see.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Eva is here. Eva is here. The thought races through my mind on a loop, along with about a million other thoughts all colliding and falling over each other in my messed-up brain.
Maeve is just confused. And shocked. She raises an eyebrow and leans in closer to me. “Eva?”
I don’t respond. I can’t respond. I’ve forgotten how to speak.
She came back, just like she said she would. Sure, it took a little bit longer than I might have wanted it to, but she came. And she’s here. I want to run toward her. To hug her and tell her how much I’ve missed her. To tell her everything that’s happened to me since she left. A part of me wants to stare and get used to the feeling of seeing her again. The sound of her voice. The color of her hair. The gleam in her eyes. But I also know how things ended, and I know that things are different now. I decide to let her make the first move.
But Maeve moves first, reaching out with her left hand. “Maeve,” she offers.
Eva takes her hand.
“Eva.” Her voice is hoarse. Hoarser than I remember.
“I know.”
Eva looks toward me, as if for approval, before turning back to Maeve. “I used to work here, before I—”
“Before she left,” I finish.
“Were you fired?” Maeve quips. But Maeve knows the truth. I’ve told her the truth. And Eva does too.
Eva grimaces before responding. “Something like that.”
I want to interject. Say something smart and witty that’ll ease the tension and make this feel familiar. But I can’t think of anything, so Maeve just keeps talking.
“So why are you back?” she asks. At first, it seems like an innocent-enough question, but then she adds, “She doesn’t need you anymore, you know that?”
My mouth drops open as I look at Maeve, shocked by her audacity. She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t even look remotely sorry for what she’s said. Instead, she cocks an eyebrow, challenging Eva to disagree. But Eva says nothing.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, right, Eva?” I offer her a smile. An olive branch.
Eva takes it gladly. “If you say so.”
• • •
Maeve is taking a nap in the bedroom upstairs as Eva and I talk. Alone.
I can’t help but inspect her face. She seems different. She has smile lines now. They were never there before. Has she been smiling more than she used to? Or has she just gotten older? Stray wisps of hair frame her face, doing little to hide her icy blue eyes. She seems older. Different. I’m not sure how I should feel about it.
“So…. Maeve?” she says, attempting to gently slide into conversation.
“She’s a friend. Her tent broke, and she needed a place to stay, so she’s here for the time being.” Eva doesn’t need to know everything. Not yet.
Eva nods. I can tell by her expression that she doesn’t believe me, but she doesn’t question me.
Instead, she says, “You seem happy.”
“I am.” And sure, that’s not the whole story, but it’s a general summary. I’m happy right now, or at least happier than I’ve been recently, and that’s all that matters.
“How’s the old bookstore holding up?” Eva asks, mockingly rapping the counter with her knuckles.
I laugh, trying to signal to her that it’s all right that she’s here, and that we can leave the past behind us for one conversation. She lets out a half-hearted chuckle as well, absentmindedly running her fingers through her hair.
“What, besides the hole in the wall? Pretty good. I mean, Maeve’s been helping. For a second there, I thought that I’d lost my running water, but she got that squared away.”
“And your arm?”
I look down at it, disdainfully. “You should have seen the other guy,” I quip.
Eva’s eyes widen. “Did you get into a fight?”
“No, nothing like that. It was a generator. I may have done something stupid.”
“Somehow I don’t doubt that,” Eva murmurs. “Does the generator work?”
Of course she still cares about me, and this building. “I’m sure that it does. Although I kind of busted it up with my hand, so it’ll take some supplies to get it humming again. Maeve will fix it once we have what she needs.”
Eva just nods before asking, “How do you know her?”
And for a moment, it’s just like old times, the pair of us chatting about mundane things like girls. It feels nice. It feels right.
“It’s actually a funny story,” I start before realizing that Eva might not find it funny at all. I don’t think break-ins really count as funny for most members of polite society. But it’s funny to me, so I continue. “She actually sort of broke in while I was—”
“Broke in?”
“Yeah.” The worried look on her face means that she does not, in fact, find it funny.
“You have to be more careful than that, Liz. You can’t just trust anyone who walks in through your front door.”
Something tightens inside me. I’m glad to see Eva, of course, but it feels strange for her to be telling me off for letting people in when she left me in the first place.
