Natural Disasters

by J. K. Wise

  He shrugs and clears his throat. “Stina asked me if you guys were coming with us to dinner.”

  “Dinner? That’s a part of Homecoming?”

  Jared doesn’t answer.

  “You’re friends with Alec?”

  “No.” Jared shakes his head. “We have a lot of the same friends, though.” He doesn’t elaborate, so I don’t push it. He’s in a mood. I wonder why he offered to give me a ride.

  “I don’t really know him that well,” I say, honestly. The car is quiet without Jared’s crazy music playing. We drive with just the sound of the wind rushing through the open windows.

  When we turn the corner into the parking lot, I catch my breath. Northside. Destroyed. It wasn’t just the gym that collapsed. The shelters that cover the breezeways and outdoor hallways are down. Corners of the brick buildings have broken apart. The Math and Science staircase is a pile in the middle of the courtyard, and the green trees that grow through the brick flooring are crushed under the weight of the fallen bricks. I wasn’t expecting to care so much, but now, I can’t help it, it feels like a punch in the stomach. This is my school. The tears start to fall under my sunglasses. Will they rebuild the school? Will I finish high school somewhere else? Jared doesn’t move either, and we sit in the car, staring at Northside while the engine runs.

  I look over at Jared, and past him, his girlfriend stands in the parking lot a few feet away from the car. Jared looks over and sees her too. He exhales slowly.

  “Damn, here we go,” he mutters. “ Without turning to me, he says, “I’ll be back in a minute.” He climbs out of the car and walks over to Christina. They stand face-to-face. I can’t hear what they’re saying, and it’s none of my business anyway. He doesn’t seem very happy to see her.

  They talk back and forth, and then, Christina’s voice gets louder.

  “Do this? What are you talking about, Jared? Do what?” she yells, and then, she focuses in on me. I look away, but I can still hear her through the open window of the car. “What is she doing in your car, Jared?”

  I don’t know what to do. I mean, there’s no way that Christina can actually be worried about me. Everyone knows Christina. I’m nobody except when I’m in the pool.

  “I’m giving her a ride,” I hear Jared say, and when I look back over, he’s standing away from his girlfriend with his arms crossed in front of his chest. A small group of people in the parking lot inch closer, trying to get a scoop on the action. I want to get out of the car, but then what? Join the spectators? Stand alone next to the car, like I’m eavesdropping?

  Jared strides back to the car and gets in, slamming the door. Without saying a word, he grinds the car into gear and takes off. His face is all squished up, and he’s holding onto the steering wheel so tightly, his fingers might break off. He drives away, fast.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t stay there,” he growls as we tear out of the parking lot. Then, he slams on the breaks. I fly forward, and my seatbelt catches me.

  “What the hell? Are you trying to kill me?” I grab onto the seatbelt that is eating into my collarbone.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he says, but he’s not really talking to me. He turns to me and asks, “Do you want to get out?” His face is more of a stare than a scowl. I’ve never seen him psycho like this.

  “Yeah. I’m going to work on the school.” I reach for the door handle, but before I can pull it open, Jared reaches across the seat and touches my arm. All of the air is going out of him.

  “Sorry, Mel. Really, I’m sorry I’m so crazy. I just can’t deal with anyone, not since Friday. I can’t unsee what I saw, you know? Of course you don’t. And no one gets it. Especially Stina.”

  “What did you see?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. The car is still idling in the middle of the road.

  “Look, Melanie, Christina told me that no one is working on the school, okay? The engineers say it isn’t safe enough until they figure out what needs to be knocked down and what they can save. I’ll take you home though. Or wherever you want to go.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll walk home. I know none of this has anything to do with me, but still, I don’t want to be on Christina Miller’s bad side, seriously. I mean, I know we’re neighbors and whatnot, but she’s a senior…”

  Jared laughs. “Don’t worry, Mel. That scene with Christina, that’s not your problem. She knows that.”

