The Disaster Days

by Rebecca Behrens

  Andrea wasn’t going to be home anytime soon. Neither was my mom.

  We were all alone, in a shaken and shattered house, in the dark.

  One of us was bleeding. All of us were terrified.

  And I was in charge.

  6

  I was a babysitting newbie, but Neha actually had a lot of experience with little kids—she loved to help watch her younger cousins at family parties. So when Mrs. Pinales had asked at the end of her class if anyone had questions, I’d been surprised that Neha’s hand shot up in the air.

  “What do you do if the kids you’re watching start crying? Or if they’re super grumpy and refuse to play any of the games you suggest? Like, their answer to every single suggestion is screaming ‘No!’” Huh. I hadn’t thought of moodiness as being a potential babysitting problem.

  “Great question, Neha. It’s tough when your charges aren’t in the best spirits—but we all have blue days, even as babies.” Mrs. Pinales had smiled reassuringly. “My advice is that when you’re in charge, you set the tone. Stay positive, and give the kids a little space. Usually, they’ll come around—especially if you seem to be having a good time.”

  As Zoe and Oscar sniffled in the dark, I focused on that advice. I couldn’t follow Mrs. Pinales’s instruction to wait for an adult’s help; I was going to be in charge for however long we had to wait for our parents to come home and take control of things. Hopefully, that would be soon, but it was going to be pretty awful for the three of us to sit and wait in tears. Or squeaks, in Jupiter’s case. For now, it was my job to turn things around, or at least try. I needed to distract the kids with something fun, even if pretending like any part of this awful situation was fun seemed ridiculous. At the least, I could pretend like I wasn’t terrified. I focused on my breathing, so when I broke the silence my voice would sound normal and calm.

  When I’m freaking out, what do I distract myself with? I squeezed my phone in my palm, then glanced up at the TV. Well, those weren’t options. I needed to think of ways to have fun in the dark, without electricity…like camping? But indoors.

  It hit me: the best part of camping is always s’mores, and when I’d been cleaning up Zoe’s cut, I’d noticed that bag of big marshmallows that had landed safely in the open drawer when everything went torpedoing out of the cupboards. That’s perfect. What kid wouldn’t perk up with a little chocolate and marshmallow? Even in a situation like this.

  “So.” I paused to clear my throat, because my voice had gotten thick and gravelly. “That broadcast was kind of intense.” Oscar’s head bobbed in vigorous agreement.

  “Kind of?” Zoe snorted.

  “But the good news, from an otherwise scary report, is that everybody in Seattle knows what happened. The emergency people are on it. Help is probably already on the way.” How will help even get to Pelling if the ferries aren’t running and the highways are closed… What if the Elliott Bay Bridge is one of the ones that collapsed? We lived on a secluded peninsula on an island. The only way we could be more difficult to get to would be if our neighborhood were bordered by quicksand instead of a forest preserve. Stop it, you’re spiraling. “Everything’s going to be fine.” I smiled, in an attempt to convince both them and myself.

  “But it’s dark, and we’re home alone.” Oscar whimpered.

  “Don’t worry about the power. This’ll be fun, guys—like camping, but inside! Sit tight and give me a minute.” I stood up, turning my phone’s flashlight app back on.

  “Where are you going?” Zoe’s voice was panicked. “Don’t leave us!” She grabbed for my wrist. Her nails dug into my skin as she tried to pull me back.

  “I’m not leaving you!” I shined my phone’s light toward the kitchen. “I’m getting something in there, and I’ll be right back. You can watch me the whole time.” After a few seconds, Zoe reluctantly let go.

  I had to squeeze past the fridge to get into the kitchen, and my stomach twisted as I saw how much space it took up on the floor. I nudged its stainless steel side with the toe of my sneaker. Of course it didn’t budge. A fridge when it’s set back against a wall and surrounded by cupboards doesn’t seem so huge and heavy, but lying on the floor I realized how massive it was. A scene flashed into my mind: one of us trapped below, the others struggling to lift the fridge away. Another death trap. I shook my head to clear the picture. It hadn’t hurt us. We’d been lucky. Now that the fridge was prone on the floor, it couldn’t fall again. Right then, we were safer than we’d been all night; we just hadn’t known the dangers before. Still, I decided it was probably wise to spend as little time as possible in a room full of appliances and cutlery.

