Praying for Rain

by Easton, BB

  “I guess the orgy got a little out of hand,” Wes muses between coughs as we round the side of the building.

  When I realize that the homey smell I was enjoying is actually the scent of burning books, something like sadness begins to settle around me, but the hydrocodone tosses it off like an unwanted blanket.

  Wes coughs into his shirt as we cross the street, hacking something up and spitting it onto the littered asphalt. He’s so pale. His lips are almost bluish, and the sweaty sheen from this morning is back.

  “You okay?” I ask as soon as we step into the Burger Palace parking lot, but Wes doesn’t seem to hear me.

  His eyes are trained on the thirty-foot-tall digital billboard overhead. “How the fuck is that sign on if the power’s out?” he mutters.

  “They probably have a generator for it.” I roll my eyes. “God forbid we have to go a day without seeing stupid King Burger on his stupid fucking horse.”

  Horse.

  I eye the flashing multicolored image of King Burger on his trusty steed, Mister Nugget, as we pass below. He’s holding his French fry staff in the air like a sword—or a mace or a scythe or a flaming club—and a nagging sense of déjà vu tugs at the edges of my fuzzy consciousness.

  The sound of gunfire inside the restaurant chases it away.

  Wes grabs my hand and takes off running toward the woods as people come pouring out of every exit, screaming and shrieking and calling out the names of their loved ones.

  Some of whom I’ve known my whole life.

  “Fuck ’em,” Wes’s voice says inside my head as the splish, splish, splash of mud beneath my feet returns.

  Fuck ’em, I repeat, this time in my own voice.

  I don’t look back, and I don’t let go. I run hand in hand with this beautiful stranger, over roots and beneath branches, feeling more alive than I ever have.

  Wes, on the other hand …

  When we finally make it back to the place we were searching yesterday, he doubles over and places his hands on his knees, coughing and hacking until his face goes from ashen to purple.

  I struggle to yank the backpack off his stubborn, hunched-over shoulders and push him to sit on the fallen log we rested on yesterday. I pull a bottle of water out of the bag and hand it to him. Wes chugs almost the whole thing before taking a breath.

  Reaching into the neck of my shirt, I pull the little orange bottle out of my bra and unscrew the cap. “Here,” I sigh, shaking one of my few remaining painkillers into my palm. “This’ll make you feel better.”

  “I don’t want to fucking feel better,” Wes snaps, shoving my hand away.

  I gasp as the tiny, precious tablet goes flying, disappearing a few feet away in a fat bed of wet pine needles.

  “I want to find that goddamn bomb shelter!”

  Ignoring my shocked expression, Wes shoves his arm elbow deep into the backpack next to me, rooting around until he finds the giant magnets in the bottom. “The only thing that’s gonna make me feel better is being in a cement bunker underground before midnight.” Wes shoves one of the homemade metal detectors in my direction. “Come on.”

  I accept the magnet with a frown. “Will you at least eat something first?”

  “I’ll eat when I find the fucking shelter!” he yells, pushing to his feet. “I’ll rest when I find the fucking shelter. I’ll take your pills—”

  “When you find the fucking shelter. Okay, I get it.” I nod, blinking back startled tears.

  “Do you?” he snaps, tossing the magnet on the ground in front of his muddy boots and pulling the rope taut. “Because I feel like all you’ve done since we met is sidetrack me and try to get me killed.”

  “I know,” I mumble, my eyes drifting over to the place where my pill disappeared. I could really use it right about now. Standing, I wander over to the mound of pine needles, hoping to find a glimmer of white in all that brown. I stare down at the crisscrossing lines on the ground, a chaotic pattern as pointless as my short, stupid life.

  I’m sorry, I want to say. I was just trying to help, I think to myself. You’re better off without me.

  But the words don’t come out of my mouth.

  I’m too distracted by the shape of the mound in front of me. Bending over, I shove my hands into the wet pine straw, but they don’t disappear into the mulchy mess like they should. Instead, my fingertips jam into something large and hard just below the surface. When I brush the needles away, my mouth falls open at the sight of a large stone block … attached to another stone block with crumbling white mortar.

