Natural Disasters

by J. K. Wise

  Fire goes off in my brain again.

  “Melanie, you’re out of it, and he was…” I can’t finish saying it. “Alec’s a dick. Do you want to call the police? Or go to the doctor?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I don’t think so anyway…”

  I lead Melanie over to my car and open the door. “Well, there’s always a fight at Carter’s place. Tonight, I get to be the story.”

  Mel pulls the door shut, and I walk around, put the car in gear, and take off through the desert. She stares out the window. Eminem plays quietly. I take the backroads towards our houses.

  “Should you go home?” I ask. “I mean, you’re stoned and pretty messed up, and your clothes…”

  She looks down at herself. “My purse. I think it’s in Alec’s car.”

  “Do you want to go back for it?” I ask, but she’s shaking her head, no, before I can finish the question.

  “No, no, no. I don’t want to see Alec right now.” She shrinks lower in the seat.

  “Right now? How about ever?” I say, my voice full of poison. I should have killed him.

  “I don’t even know what happened. It’s not really his fault. I mean, I kissed him earlier tonight. I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” Her shoulders collapse forward. “Why did I get high with Hannah and Angie?”

  “Melanie, stop.” I can’t stand to listen to this anymore.

  She turns to look at me, and her eyes lower to my hands that are gripping the steering wheel so tightly, the veins stand out in my arms.

  “Seriously, Mel, so what if you kissed him? That doesn’t mean you want him when you’re dead to the world.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t want him at all.” She looks out the window for a while, and then, she swallows, hard. “He asked me to Homecoming, and everyone is so shocked, like it’s the weirdest thing in the world that someone would ask me out.”

  “Have you gotten high before?”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve never even seen weed before. I’ve never been to a party. When Hannah and Angie asked me to come with them, I didn’t know what else to do. I know that sounds lame…”

  “When I showed up, I saw Alec talking with Robbins.”

  She’s quiet for a minute.

  “I just don’t like Chris.” She looks down at her hands, and she looks out the window. “I don’t want to think about any of this anymore, and I still have to get past my parents. They’re going to be waiting up for me.” Her face hardens like she’s getting ready for the worst thing ever.

  “Look, why don’t you come to my house? My mom went out with her friends tonight, and it’s still pretty early. She never comes downstairs to my room anyway. You can clean up and get right before you go home, okay?”

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “Mel, you’re not going to get me in trouble with anyone,” I say, thinking more about Stina than my mom.

  She thinks for a minute before she nods. “Okay, Jared, if you really mean it.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I turn up the music a little for the rest of the short ride home, and Melanie slumps down.

  At the intersection before I turn into our neighborhood, I see the ruined Texaco station, the roof collapsed for days now. The fluorescent lights shine inside of the ruined building. No one has turned out the lights, and no one has started to repair it. There isn’t even a fence around it. How long is it going to lie there, crumbled, I wonder, before anyone cares enough to do something to either make it better or shut it down?

  Chapter Seventeen

  In the Basement

  This is what happens when I try to live out of water. I check the time; I can’t believe it’s only ten o’clock. Two hours until I have to be home, but my parents have never done much with my curfew. They never had a reason to worry about what I was doing before or after midnight.

  The Portillos’ house is a split-level. Jared’s bedroom is in the basement, and there’s a sliding glass door out to the backyard.

  “I remember when this whole thing was your dad’s office,” I say, walking across Wilber the Wildcat’s face on his shaggy red and blue rug.

  “Yeah, well, I started playing electric guitar in middle-school, so they moved me down here.” He stretches his long arms over his head, and his fingers almost brush the low ceiling.

  The last time I was in Jared’s room was in December when the Portillos had their holiday bash like they do every year. All the kids hung out down here while our parents got drunk upstairs. Jared played Xbox with some other guys, and Christina sat on his lap. The large room had been packed with kids from school. It was exactly the kind of scene that makes me want to hide in a corner, out of sight, so that’s basically what I did.

  Now, it’s just the two of us. I look around his uber-clean room. I recognize the couch and chairs that used to be in the family room upstairs until Mrs. Portillo redecorated. They’re arranged around the TV near the center of the room. His bed is pushed into the far corner, and a tall lamp sits on a small table next to the bed. A book sits on the small, dorm-style fridge that serves as a small table with a lamp in another corner. Jared walks over to the fridge and pulls out two bottles of water.

  Jared yawns and then grimaces, and the split on his face cracks.

  “What are you going to tell your parents about your face?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “What are you going to tell your parents about yours?”

  My hand flies up to my cheek. “What’s wrong with my face?”

  “Nothing, Mel,” he says. “I’ll tell my parents that I got into a fight with Alec Newton and that he had it coming.”

  I must have a weird look or something, because his angry face softens. “I won’t tell them why unless you want me to. Seriously, Mel. Do you want me to call the police? Or to talk to your parents? Newton deserves to go down for hurting you.”

