“Don’t freak out.” He shuffles in his space. “Can you just close your eyes?”
“Done.”
“I guess I’ll have to trust you.”
“Duh.”
“Think of someplace big. Somewhere with wide-open space.” I feel the peace in his voice, the calm he’s extending to me. I bet his eyes are closed, too, trying to go to that wide-open space with me. “Feel it. Smell it. Like you’re there. Like you’re home.”
I suck in a breath, trying to transport myself. Trying to imagine.
“Where are you?”
“The beach. Hawaii.” The sun’s heating my toes and fingertips. I see Mila on a towel next to me, the fuzzy buzz of a pop song seeping out from her AirPods, interrupting my calm. I want to yank her AirPods out and make her go away.
“What’s the water like?”
“Turquoise blue. Clear.” I’m glad Charlie’s question makes me focus on something else. On the waves lapping the wet brown-sugar sand.
“Do you spend a lot of time in Hawaii? Is that a required school trip for kids who can’t do their own laundry?”
“Hardly. But I’ve gone the past three summers. For water polo tournaments.”
I tell Charlie that last summer Mila convinced us to sneak out past bed check to hang out with a boys’ team at the hotel pool because they had tequila and a hot team captain. Mila got drunk in record time, then insisted I balance her on my shoulders so she’d have a height advantage as she wrestled a guy from the other team in a water jousting match. I can still feel the way my fingers dug into the soft skin above her knees as I tried to steady her. I was concerned she’d get hurt even though it was my neck feeling like it might break as it twisted with her body. I worried about how mad Coach would be if I injured myself and couldn’t play the next day, so after Mila won, I swam away and stood in the shallow end with Iris, letting the warmth of the underwater lights heat my legs. Why are we here? I’d asked Iris. There’s nothing in this for us except getting in trouble. She’d shrugged. We were there because someone had to look out for Mila.
“Rebels. Did you get caught for sneaking out?” Charlie says.
“Not all of us. Only Mila. I thought she’d gone to bed but I guess she’d snuck out again. Security called our room at two a.m., told us to come get our friend.” I’d shoved my feet into flip-flops and run down in my pajamas to get her. She’d thrown up and broken the glass tequila bottle on the pool deck. I was so afraid Coach would find out and she’d get sent home. The next day she had a hangover so we told Coach it was food poisoning. He didn’t buy it. But he didn’t have proof we were lying. “Karma was that she lost her championship ring in the pool. Probably down the drain. She was more upset about that than anything.”
“Seems like Mila’s got bigger problems than lost jewelry.”
She does. But I can’t go there. “The ring was special. We all got one for winning our division in water polo last year. I’m wearing mine now.” I spin it around my finger. “I don’t always wear it.”
“So why today?”
“Because I’m thinking about quitting water polo.”
“Um, Ruby? Have you met you? You’re basically in love with water polo. You’d marry it if you could. And have little Speedo babies.”
“Yeah. But my mom started dating my coach.”
“That’s awkward.”
“Right? And the team thinks I’m getting special treatment.”
“Are you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then I’m not really seeing a reason for quitting something you love.”
“Didn’t you love school?”
“Yeah.”
“But you still quit.”
“Right.”
“Why? What’s your big reason that’s so much better than mine?”
“Something happened.”
“Something’s pretty vague.”
He sighs. “I know.”
“Tell me what happened, Charlie.”
“I saw something. And when I saw it, I didn’t do anything about it.”
“What kind of something?”
“A death kind of something.”
“Are you messing with me?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that.”
“Tell me.”
“The thing is, if I tell you, then I have to hear it again. And you won’t be able to unhear it. And I’m not sure that’s good for either of us.”
“I can handle it.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Who died, Charlie?”
“Jason Cooper.”
“Please tell me what happened.”
“Why?”
“Because I think, deep down, you want to. I think Jason Cooper is the reason you’re sleeping on your brother’s couch and working out at the gym like you’re training for the Olympics. I’d do the same thing if I were trying to forget bad memories.”
“You seem to understand a lot about a lot, Ruby in the Rubble.”
“I know about not doing something when maybe I should do something.” I think of Mila. And her drinking. And the way I always wonder if I should speak up. Or out.
He’s silent for a moment. “What do you know about fraternities?”
“Just TV and movie stuff.”
“You know you have to rush, right? To join?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I thought I’d try it. Like maybe it’d be a way to meet some people. New place. New me. But, Ruby? That fraternity thing? It wasn’t great. Too much alcohol. Too many dares. A lot of bad choices. And this guy, Jason, was embracing all three. Shot after shot after shot. It was like getting into that frat was the only thing that mattered. I should’ve noticed how bad off he was sooner. I should’ve said something. But freshmen don’t get to speak up.”