  The marshmallows, miraculously, hadn’t landed anywhere gross when I’d tossed them. I hugged them to my chest. Now for the graham crackers and some chocolate. Everybody had those squirreled away in their cupboard, right? I called back to the living room, “You guys holding up okay?”

  “Yeah.” Oscar’s voice was so forlorn. It made my heart squeeze.

  “I promise you’ll be excited about what I have planned!” Graham crackers, graham crackers, wherefore art thou, graham crackers? I shined my phone’s light into a cupboard containing a big cereal spill. Aha! Far in the back, still standing upright, was the familiar blue box. I snatched it. Now I only needed chocolate. There were lots of baking ingredients jumbled in that cupboard—it seemed like the right place to keep hunting. I swept my hand left to right, using the phone like a searchlight. A metallic wrapper glinted.

  Jackpot.

  The bar was hard as a brick, and the partially peeled label said BAKING CHOCOLATE, but it would have to do. With my arms full of ingredients, I carefully walked through the kitchen, squeezing past the sharp edge of the fridge again, and back into the living room. I plopped onto the couch, in between Zoe and Oscar. They scooted right next to me, and Jupiter made a whoop like he was happy I was back too.

  “You know what you have to do when you’re camping, even indoors?” Oscar shook his head no. “Make s’mores!” I grinned like a maniac.

  Oscar’s face brightened—and not from the flashlight he was shining on and off again. Zoe looked skeptical. Maybe that was because of my unintentional rhyming. Now I understood how my mom felt whenever she tried way too hard to get me excited about something, like doing yard work or helping her reorganize our bookshelves in accordance with the Dewey decimal system.

  It turns out that s’mores without a source of heat—be it a crackling campfire or a lowly microwave—are not quite as good. It’s a dessert that hinges on gooeyness; without melting, it doesn’t quite gel. Also, baking chocolate is totally not the same thing as regular chocolate. Oscar took the first bite of a dusty square and promptly spat it somewhere on the floor.

  “Ugh! That chocolate tastes awful. Can it go bad?”

  I picked up a square and failed to break off a piece—it was really hard. I nibbled on the edge, and my nose scrunched up. “Yuck. It’s like there’s no sugar in it.”

  Zoe nodded. “Mom only uses that stuff for making fudge. And then she dumps in loads of sugar.” I wished she’d told me that before I ate it. I looked down at the sad imitation of s’mores in my hand. The marshmallow was barely squished. The graham cracker had crumbled all over the couch when I’d bitten into it. Crumbs were the least of my worries, though.

  My throat had that tight feeling, like there was a lump in it that I couldn’t swallow past. The feeling you get when your voice rises and your eyes sting, right before you start to cry. I gulped in air to make it loosen.

  Zoe was watching me. She could tell I was struggling. “I love marshmallows,” she said quietly, offering a tiny, tentative smile. She took a big bite of hers. “Yum.” Watching her try to act happy for me made my heart squeeze tighter.

  “How many do you think I can fit in my mouth?” Oscar asked, grabbing for the bag. He crammed a few in, forced his lips closed, and then shined the flashligh
t again from under his chin while grinning and waggling his eyebrows. Despite everything, Zoe and I laughed. My tears stopped welling, and my throat relaxed. Mrs. Pinales had been right—they were coming around. I just had to keep them distracted and all three of us calm. Four, if you count Jupiter. Periodically he would make this weird angry purring sound, which Zoe insisted meant he was stressed out.

  Continuing to pretend like we were in the dark on purpose—camping indoors—seemed like the best strategy I had. I’d only gone camping once, with my Girl Scout troop. We’d stayed in tents at a campsite in the mountains and went on a nature walk during which we identified plants in order to get a special badge. At night, we stargazed and told stories by a campfire. I definitely didn’t want to herd the kids outside to try to see stars—who knew what conditions were like out there, and even if it weren’t drizzling, then the sky had probably clouded over anyway. We didn’t have a campfire, but we could still tell stories. By flashlight.

