The woman backed almost halfway out of her spot before inexplicably stopping. I blinked once. Twice. Then exploded.
“Oh…my…god,” I articulated each word in a low growly threat. “Don’t make me come out there.”
My hand hovered over the horn, just daring me to blow the whole operation.
Breathe, I lectured myself. You can’t afford to piss her off—not when you’ve come this far.
But maybe if I could tap the horn lightly enough, it might actually make her aware that I’d been waiting on her long enough for the earth to orbit the sun. Just one tiny honk. Surely she wouldn’t take offense to that—a friendly toot that said, Hey, sorry for bothering you, LOL, but are you backing out anytime soon, you fucking bitch?
Whoa…where had that come from? I needed to chill out. I knew as well as every other person in this apartment complex that patience was key to a successful changing of the parking guard. Parking swaps were a delicate dance, and I couldn’t for one second forget the fluidity of the situation. Turtlepoke over there held all the power. She was, for the lack of a better term, the man in this particular cha-cha-cha. And if I did anything even remotely off-putting to her, she might deny me the spot I’d been waiting so impatiently for.
This right here, the parking lot hunt, was the worst part of my day, and that included run-ins with Chad. I’d honestly rather have conversations about his bushy twig and berries than try to find a parking spot after work. I equated the experience to that of the old carnival game the Cake Walk. You know, the one where everyone is circling as chairs are removed and then, when the music stops, anyone left standing scrambles for that one open spot? This right here…this was my daily Cake Walk.
The brake lights flickered, and as slowly as a turtle crawling through peanut butter, her tires again began to roll. Here we go. Almost home. My eyes darted in every direction, checking for lurking adversaries. There was a car one row over, but it was too far away to be a real contender. No, it looked like I might be home free. My mouth began to water.
Squealing wheels snapped my head to attention. What the shit? Oh, no! That non-factor car over on the other aisle had suddenly come into play and was angling to ruin my day. My heart rate quickened as the vehicle sped around the bend.
“Oh, no… no, you don’t,” I warned, flicking my blinker on and inching closer to the woman’s car. It was then I saw who was trying to steal my spot, and of course, it had to be booger-flicking, name-calling Chad. The woman pulled free of the cars on either side of her, and it was then she made the fateful decision to turn her bumper in my direction—blocking me out of the spot and essentially welcoming in the weasel with a heart of coal.
“Don’t do it!” I hollered, heat hop-skipping up my spine. Our eyes locked, mine flashing him a warning and his not giving a crap. I swear I saw him grin as he swung a hard right and slid effortlessly into my spot.
Oh, he was so dead!
Pulling my car up until my front bumper nearly touched his back one, I flattened my palm against the horn and I held it down in one continuous fuck you. I could even see Chad inside his vehicle holding his hands to his ears, and I pictured him laughing. I’d had enough of his bullshit. This was war.
But before I could take matters into my own hands, I felt my car jolt like it had been hit by solid steel.
Had Chad backed into me? My god, the dude was just asking for dismemberment. I checked out my driver’s side window, puzzled. Our bumpers were right where I’d left them…still a good inch apart.
Another jolt.
“What the…?”
I checked my mirrors, but there was nothing behind me. And then it started. Violent shaking so intense it scrambled my head with confusion. Then another jolt, but this one unlike anything I’d ever felt in my lifetime. There was the sudden sensation of dropping, as if the undercarriage of my vehicle had completely given way. The swaying walls in the parking garage rumbled and quivered, chunks of concrete breaking free from their berths and crumbling onto the cars below.
“What’s happening?” I cried out, even though I knew full well what this was—a Richter scale-busting earthquake. And I really couldn’t think of a worse place to ride out this once-in-a-lifetime event than in an underground parking garage…with Chad. The standard recommendations of hunkering under a table or taking shelter in a door frame did not apply in this setting. The only thing I could do now was wait for relief… and hope and pray I would still be alive once the earth had had its way.