“I trust her.”
“I doubt you know very much about her,” Eva grumbles.
“She saved my life.”
Eva looks like she’s ready to make another comment, but she bites her tongue, her chest heaving. A few seconds pass. “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I reply. “It’s okay. I forgive you.” And I do mean it. I think. What matters now is that Eva is here. She’s back. And I’d rather focus on the present than rehash the past.
“But you shouldn’t. I should have talked to you before I left.”
“You didn’t. And that’s okay. You’re back now, and that’s all that matters.”
Eva doesn’t try to argue. Instead, she places her hand on my arm. It’s an awkward maneuver, her fingers shaking slightly as they make contact. I don’t brush it away. And even though it’s not a hug, not like the one she gave me when she thought I was leaving for college and would never return to New Jersey, it has to count for something.
“I have to tell you something too,” Eva murmurs.
“So you didn’t come here just to ask for my forgiveness?”
She looks offended, like she’s about to defend herself, but she doesn’t. She chews her bottom lip.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” she mutters, so softly that I almost can’t hear her.
I steady myself preemptively. Bad news has a new meaning nowadays. Bad news used to mean I lost my wallet or I got a parking ticket on Sunday; isn’t that crazy? Now bad news could be I got my arm eaten by a generator or I’ve run out of food and water. Still, I don’t know what she’s going to say. It might not be that bad. Whatever she has to tell me could be the new equivalent of not-so-bad news, as in, I haven’t run out of food and water, but all I have to eat is creamed corn; doesn’t that suck? But the look on Eva’s face tells me that it isn’t.
“Another Storm is coming,” she says, her voice hoarse.
I roll my eyes, releasing a shuddering breath. “I know that already.” That’s not bad at all. Nothing that I wasn’t already dealing with.
But Eva’s not finished. “It will be here in a week. Maybe less, maybe more, but it’s coming.”
That can’t be true. Fear wraps around my brain as I glance around the room, from the hole in the wall to the broken door to the missing windowpanes. “No, it’s not. We still have a month.” Peacoat Man didn’t say anything about it coming a week and a half from now. He said we had a month. Maeve said the same thing. I was planning on us having a month. Maybe more if we were lucky. So who’s right? Eva or Maeve?
Eva’s face is solemn as she looks at me, her skin almost gray. “We had until the end of August last year, sure, but that’s not reliable data, right? I mean, you should know that.”
And I do know that, no matter how much my heart might try to contest it. I can’t rely on last year to determine this year. That’s just not statistically sound. As my AP Stats teacher would say, it’s not a large enough sample. As our alien overlords would say,
,
which roughly translates to You’re royally screwed. But I’m not quite ready to give up just yet.
“How do you know?”
“A friend of mine,” she says, and the words sting a little, the feeling only made worse by the fact that she paused before saying friend. Maybe I forgot that she could have friends outside of here. That life went on for her after she left, and that I could be replaced. “He’s an amateur storm chaser—or used to be. Meteorologist adjacent. He eats this stuff up. He’s right about these sorts of things ninety-five percent of the time, from drizzles to thunderstorms. If he says it’s coming, then it is.”
“Are you sure?” I ask, my voice quivering just slightly. There’s still a chance she’s wrong, but as I start playing the facts over, I start to realize we might have less time than we thought. I think about the birds, and the deer, and the rabbits. They weren’t gone until mid-August last year. And the wind has been picking up, the temperature getting cooler than it should be at this time of year.
“Would I have come all this way if I wasn’t?” Eva replies.
The question stings at first. How could I be so thoughtless? Of course, she wouldn’t just come here unless she had some important reason. She wouldn’t come back here if she didn’t have to. She made it very clear that she left for a reason. But then, realization sets in, and it’s like a stone has been dropped on top of my head. The Storm might be coming in less than a week, and I’m not prepared. I look down at my useless hand. I have so much work to do.
“I had to tell you,” Eva says solemnly. “I wasn’t just going to leave you to die like that. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
The thought of that makes my heart skip a beat. She still cares. I knew she still cared.
“I’ve made it this long. This Storm won’t take me out,” I reply. “I can promise you that much.”