  “While we eat the marshmallows, let’s tell some scary stories. Pretend we’re around a roaring campfire,” I said.

  “Or at a sleepover!” Zoe added, her face brightening. “I went to one last week for Liliana’s birthday. She told us a really scary story.”

  “Super!” I said. “Do you want to go first?”

  She nodded. “Oscar, give me the flashlight.” He stretched it out and, with her good hand, Zoe took it.

  She cleared her throat, then spoke in a low whisper, while the flashlight below her chin illuminated her face. “This is the story of the scritch-scratch.” Oscar’s eyes widened. “At night, when children are sleeping in their beds, sometimes a shadow creeps up to their windows. If they were smart, they closed the curtains before they went to sleep, or rolled down the shades. If they had shades instead of curtains. Or blinds, I guess. Anyway, foolish children don’t remember to cover their windows.”

  “I never close my curtains,” Oscar piped up. “I like to watch the moon.”

  “Well, I guess we know that you’re one of the foolish ones, then. As I was saying—some children sleep with their windows uncovered, and that’s how the shadow finds them.”

  “Their own shadow? Isn’t it already there?” Oscar sounded confused. So was I.

  “No—it’s a different shadow, like a monster. Just listen, okay? So first the shadow lurks below the windowpane, listening. Once the kid is snoring, it knows the time has come…for the scritch-scratch test. It takes its long, bony shadow finger, and with its even longer, grimy shadow fingernail, it goes scritch-scratch against the glass.”

  Zoe raised her other arm, the one she’d cut, to mime the scratching. To my relief, her bandage appeared to be holding up—it looked clean and white; no more blood had soaked through.

  “If the noise wakes them, the shadow slips away. They’re not in deep-enough sleep. But if they don’t stir, it…attacks!” Zoe switched off the flashlight and we were plunged into darkness. Oscar screamed, and then Jupiter began chirping frantically.

  “I don’t want a shadow to attack us!” He started to sob.

  “Zoe, turn on the flashlight!” I yelled.

  The light snapped back on, showing her apologetic face. “Jeez, Oscar. It’s just a story that Liliana made up.”

  I crawled across the back of the couch cushions so I was sitting next to Oscar, and I put my arms around him in a hug. He felt so much tinier than I expected. Maybe because we were in the dark, or because he was curled over Jupiter in his lap. His little shoulders shook. I rubbed his back and tried to soothe him. “It’s only make-believe, Oscar. There are no shadows out hunting kids. I promise.”

  He kept on crying. “I want my mom.”

  My heart panged. I do too. “I know. She’ll be home as soon as she possibly can.”

  “I can tell another story,” Zoe offered. “Without any shadows or scritch-scratching.”

  “Thanks, Zoe—but maybe we should leave the stories for later.” That idea had been a mistake, clearly. I pressed the home button on my phone to check the time. It was closing in on nine. No wonder I felt so exhausted.

  “Guys, I think we should start getting ready for bed.” Before they could protest about Andrea not being back yet, I added, “Your mom will really appreciate it if you’re all ready for sleep once she gets home.” If she makes it here tonight. I paused, sinking back into the couch. Till that point, I’d still believed that eventually I’d be going home, changing into my favorite fleece pajama pants, and curling up in my bed. I only knew of the chaos the earthquake had caused at the Matlocks’ house. In my mind, mine still stood strong, waiting to welcome me.

  But until Andrea made it back—I would be staying right where I was. In their upturned living room. If my mom came back first, though, maybe she could take the four of us to my house.

  Mom must be frantic, I thought, if she knew I was there alone, with two kids and a guinea pig. She would stop at nothing to get to Pelling, if she hadn’t already been on the island when the earthquake happened. So the fact that she wasn’t here…

  A bit of the news broadcast popped back into my head: Area hospitals already are becoming overwhelmed with patients. What if my mom was one of them?

  My stomach twisted. The reporter had said there were lots of casualties already. Did that mean people had…died?

  A rushing noise filled my ears, and I felt my pulse start to race. My chest started to tighten, like my lungs were a balloon with a hole, one that couldn’t quite expand.

