Natural Disasters

by J. K. Wise

  “Did you hear that Roberts is having another party tonight? We go back to school on Monday at Pima.”

  “Yeah, I saw that. Are you going tonight?”

  “I guess so.”

  “With Stina?”

  I shrug.

  “What’s going on with you guys?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. ‘Why?”

  He shrugs. “About an hour ago, Bre posted a picture of you and Christina fighting in the Northside parking lot.”

  Great. Breanna, one of Christina’s supposed friends. Why can’t people stay out of other people’s shit?

  “I went to school to check out the damage. Christina was there, and she’s mad at me, because I wasn’t at Ryan’s on Saturday,” I explain. “And then today, she was pissed off that I gave a ride to my neighbor.”

  Chris raises his eyebrows and nods at the door. “I need some water, dude. Come inside.” I follow him up the steps.

  His kitchen is a mess. Some of the ceiling fell in, and one whole wall is open to the outside except for a big sheet of plastic.

  “Wow, Chris. This is ghetto,” I say, trying to make a joke.

  He laughs, but it isn’t a happy sound. “Yeah, my parents are flipping out. I guess insurance is going to sort it all out, but it’s going to take forever. Dad brought some of those guys from work to start cleaning things up.” Chris’s dad is a contractor. His company built the new Northside gym that isn’t standing anymore.

  Chris grabs two bottles of water from the fridge and throws one across the kitchen to me. “We just got power back this morning, so these are cold. I’ve been staying at Kevin’s place.”

  “You can stay with us,” I offer.

  He shakes his head. “I’m cool now, but really, thanks for the offer. The rest of the house is messed up, but my room is cool. Dad and I stay up most of the night sitting in the driveway with these guys who work for him, drinking beers with .38s under our lawn chairs in case anyone tries to steal our shit.” He nods at the plastic wall. “Mom is staying at a resort with my sister.”

  “You’re guarding your house? That’s hardcore.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of looting, and the police’s hands are full. It’s crazy,” he finishes, shaking his head. Then, he changes the subject. “So Stina’s mad that you gave your neighbor a ride, huh? That’s Melanie? The swimmer?’

  I bristle. “Yeah, Melanie. You know her?”

  He chuckles. “Oh yeah, I know her.”

  I feel the rush that makes it hard not to punch him in the face. Red-hot quake anger, my new buddy since the collapse. “How do you know her?” I ask, trying not to clench my teeth.

  Robbins laughs again as he answers. “We’ve all gone to school together for ten fucking years, Portillo.” He looks at me, his eyebrow raised. “Why? You on that?”

  “Fuck you. She’s my neighbor. She’s like a sister. But earlier today, she said you were an asshole. And I was wondering why.”

  “Lots of people think I’m an asshole. Especially girls,” he answers. Everything he says is like the crack of the beam. He scowls, though, and it’s almost worse than when he was smiling. He takes a big swig of water, pausing a second before he swallows. “We kissed once, but she’s weird, dude. Not my type. You’re a nosy little bastard for someone who isn’t interested. Plus, are you playing around on Stina? That’s pretty stupid, Jared. Stina’s hot.”

  I answer, probably too quickly. “Yeah, Stina’s great. And Mel’s seeing Newton. I’m just trying to protect her from assholes like you.”

  He snorts. “I may be an asshole, but I’m not a douche like Newton.”

  Agreed. I change the subject. “So do you need help with your house?”

  “Sure, but really? It’s hot work in the sun.”

  “I don’t have anything else to do.”

  “Yeah. Stick around. Make yourself useful, water mooch,” he jokes, and we go back outside to lend a few hands.

  We spend the next hour loading bricks. I keep trying to figure it out how Chris Robbins and Melanie would find themselves kissing. It’s totally unthinkable. I know Robbins. He only goes for a Sure Thing.

  The other workers are a few years older than us. They talk about March Madness, but they’re speaking in Spanish. I stay quiet, but when this guy Stephan says that he thinks Arizona will get beat in the first round of the tournament, I can’t keep quiet.

