Natural Disasters

by J. K. Wise

  Melanie looks out at the parking lot chaos. “I just want to be home,” she says.

  I feel like I’m going to throw up. My car is parked at the far end of the parking lot. “There’s no way that we are getting out in my car. Look at that mess.”

  “We can walk back to our houses. It’s only a half-mile or so from here,” she says. We skirt around the mayhem and stand at the busy corner, waiting for a green light.

  “Wow, I’ll bet you’re really glad I gave you ride today, huh?” I try to joke, and Melanie tries to smile.

  “I’m going to stop in here and wash my hands,” she tells me, nodding at the McDonald’s on the corner. I take her hands and hold them up, checking them out. “You can go on, Jared. You don’t have to wait for me.”

  “Please, Mel. You’re not walking home alone.” I’m mad at the ground for shaking, and I’m mad at Christina for not caring. I’m pissed off that people can’t be human to each other, and that Melanie’s hands are bleeding because some asshole cop cared more about the color of my skin than helping out a girl who was lying on the floor. Without thinking, I kick the stop light pole, hard. I yell out. Pain shoots through my Vans and up my leg.

  Damn, that really hurts, but at the same time, it feels better than anything else. I grimace and swear some more.

  Melanie laughs at me. ““Jared! Are you stupid? What was that for?”

  “So many things, Mel.” More police cars scream past on the way to the Safeway. I hold her shoulder, and we walk together across the street.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Walking Home

  Jared and I barely talk as we walk next to eight noisy lanes of non-stop traffic on Oracle Road. It’s a different world, though, once we make the turn onto our small side street. The tall mesquite trees and dense desert erase the traffic noise, and if it weren’t for the pain in my hands and the dirt and food all over Jared, this could be a nice walk. I trace the fine cuts on my palms with my thumbs. Ri-ot, ri-ot, I repeat in my mind in rhythm with my steps.

  Jared carries the water bottles that he bought for us at McDonald’s. When I reach for one, he unscrews the plastic top and hands the bottle to me, keeping his hand outstretched while I drink, waiting to take the bottle back from me. He’s limping a little.

  “So many things,” I say, repeating his words.

  “Yeah.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

  “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “Okay, well.” He thinks for a minute, like he’s trying to find a way to explain. “You know how you said that you felt sad watching all of the TV stuff about the earthquake?”

  I nod. “Sad at first. I couldn’t stop crying when people told their stories on TV. After a few days of watching every sad story, I still felt sad, but it was more like numb.”

  He shakes his head. “I wish I could feel numb, or even sad. But I feel angry, Mel, and it comes out of nowhere.”

  I nod again, mostly to myself since he’s looking down.

  “And then I feel out of control, and what good does it do? Being angry doesn’t change anything. Nothing changes anything. It doesn’t matter how I feel. People are still dead, and my friends still don’t give a shit.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. We’re walking in the middle of the road. Not one car passes us on this quiet street. “I heard on the radio about two people who were standing shoulder to shoulder when it happened. The roof fell in and killed one of them. The other guy got to walk away. Why one and not the other?”

  “It’s all random. None of it makes any sense,” I say.

  “But that’s it. You live or you die; your luck is good or bad. And before this earthquake, it was like that. I just didn’t get it. It doesn’t matter what I think or what I do. And it never mattered. It makes me angry.”

  “Maybe it’s God?” I ask.

  “Maybe. But if it’s God, God has a shitty way of working everything.”

  “I probably would have gotten crushed today if you hadn’t pulled me off the Safeway floor. Maybe God put you there to help me.”

  “And God made me brown so some asshole cop could push us back down again?”

  “Maybe.” I have this crazy thought that I want to take his hand and hold it or something. I don’t, though. I kick a rock down the street, and it bounces up and over a faintly painted speed bump. Ran-dom, ran-dom.

  “Hey, remember when this used to be our bus stop?” he asks as we walk past a cluster of mailboxes at the end of a dirt road.

  “Yeah, our parents made us walk to the bus stop together everyday.”

  Our parents. The moonlight. The look on his mom’s face. The pictures from that night bounce through my head. I kick the rock further down the street. I wish I knew whether I really saw what I think I saw.

  “What’s on your mind when you’re quiet like that?” he asks.

  I really don’t want to go into the thing I saw between our parents when it’s probably nothing. Why drag Jared into my crazy head?

  “Seriously. You go a million miles away. And not just now. A lot of the time. At school, actually, most of the time.”

  “You see me at school?”

  He laughs. “Yeah, Mel. Maybe you’ve seen me around too?”

  Everyone sees Jared Portillo. I just didn’t think that he saw me.

  “So where do you go?” he repeats.

  “You mean when I’m spacing out?” I look down. “I know, everyone thinks I’m a freak. I’ve heard girls from my team talking about me. I don’t know, usually I’m thinking about swimming, you know?”

  “Is that what you were thinking about now?”

  “No.”