  “Wes!” I shout, frantically uncovering the chain of stones. “Wes, I found it! I found the chimney!”

  A split second later, Wes is at my side, kissing my temple and apologizing profusely as we work together to unearth the fallen chimney. Once we locate the base, he knows exactly where to look for the hatch. He turns and takes about ten steps away, like a pirate measuring paces on a treasure map, and then he drops the magnet. This time, there’s no bounce when it lands on the soft forest floor. Hopeful green eyes lock on to mine as Wes tugs on the rope. The metal disc doesn’t budge.

  I stand, rooted to the spot, as he falls to his knees and begins clawing at the carpet of leaves and needles beside the magnet. As the surface of a rusted metal door begins to take shape under his determined hands, I feel as if he’s lifting a weight off of me as well.

  We’re going to be okay.

  I was helpful.

  Wes will be happy with me again.

  “Shit,” he hisses, uncovering a rusty old padlock secured to the side of the door. Giving it a tug, Wes drops it with a clang against the door. Bracing his hands on his thighs, he furrows his brow at the new challenge, as if he were trying to unlock it with the sheer force of his mind. After a moment, he nods. Then, he reaches into the side of his open shirt and pulls the 9-millimeter out of his holster. “Go stand behind that tree. I’m gonna shoot the lock off, and I don’t want you to get hit by the ricochet.”

  With a nod, I scurry behind the nearest oak tree and feel my heart pound as I wait for the shot to ring out. I should be excited, but this sensation fighting through the drugs feels closer to dread. This is our last bullet.

  What if he misses? What if he gets hit by the ricochet? What if—

  The sudden blast rattles my eardrums as it crashes and echoes off the trees. When I open my eyes and lower my hands from my ears, I wait for confirmation that it’s safe to come out, but all I hear is the exaggerated squeeeeeeak of a metal door being opened.

  Then, nothing.

  With a deep breath, I peek around the trunk of the tree. Wes is on his knees, soft brown hair hiding his face, white knuckles curled around the edge of the open doorway. He did it. He fucking did it. And with hours to spare. Wes should be running around, shouting in triumph, but instead, he looks like he’s kneeling before the executioner. I can’t figure out why until I look into the void.

  And see his tortured face staring back.

  Wes

  Water.

  The entire … fucking … bomb shelter …

  Is filled with water.

  When I threw open that door, I didn’t see salvation. I saw the happiness drain from my own eyes. I saw the smile rot off my own fucking face. In my reflection, I saw myself for what I’d always been—helpless, hopeless, powerless.

  Nothing.

  I have nothing. I’ve accomplished nothing. I’ve survived a lifetime of hell for nothing. And tomorrow, I’m going to return to nothing, just like everybody else. I’m not special. I’m not a survivor. I’m a fucking sham.

  “Go home, Rain,” I say, closing my eyes. It’s bad enough that I have to hear the words coming out of my mouth. I don’t want to have to see them, too.

  “Wes.” Her tiny voice is almost a whisper as the straw rustles beneath her approaching feet.

  I hold my hand out, as if that will keep her from coming any closer. “Just … go home. Go be with your parents.”

  “I don’t want to,” she
whines. “I want to stay here. With you.”

  I lift my head as anger surges through my bloodstream. “You only have a few hours left to live, and you’re gonna waste them on somebody you don’t even know? What the fuck is wrong with you? I have nothing to offer you. No supplies, no shelter, no fucking means of self-defense!” I throw the gun in my hand as hard as I can past Rain and into the forest. “I can’t save you. I can’t even save myself. Go the fuck home and be with your family while you still have one.”