The sound of ripping steel drew my attention. I swung my head around just in time to see the upper floor near the garage exit come crashing to the ground a hundred feet behind me. I watched in shocked horror as smoke from the collapse billowed toward me like a beast on a rampage. Covering my head with my hands, I closed my eyes as fast-moving projectiles slammed into my car with the force of a bomb.
Only when the wave passed over me did I dare open my eyes. My back window was shattered, and I was blanketed in glass and dust. And still the earth continued shaking. I wasn’t going to survive this. This underground hell would very likely become my grave. Then, in what I believed to be the final moments of my life, I thought of him—Chad—the man I was about to die with. Our feud seemed so childish now, so petty. I wished I could take it all back. Start anew. But we might not have that chance…ever again.
It was his face I focused on seconds before a concrete slab ripped free of its mooring and dropped from the floor above.
• • •
My body settled as the earth ceased its quaking. There was no sound—no feeling. Even the car alarms, going wild a few seconds before the collapse seemed to have stopped with the shaking. It was as if the earth were observing a moment of silence for what it had destroyed. I sat stunned in my car, the strange unnerving silence giving off the sensation of being underwater. I kept my eyes closed, too afraid to face what lay ahead. But as the seconds ticked by, a low buzzing in my ears gave way to an eerie electrical moaning.
Open your eyes, Dani. I had to know what I was dealing with. I had to find my strength.
Reaching up with shaky hands, I cleared the dust from my eyes before slowly opening them to the new world order. Nothing looked familiar. The landscape around me had totally shifted in a matter of seconds, and now I was in a desolate wasteland, covered in destruction. At least I’d solved the mystery of the haunting sound pulsing in my ears—it was the final cries of weakened car alarms dying under the weight of thousands of pounds of concrete.
I shook my head, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Too much had changed in too little time. If I had to guess, the quake hadn’t lasted more than thirty seconds, but based on the total demolition around me, it had been a significant half a minute. Looking out over the ruins of my former life, I now understood what people meant when they said ‘life changes in an instant.’ Mine had—the repercussions of this day, I was sure, would stay with me for a lifetime.
I should have been panicking right now, but I wasn’t. Grateful—that’s what I was. Somehow, amongst all the destruction, I’d been spared. Why? Maybe this was my wake-up call. I’d been handed a second chance to become a better, calmer, more introspective person. I could fall back on the weaknesses that held me back before, or I could look forward with strength and perseverance.
Really, the choice had been made for me. If I didn’t find my inner bravery, I would surely die here in my car…or what was left of it. During those few short seconds of shaking, my Chevrolet had been split in two. Where there had once been a dashboard and an engine, there was now just open space. The beam that had decapitated the hood of my car had worked as a seesaw, and now the mangled wreckage was elevated off the ground. I was still strapped into my driver’s side seat, my legs dangling over the edge like a rider on one of those inverted roller coasters.
There was no safety plan for this, no accompanying handbook. This was all survival stuff—instinctual. If I wanted to get out of this, I needed to think like a wild animal caught in a snare. F
irst things first: did I still have access to all my body parts? Just because I was feeling no pain didn’t mean I’d escaped unscathed. Shock was a funny thing, tricking the body into thinking things were all hunky-dory when bits and pieces were actually dangling off you.
I took stock of my limbs, systematically testing various body parts for malfunction and was relieved to find them responding properly—or that least they were from the waist down. Waist up was another story. Shards of glass were embedded in my skin; I must have looked like a shiny porcupine. Gritting my teeth, I went to work gingerly extracting those I could, even gathering the bravery needed to dislodge the one in my cheekbone. But a particularly jagged blade of glass rooted deep in my left arm proved to be beyond my level of expertise. Plus if it was working as a stopper to prevent an artery from bleeding out, my instinct was to let it stay.