  Jared laughs. “Mysterious Melanie. You weren’t like that when we were little kids. You were so obnoxious when we walked to the bus stop. You always wanted to play princess.”

  “Whatever. You always wanted to play superhero,” I remember. “Before you got cool.”

  Jared snorts. “Oh yeah, I’m really cool.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “No? You don’t think you’re cool hanging out with your cool boy posse in front of the locker room everyday?”

  “I didn’t think you cared much about that stuff.”

  “I don’t care. I’m a hundred miles from cool. When I talk to people, I always say dumb things.” I step over a deep fissure that jags across the concrete, another small scar from the quake. “You just don’t notice, because you’ve known me so long. I don’t have time to be cool and to swim fast too, you know? So being faster is always going to be more important to me.”

  “That is cool, Melanie. I wish the guys on our team were focused like you.”

  “Well, swim is all that matters to me. It’s different for the guys you hang out with,” I say, thinking about the gossip that I float through in the locker room before and after practice.

  “Different how?” he asks.

  “Like life beyond football, and girls…I guess. Angie and the other girls talk about your friends and all the girls you’re with. Lots of girls.” As soon as I say it, I wish I could go back and press delete.

  “You can’t believe everything you hear in the locker room, Mel.” Now he just sounds embarrassed.

  “I know, but I don’t get it. Everything about boys confuses me,” I say, honestly. He looks at me for a long time. “What? I already told you I’m a freak. I just don’t get boys and dating and stuff like that.”

  “Well, I’m not like those guys. And I have a girlfriend.” And then he adds, under his breath, “I guess.”

  I wonder what he and Chr
istina argued about at Northside today.

  I’ve never been on a date. I’ve only kissed two boys in my life. Alec Newton and Chris. I cringe when I think about him. Tap that, I heard him say about me.

  “Chris Robbins,” I say out loud, speaking from inside of my memory.

  “Robbins? What about him? He’s my buddy,” he says.

  “He’s an asshole,” I say, looking down, knowing my voice doesn’t sound like me.

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” He slows down his pace.

  “He just is.” My face feels flushed in the sun, and I look down at the cuts on my hands again.

  “How do you know Robbins?” Jared’s eyes are on me.

  I kick another rock down the road. “Doesn’t everyone know him?” I didn’t want to kiss Chris when he kissed me. I didn’t want to kiss Alec either.

  I stop walking without knowing why, and I look at Jared. I want him to read something in my mind. But what? The air isn’t moving at all, like the day is holding its breath. I’ve never had a moment like this before, and I don’t even know what it is.

  We’re still standing in the road when I hear the loud music from a car speeding up behind us, and Jared pulls me by the arm to the shoulder of our street. When I see the white Jeep, I know who it is, and Jared does too. It’s Alec. Music plays loudly out the window as he slows down next to us.

  “Hey Portillo, where’s your car, dude?” he calls out of the window. He puts his Jeep in park and turns to see both of us for real. His face drops when he sees blood and dirt still on my shirt from the Safeway floor, and Jared, covered in tomatoes. “Holy shit, Mel, what happened to you guys?” He looks back and forth between me and Jared. My heart pounds now, remembering.

  “We were in the middle of a riot, dude,” Jared answers.

  I hate it when guys get their dude on when they talk to other guys. I watch Alec climb from the bucket seat, his jeans, perfectly faded, a black rubber wristband around his tan arm, his sunglasses so dark, I can barely see his eyes. Jared tells him about the scene at the Safeway, and Alec interrupts him mid-sentence.

  “Hey, you mean up here on the corner? I just heard about that on the radio. I guess it was a bunch of Mexicans from the southside,” he says, and then he laughs. “I mean, no disrespect or anything.”

  Jared isn’t laughing. “Why are you driving down my street?”

  Alec looks over to me. “Um, actually, I was driving down Melanie’s street.”

  I blush instantly.

  “I just left a message for you, Mel, at your house,” he says, examining my flushed face before his eyes drop to my ripped-up hands. “Are you sure you’re okay? Do you need to go to Urgent Care or something?”

  “No, I’m fine, thanks to Jared, really.” I force a laugh that doesn’t make any sense and sounds like a snort.

  Jared smiles with his eyes on Alec. “See, all that waiting for me to save you paid off. Princess and superhero?” he offers.

  Alec looks back and forth between us again.

  “My parents used to make Jared walk me to the bus stop,” I say, and when Alec doesn’t say anything, I realize that information doesn’t actually make any sense. “When we were little. A long time ago. And we would play these games, like, little kid games, and I wanted to be a Princess, like Snow White? Then, I mean. Not anymore. That was a long time ago, I was, like six? Or maybe older? But not as old as I am now. I don’t want to be a princess now. That would be lame…”

  From behind his sunglasses, Alec gives me that look he gave me at the swim meet, the one that makes me feel like a zoo animal or a social experiment.

  “You’re okay, Mel?” Jared asks.

  I nod, because I don’t know what else to do. He takes off towards his house.