  “He didn’t hurt me like that. I don’t know if he would have hurt me more. I just don’t know.”

  We sit in silence.

  “Hey, it’s almost ten,” he says. He grabs the remote as he sinks into the couch and throws his feet up on the table. “Let’s see what’s on the news about the Safeway riot.”

  I stand next to the couch awkwardly, and I hold Alec’s jacket closed around me. I should really go home. My shirt is ruined, and I don’t want this jacket on me anymore. Jared jumps up when he sees the way I’m standing. He walks over to his dresser and pulls out a flannel. “You can put this on,” he offers, holding out the shirt.

  I take it from him and run one hand over the worn fabric. “I’ve seen you wear this shirt before.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, well, it’s one of my favorite shirts.”

  “I never notice what people wear. The girls on my team, they all notice people’s clothes and what they look like, how people do their hair. They talk about stuff like that all the time.” I’m babbling, but I can’t get myself to stop.

  “Well, I guess you noticed my shirt,” Jared says, sitting down. He watches the commercials on TV with a half-smile on his bruised face. I don’t know what to do or say or if I should say anything, and I turn and walk into his bathroom and close the door. When I see my own face in the mirror, I gasp.

  My face is smeared with dirt. Even my white-blond hair is brown from the desert dirt. I almost never wear makeup, but earlier today, Corrina talked me into eye makeup. Big mistake, because now, mascara has dripped and dried in the path of my tears from earlier.

  I splash cold water on my face to wash and to wake myself up. I stare at my own face in the mirror for a few minutes. My eyes are someone else’s, dark and blurry, different
from when they are red from the pool water and the sun. When I try to make sense out of the things that I have seen this week, all I can see is ugly. The ugliness of disaster, the ugliness of the strangers in the store. Alec, who turned from beautiful into ugly in an hour’s time. My own ugly eyes, bloodshot and dumb.

  I change my shirt quickly. When I walk out of the bathroom, Jared lounges on the couch, his eyes sleepy as he rests his head back on a chenille pillow. He holds an icepack to his face.

  “Jared, I have to ask you a question,” I say.

  He winces as he moves the icepack away from his head and turns to look at me. “Sorry,” I say, hating to make him hurt.

  “I’m okay, Mel. What’s up?”

  “Is your head okay?”

  “That’s what you wanted to ask me?” he jokes. He sighs, relaxing back into the couch pillows. “It hurts a little, but I’ll be better in the morning.”

  “Your parents won’t freak out?”

  “It’s just my mom. Dad’s still away. She’s used to it. I come home bruised up all the time from football or wrestling with the guys,” he shrugs. “What did you really want to ask me?”

  I walk to the chair and sit. I don’t know where to look. I can’t look at him.

  “You look good in my shirt,” he teases.

  “Well, thanks for it. I look so awful. I can’t believe it. Why didn’t you tell me my face was such a mess?”

  “Whatever, Mel. Maybe I don’t notice what people look like either.”

  “Really?”

  He shakes his head. “No. But I don’t think you look awful.”

  We sit, not looking at each other as the news begins on TV.

  I clear my throat. “Your dad is out of town still?”

  “Yeah,” he answers.

  “Does he travel a lot?” I ask, trying to find the right way to ask what I want to know.

  Jared shrugs. “I guess. Same as always. It’s all business stuff. Why?”

  “Have you noticed anything weird about your parents, Jared?”

  “My parents are always weird.”

  I take a huge breath in and exhale slowly.

  Jared looks more closely at my face. “What, Melanie?”

  I’m feeling a little dizzy again. “I think I saw something weird, Jared, with my dad.”

  “Yeah?”

  “On the night of the earthquake. With your mom.”

  “My mom?” he says, not understanding. Then, he looks past me to the TV. “Hey Mel, check it out.”

  I turn my head to the news, willing the room to stop spinning. The newscast shows the front of the Safeway earlier today. I see the fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars parked outside the store. A blond woman with helmet hair points to the store and spouts words that I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t been there.

  Since the disasterous earthquake shook Tucson last Friday night, residents of the hard-hit Southside neighborhoods have had a difficult time finding basic supplies like bread, water, and milk in local grocery stores. Today, when a local radio station announced a Safeway that had a surplus of inventory, a rush of people crowded into the store. When supplies ran out at the store on the northwest side, the shoppers turned violent.

  The scene looks different but recognizable from the surveillance camera footage.

  “Jared, that’s us,” I say as I jump up and point to the top of the screen. The picture is grainy, but I see Jared in the chaos, pushing people out of my way. In the footage, he reaches down, finds my hand, and lifts me. He carries me out of the screenview, blocking the rioters who get in our way.

  Seeing it happen from the outside gives me that same feeling as his half-smile did a few minutes ago. I look over at him, but Jared watches the TV intently.

  On the screen, the image switches back to the news reporter who explains that four people were sent from the riot to Northwest Medical with injuries.

  At the International Border, wait times increased to over two hours as US citizens wait to enter Mexico, where food prices have remained stable as Arizona prices skyrocket due to shortage.