  I open the car door, and Jared reaches across me, his chest leaning into me as he grabs the door and pulls it shut. “We’re in the middle of the street, Mel. Come on, I’m sorry. I’ll drive you home, okay?”

  I let him pull the door shut. His face is close to mine, but then, he sits back against his seat and away from me. So much for my bubble. I can’t seem to keep boys out of my personal space lately. Must be a side effect from structural damage and natural disaster. All of this tension makes me laugh.

  “Oh, now you’re laughing at my pain?” Jared asks, but he isn’t angry anymore.

  “No, I’m not laughing at you. Everything is so unreal, you know? So when normal things happen, like girlfriends being mad at boyfriends, it almost feels like a joke,” I try to explain.

  He nods. “It’s all so horror show. That earthquake fucked me up.”

  “You seem fine to me,” I lie.

  “Thanks, Mel.”

  We drive off, back down the street and away from the crumbled school.

  “I have to stop at the store on my way home. Cool?” His dark brown hair falls across his forehead. He isn’t scowling anymore. His face is relaxed, and my eyes follow his strong jaw down to his almost smiling mouth.

  Oh man. Jared Portillo, my neighbor.

  Chapter Twelve

  Safeway

  Cars are lined up for a block to make turn into the Safeway parking lot. I glance over at Melanie. She’s staring out the window at the line of cars. Her hair is down around her face.

  ‘Wow, it’s busy like Christmas. Is there some big sale or something? Maybe it’s Girl Scout Cookie Time,” she says.

  I remember when Melanie used to sell Girl Scout cookies in that green uniform. I circle the parking lot, looking for a space, and we pass a bunch of police cars in front of the Safeway.

  “My mom’s going to kick my ass if I don’t bring home a chicken and some milk. Do you want to wait here?”

  She has her legs tucked up under her in the bucket seat, and it’s hard to look away. She’s small, but she doesn’t look like a little girl, like she did a few nights ago.

  I’m not blind.

  I’m not deaf either.

  I heard what Chris Robins said when Melanie walked past the locker room at the beginning of the school year. She was tan from lifeguarding at the Racquet Club all summer, and she had that absent look that I know well. It was his usual jackass shit. Tap that, huh?

  “Be cool, Chris, that’s my neighbor,” I had said, and the guys laughed. Someone whistled, and Melanie turned to look. When she started to smile and wave at me, she saw the rest of the guys looking at her and looked away. She was wearing a short denim skirt and a halter that showed off her shoulders. Who wouldn’t check her out? Shit. Sometimes it’s hard being a guy.

  Now, she’s sitting in my car, looking cute enough to make Stina angry.

  “I’ll come with you,” she says. “I need a water and some gum.”

  The entrance to the store is crowded, and it’s clear that something’s up. People shove through the door as the store greeters try to control the crowd. Even with their shouted instructions to stay to the right and wait for a cart, the people still crush forward. I grab Mel’s arm to keep her with me as
people push into us. I don’t want her lost in this crowd.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” I say.

  “Give me a break. It’s a busy store, Jared. I think we can handle it.”

  “Fine.” I agree, but as soon as we are ten feet inside the door, I wish I had made her wait outside. A crowd stands in the narrow space where the shopping carts usually are. I see a man grab for a woman’s cart. They argue in Spanish. The guy pulls the cart towards himself, and the woman’s little girl screams, her legs still caught in the seat. The mom hits the man, still shouting at him. I mutter under my breath in my own mix of English and Spanish.

  “What’s that?” Melanie asks.

  Before I can answer, she gets pushed away from me by a rush from behind us. I turn to see who pushed, ready to kick some ass, but before I can step up, I’m moved along in a wave of people. This feels more like a scrimmage than Safeway. The aisles are filled all the way to the back of the store, and shoppers are clearing the shelves. Another push sends my face into the back of some guy who turns and pushes me back into another man who is helping an older lady, and now, I’m really pissed. I can see Melanie’s white-blond hair in the crowd, but she’s getting shoved away from where I’m standing. Forget this. This is crazy.

