by Hughey, J.
I smelled beer as I snuggled into his side. He wasn’t drunk or anything, but I wasn’t used to the added scent over his normal scrumptiousness.
A satellite loop several hours old played in the background while a picture of the President popped up to one side of the screen. Female anchor: At the White House today, the President promised to meet with the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey where he expects to review their processes for sharing information with the public who would certainly have benefitted from some earlier warning of this eruption. He also promises FEMA is deploying and reallocating resources from the gulf hurricane as quickly as possible.
Mia shook her head at the TV. “Where will they start?” she asked quietly.
“I know,” I said. “It’s already so much bigger than this morning.”
“This is surreal,” the girl behind us said. “I feel like I’m watching a movie. Like it’s all pretend.”
Male anchor: This released from NOAA, an infrared image of the western US, compiled today.
Everyone in the room sat forward. The new footage showed thousands of miles of peaceful blue and green burned by a red center with orange flaring into an eastern-reaching plume. A flaming finger of heat pointed in our direction.
Joining us is our guest geologist, Stan Westenhold, to explain what we are seeing here.
Stan the geologist: Thank you for having me. I see this as the classic heat signature of an active eruption. And this is really our first view of what might be happening down there. This red area is quite extensive, you know. On smaller volcanoes, it might be a pinpoint at this scale, but, uh, this is quite a large area here, with several extended dark maroon patches there that might indicate more than one vent.
“Did you hear from your parents?” I whispered.
“Yeah, my mom called while I was at Cramer’s. They’re doing okay. They’ve heard there’s ash west of them already, but none is falling at the ranch yet. Dad had some of the hands working overtime, checking watering areas and stuff. Mom picked a ton of vegetables out of the garden to can tomorrow.” He glanced toward the TV when the talking heads mentioned the ash then checked my reaction. “Does anyone outside of Nebraska still can?”
“My grandma used to. I always had to snap beans for her.” I’d hated it, with the choice of sitting on the porch in the sweltering heat or in the kitchen with the steaming canning kettle. “They got too old for the garden a few years ago.”
His attention returned to the TV as the ash discussion narrowed.
Male anchor: How far can the ash travel?
Stan the geologist: It depends on the size of the particle and the energy in the atmosphere. The ash column has already reached, uh, tens of thousands of feet into the sky. I believe visible ash is falling in eleven states as of midnight, eastern time. Smaller particles will almost certainly circumnavigate the globe.
Boone rubbed his eyes. The crowd in the lounge thinned, though I couldn’t imagine sleeping, like dozing while video of a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers played in super-slow-mo right in front of you.
Mia yawned. “I think I’ll head to bed,” she said. “Though I’d thought about stopping over at Christine’s.”
I smirked at her. “No, you weren’t,” I said. “I’ll see you in awhile.”
She waggled her fingers over her shoulder as she left.
“Subtle,” Boone said with a laugh. He pointed at my water bottle. “Is that your drink? Can I have a slug?”
I handed him my pink WCC bottle. We’d kissed a bunch in the last few weeks, yet there was something nice about sharing a drink, like my germs were already his germs. Most girls wouldn’t be excited by such a mundane event. Many girls would have leapt at Mia’s offer to clear out of our room for the night.
Well, no one would ever accuse me of being easy, and that seemed to be okay with Boone. I sat with my head against his shoulder. His thumb rubbed my collarbone. We shared my H2O while the newscasters repeated stories of devastation and offered new prophesies of doom.
Surreal didn’t start to cover it.
I woke up late on Saturday. Rain splattered against the window. Mia snored lightly with her mouth hanging open. Her eyelashes made dark crescents against her pale cheeks, even without mascara.
I tugged the sheet over my head, wondered why I wore yesterday’s T-shirt. Something important to remember…. Mmm, my shoulder smelled of Boone’s deodorant because—I smiled sleepily—I’d been tucked under his armpit for hours on the lounge sofa. I stretched like a satisfied cat until I remembered we’d been watching the ever-spreading ash cloud that, by two a.m., had insinuated into the jet stream and gained momentum in its aggressive eastern movement.
Maybe the eruption stopped while I slept.
I shoved my feet into dollar store flip-flops for the walk to the bathroom. I heard the TV in the lounge blare the phrase “ongoing eruption” and decided ignorance would be bliss this morning.
Mia yawned when I returned to the room. “Yuck. Rain,” she complained, her face much more innocent and ordinary without makeup. “I wanted to walk down to the vintage store.” She peered out the water-streaked window. “It doesn’t look too bad. Wanna come?”
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. I definitely didn’t feel like studying, but I also couldn’t sit still. The Copperheads football team played somewhere in Ohio today. All the hungover misfits might already be on their way, riding with Boone as usual. I opened my laptop to check the school website. “They’re still having the game, and the president of the college issued a special message reassuring parents the administration is monitoring the local situation closely.”
Mia staggered out the door to go to the bathroom.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and my red floral rain boots. My North Face rain jacket covered me almost to my knees. Mia went the umbrella route, shielding herself with a huge green and white cone adorned with an ornate country club logo.
