Natural Disasters

by J. K. Wise

  My eyes fly to Jared’s. He doesn’t look away, he doesn’t blush, and he doesn’t say anything. I’m deep into his brown eyes, the same eyes I’ve looked into since we were kids. I don’t want to look away from him and back into the ugly world just above the surface.

  Matt Randle clears his throat. “When do you think you’ll see your parents again?” he asks.

  Jared shakes his head. It’s a small motion, almost imperceptible, but I understand. Neither of us have mentioned our parents.

  “I don’t know. They’ve got a lot going on at home,” he says. “And right now, this is where we need to be. It isn’t safe on my street. It isn’t safe here either. But today and tomorrow and the next day, I want to be where people are trying to stand together. If the rest of our town is going to start making sense out of this mess, it has to happen right here.”

  “I’ve learned about slavery and segregation in history class, and I’ve wondered how people back then could be so stupid and hateful. I guess I ignored all the little ways that I saw that same kind of hate all of the time. Stupid comments in the locker room, the way that someone would treat me in a store….how the guys on my team talk about getting great food on the Southside and then about the ‘beaners’ who live in that neighborhood in the next breath. Yeah, it makes me mad. My Tia and my cousins live on the Southside. I live on the Northside. There’s no difference between us, but my friends think I’m a different kind of brown because of my address.

  “Yesterday at school, this asshole says that I’m a Mexican who’s trying to take something that doesn’t belong to me, and he’s talking about Melanie. Mel and I have lived next to each other our whole lives, and suddenly I’m in the ‘other’ column? Because some earthquake makes people scared there isn’t enough shit on the shelves of the stores to go around?” Jared takes my hand again, and I can’t look away from him. No one can. His voice is shaking when he starts talking again.

  “I’ve been angry, but it took an earthquake to jar that anger loose and make me say it. All of those things have been little injuries that I ignored, because it was easier looking past it. I never wanted to be the guy who cried ‘racist.’ And I didn’t even see that every time I let someone make a joke or treat me differently, I was edging this town closer to where we are now.

  “Before the earthquake, I didn’t see. But since then, I’ve seen a guy throw a metal can at a woman’s head for a loaf of bread. Yesterday, I saw two gangs of men shoot at each other because they didn’t speak enough of the same language to get out of each other’s way. And for the past two weeks, I’ve watched my friends laugh in the halls and drink beer at parties, pretending not to see what’s going on here. I can’t do that anymore.” Jared looks around at the crowd of people gathering to listen to us and Matt Randle, “These people down here, they can see what’s going on. So for now, I’m going to stay right here.”

  I hold my breath for a second. Jared looks surprised, as if he weren’t expecting that many words to come out of his mouth. People clap. I hear someone say “me too” and “you go, kid,” and other things like that in the crowd. Jared’s face is already red from how worked up he got during his response, but now, I can tell he’s embarrassed too. Don’t, I want to whisper, but I don’t want to water down his words.

  Instead, I squeeze his hand, and for once, I stop myself from doing the other dumb thing I want to do, which is kiss him in front of all these people.

  “Damn, bro. That was deep,” Chris Robbins says, but he gives him one of those slapping-hands handshakes that guys know how to do at birth. He half-hugs him, his awkward and proud friend.

  Mr. Randle takes a few pictures of us standing in front of the memorials. He takes a few pictures of me holding a single candle that someone left next to a brown stuffed bear.

  As he snaps the pictures, people walk away from where they were listening to our interview. As the group parts, I see one of the cameramen from a TV van. He wears sunglasses in the back of the circle around us, and he’s nodding his head. One corner of his mouth turns up, and in that moment, he is Alec in the crowd at the swim meet.

  I shake the image out of my head. Alec seems a million miles away, and Jared stands just a few feet away from me. When his eyes stay on me, it’s a comfort instead of a distraction. Is it possible that another person could make all things better, even this impossible place, so far from our homes, with our parents’ lies on our minds? But right now, in this moment, Jared is the only home I need, and I think he might actually feel the same way.