  Last summer at the Rise Against concert, I was jumping and screaming along with everyone else in the crowd when I looked at the bouncers’ faces at the base of the stage facing out into the audience. Their eyes narrowed at the same moment as they saw what was happening behind me. I had the thought: time to get the hell out. A second later, a huge surge of fans rushed the stage. The crowd lifted me off my feet. I was pushed between two people to the edge of the crowd. I muscled my way out of there, but right where I had been standing, fists flew, people’s faces were bashed in, and happy violence took off. The whole crowd had made a decision at the same time: rules no longer apply.

  Right now, in the Safeway, I’m having the same moment.

  Time to get the hell out.

  I see a glass bottle fly through the air like it’s in slow motion. It hits a woman in the back of the head. Her head snaps forward as the glass shatters into her skull, and the crowd surges toward her from the momentum behind, then backward as people near her scream push away. I have first-snap heartbeat fever, but this is no football game. The woman’s hair is wet with dark blood. Her hands wrap around the back of her head. More people yell, and the crowd turns to look. The people nearest to the woman push people away from her, and a little boy cries loudly as he is pushed to the floor. Someone’s elbow hit me in the ribs. I turn to look for Mel.

  One of the cashiers stands on his conveyor belt, and he yells over the crowd, “Hey, keep it cool everyone. Watch out for others,” trying to quell the animal behavior that has taken over. He’s my age, so of course, no one listens to him. The police jump onto the counter next to him, and someone yells out and points to the bleeding woman.

  I push past the people in front of me. Body to body, people make a wall, and I can’t see Melanie’s white hair anywhere. To get through the crowd, I’m pushing too, but I try not to hurt anyone. I see people grab food from the shelves and run out of the store with whatever they can carry. A policeman whacks a kid across the shoulders with a wooden club. He drops to the floor, and the cop doesn’t even look down.

  I fling forward, propelled by a push behind me. More police are yelling now. A big surge lands me chest first into a display of tomatoes, crushing red slime into my t-shirt. The metal bar at the bottom of the display hits me right under the ribs, and my head spins from pain as the breath flies out of me. People are shoving harder, so even though it hurts, I push my hands into the sickening softness of squashed tomatoes and stand up. This is fucking crazy, I think for the hundredth time in the past few days. Adrenaline buzzes through my ears, and then, I see her on the floor.

  Melanie is balled up against a tall shelf of bread. A man sees her on the floor, and he reaches a hand to help her. Before she can grab it, the crowd pushes him along with the current, knocking him into the next shelf with so much force, it falls over. The next line of bodies trip and fall and pile up. Melanie can’t get up, and people around her grab anything they can reach from the shelves, loaves of bread, English muffins, hot dog buns. She’s only a few yards away from me, and now she’s holding her hands on her ears, trying to protect her head from the feet and carts that push forward into the store.

  I put my shoulder down, and I don’t care who I knock out of the way. All I can think is get Mel and get out. When I reach her, she’s still lying on the floor. I pick her up; she’s feather light. She looks through her hands at my face.

  “What is happening? What is this?” she calls out, and I get a little light-headed when I see blood on her face. Her hands are cut and bleeding. I stand, carrying her cradle-style. Behind us, like an unending wave, bodies push to the front of the store.

  As many people push, that same number of people stand on top of whatever they can use to get above the crowd, their phones out, filming. Camera phones are held high in the air over the crowd, arms extended as they are swept into walls, displays, and shelves.

  “Hey,” I yell at a woman as I hold Melanie. “Drop your phone and give us a hand.” On my right, a few feet away, a cop sees me holding Melanie.

  “Put her down,” he shouts.