We splashed over to breakfast then hoofed it downtown. “So,” Mia said as she skirted a puddle deep enough to swamp her high-top Converses, “Sir Hotness seems to be developing quite the tendre for you, my dear.” She looked at me from eyes freshly rimmed in her casual Saturday liner, one-eighth inch wide, flared at the outer corner.
I didn’t say anything. Not ’cuz I didn’t trust Mia with my deepest secrets. I did. I simply didn’t know what to say.
“You should have seen the other girls when he walked in last night and put his arm around you. The two of you are a brilliant match. You’ll be the toast of the season.”
I kept my head down so the hood of my coat protected my face from the drizzle.
“What is it?” Mia asked. I could tell from the way her voice lowered she wasn’t teasing me anymore. “Aren’t you as into him as you thought you’d be?”
“No, it isn’t that. For sure, it isn’t that. I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen. Like, I didn’t know he was coming over last night, and I don’t know when I’ll see him again. We aren’t really dating. We’re kind of running into each other.”
“You want him to wine and dine you?”
“No. You know I’m not like that. I mean…I don’t know what I mean.” I sighed. “The whole world might be blowing up and Boone Ramer might be into me, and—gah!—so much uncertainty all at the same time. And then I feel guilt because I know there are people dying under that dirty cloud on the satellite while I sit there totally psyched Boone is drinking out of my water bottle.”
Mia laughed and shook off her umbrella at the door to the thrift store. “And I thought I felt conflicted sometimes. You’re a hot mess.”
She shopped here partly due to her money situation, but also because of her eclectic tastes. She walked straight to a pair of striped bell-bottom jeans in autumn colors, something out of the 1970s. They were absolutely hideous on the hanger, and I already knew she’d rock them. She’d pair them with chunky boots and a fuzzy brown top, she said. If I tried the same thing, I’d look like I’d raid
ed some hippie’s closet.
I held Mia’s umbrella while she flicked through the racks. I’d bought clothes here a couple of times, but ended up with a pilled sweater the color of the inside of a hot dog and a pair of jeans with a zipper so stiffly resistant I’d nearly peed myself the first time I wore them. Now I left the hunting and gathering to the pro.
“Looks like Pucci.” She draped a flamboyantly swirled scarf around her neck. She grabbed another scarf in sedate blues to tie it in a headband around my skull, fussing until she’d made a jaunty bow by my left ear, the tails hanging down over my wet shoulder. She turned me toward a full-length mirror. The bottom half of me looked confident, with the bright boots and bare knees, one hand stuffed in a pocket while the other held Mia’s umbrella like a walking stick. The top half? Questionable.
I smiled at Mia in the mirror, and she smiled back.
“You know, sister-friend, you are the last person who should worry. If the world was blowing up, your parents would already be here to rescue you. And I think Boone isn’t the type to make a big deal out of things. Kind of like you,” she said with a nudge to my shoulder. “I mean, if you want a dozen roses or something, I can send him a text.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, appalled.
We returned the scarves to the rack. “I hope I don’t get lice,” I muttered.
She laughed. “Stop worrying. You can come to Jersey with me for the apocalypse. We’re resilient, like cockroaches. We’ll be the last living humans on earth, believe me.”
She paid seven dollars for the jeans and two tight tops. The rain had almost stopped so I unzipped my coat, letting the warm, humid air slip under the waterproof layer. “Look at how high gas has already gone,” I said, pointing at a mini-mart.
“Probably the hurricane. The gulf is all jacked up.”
“The news said last night some states are pulling their emergency power crews out of the southeast to be ready for the ash, if it comes.”
“What does ash have to do with electricity?” Mia asked.
“Who knows?” I said, wishing ignorance really was bliss. It mostly felt like blindness.
Restlessness. I had loads of studying to do on Sunday. I had a paper to write. I had tons to read in everything except calculus. I caught myself cruising the Internet over and over, reading the same news, checking Facebook, texting Dad. Mom ran him ragged as the ash cloud nudged north and west of them, like dye poured into the jet stream. A wave of it oozed less noticeably over Nebraska and other states south and east of Yellowstone.
Text from Sara:
I stared across the room. A shiver went down my spine. My parents didn’t garden. Had they gone completely off the deep end, or were we really headed for subsistence agriculture within forty-eight hours of blast off?
The uncertainty made me crazy. Was kale, one of those disgusting veggies Mom made for her and Dad but I’d never eaten?
I leaped off the bed to change into some biking clothes and fill the water bladder of my small backpack. My biking shoes, with their metal clips under the balls of my feet, alternated between tap dance clicks and death skids on the vinyl stair treads. The derailleur —the thingie to move the chain to the selected sprocket—clanged with the rear wheel’s descent of each step.
I rode south, toward the open countryside. After a few miles of light traffic, I cranked along a two lane country road, maintaining the same cadence while changing gears with the rolling landscape. Initial goose bumps from the wash of cool air gave way to a sheen of sweat.
Wind whistled through the vents on my helmet. Worries evaporated. My world narrowed to the shoulder of the road spinning out in front of me. Ragweed nodded down to touch the gravel. Fallen leaves stuck tight to the pavement. My nose wrinkled at a road-killed groundhog, a day or two aged. Gag. Leave it behind. Ride into the wind.