  Chapter 28

  Half Submerged

  When the interview is over, we walk back to Theta Chi. My legs are like rubber underneath me, and Melanie looks like she’s going to fall over.

  “Mel, when was the last time you slept?”

  She doesn’t look over at me as she shakes her head, her chin dropping to her chest. “I don’t know.”

  I walk her around into the Theta Chi house and upstairs to the library where I found her earlier. She drops onto a dusty couch and tucks her legs up behind her. Her eyelids close and her forehead relaxes. I pick up her feet and sit at the other side of the couch, setting her sneakered feet on my lap. I watch her settle into sleep with a shudder.

  I lay my head back against the wall behind me. My body hums inside from exhaustion and tear gas, and I know I need sleep too. I rewind through all the parts of this day, from waking up on Will’s floor, finding Melanie in the kitchen, fighting with Robbins, and behind it all, I can’t get rid of Mel’s words. “Only Jared.”

  I’m home to her, she said. I wish I knew what that means. Home is pretty messed up right now.

  If being with Melanie were happening before the quake, there would be rules. I’m a dude; I’ve got game. I would ask her out. We’d go to a party. I’d kiss her in my car. I’d text her everyday, she’d always text back, and I’d know that she was into me. Eventually, the rest of the world would get that we were talking, and they would call us a couple. That’s how we would know we were together.

  I don’t know how to work it now. There is no “rest of the world.” No parents. No school. It’s just Melanie and me, and we can do whatever we want and be whatever we are.

  I close my eyes. Damn, my head hurts. I always let my parents, teachers…hell, I even let Stina make rules for me. Who knew that all this time, my choices were always mine to make? It took this earthquake that no one saw coming to make me realize that I’m actually in control of what happens to me. What? How does that make sense? I don’t know, but it does…

  Melanie moves a little in her sleep. Her lips curl down a little, and her forehead is smooth and freckled. I’m afraid to look away from her. She is still and sweet and damn near perfect with her hand tucked under her chin. The way her shirt wraps around her waist. The noise she makes when she breathes out, almost a snore, but for her, there should be a different word for that sound. Her eyebrows are so smooth, as perfect as McDonald’s arches over her eyes. I’ve never even noticed that girls have eyebrows. I mean, I knew they were up there. That just wasn’t a girl-part that I looked at. With Mel, there isn’t a part of her that I don’t want to memorize, to lock away, like if I can capture her in my mind, I can keep her near me forever. A frat-house refugee isn’t a role I ever thought I would be in, but I sure-as-hell wouldn’t trade it. Not if that meant that I couldn’t be with Mel on this couch right now.

  She hypnotizes me. I feel myself breathing in the same rhythm with her. I reach out my hand to touch the bare skin of her shoulder, but I stop myself. I don’t want to be creepy. She’s like a magnet for me. How did I live next door to her for all of these year and concentrate on anything else?

  When she put her hand in mine earlier, she could have lead me straight into a fire. I would have followed with a smile on my face. It’s alm
ost too much, all of this feeling; it’s overwhelming, like a huge wave that keeps knocking me face-flat on my favorite beach. I don’t know where to keep all the things that I think about her, about us, about the past week, about the next week…

  Dad and Mom met when they were in high school. I wonder if Dad ever looked at Mom when she was sleeping. He must have. Did he watch her sleep? Did he memorize her eyebrows? Wow, it seems super-creepy when I think about it like that. Did Mom look perfect to Dad, too?

  I hear footsteps at the door, and Will pops his head in.

  “We’re grilling hot dogs on the roof, if you guys are hungry. One of the guys went on a beer run,” he says. “And your buddy Chris is looking for you.”

  I nod back to him. A cookout on the fraternity roof with a lovely view of the occupied campus with a side dish of tear gas. What a wonderful life.