  “¿Cómo puedes llamarte fan? La primera ronda?” I throw a few more bricks onto the broken pile.

  “Los Wildcats…este no es su año.”

  “Speak English, dude,” Chris mutters. “Or shut up.”

  “Dude, these guys speak English. Don’t be a dick.”

  Stephen shakes his head and goes to stack bricks behind the garage.

  “Yeah, well, this is America. We speak English here.”

  “Um, actually, you do. Stephen and I speak Spanish, white boy.”

  “Beaner,” he says to me.

  “Asshole.”

  It feels good to lift heavy bricks. When we’re done, my head is clearer.

  I say later to Chris and tell him that I’ll see him at Roberts party tonight. The road twists along the side of the mountain, and I take more care than usual on each switchback. Stina’s neighborhood is close to the base of the mountain. Every house is painted the same color with the same size and color of decorative rock in the front yards, and her house is at the end of a cul-de-sac. I’m going to make it better. I’m going to tell her the things that she needs to hear. I’m going to put things back where they were before they fell.

  When I pull up to her house, Christina is washing her little white car in the driveway wearing super-short denim and her bikini top. At first, she doesn’t see me, her brow wrinkled in concentration as she holds the green hose in one hand and scrubs the hood with a yellow shammy. I honk my horn, and when she looks up and sees me, her smile is painfully bright.

  I squint and walk over to her, stepping over the water running out of the hose and down into the shallow gutter that edges the unbroken asphalt street.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Party at Roberts’s

  When Alec comes to get me, my parents seem almost nervous. A guy has never picked me up to go anywhere, and they’re more curious about him than where we’re going. Alec is polite, and he tells them that we are meeting our friends at Ryan’s house. That should confuse them. What friends?

  When we get to the end of the street, Alec speeds up and drives fast down the two-laned stretch. There aren’t any street lights out here, and the houses sit a half-mile back from the road. Small, hard-to-see mailboxes and homemade signs mark individual driveways. Alec pulls off the pavement, and we drive on a rough entrance to the back of the Carters’ property that I’ve heard kids call “The Ranch.” We vibrate over metal cattle guards and duck as the soft palo verde tree branches sweep into the open Jeep. It hurts when I grab onto the roll bar with one of my messed up hands.

  People stand around a bonfire at the end of the dirt road, and Alec drives past it to park the Jeep. Crowds always make me nervous, and a high school party is the most petrifying event I can imagine.

  I recognize the purple Dodge parked next to the fire and the two identical boys who park next to the bus lane every day and play music so foul, I’m amazed the hall monitors don’t write them up. Tonight, the same music pounds out of their car while people laugh and dance, holding plastic cups. Alec glances over at me as he parks the Jeep in the desert away from the crowd.

  “You’ve never been here before?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not really a party kind of gi
rl.”

  He leans closer to me. My instinct is to pull away. His light eyes reflect the bonfire behind us. “I like how you are. Like you’re in a cloud.” Alec tilts his head, looking at me. “And you look great tonight.”

  I look down at my black tank top and jeans. The only thing I did differently tonight than any other night is wear my hair down, out of my usual braids. Still, the way he looks at me makes me feel pretty.

  “Come on, it’ll be fun, and if it isn’t, we’ll leave.” He reaches across me and opens my door. Earlier today, Jared reached across me too. For sixteen years, I’m invisible, and in one, crazy day, I’ve spent more time with boys than I’ve spent alone.

  We walk across the dirt. The bonfire is in a shallow pit, and a few picnic tables are randomly arranged around it. The only light is from the fire and the full, blue moon high in the sky. The land is flat, and a barn-ish building sits yards away from where cars are haphazardly parked. I know most of the people lounged against cars or sitting on the tables in small, moonlit groups from class or from sports. Some are kids I’ve known for years but haven’t talked to since we were in elementary school together, before I got in the water and started swimming.

