CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Becca stops moving entirely, staring at the weather outside like she’s never seen rain before, lips slightly parted as a breath escapes her lungs.
“Shit,” she whispers. It’s a few days earlier than expected, something that Eva and her crew hadn’t bargained for by the looks on their faces. At the sound of Becca’s voice, the rest of them turn, Maeve included. They all stare out the window, watching the droplets fall as if they’ve been hypnotized. But I haven’t been.
I take advantage of the seconds that I have and move forward, quickly enough that Benji doesn’t have the time to react. I decide to employ a move that I learned from a slightly bratty cousin at Thanksgiving dinner, hooking my right leg around Becca’s and sweeping her feet out from under her. Her tailbone collides with the floor before she can even realize what I’ve done. Before Benji can either.
And then I run, wrapping my bad arm around one of Maeve’s and dragging her with me while the woods people are still distracted. I can hear Maeve say something, probably questioning what the hell has gotten into me, but I don’t stop. I don’t stop as Tristan exclaims and lunges, his grip mere inches away from snagging Maeve’s T-shirt as we disappear through the back door. I shove it shut and lock it, listening to the cacophony that erupts as Tristan and god knows who else pounds on the wood.
“What the hell are you doing?” Maeve whispers as I pull her up the stairs behind me. “I almost had him!”
“I didn’t,” I mutter in response. “Either I took the opportunity and ran, or I was dead, so I ran.”
“And what’s your genius plan now? Now that you’ve run away? Because last time I checked there’s no other exit from this, unless you plan on jumping out the window. We’re screwed.”
“There are four of them and two of us. We were always screwed.”
“So you don’t have any idea what we should do next?” Maeve confirms. I say nothing in response because I have absolutely no idea what we should do next, but I’m not going to give her the satisfaction of being right. So she shrugs and picks up the armchair, sending it tumbling down the back stairs. Sure, it seems like an overreaction to my sudden silence, but I decide not to question it. We all have our vices; who am I to judge Maeve if hers is throwing furniture?
Maeve notices the look I give her and rolls her eyes. “When they inevitably make it through the door, it’s probably better that they don’t have a straight shot up the stairs, right?”
“Right.” And just like that, the barricade is reborn. I can’t say that I missed it.
The rain pours harder outside as Tristan and co. break down the back door, the axe cutting The Shining–style holes through the wood. Maeve ignores the sound, picking up the microwave and unplugging it before sending it tumbling down the stairs. It collides with the armchair with a sad thud.
“Could you stop destroying the furniture?” I ask. “How would you feel if I threw you down the stairs?”
Maeve scowls as she reaches for the coffee table. “Do you have a better idea?”
I begin to scan the room looking for a “better idea.” Worst-case scenario, we make our final stand up here and take the minutes we’ve earned to lower our dangerously high heart rates. Or we could try to talk them out of it with the door between us. Maybe, if they physically can’t try to kill us, they’ll listen to reason. But I know that I’m being ridiculous. This has gone too far for them to call a truce, especially when they have the upper hand.
The bedroom door is ajar, blown open by The Storm, and I peer through as a cutting board goes flying past my face, the blue tarp slowly disintegrating as the rain grows heavier, turning from drizzle to downpour. The whole place is bathed in blue light, like the inside of some alien spaceship in a cheesy sci-fi flick with badly CGI-ed aliens. As I stare, something clicks in my brain, and I turn to Maeve, who’s still struggling with the coffee table.
“Maeve, stop. I have a better idea.”
She cocks an eyebrow, finally surrendering to the power of the coffee table. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” I reply, before adding: “We’re going to Home Alone this shit.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
OCTOBER 6: AFTER THE FIRST STORM
I watch from the counter as Eva pores over travel guides, flipping past pictures of the Sagrada Familia and Park Güell. On the floor next to her is a pile of Spanish-English dictionaries and “100 first words!” books from the Children’s section. It’s pouring rain outside, something that still sends shock waves through my body. Neither of us is brave enough to go out in it, even though it seems perfectly harmless from inside. So we’ve both got cabin fever; that much is clear as I thumb through a copy of Republic. Some of us, however, have it worse than others.