  My stomach is making some strange sounds, though, so I won’t argue. I haven’t eaten since the crackers in Will’s room earlier, and I’m not sure if Melanie has eaten at all today. I move Mel’s feet off my lap, and she murmurs some unintelligible syllables without opening her eyes. I leave her on the couch. She needs the rest.

  After I eat a half-dozen hot dogs and drink a Coke, I feel more like a human. Things are calmer now. The police are still lined up along the perimeter of the grass in full riot gear, but the number of people filling the yard hasn’t grown any larger. Oh man, though, the shrine is at least ten times larger. From up here, I see homemade posters and cards, enlarged photos of faces surrounded by flags, candles, toys, It all swirls around, placed in the grass in an impromptu pattern, laid out so that people can walk between the rows of things left behind in memory of the dead, the hurt, and the missing.

  Everyone is searching for a place to put the things that no longer have a place.

  . . . . .

  Robbins is down with waiting until morning to look for Corrina. Our newspaper story will roll out in the morning, and even though I think it’s long shot, Corrina might use the paper’s contact info to get in touch with Melanie. We can’t be out after dark anyway. Curfews.

  After Melanie wakes from her nap, she and I go for a walk. “Where are we going?” Melanie asks as we leave Theta Chi and walk away from the mall.

  “Nowhere,” I answer. “I just can’t sit around there any more.”

  “We don’t have long until curfew.”

  The sky is turning pink and yellow as the sun sets on another day. I wonder what my parents are doing right now. Is Dad home yet? Does he know about Mom? I shake my head to let those thoughts slip away.

  “What is it?” Melanie asks, catching my frown.

  “I was just thinking about Mom and Dad. I wonder what’s going to happen. Will they split up? And what about your Dad and my mom? Are they going to be a thing?” I shake my head again. “Too weird…”

  “I don’t care. I’m never going back.” She kicks a rock down the road.

  “Melanie, you can’t live in Theta Chi forever. We have to go home eventually,” I try to sound like I believe it.

  “We do? For what?” she snorts. “For school? There is no school. For my family? I can’t live in a house with those liars.”

  “Your parents love you. And school will open again soon, I’m sure,” I say, but even as I say the words, she shakes her head, blond braids flying.

  “Are you sure about any of that? You can’t be sure. And my parents…that’s their life, not mine. I thought that our lives took up the same space, but I was wrong. It was never like that. I just didn’t know.”

  We reach Sorority Row. This whole block looks untouched by the earthquake. Tall trees reach over the narrow street, and grassy yards grow in smooth and unbroken green squares. It’s shocking how normal everything looks. Some things fall. Some things crumble. Some things remain.

  Melanie takes a deep breath. “Do you smell that?” she asks.

  “Smoke and chemicals?” I answer as we walk past bright pink bourganvillas on Cherry Avenue.

  “Mesquite,” she answers, and I take another deep inhale. She’s right; underneath the smell of chaos is that desert smell of burning mesquite wood. “That smell has always been the smell of Winter to me. The end of school swim season.”

  It’s a sweet, dark smoke that smells like a desert, star-filled sky. When we turn off of Cherry Street onto Park, the world lights up. Will was right, this street has power, and it isn’t from generators. Melanie stops in front of an adobe house with bright green shutters and flowers in the beds on the front walk. A window shines brightly from the light inside, and a group of people are laughing around a table, passing dishes and eating their dinner.

  “Look. I sat around the dinner table with my parents the night before last. Crazy,” she says, her voice, flat.

  Crossing over to the next yard, I see an emerald green glow from behind a broken brick wall and some overgrown oleandar bushes. “Hey, check this out, Mel. Some blocks have all the luck.”

  She walks across the grass to the side of a huge tudor house. Alpha Phi is written on a wooden sign near the front walk. “Is this another fraternity house?”

  “I think it’s a sorority. Check it out, the pool is still holding water.”

  She freezes in mid-step. Her eyes narrow. “What did you say? Where?”