  Everyone knows Alec. Ryan Carter comes over to us and slaps Alec on the back.

  “What’s up, Newt?” he asks, and he nods over to me. “Hey Melanie.”

  I nod back. I can’t believe he knows my name.

  “Grab some cups over there,” Ryan nods toward a Suburban with a keg in the back.

  I glance over, my eyes following his nod, and I see a crowd of people and Chris Robbins standing in the center, pumping the keg and laughing. A short, curvy girl holds onto the back pocket of his jeans that hang perfectly off his hips. He’s super tall, and his flannel button-up fits tightly across his broad shoulders. His face glows in the fire, and he hands a cup to the girl. Smiling Chris Robbins. He has all kinds of smiles.

  Alec starts to guide me over to the van to get a drink. I quickly scan the firelit crowd for someone, anyone I know. I wish Corrina were here. Across the way, I see Angie and Hannah, senior swim team captains, talking to two other girls. I really want to stay away from Chris, so I wave. Angie sees, and she waves back, slowly. That’s the nice thing about being clueless. No one is that surprised when you do something outside of normal.

  “Hey, I see Angie. I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  He nods.

  To gather courage, I pretend I’m walking up to the starting block as I make my way over to the girls. They open up their small circle and focus on me which makes me want to throw up. In the pool, I can put my head down and pretend that no one is watching me.

  “Wow, hey, Melanie, the girl who everyone’s talking about,” Angie says, and the other girls nod in agreement. Uh oh. “We heard about you and Alec. You’re here with him?”

  “What about us?” I ask, probably too defensively. I feel trapped. I try to stay cool.

  “Just that he asked you to Homecoming, and you guys are coming with us to dinner,” the older girl explains.

  “Oh, yeah. If Homecoming even happens,” I answer, trying to sound casual.

  “So you guys must be pretty friendly, then?” one of the other girls asks.

  “Yes, we’re friends,” I answer.

  The girls laugh, raising eyebrows at each other. Oh no. I must have gotten something wrong.

  “And Jared Portillo? He’s your friend too?” the other girl asks.

  I can feel the flush in my cheeks. “Jared’s my neighbor. Why?”

  They shrug. “You have a lot of new friends, Melanie. That’s all. You must be a really friendly person,” Hannah says, sweetly, and everyone laughs again. “There’s no love between those two, you know.”

  “Not since Jared ratted out Alec to their Coach,” Angie snorts.

  Hannah shakes her head. “That’s not how it went down, though. I was at that party. Jared wasn’t around. Why would he blow the whistle on the rest of the team?” She takes a long drink from her red plastic cup.

  I wonder if Hannah and Angie smoke and drink during the season when a natural disaster hasn’t broken all the nearby pools. No wonder I beat them every time.

  Hannah continues telling her tale about Jared and Alec. I try not to act too interested, but it’s hard. I can’t imagine Jared ratting on anyone.

  “Here’s what I heard from the other guys on Varsity. Alec told the Coach that the Seniors were partying over the summer, which, of course, they were, but the season hadn’t even started yet. To cover himself, Alec told the rest of the team that Jared was the one who talked to Coach. Alec wanted Jared’s position, and he wanted the rest of Varsity to think Jared was a rat.”

  “They seem okay with each other today,” I share, thinking about earlier on my street.

  “You were hanging out with both of them today?” Hannah says, even more sweetly than before. “Wow, Melanie, you’re very friendly.”

  The rest of the girls laugh again, and before I can tell them about the riot in the Safeway, Angie changes the subject.

  “Did you hear that Benji is in the hospital?” she tells the circle. “He was driving on the earthquake night, and he hit a downed light pole and went through the windshield. They say that he’s lucky he didn’t get electrocuted from the wires.”

  Oh no, smart, sweet Benji is on swim team. He’s quiet like me, usually, when I’m not being a social butterfly like tonight. Or a weird, wilted moth.