I clear my throat, struggling to recall my high school Spanish skills. “¿Has estado en Barcelona antes? Es mucho más bonito de lo que parece en esas fotos.” Have you been to Barcelona before? It’s much prettier than it looks in those pictures.
Eva looks up at me from the stool she’s sitting on, a dazed expression on her face. Her forehead wrinkles. “What?”
I laugh to myself. “I don’t know what you’re doing with those dictionaries if you aren’t practicing the language. I’m simply trying to help you with your conversational skills.”
Eva doesn’t seem amused. “Respectfully, Liz, I’m not in the mood for your antics,” she grumbles.
“It could be fun, though! A little project. I could help teach you! Remember that time when we memorized the first page of Crime and Punishment out of sheer boredom? And I made flash cards?”
Eva can’t help but smile, although she tries to fight off the expression. “I didn’t memorize any of that stuff. You did.”
“Yeah, but you tried, right?”
“And failed.” She pauses, closing the cover of the Barcelona travel guide. “Remember those super-slow Sundays, before all of this?”
“Let me guess, mid-July?”
Eva shrugs. “Probably. It was a ghost town in here with everyone on vacation, and we spent way too much time trying to guess the most streamed artists on Spotify.”
I remember. Of course I remember. I remember everything, whether I want to or not. “We never did guess number six, did we?” I breathe out, letting the memory fill the space between us. Why can’t it be like that again? The store is just as empty as it was that summer, even more so. And we’re together, right? Even closer than we were before. What piece is missing from this equation? “Who do you think it is?”
Eva rolls her eyes in response. “It’s not like we can check anything,” she mumbles.
“Yeah, but it’ll be fun. Humor me, Eva.”
Eva shakes her head. “None of this is fun. We’re stuck inside, and even if we weren’t, there’s nothing left outside the front door anyway.” She swallows. “I’m beginning to think that I wasted the best years of my life in New Jersey.”
“But you were stuck with me in New Jersey,” I offer. “So it wasn’t all that bad.”
Eva sighs. “Don’t you want to go on an adventure after all this rain stops? Don’t you feel suffocated here?”
I don’t. Excitement and adventure are things that seem cool when viewed from far away but are terrifying upon closer inspection. Dreams look so much more compelling when they’re far enough away that they still look like dreams. When they come closer, they morph into reality. Reality doesn’t bend to the whims of a teenager, and excitement never comes in the form you want it to. It comes in the form of storms, and rain, and all the horrible things that lurk in between.
“I think I’m all good.” I flip the page in my copy of Republic.
Eva stares into the distance, watching the rain fall outside. “I just don’t understand you, Liz. You’re going to go insane one day if you’re trapped here forever.”
I fully intend to.
• • •
It’s drizzling, dark clouds still filling the sky. Yet Eva still stands at the front of the store preparing to go out.
There’s a bulging backpack at her feet, straps slightly ripped from overuse. She’s so focused on wrapping plastic bags around her sneakers that she doesn’t notice me as I walk through the back door. Or maybe she does notice me and pretends not to.
Mom had a bad habit of doing that sort of thing. We called it selective hearing. She had supersonic hearing whenever Thea was sneaking out, or whenever I was watching a super-gory foreign film that she absolutely couldn’t know about. Yet as soon as I had to talk to her about missing family dinner for a band concert or needing to borrow fifty dollars to pay for a field trip, she went deaf. It was rather convenient for her and annoying as hell for everyone else.
“What are you doing?” I ask, walking toward her in my socks and pajamas. It’s too cold and I’m too tired to put on socially acceptable clothing.
Eva’s head snaps toward me as if she forgot that I even existed. She picks up her backpack and hugs it to her chest before responding. “I’m just going out for a bit.”