  I nod my head over to the body of water, and she walks, cautiously, as if approaching a dangerous animal.

  When we squeeze through the hedge, I hear her exhale a deep breath. I look up at the huge house. A few lights shine through thin, colorful curtains, but mostly, the windows are dark.

  Without another word, she pulls off her sweatshirt and steps out of her shoes. My heart lurches into my throat. She walks into the shadow, and without looking back at me, she pulls her shirt off and steps out of her shorts. I know that I should look away, but I can’t.

  She faces the edge of the pool and uses her lean, tan arms to ease herself into the water without a splash. Pushing back, she silently drifts away from the edge and floats, her face turned up to the dark sky. The water divides her: her submerged half is uniformly emerald, like the skin of a creature from another world; the rest of her, above the water, is shadowed. She closes her eyes, making small circles in the water with her hands to stay afloat. Her fingers fan out, then together again like webs.

  She is a creature like none other. I can’t take my eyes off of her, and she is completely unaware of me. She drifts, eyes closed, in that different world that belongs only to her. She flips over and lazily crawls through the water, her arms carving troughs in the surface, her legs fluttering, never breaking the surface enough to create a splash. A trail of bubbles rise up from her mouth as she exhales into the water. She swims all of the yards to the other side of the pool without taking a breath, and when she settles against the edge, she rests her head on her hands like a pillow, elbows out to the sides to hold onto the edge.

  I don’t want to move. I don’t want her to remember that I’m here. I don’t want to ruin it for her. I see her shiver, but she doesn’t lift her head. Her back rises and falls in rhythm, and I wait, silently standing, until she comes back to this world.

  Chapter 29

  Romeo and Juliet

  I slice through the water, taking care not to make too much noise. Wa-ter, wa-ter. When I push off to float, I am hyper-aware of Jared’s eyes on me. What I’m wearing isn’t much less than my practice suit. I’ve been photographed in swim gear for the newspaper, even. This is different. The water feels different on my skin. He’s seeing me, real and bare, and I have nothing to hide.

  I hang on the edge of the pool, my head resting on my hands. Ja-red. Ja-red, I breathe in rhythm. I take a breath. I think about what I am going to say. I
shouldn’t say it. I should stay here, in my own mind. I should leave him out of it. I wait for minutes for the impulse, the consideration to pass, but my mind keeps coming back to the words that I finally say, turning to face him.

  “Are you coming in?”

  I wait for the sea of regret than I usually feel after I say something raw and stupid, but it doesn’t come. I want too much for Jared to be in the water with me.

  He stands, staring. He blinks and looks up at the dark building behind us. The only light is the green pool light reflecting onto him in waves. Without a word, he kicks off his shoes and grabs the back of his shirt in one movement. He pulls off his jeans, looking down and grinning a little, almost embarrassed, I think. Using the stairs, he splashes into the pool.

  “COLD!” he gasps, splashing as he jumps around, trying to keep as much of his body out of the water even while he’s standing in it.

  “Shhh!!!!” I shush. “We’re not supposed to be here. They could call the police.”

  “SHIT, Mel, this is cold. Freezing. Oh my God, I am freezing my ass off..”

  “Just wait a minute. You’ll get used to it. It isn’t that bad.”

  “You’re wrong. It is every, single bit that bad. Oh god, this is cold.” Jared stands, his arms crossed tightly in front of him, his shoulders shrugged up to his ears.

  “Try to relax. Shivering just uses up extra energy. Breathe into it.” I try to use the words that my coach says when we whine about the cold.

  Jared still stares at me, but now it’s more like I’m a crazy person. His teeth are chattering. It’s funny. I’m so used to cold practice mornings. I hate the cold water, but it’s a fact of swimming life. Practicing in warm water is way worse.

  “Sorry, I should have warned you.” I can’t help it, I have to laugh at him.

  He holds his arms around his body underwater. “Mel, this is crazy. I’m getting out.”