  Rain doesn’t even turn her head as the weapon sails by. Her pleading, glistening eyes are trained on me and me alone. “I don’t care about any of that, Wes. I … I care about you.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t,” I snarl, gritting my teeth as I prepare to break what’s left of my own sputtering heart. “I was just using you to help me get what I wanted, and here it is, in all its flooded glory.” I sweep a hand over the cesspool in front of me and let out a disgusted laugh. “So go the fuck home, Rain. I don’t need you anymore.”

  The lie tastes like arsenic on my tongue and hits Rain with a force almost as deadly. Her mouth drops open, and her eyes blink rapidly as she struggles to process the poison I just spat at her. I expect her to argue with me. To come back with more teenage girl whining about whatever it is she thinks she feels for me. But she doesn’t.

  She swallows.

  She nods.

  She tucks her head to hide her quivering chin.

  And then she says the words that cut deeper than any goodbye I’ve ever suffered through.

  “I just wanted to help.”

  Rain

  My feet feel like cinder blocks as I stumble back down the trail toward the highway, struggling to open the childproof bottle in my shaking hands.

  Don’t fucking cry.

  Don’t you dare fucking cry.

  My eyes, my throat, my lungs—they burn worse than when I was crawling through Carter’s smoke-filled house. But I have to hold back the tears. I have to. If I cry for him, then I’ll have to cry for all of them. And I can’t do that. I won’t.

  “Go home, Rain.”

  I look behind me, but Wes isn’t following. The only thing I have left of him is his cruel, dismissive voice. I walk faster, trying to get away from it.

  “Go be with your parents.”

  He told me he would use me up. That I would leave him. I didn’t believe it at the time, but all it took was five simple words for him to prove himself right.

  “I don’t need you anymore.”

  With a desperate grunt, I rip the cap off and throw it as hard as I can against a tree. I don’t look to see where it lands. It doesn’t matter anymore. Nothing does.

  Wes was my only hope. My only shot at life after April 23. Without him, my hours are numbered.

  Without him, I don’t want the ones I have left.

  Wes

  As I listen to Rain’s footsteps getting farther away, I feel a pure, unbridled hatred begin to fester in my soul. I don’t hate the nightmares or the flooded shelter or even Rain for doing exactly what I told her to. I hate the man staring back at me. I want to wrap my fucking hands around his neck and squeeze until I have the pleasure of watching all the life drain from his eyes. Because he’s the one who made her leave.

  He’s the one who makes everyone leave.

  His fucking face is nothing more than a lie. He uses it to trick people into thinking he’s trustworthy. Attractive. Confident. Strong. But he’s an ugly, lying piece of shit that people can’t wait to get away from as soon as they see past the facade.

  I spit in his worthless fucking face, watching it distort into ripples just before I slam the metal door with a primal scream.

  The clang vibrates through my arms and into my chest and rattles a cough from my smoke-stained lungs. When the silence falls back around me, it comes with a strange sense of calm.

  The man is gone.

  I don’t know who I am without him, but I feel lighter. Younger. Freer. I no longer have anything to fear because every bad thing that could possibly happen to me has already happened. Because of him.

  And, now, he’s locked away for good.

  I pick up Rain’s backpack, noting how heavy it is. As my feet begin to move, my strides feel too long. My point of view unusually high. I’m a kid again, in a grown-up’s body, walking home with a backpack full of food scored from the dumpster behind Burger Palace like I did every afternoon.

  The trail is wider than I remember. Muddier, too. But the birds are singing the same songs they always have, and the trees smell just as piney. I almost expect Mama and Lily to be waiting for me when I get home. Mama will probably be passed out on the couch with that thing in her arm or arguing with her “friend” in the bedroom. Lily will probably be screaming in her crib. Her little face will light up when I walk in the room, but she’ll start crying again after a minute or two. Mama said babies do that. They just “cry all the damn time.”

  When I cut through the Garrisons’ backyard, I notice that their swing set is gone. I used to spend hours playing on that thing with their son, Benji. The Patels’ house, next door, looks like it hasn’t been lived in for years. The grass comes past my knees, and a few windows are broken out. Junk cars line the road, which is littered with broken television sets, glass vases, dishes—anything that the big kids might like to smash. I let my feet carry me across the destruction, but with every crunch of my boots, it becomes more and more apparent that the squat beige house at the end of the street isn’t my home anymore.