Slipping my right arm out my lightweight sweater, I used it as a tourniquet, tying it tightly around my upper left arm with my teeth. That would have to do until help arrived. If it did. I wasn’t naïve enough to think my apartment complex was the only scene of destruction in this city of millions, nor did I think first responders would head here first. If it was this bad here, I couldn’t help but wonder what a quake this size had done to the rest of Los Angeles. To my students. To my school.
To…Chad.
I whipped my head around. Oh god, how could I have forgotten he was here with me in this wasteland? My eyes darted from side to side. Where was his car? Had he somehow gotten away? And then I saw it… or what was left of it, flattened under mounds of concrete. The plank that had cut my car in two had also crushed his, only it had come to rest vertically—on top of a second beam that had fallen horizontally across the cab of his vehicle. I swallowed back a sob as I realized that no one could have survived that. He was gone, entombed under intersecting planks that had fallen in the form of a cross to lie on top of what was now Chad’s grave.
Shock. Horror. Every emotion grabbed hold as I slowly realized what I’d lost. Chad wasn’t just the man I loved to hate. He was also the man I actually sorta didn’t hate. There—I admitted it. I’d spent countless hours of my life obsessing over Chad for the same reason little elementary school girls the world over called boys names on the playground—I had a crush. Chad was the real reason I couldn’t connect with James. The brawny jerk had hijacked my mind. At work. At play. At sleep. Chad was everywhere. And, as much as I tried to resist the icky attraction, I couldn’t.
And now he was gone, buried under a pile of rubble. Tears welled as I tried to comprehend the loss. Thirty seconds was all it had taken to end his life, and now I’d never bicker with him again. I’d never instigate a knocking war on our shared wall or communicate with him through Post-it Notes. I’d never spy on his half-naked body through the sliding glass door or fantasize about those powerful arms pushing me up against the shower wall. If only I’d known how little time we had left, I would’ve treated those last minutes with more respect.
I dropped my head to my hands and cried for Chad. For me. For the sex-fueled life we’d never lead. He didn’t deserve this. No one did.
“Dani?”
My lips parted in surprise. It couldn’t be. I’d seen his car. He couldn’t possibly have survived. But when he repeated my name, there was no doubt. That raspy voice, beset with pain, belonged to Chad.
Still, my brain could not compute. “Chad?”
There was a pause before he answered with his typical bluster. “Who else would it be?”
Oh, my god. Even in this life-or-death situation, Chad was being… a dick? If that didn’t prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that my tough-as-nails neighbor-crush had somehow survived the unsurvivable, I didn’t know what would.
“You’re alive?” I asked, confirming the obvious.
“Would I be talking to you if I were dead?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, falling right back into our comfortable mockery. “Maybe you’re a ghost.”
“No offense, Dani, but if I was a ghost, I sure as hell wouldn’t be spending eternity with you.”
“And, yet, for the last four months, I’ve been doing just that.”
I waited for Chad’s snappy reply. But he remained silent, which was not like him at all. He never missed a chance to volley. Something was wrong. No way would my surly neighbor waste a return of serve.
“Chad?”
“I’m here,” he replied, but the sound came out more like a groan.
“Are you hurt?” I questioned, knowing immediately I’d asked the obvious. Of course he was hurt. No one could survive what he’d survived without injury.
“Well, let’s put it this way. I’m not dead yet, but by the looks of it, you’ll get your wish in about ten more minutes.”
My wish? The hundreds of times I’d threatened his life had all been in jest. Those were the words of a frustrated girl with no other recourse against his force of nature.
“I don’t want you to die, Chad,” I said, maybe the first bit of honesty I’d ever spoken to him. “You know that.”
“Yeah, I know that,” he replied, with possibly the first bit of honesty he’d ever spoken to me.
“Tell me what’s happening to you,” I urged.
“Look for yourself.”
“I can’t see into your car. I don’t even know how you survived that.”
“I survived because I wasn’t in my car.”
“You weren’t? Where were you then?”