I think of all the times I wanted to say something. To talk to Mila about her drinking. And then every cautionary tale kids have ever been told encourages us to seek out a trusted adult—a counselor or a parent. Or a coach. But there’s that word. Trusted. On what planet are teenagers instantly supposed to trust adults? I trusted my mom and Coach and they fell in love behind my back. Why should I trust anyone? I never said anything about Mila to any adult I knew because if none of the adults were noticing she had a problem, then maybe I was making too much of it anyway. Maybe she was fine.
“Death should be more complicated,” Charlie says. “All Jason got was blackout drunk and a defibrillator that came too late. But if I’d done something sooner, maybe he’d only have a story about a too-drunk night at a fraternity party. It still would’ve been scary. He still would’ve had an ambulance ride and his stomach pumped, but he’d be alive.”
“Jason dying isn’t your fault, Charlie.”
“It feels like it’s my fault.”
“Did you stay with him? When he was like that?”
“I put him on his side. Some other guys propped him up with his backpack. That’s the big college trick. All the kids are doing it, don’t you know?” He rustles in his rubble. “Guess what? It doesn’t work.”
I’ve seen Mila passed out so many times. It’s scary. And I’m always afraid she might not wake up. “But you didn’t leave him, Charlie.”
“I stayed with him until the ambulance came. But he was already gone when they got there.”
“That’s what matters. That you were with him until the end.”
“It didn’t matter. He died.”
“It mattered, Charlie. Being with someone in their last minutes matters.”
He’s quiet. Thinking.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I keep trying to make sense of it. I thought if I took a semester off, I’d figure it out. That I’d want to go back. But I don’t. I hate Stanford. And I used to love it. It was my water polo, Ruby. Not that it matters now. I mean, definitely not now. Look at us—trapped here.” He groans. “The best part is my parents think I quit because I couldn’t handle Stanford. And I couldn’t. But not fo
r the reasons they thought. I couldn’t handle life. There’s going to be a court case. Jason’s parents want answers. Our fraternity was suspended. There were news crews around all the time. I just had to . . . leave.”
“I get it.”
“And pretty soon I’ll have to sit in some courtroom and tell everyone how I let a kid die.”
“You didn’t let anyone die, Charlie.”
“You can say that a million times and I’ll never believe you.” He coughs. It’s ragged and tired. “But this is all to say that I think it’s important you keep your ring and your game and your team. You still won the championship last year. You earned that ring. Be proud of it. Don’t let the stuff you love slip away.” He coughs again. “Listen to me, I’m like a public service announcement for how to not be a couch-surfing college dropout.”
“You need to stop talking about yourself like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some loser. Because you’re not.” I clear my throat. Cough out the dust. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you my ring. You hold on to it until you’re ready to love Stanford again. Because I think, with a little time, you’ll love the stuff you loved again. We both will. And when that happens, I’ll take my ring back.”
“I like that. Holding on to your ring.”
“Okay. It’s done. That’s the plan.”
“I should give you something, too.”
“Great. You pick.”
He hums as he thinks. “How about my journal? That’s the thing I’d be most devastated to lose.”
I feel bad for almost rolling my eyes when I first saw Charlie and his journal. He didn’t deserve that. “I’ll protect it at all costs. And I won’t even crack it open if you don’t want me to.”
“It’s okay. You can read it and tell me if I’m any good.”
“Deal.”
“I’d shake hands on it but, you know. Rubble.”
“Your promise is good enough for me.”
The laundromat is dark. The sirens are echoes. The minutes are swirling. Charlie is quiet, lost in his guilt and his memories.
“What happened wasn’t your fault, Charlie.” I say it again because I believe it. And I want him to believe it, too.
PROMISES
When I turned up to my first day of club water polo at ten years old, I expected to find a team of girls like I’d met when I played soccer. It turned out the ten-and-under team was mixed, meaning boys and girls played on teams together. Besides me, there was only one other girl on my team: Mila.
Even at ten years old, the boys had already created a bro-club culture, and Mila and I were the odd girls out. When we went to tournaments, the boys traveled in a pack, while Mila and I hung together on the outskirts. No matter. We fought our way to earn starting positions. She played goalie. I played the field.
One day, as we warmed up before a game, the boys took shot after shot at the goal. Mila consistently blocked each attempt, proving every ounce of her All-America status.
“Watch Ruby,” Tanner said when it came my turn to shoot. “Bet she throws like a girl.”
“Duh. I am a girl.” I raised my arm, gripped the ball, and aimed at the right corner of the goal. My shot flew past Mila’s outstretched fingertips and into the net—the first goal of the day.
Mila glared at Tanner and yelled, “Yeah, Ruby throws like a girl all right. Too bad you don’t.”
Later, when we were sitting on the pool deck, drinking water and sharing a granola bar after the game, I asked Mila if she’d missed my shot on purpose.
She looked at me, her eyes nearly shiny with hurt. “Why would I do that?”
“Because the boys were being jerks. As usual.”
“They were, but you made the goal. I missed it. I promise.”