  “Is he going to be okay?” I ask.

  “Well, he broke his back, but he isn’t paralyzed. He’ll be the hospital for a while. And, Jenny Hepburn? Her whole house burned down from the earthquake. There was a gas leak, I guess, and the house caught on fire. They weren’t in it, though. Her whole family was out in the street when it went up. It took the fire department a half hour to get there, and by then, everything was gone. Their neighbor’s house was half burned too.”

  Wow, gas leaks. Go Dad.

  I look through the fire at the groups of people, drinking, smoking, laughing. The people on the other side look distorted. We are rootless, ash blown up into the dark sky. Most of these people were probably here in the Carters’ when the earthquake happened. And now they’re back here again.

  I tune back into Angie’s voice.

  “Then, my garage collapsed on our car, but my mom says she wanted a new car, and now she’ll have insurance money to get one,” Angie giggles. She’s tall and tan with a loud, high-pitched giggle that is easy to pick out in a crowd. Hannah looks bored with their conversation, and she downs the contents of her red plastic cup quickly.

  Hannah and I have been competing against each other on club teams for years. She’s intense, and I’ve only seen her smile a few times. Now, she gathers up her thick, dark hair into one hand, and she throws it over one shoulder. She reaches into her bag and takes out a pack of cigarettes. I’m surprised. She’s a great athlete, and she has swimmer’s asthma like me. When Hannah opens the pack, it’s empty except for one handrolled joint. I’ve never seen drugs before.

  “Ready?” Hannah asks Angie, and Angie frowns.

  “Not right here,” she says, glancing at me. She nods out in the direction of the open desert, and Hannah nods back. They start off into the desert, and the other two girls wander away. Then, Angie turns back around to me.

  “Coming?”

  I shrug and look over at Alec talking with Chris by the van.

  “Come on, Melanie. Alec won’t miss you for just a few minutes,” she says, almost like a dare.

  I don’t want to go over to him, so I follow Hannah and Angie into the desert. When we are away from the sight of the fire and into the moonlight, Ang
ie lights the joint and drags the smoke into her lungs, holding the paper away from her lipsticked mouth. She passes it to me, and I don’t know what to do.

  “I’ve never smoked anything before,” I say, and choking on her smoke, Angie laughs out a big cloud. Hannah smirks.

  “Yeah, I figured,” she says, snarkily. “Do you want me to hold it for you?”

  I shake my head.

  “Just don’t hold it too close to your mouth and go easy the first time,” her senior teammate instructs, like she’s giving me advice on my stroke or pacing. I hold the paper close to my lips and inhale. My lungs instantly rebel, and the smoke chokes me. I cough and retch, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. Hannah and Angie laugh and hand me a cup. I don’t like the taste, but the beer is ice-cold, and I drink it quickly to try to stop the burn in my chest.

  They pass the joint around the insulated circle centered around a single burning ember. When we have smoked as far as we can without burning our fingers, Hannah pulls a bobbie pin out of her hair to hold the roach. I watch her smoke the last of the joint and grind out the remaining paper in the desert dirt. I look up at the huge dark sky.

  What would it be like to always know what to do and to just do it, I wonder, as easy as pulling a pin out of your hair? Angie giggles. I try to find my way back, but I feel like I’m falling up instead of down. Only one thing will come into focus at a time. I look over at Hannah, and she stares back at me.

  “Like what you do in the water?” Hannah asks.

  I rewind my thoughts. “Did I say that out loud?”

  Both girls laugh, and then I start to laugh too.

  “So you showed up at school today with Jared Portillo,” Hannah says.

  Jared, I think. Is he here? The thought makes me laugh harder.

  “I was walking to school, and he stopped to give me a ride,” I try to explain, still giggling, my voice a faraway echo, lost in the night. “Jared smells like soap. And we almost got killed at the Safeway,” I say when I stop giggling. I can’t catch my breath, looking back at the bonfire that seems so far away.