  And it hasn’t been for a long, long time.

  “Four-five-seven Prior Street,” I told the woman on the phone when I called 911 like they’d taught me at school.

  “What’s your emergency?”

  “My baby sister stopped crying.”

  “Son, is this a prank phone call?”

  “No, ma’am. She … she won’t wake up. She’s all blue, and she won’t wake up.”

  “Where is your mommy?”

  “She won’t wake up either.”

  The mailbox still says 457, but the house looks nothing like I remember. For starters, it’s been painted—light gray with bright white trim—and the shutters, well, it has some. The rotten front steps that used to wobble when I ran down them, always on the verge of missing the bus, have been replaced, and hanging from the side of the porch, where the giant wasp’s nest used to be, is a blue-and-red plastic baby swing.

  My chest constricts as I instinctively listen for the sound of crying.

  But there’s only silence.

  I run to the porch, clearing all four steps in a single leap, and press my face to one of the windows on either side of the freshly painted front door. “Hello?” I bang on the door with my fist before trying to get a better view in through one of the other windows. “Hello!” I pound on the glass with my open palm.

  Even though the framed photos hanging on the wall above the couch show a family of smiling strangers, I can’t help but picture my mom and my sister the way I found them that day. One passed out and dead to the world, the other …

  Before I know it, I’m grasping the sides of the doorframe and kicking the motherfucker in. Wood splinters around the deadbolt as the door swings open violently. I burst into the living room and realize immediately that the place doesn’t smell like cigarette smoke and sour, spilled milk anymore. The walls inside have been painted a light gray as well, and the furniture is simple and clean.

  “Hello?” I move more cautiously into the hallway, my heart chugging like a freight train.

  When I peek into the first room, my old room, I don’t find a mattress on the floor, surrounded by a collection of flashlights in case the power went out. I find a computer desk and two matching bookcases filled with books.

  Lily’s crib was in my mom’s room because the extra bedroom had a padlock on it. She never told me what was in there, but now, the door is wide open.

  Adrenaline pushes me forward as my eyes land on a white crib, positioned against the far
wall with rays of late afternoon sunlight hitting it sideways from the window. The zoo animals hanging from the mobile watch me approach, holding their breath along with me as I relive that day with every step.

  I remember the relief I felt that she’d stopped crying, followed by the realization that her skin wasn’t the right color. That her open eyes were fixed on nothing. That her once-chubby cheeks were sunken, her knuckles raw from incessant chewing.

  But when I look into this crib, it’s as if I’m experiencing that day in reverse. First comes the dread and then the relief.

  There is no Lily. No death. No failure. Only a fitted sheet covered in pink giraffes and gray elephants and a tiny pillow embroidered with three simple words.

  You are loved.

  I pick it up and read it again, blinking away the sudden, stinging tears blurring my vision.

  You are loved.

  I grit my teeth and try to breathe through the pain.

  You are loved.

  I want to throw the pillow to the ground and stomp on it, but instead, I find myself clutching it to my chest, pressing it as hard as I can against the place that aches the most. I hear the words again, repeated in my mind, and realize that the voice doing the whispering isn’t my own.

  It belongs to a different neglected girl. One with sad blue eyes too big for her delicate face. One who found a way to care for me, even when she wasn’t being cared for herself.

  One that I just threw back to the wolves.

  I might not have been able to save Lily, but I’m not that same scared little boy anymore.

  I’m a man now.

  A man who lies.

  A man who steals.

  But a man who will do whatever it takes to protect his girl.

  Wes

  The energy in town has escalated into a fever pitch of desperation. The parking lot fistfights and burning buildings and rioters smashing car windows and stray dogs snarling over Burger Palace wrappers blur together as I power through the anarchy with my head down. Glancing up only to note how quickly the sun is sinking behind the trees, I walk faster.