“In this weather?”
Eva nods. “We need food.”
I want to take her word for it, but I watch as her biceps clench, struggling to hold whatever’s in her enigmatic backpack. She wouldn’t need so much stuff with her to gather food. In fact, she’d need the empty room in her bag to carry food back. If I had bullshit detectors, they’d be going off right now.
“What’s in the bag?”
Eva swallows, looking down at her feet before shaking her head. “It’s not important, Liz. You don’t need to keep tabs on me all the time.”
“What?” I pause, biting my lip. “I’m sorry for being concerned and trying to make sure that you don’t end up dead without anyone knowing where you are.”
“I’m an adult,” Eva says. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
She says it so matter-of-factly that it catches me off-guard. On my own. Her voice is heavy, like the statement is final.
“On your own?” I ask.
“It’s a figure of speech. I’ll be back.”
But she doesn’t say when she’ll be back, and she doesn’t even promise that she will be. She just lets her lie hang in the air lifelessly.
“Where are you going, Eva? For real.”
Eva exhales, slinging her backpack over her shoulder and zipping up her coat. She looks at me, saying nothing, before finally deciding to bite the bullet.
“I’m leaving, Liz,” she murmurs. “I’m sorry.”
The statement catches me off guard. I don’t know what I thought she was going to say. Maybe that she was going on some super-groovy vacation and would be back in two weeks, souvenir key chains in hand. But that would be ridiculous, and this is real life.
I feel a pang in my chest, right underneath my ribs, as my intestines twist and turn inside me. And I’m sure that’s not anatomically correct, but feelings often aren’t.
“What?”
It’s a ridiculous question to ask because I most definitely heard her the first time, but maybe it’s safer to double-check. Maybe now, once she’s been questioned, she’ll change her mind or reveal that this was all a horribly cruel prank.
Eva reaches for the doorknob instead. “I’m leaving.”
A million questions burst into my head, but I’m beginning to think that I might not have time to ask them all. I always thought Eva would be here forever, the same way I assumed that Thea would be. I never thought that there would be an end to this.
“Forever?” I ask. The question sounds small and pathetic.
Eva huffs again. As I look at her, her hand still on the doorknob, I realize that she never meant to have this conversation in the first place. She probably hoped to disappear before I even woke up. That way, she’d be far, far away by the time I realized that she was gone. But she wasn’t so lucky.
Am I really not even deserving of a conversation? Of a goodbye?
“I don’t know, Liz,” Eva replies, before slowly removing her hand from the door. That’s a good sign. Maybe if I try hard enough, she’ll change her mind. Maybe she’ll stay for just a little bit longer. That’s all I need. Just a little bit longer. We can take it one day at a time.
“I might come back,” Eva continues. “When things are a little bit different. But I can’t stay here with you forever. I’ll go insane. We both know that. There has to be life outside of this bookstore. There could be communities, towns with electricity. We’re shutting ourselves off to the world, staying here.”
This is about me, isn’t it? There are a thousand things that Eva doesn’t say, but I understand them all. You’re driving me insane, Liz. I can’t just stay here with you forever. I need something more. I need something better. I don’t need you.
“Were you just going to leave and say nothing?”
She doesn’t respond.
“Were you, Eva?”
She takes a hesitant step toward me. “I thought that it might be easier that way. If I told you, then you might try to persuade me to stay. But I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”
“So this is goodbye?” I don’t hug her. I’m not sure that she’d want me to. I don’t think I could handle it if she pushed me away and said no.
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this anymore.”
“You can’t do this with me anymore, right?” I clarify. I understand what she means without her even saying it. I understand all too well. “Got it.”
So we don’t hug. We don’t smile. We don’t wave. We don’t wish each other good luck. Instead, Eva nods as she opens the door and walks outside.
I don’t try to stop her. No matter what I do, she’s not going to turn around. She’s not willing to go insane with me.