I’d ridden this route before so I knew about ten miles out I’d rest in a farmer’s driveway. My legs felt strong right now. I might ride farther today.
Awareness of another biker pretty far back slowly penetrated. Whoever tailed me closed a substantial gap over a couple of miles.
I thought about turning around before brick ranchers gave way to isolated farmland, but I didn’t want to shorten my ride. Before I’d left campus, I’d started the tracking app on my smartphone to ping Mia with my location. Maybe that, and the confidence and certainty pumped through my veins by the exercise, gave me a false sense of security.
I decided to keep going.
Gravel crunched in the driveway leading to a square farmhouse house with white siding, a matching barn, and a tall blue silo. From a half mile away the homestead oozed peace, tidiness, the promise of simplicity.
The other biker pulled in right behind me. “I thought that might be you. I swear, I’m not stalking you,” Boone said with a smile, though something in his eyes suggested he might honestly be worried I thought he watched my every move or something. As if. He took several gasping breaths. “I guess great minds think alike.”
“It’s a good day for a ride,” I agreed. “I should study all afternoon but….”
“Me, too. I couldn’t sit still.”
I knew how to operate on my own plan and decided I’d keep doing my thing. I unclipped the tube from my pack—essentially a long flexible straw to suck the water through—and took a deep drink. I noticed Boone did the same from his pack. He’d sweated through his quick-dry shirt, just as I had through my favorite jersey, in deep blue with an Indiana bike shop’s logo. I’d thankfully worn my usual skort to disguise the biking short butt. I pulled a mocha energy gel out of the pocket in the back of my shirt and offered it to Boone.
His tawny eyebrows rose. “No, thanks.”
He ate a protein bar retrieved from the cargo pocket of his loose shorts while I eyed his bike, a run-of-the-mill mountain bike, black with bright green artwork, hard tail, 26er. Good brand, lightweight, but nothing special. Not that it mattered, except items of curiosity about Boone germinated like the fragile sprouts in orderly rows bracketing the drive.
“Winter wheat looks good,” Boone said.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“I’m gonna keep going for a few miles,” I said when I’d caught my breath.
He nodded and took another drink from his pack. “Mind if I tag along?”
“Sure.” I pushed off and clipped in, wildly aware Sir Hotness could be looking directly at my ass for the next ten to fifteen miles.
We rode, the faint whir of the chains on the sprockets and the hum of our knobby tires punctuated by the click of our changing gears. I never forgot Boone trailed to my left, but got comfortable with the idea. He didn’t try to chat with me or change my route, and he kept up without any trouble.
We just rode.
We pushed deeper into farmland before looping back toward town. I stopped after ten miles. We would enter traffic soon.
Sweat stains darkened our shirts. I knew I couldn’t be looking my best with my hair tucked under my helmet and my face red and shiny. I pulled out an energy bar this time while Boone scarfed down a banana.
He tossed the peel into the weeds. “You set a good pace, Biker-girl,” he said, still breathing hard.
“You can lead the rest of the way back,” I said. “I don’t want to wear you out.”
His eyes raked me up and down. “You don’t have enough gas in that lean little tank to wear me down, Biker-girl. Not this year.”
I grinned, liking the nickname and the challenge.
We pushed off again. “Hey, we’re gonna ride by that park near campus, right? Do you want to cool down there for a while?” he called.
“Okay,” I said, purposely forgetting about the chapters waiting to be read and the paper to be written.
We found a patch of sunlight in the otherwise shady park.
I hadn’t considered the need to take off my bike helmet in my acceptance of this stop. I did what he did. I tugged it off and forced my fingers through my hair, pulling out my hairband and po
nytail in the process.
We both stretched for a few minutes, then Boone jogged across the street to a coffee shop to get us each a soda, and he bought a huge chocolate chip cookie and a newspaper, too. He flopped down in the grass, facing me as we split the cookie. I rotated to sit shoulder to shoulder when he opened the paper. The sun warmed my back and everything felt perfectly right with the world.
Until I read the scary headlines.
“Have you heard from your parents?” I asked.
He pointed to a paragraph about cell service. “I couldn’t get through yesterday, but Mom called me, late. They’re worried about Drew. I spent most of last night surfing the Internet, trying to find people to contact to let him know what’s going on when he comes out of the wilderness.”
“He should be safe up there, though,” I said.
“Yeah, but he practically runs our ranch now. Dad knows what to do, but it’s a lot for him. He won’t admit it, but he gets tired easily. We’d all feel better if Drew helped call the shots. I offered to go home. They both said no.”
“Is there ash there yet?”
“Mom says yes. Dad said it’s the usual Nebraska grit.”
“Who do you believe?”
“Mom. She’s the realist in the family, bordering on pessimist.”
I leaned against him, loving the solidity of his shoulder, even if we were both damp and probably smelly. Our two bikes lay on the grass, side by side, and the couplehood gave me the same pathetic pleasure his drink from my water bottle had on Friday.
He bumped his elbow against my arm. “Sorry I didn’t text you or anything yesterday. I got caught up in Alaska emergency services.”
“No biggie. Who all did you try?”