  Like hell I will. I turn and duck just in time to miss a punch thrown at my face. If my hands weren’t full, I would swing back. I’m red with anger and full of crazy.

  Something whacks my ear so hard, I wonder if it’s still there. A quick look to my right, and I see the cop holding the club he just swung at me, falling and thrown off balance by the crowd. Goddammit.

  “Get out of here and go back home, or I’ll arrest all of you for trespassing.” His ragged voice carries over the chaos of the riot. All of you? Who’s he talking to?

  I look around quickly to figure out a plan. As more shelves of food are knocked down, men and woman scramble on the floor to grab food and run. I can’t go back to the front of the store, that’s for sure. The cops are trying to block the entrance and stop people from stealing stuff. To the back of the store, things aren’t much better, but most of the craziness is at the entrance.

  I spot the door to the back room, and carrying Mel, I follow a few people who are already busting into the storeroom. I get us through the swinging door. The red EXIT sign glows through the dimly lit fluorescents. We push the loading bay door outside into the daylight. Others follow us through the warehouse, and they run out behind us, their hands full of food. I sit Melanie down on the edge of the concrete block by the dumpster behind the store.

  I collapse a little. We try to catch our breath.

  “What the hell?” I think out loud, and then, I turn to Melanie, “We need to get you to a doctor, now.”

  She shakes her head and holds out her hands.

  “I’m okay, I think. I tried to push myself up off the floor, and there was a broken jar of something. I cut my hands, but I’m okay.”

  I hold her wrist and try to brush off one of her hands, but when she winces, I stop. “We should get out of here.”

  “Can we just sit for a minute? I can’t go yet,” she says.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my pack of smokes. It’s hard to light the match, my hands are shaking so hard.

  “I thought you didn’t really smoke,” she says.

  “I guess I do now.” I try to settle myself. I can’t believe what just happened in there. More people are starting to pour out the back door. They ignore us. Some are yelling; some are crying. Sirens sound out in front of the store just before a loud alarm sounds.

  All of you, the cop said. Of course. All of the Mexicans is what he meant. Never mind that I grew up
less than a mile from here.

  I stand up and reach out to hold Melanie’s arm and help her up. She holds her hands in front of her, looking curiously at her own blood. “C’mon Mel. You need to get home, at least, and then your parents can take you to the doctor. Can you really walk?”

  “I don’t know,” she answers unsurely, but when I help her to her feet, and she seems okay. She looks at me closely. “What about you? Are you okay? Your ear is bleeding a little.”

  I reach up and touch the wetness by my throbbing ear, and when I see the blood on my hand, a wave of something very ugly sweeps over me. A rage pulses through me more strongly than the pulse I can feel in my ear. Mel’s holding my arms with her bleeding hands, and when I try to push her away, she scowls even more. “Just cool it for a second,” she says.

  “Cool it? Who the fuck is that asshole to tell me where I can be?”

  “The cop? Come on, let’s get out of here.” She starts to walk.

  “You don’t get it.”

  “I get it fine. I’m here too, remember?”

  It’s hard not to walk back in the store and let that cop know where he can stick it, but Mel needs to get out of here, and I’m not letting her brave through that crazy alone.

  We clear the corner of the building, and the scene out front is completely unreal. People are shouting at each other in the parking lot mostly in Spanish, and the police wear riot gear as they line up outside of the Safeway. Cars are bumper to bumper.

  An ambulance sits, lights and sirens on, at the entrance to the strip mall, and the EMTs have abandoned it and are running across the asphalt to the entrance to the store. The store’s alarm rings continues to ring sharply through the sunny winter day. I walk up to a rent-a-cop standing out in front.

  “What is going on in there?” I ask.

  He looks down at my shirt, completely ruined with tomatoes and dirt. Oh, right.

  “Food riot. One of the radio stations reported that this Safeway still had stock, and people rushed it,” the security guard explains. “A lot of the harder hit areas have run out of food since the quake on Saturday.”