“I was coming for you, Dani.”
I let those words percolate in my brain for a second. My neighbor, the one who’d accused me of stealing, who’d stolen my parking spot, and who’d commandeered my thoughts at all hours of the day—and night—had been coming for me. Chad’s face hadn’t been a thought in my mind when I’d thought I was about to die. He’d actually been there, racing toward me, trying to save my life.
“Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “I have my moments.”
“Wait—you can see me?”
“I’m right here.”
I scanned the barren landscape but didn’t see him.
“Look down.”
Down? I stuck my head out of the missing window and there, about three feet from my car, was Chad, covered in grime and buried up to his shoulder blades in rubble. I gasped.
“Yeah,” he said, pain etching lines across his sullen face. “That was my first reaction too.”
I wanted to say something, anything, to make the situation better for him, but there was no silver lining. Chad was in serious trouble.
“Chad…” I began, my voice steeped in sympathy.
“Don’t,” he stopped me. “I know it’s bad. I don’t need your pity.”
He was right. That wasn’t how we worked. We’d never shown each other mercy before, so why start now? Our dysfunction made us stronger, and Chad needed that strength now. If he wanted ‘normal,’ I’d give him normal—starting with an insult. “I’ve been pitying you since the day we met, dude. So why stop now?”
He attempted a chuckle, but the pain proved a worthy adversary. I watched him clench his jaw as he drew in a shaky breath.
Now there was nothing but sincerity in my reply. “I’m coming, Chad. Breathe slow and steady. I’m going to get you out of there. I promise.”
And I meant it. Taking my own deep breath, I reached for my phone only to realize it wasn’t where I’d left it in the cup holder. In fact, the cup holder wasn’t where I’d left it either. Both had, no doubt, blasted off like rockets when the beam cut my car in two. I searched the area around me for my cell with no luck. It was gone, and so was any hope of a coordinated rescue. It was up to me now.
God help us all.
“Not to dampen your optimism,” he said, before proceeding to dampen my optimism, “but, unless you have a bulldozer in your pocket, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Hey, check the doom and gloom, bud. I manage to tie thirty first graders’ shoes every day and still get them out to recess on time. I
think I can dig one asshole out of a dirt hole.”
“You’re. A. Teacher?” he asked, every word punctuated with disbelief.
“Don’t sound so surprised. What did you think I did for a living?”
“Well, I’d narrowed it down to a few contenders, with the top one being agent of Satan.”
I laughed, relieved he still had the energy to insult. That meant I still had time—but how much, I wasn’t sure. Unhooking the seatbelt holding me suspended in place, I tried to ready my feet for the impact, but gravity took hold before I could steady myself, and I tumbled to the ground. I let out a cry of pain as a red raised abrasion instantly sprang up on my knee.
“Ouch. Dammit,” I pouted.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I miscalculated,” I replied, pushing myself back onto my feet with my one good arm. “I’ll live.”
“That makes one of us.”
“Enough with the negativity, Chad. Don’t make me come over there and slap you.”
“Not trying to be negative, Dani,” Chad said, puffing out the words. “I’m actually having trouble breathing. The pressure on my chest is insane.”
There was no snark left in my neighbor. His life was hanging in the balance, and he knew it. I had to get to him.
“Just focus on my voice. I’m on my way. I can’t get out the driver side door, so I need to climb over the mountain of concrete in front of my car. It’ll just take me a minute, and then I’ll start digging you out.”
He didn’t respond, his silence an ominous predictor of his decline.
“Chad, don’t fall asleep.”
“I’m sorry, Dani.”
His voice sounded defeated—done. I had to keep him talking.
“For what—stealing my parking spot?”
“No, I stand by that. Parking in this garage is a bitch.”
I smiled to myself. He always did suck at apologies. “Are you sorry for accusing me of stealing your package?”
“Yes, I am actually sorry for that.”
My Night with a Rockstar Page 6