  “Hannah? How are we even going to go to bed?” Zoe asked. “We can’t go upstairs, remember… Are you okay?”

  I gripped the arm of the couch, forcing myself to calm down. Focus, Hannah. You have to stay in control. “Uh, good point.” We couldn’t go up to the kids’ bedrooms, but that was probably for the best. We needed to stick together, and it would be easier to get out of the house from the first floor if anything else happened. “We’re camping, remember? Here in the living room. Yeah—we’re going to make a tent.” I held up a soft throw.

  “I love making blanket forts.” Oscar sniffed.

  “Now it’ll also be like a sleepover,” I added, for Zoe’s benefit. “Let’s find some more blankets.”

  A tall wicker basket full of them had overturned in front of the fireplace, which was now blocked by a heaping pile of broken pottery and everything else from a shelf that had collapsed. Facing away from the couch, I shook out all the blankets, hoping that if any shards had fallen, they’d be flung away before we snuggled up in them. Then we draped the biggest blanket over the space in between the couch and the coffee table a few feet away, tucking the corners into the couch seams so they’d stay tight. We laid out the couch and love seat cushions on the carpet below the blanket covering, for a softer place to sleep. It would be pretty tight for us three to fit in that space, but I didn’t mind being curled up together.

  “What about Jupiter?” Oscar asked. “I can’t hold a guinea pig all night long.”

  “We can’t put him back in his cage… Is there a box anywhere? Like a shoebox or something.”

  “We have the emergency box.” Zoe had carried it back from the closet.

  “Perfect. Jupiter, congratulations on your new home.” Zoe handed me the box, and then Oscar gently settled Jupiter inside. The walls were tall enough that a guinea pig shouldn’t be able to climb out, but it was open so he’d have enough air.

  We made another group expedition to the bathroom, grabbing sweatshirts from the mess inside the closet, and on the way back we stopped in the kitchen to brush our teeth—but with our fingers, since their toothbrushes were upstairs and mine was at my house. “It feels so weird to not use toothpaste. Weird and wrong,” Zoe said.

  “I know,” I agreed. I ran my tongue over my teeth, wishing I at least had a piece of gum or something. Slimy marshmallow residue still coated them. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone to sleep without brush
ing. Although, that was probably the least weird part of the night, considering I was going to bed inside a blanket fort with two elementary-schoolers and a guinea pig.

  The whole time we were “getting ready for bed,” I kept my fingers crossed. Hoping that a knock would come at the door, followed by my mom calling for me. Hoping that we’d hear Andrea’s key in the lock, or that we’d see flashing lights, even, from a police car coming to check on the house. If our parents couldn’t get back, wouldn’t they tell someone to come wait with us? I couldn’t believe that we’d been left alone this long. I mean, my mom knew I couldn’t remember my inhaler half the time. She didn’t think I was very capable—she’d made that clear this morning. There’s no way she would let me handle this situation alone. Unless there was nothing she could do about it. That was the scariest possibility.

  I didn’t want to go to bed, not without an adult in the Matlocks’ dark, demolished house. What if the shaking started again, and I was wrong in thinking that our blanket fort was in the safest possible spot? Watching The Wizard of Oz taught me that during a tornado, people go into basements and cellars. Are you supposed to go to a certain place during an earthquake? I had no clue. I looked longingly at my phone’s dark screen. If only I could Google it.

  “I don’t want to go to bed before our mom gets home,” Zoe announced, echoing my thoughts.

  Oscar spat the water he’d been swishing around his mouth into the kitchen sink and nodded. “Yeah, I’m waiting up for her.” He’d barely finished the sentence before he punctuated it with a yawn. I bit at my lip, thinking. The later we stayed up, the more worried they were going to get, and we were all exhausted. In the bathroom, I’d caught a glimpse of myself in the cracked mirror, thanks to a sliver of moonlight coming in through the window. I hardly recognized my weary face. It was strange to think that only hours ago, it had been a perfectly ordinary day. Now, it was like we were stranded in some alternate universe, without power or parents or a phone. Where refrigerators were deadly. I missed the regular buzz from Neha’s texts. I wanted so badly to shut my eyes and travel home. To click my heels, like Dorothy.