“Okay, good.”
“We’re the only girls here,” she said, handing me another bite of the granola bar. “We have to stick together.”
“I know.”
“We should come up with a secret handshake or something.” She tapped her fingertip to her chin, thinking. “How about something like this?” I followed along as she pinkie-promised our pinkies, made jazz hands, high-fived, led us into a legit handshake, and ended by pulling our hands apart and doing some weird thing of rubbing her fingertips together. “I’m sprinkling glitter,” she said as she danced her dangling fingers above the ground. “Because we can like glitter and kick butt at the same time.”
“I love glitter,” I said. “I wish I could put it on everything.”
“They should make glitter water polo balls.”
We agreed that would be the best.
We also agreed we would be the best at water polo and the best at being friends.
Too bad it didn’t last.
CHAPTER EIGHT
11:00 P.M.
My eyelids droop. Heavy. Like weights are pulling them down. I take a quick peek at my phone. Eleven o’clock at night. I attempt to dial my mom but get nothing. Again. Six hours of nothing.
On school nights, I’m usually finishing up homework and going to bed right now. On a typical Friday night, eleven o’clock would be my curfew. I’d just be getting home, putting on my pajamas, logging into Netflix, and firing off one last text to Leo. I’d crawl between the cool sheets of my bed and tuck the puffy purple comforter underneath my chin.
I want to be there.
I want to hear the sounds of my house falling asleep.
I want to hear the hum of late-night television through the wall to my mom’s room. Her faint laugh over a joke from the opening monologue.
I want the soft flicker of the night-light in the hallway.
I want to sink into my mattress.
I want to drift.
I want to dream.
But I’m stuck on this hard slice of cold ground in a darkness so dark it fills me with fear. My thoughts narrow to focus on different points of pain. My head. My arm. My right elbow screams loudest, the knot of it bruised from grinding into the ground like the mortar and pestle set my mom uses to smash garlic cloves. The skin is rubbed raw. The simple thought of the Minnie Mouse Band-Aids my mom used to put on my cuts when I was a kid makes me want to cry.
Charlie mumbles in the dark. His words a chant under his breath. The sound has kept me company for the last hour, the repetition somehow soothing. His words aren’t loud enough for me to decipher, so I let him keep his secrets. Maybe he’s processing what he told me. I want to tell him over and over again that what happened isn’t his fault. But I understand the way he needs to be quiet with himself right now.
There’s a slow build to a new spot of pain. Like it’s growing. Expanding. Pushing.
My bladder.
I have to pee. I have to pee so bad that my insides ache.
I can’t hold it any longer.
I close my eyes like it will somehow hide what I’m doing.
I’m about to pee my pants.
On purpose.
I want to make noise with my hands to drown out the sound of it, so I pat them against the sides of my legs.
And then I relax enough to go.
The relief is instant and makes me sigh. The way I’ve felt on long road trips after scanning the horizon for an exit and finally finding a bathroom. My pee is warm at first, almost hot against my body that’s gone so cold, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel good. Is it gross to think my pee feels like a warm bath? Yes. But then there’s the smell of urine mixing with the ground grime and I want to gag.
Charlie rustles.
Can he smell it? Does he know?
Has he gone pee himself?
In between his mumbling he’s been breathing tight, short, shallow breaths, which worry me. The labored sound of them. I tell myself he’s okay because I have to believe he is.
Because I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.
Last fall, our school participated in the Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill. It was supposed to teach all of us how to survive earthquake
s. The drama department coordinated the whole thing like it was the spring musical instead of preparation for the worst thing that might ever happen to us. Mila played someone with a broken leg. There were triage tents on the football field—one for the dead and one for the dying. Coach tagged bodies in the dead tent.
Leo and I watched from the bleachers while sucking on Tootsie Pops. It was an excuse to get out of class early. I should’ve paid closer attention. I should’ve taken notes.
I miss Leo. I want him here now.
A thought creeps in. One I’ve kept squashing.
What if he isn’t okay?
Would I sense it? If he’s gone? Leo with his chlorine curls and his crooked smile, with one AirPod plugged into his head. In his flip-flops and his board shorts and his sweatshirt with the broken zipper. Leo who does a perfect imitation of our AP English teacher reading Shakespeare sonnets out loud. Leo who rides a skateboard to school and carries an endless supply of Cuties oranges. Leo who presses his fingers into the small of my back in the hallway between classes, making me want to grab his face and kiss him all the way through sixth period. Leo who understands me.
He has to be okay.
He wouldn’t have been on campus yesterday evening.
He would’ve been at home.
With his little brother.
Who he would’ve done everything to protect.
There are people who walk away from earthquakes. Even The Big One. People without badges and hard hats rush into toppled buildings to help. I know this. I’ve seen it. On television. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
That is what Leo would do. That is where he’d be. I’m sure of it.
Aftershocks Page 5