  The news continues with lists of shelters for families and food banks for people who can’t find food. Water stations for people without clean water sources. I look down at the water bottle in my hand.

  “What were you saying about my mom?” Jared says, bringing me back up to the surface again.

  “I saw your mom and my dad holding hands in my backyard after the earthquake. And then your mom saw me standing there, and she pulled away from my dad.”

  Jared frowns. “What do you mean, holding hands?”

  “Just what I said. At first, I thought he was just comforting her, you know? Because she was by herself, and it was really scary? But then, she saw me, and she gave me a look. It was weird. I can’t get it out of my head. Of all the messed up things this week, I can’t get rid of that.”

  This time, Jared snorts. “You think our parents are together, like together together?”

  “I don’t know. Handholding and a weird look. That’s all I’ve got,” I say.

  Jared lifts the icepack to his temple again. “You just made my head start hurting again, Mel.” He’s trying to make a joke, but his voice cracks, and it doesn’t come out right. “So what are you going to do? Are you going to say something to your dad?”

  I shake my head. “No. That would be too weird. What would I say? And what if I’m totally wrong?” I run my hand through my hair and slump deeper in the chair. “I’m so tired, Jared. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”

  “I feel that.” He takes a drink from his water bottle. “My dad is gone a lot, but when he’s home, my mom and dad are kind of sickening, honestly. And I can’t imagine my mom…and no offense, but your dad?” Jared shudders, and I do too.

  “I know, it’s so super gross. I mean, it’s nasty enough to imagine my mom and dad…” I don’t know how to finish, and my face turns red.

  “Boning?” Jared finishes, grinning.

  “Ew, yuck,” I stop him, gagging a little for real. I take a deep breath, and I try to say what I’m feeling. I hope, for once, that I don’t mess it up.

  “Listen, Jared. I wish you hadn’t gotten into it with Alec. I don’t know what happened. One minute I was standing by the fire, and then, I was in the Jeep.” I know that my face is purple-red, I’m so embarrassed.

  Jared clears his throat. “Well, I’m glad you’re okay,” he says, his voice low.

  I want to look at him, but instead, I settle my head into my arm. I feel so, so heavy, and I can hardly keep my eyes open all of the sudden.

  “You still have an hour until you need to be home,” he says. “Why don’t you chill? I’m just going to watch TV anyway. It would be good for you to sleep it off a little.”

  “I’m not high anymore.”

  “Well, you’re just talking a lot more than I’ve heard you talk in the last decade,” he teases.

  “You’re easy to talk to,” I say, closing my eyes a little more, my head still resting on the chair.

  “You’re the only one who thinks so,” he says.

  I’m drifting off, listening to the commercials on TV and finally finding that place in my bubble where my mind goes quiet.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Waking Up

  The TV wakes me. My feet are numb, propped up on a pillow on the table. I must have fallen asleep on the couch again. Sleep hasn’t come easily, not since the earthquake.

  Before I get my eyes all the way open, the throb of my face and my ribs remind me of last night and Newton. I groan and wiggle
my feet to bring the feeling back, and then, I glance over.

  Melanie sleeps in the chair facing me. Her body is curled up in an impossible position, and her head rests in the crook of her arm. I’ve never seen a girl sleep before except in class, not even Stina. Melanie’s hair falls over most of her face, but I can see the freckles across her nose. Her legs, toned and tucked under her are an even, dark tan. She’s practically glowing in the dim morning light of my room. I’m hypnotized by the even rise and fall of her body with her breath. I can’t look away.

  Alec touched her last night. He kissed her. I don’t want any guy touching her, ever. I want to wrap her up in a blanket and keep her safe from all of the bad shit that’s going on everywhere that I look.

  After last night’s scene, she’s going to hear about it from some of the girls at school, and Christina is only going to fan the flames. Girls love a fight between two guys over a girl, and they hate it too. That’s how everyone is going to spin the brawl between Alec and me.

  I don’t know why I did it. I don’t even know for sure what I saw. I saw Alec over Mel in the Jeep, and something snapped in me, like Incredible Hunk-style rage.

  Sun is creeping up over the back wall, and I can hear Mom upstairs, moving around in the kitchen. I don’t want Mel to get in trouble with her parents, and I’m not sure what Mom would do if she found Melanie asleep down here.

  “Hey, Mel,” I say to her quietly from the couch.

  She makes a little noise like a yawn with her eyes still closed, and she moves in the chair, her hair falling away from her face. Her lips are parted a little.

  Damn. There’s something not right and also perfect about watching her wake up.

  “Melanie. You have to get home.” I’m trying to sound gentle, but my voice comes out low and froggy.

  Her eyes open, sleepy and slow at first. She stretches, her long arms curling up over the top of the chair and her back arching, the plaid of my shirt loose over her body. Her heavy-lidded eyes fix on me, and her lips soften into a lazy, dreamy smile.