  “Hey dude, are you going to Roberts’ place tonight?” Alec calls after him. “We have to go back to school next Monday, so Roberts said he wants to make the most of the ‘state of emergency’ or whatever,” Alec says.

  Jared frowns. “Are you sure about Monday? We were up at school earlier, and it’s a wreck.”

  Alec raises his eyebrows at the ‘we.’ I’m in perma-blush now.

  “Yeah, school is still closed, but classes are going to be held at Pima Community College.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you tonight,” Jared says to me.

  “Maybe,” Alec answers as I shake my head. He nods for me to get in the Jeep. I wince as I pull myself up. My hands hurt. I wonder if they will hurt when I get to swim again? I miss being underwater.

  “So, how about it? Do you want to go to a party tonight?” Alec asks.

  I try to sound casual. “I’ve never been to a party.”

  “That changes tonight,” he says, and he takes my hand and squeezes it. It hurts, and I cringe, but he doesn’t notice. I look down and my shirt is covered with dust and blood. Yuck.

  “I look awful.”

  “Naw,” Alec grins. “You look pretty tough, actually. Sounds like a pretty intense scene. I heard on the radio that people were taken away in ambulances.”

  “It was awful. People were awful.” I turn and look back to where Jared is still walking down the street toward our houses.

  Alec turns too. “What’s with you and Portillo?” he asks, casually. I can’t see his eyes.

  “We live next door to each other.”

  “So he’s your neighbor? The brown boy next door?” he asks, smiling.

  “Why do you call him that? That’s rude,” I say.

  Alec doesn’t answer. He reaches out his hand and rubs at the blood on my cheek, ignoring when I flinch. “Come on, you need to get home.”

  He puts the Jeep in gear and grinds it around, u-turning in the middle of the quiet street. Jared must be inside of his house, because he’s nowhere in sight when Alec pulls into my driveway.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Setting Things Back

  Dammit. Alec Newton really gets to me.

  I flop onto the couch in my room, and I don’t bother to turn on the lights. My body hurts all over from being shoved at the Safeway today, and my foot throbs from where I kicked that pole.

  I turn the TV to SportsCenter and throw the remote on the table. I stand up. Why am I standing up? I grab a Gatorade out of the fridge, but I’m not thirsty, so I set it down on the night table, unopened.

  Alec Newton is an asshole.

  Asshole.

  Melanie said that Chris Robbins is an asshole, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard her say anything like that about anyone.

  Where did Melanie come from all of the sudden? She’s lived next door to me forever, and I give her rides and stuff like that. I was always just being polite. Now, she’s hanging out with Alec, and she’s calling Chris Robbins an asshole. And tonight, she’s probably going to Roberts’s place with Alec. And I’ll be there, maybe with Christina. Maybe not. After our quick talk in the parking lot this morning, I don’t know where we stand, and I’m not sure if I care.

  “You weren’t home last night,” Christina said to me in the parking lot this morning at Northside.

  “I didn’t know you were coming by. I went for a run.”

  “I told your mom to tell you I came by.”

  Mom told me.

  The look that Christina gave Melanie this morning, well…that wasn’t a pleasant look. Why did I ask Melanie to stay in the car? If she hadn’t stayed, she wouldn’t have been at the Safeway for the riot. I can’t believe that happened, but I’m making a promise to myself right now to start believing that any messed up thing can happen.

  Why not Melanie, then? Why don’t I just ask her
out? So she’s my neighbor. She’s cute, and she’s weird, but I like listening to her talk. And I like being quiet with her too.

  Okay, Melanie. That could happen maybe. But first, I have to end it with Stina. No more playing. I’m not that guy.

  I take a breath, and then, I take a quick shower.

  I get in my car, and I start to drive to Stina’s house. But when I get to the turn off, I keep going. Something’s driving this car, and it isn’t me, or at least, not the me that’s in control of anything in my life anymore.

  I turn down a small, winding road that leads up into the Tucson Mountains. Chris Robbins’s house is the only house at the end of this winding road. I’ve been here millions of times before, for birthdays and little league parties when we were young, and basketball and beers in the backyard since we’ve grown up. His place is old but big, built forever ago into the side of the Tucson Mountains. When I drive closer, I can see that the side of his house isn’t there anymore. A crew of people are loading bricks into a wheelbarrow, and Chris works with them.

  He sees my car pull up, and he smiles and waves, wiping sweat off his face with his shirt.

  “Hey, dude. I didn’t know…” What do I say? I didn’t know your house fell down?

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t know until I got home on Sunday. I spent the earthquake night at Ryan’s place. You weren’t there,” he says.

  “I was down with Will , remember? At Theta Chi.”

  “Yeah? Is he okay?” he asks.

  “I guess. He’s alive. I haven’t talked to him since that night.”

  Thick dust flying in front of the dim emergency lights. Will standing, screaming.

  “I hear that was some crazy shit downtown,” he says.

  I nod, watching the workers stack the bricks in two piles, broken and intact. “Crazy awful.”

  “So what’s going on? What are you up to?” he asks.