Escaping the Giant Wave

by Peg Kehret

“I don’t know,” I said. “If the worst is yet to come, we should keep running.” I stepped out from behind the tree.

  BeeBee did too. “Thank you, tree,” she said.

  “Thank you, Pansy,” I said. If she hadn’t alerted us that another wave was coming, we wouldn’t have made it behind the tree in time.

  I tried to put Pansy down but she whimpered so pathetically that I continued to hold her even though my arms ached. I turned on the flashlight and moved it slowly back and forth.

  “Everything’s changed,” BeeBee said.

  The woods we had walked through now looked as if loggers had chopped down trees at random and left them leaning haphazardly against each other.

  Much of the low undergrowth had washed away; what was left wore a thick layer of sand. A twisted piece of metal the size of a car’s bumper glinted in my light; I couldn’t tell what the metal had been, but I knew if it had come down on a person, it would have inflicted serious injury.

  The ground was littered with beach chairs, broken bicycles, and other odd pieces of man-made items that had been lifted by the water and transplanted here.

  I stopped my light on a large rectangular piece of wood that stuck out of the ground at an angle, one corner of it jammed into the dirt.

  “It’s a sign,” BeeBee said as she walked closer to it. “It’s the big sign from the front of the Totem Pole Inn!”

  The foot-high carved letters and the life-size totem faces were black from the fire. The sign had been mounted on two tall logs the size of telephone poles near the front door of our hotel. I thought of the power necessary to rip that heavy sign free and carry it over the top of the hill.

  “I wonder if Norm and Josie are okay,” BeeBee said.

  I was afraid they weren’t, since the wave had landed right where they had been, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t even want to think it.

  I couldn’t hold Pansy any longer. I set her down. The dog sniffed the sign, then rolled in the wet sand. Her fur was a mess, but it didn’t matter. She was alive. That’s all that mattered for Pansy, and for BeeBee and me. We were alive.

  I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Norm! Josie! Can you hear me?”

  My words floated away like soap bubbles.

  “We’d better keep going,” I said.

  “No. I can’t run any more. I’m worn out.”

  “There might be another wave, even bigger than the last one.”

  “I don’t care,” BeeBee said. “I’m too tired to run anymore; I need to rest.” Her face was pale, her arms were scratched from running through the woods, and I knew she wouldn’t make it much farther no matter how desperate our situation.

  My burned hand throbbed, my head ached, and my legs felt like rubber. BeeBee was right; we both needed to rest.

  “I don’t have the energy to keep running either,” I said. “If another wave comes this far, we’ll stand behind our big tree again and hope for the best.”

  “Good. I’m going to sit right here and wait for Mom and Dad to find us.” She plopped down on the trunk of a downed tree.

  I sat beside her. I doubted that anyone would find us, but if no more waves came, we could wait here until daylight. By then surely it would be safe to return to Fisher Beach.

  I wondered what was left of Fisher Beach and the town of Fisher. Had the small village survived? Was anyone there to broadcast an all-clear signal when it was safe to return?

  Where were Mom and Dad? Was the Elegant Empress unharmed somewhere out at sea—or had the tsunami waves destroyed it?

  What had happened to Norm and Josie?

  My mind overflowed with questions, but I didn’t know how to find any of the answers.

  11

  Each minute seemed like an hour.

  We sat on the fallen tree, listening for another giant wave. I kept the flashlight off, saving the batteries in case we needed to see.

  My mind was as weary as my body. The fire, the fear of a tsunami, and my worry about Mom and Dad had drained me of energy as much as climbing the hill and running through the woods had.

  Tired as I was, I worried that we shouldn’t stay where we were; we ought to keep going. When we first got to the top of the hill, we should have kept running rather than sitting on the bench. That decision had probably been fatal for Norm and Josie. Now we were sitting again instead of running farther inland. Was I making the same mistake twice?

  With so many trees down, the next wave would have less resistance. It might travel faster and farther. I fretted and stewed over the possibility, but I didn’t move. BeeBee and I were exhausted. If a bigger wave came now we wouldn’t be able to outrun it anyway.

  I had done my best to save us. Now I sat in the dark, and waited.

  The only sound was Pansy’s gentle snoring.

  BeeBee’s head kept drooping down, then jerking back up, the way it does when she falls asleep in the car.

  “Let’s sit on the ground,” I said, “and lean back against the tree.”

  We sat in the damp sand.

  “My clothes are getting dirty,” BeeBee said, “and my shoes are all wet. Mom won’t like that.”

  “It’s okay. Mom will be so glad to see us, she won’t care how dirty we are.”

  “I wonder if Daren drowned,” BeeBee said.

  “He should have come with us.”

  “I’m glad he didn’t.”

  The anger in her voice surprised me.

  “I didn’t tell Mom and Dad the truth about Daren,” BeeBee went on.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He hits me. At school he sneaks up behind me during recess and pushes me. Sometimes he pokes me with a pencil, and if I cry, he calls me a baby.”

  Outrage exploded inside me. I was far more furious at Daren for bullying BeeBee than I had ever been over getting hit myself. I wondered if Daren had picked on BeeBee because she was my sister. That possibility made me feel sick.

  “I never told on him because I was scared he’d do something worse to get even.”

  Remorse settled on me like a quilt; I felt its weight on my shoulders.

  “I know this is a terrible thing to say,” BeeBee continued, “but if Daren doesn’t come back, I won’t miss him.”

  I wouldn’t miss him either, but I hoped he was alive. If I never saw Daren again I would always regret letting him get away with hassling me for so long. I should have taken a stand with Daren years ago. If I hadn’t wanted to confront him myself, I should have talked to a teacher or my parents about the problem.

  I had always been afraid to tell him off, for the same reason BeeBee hadn’t told a teacher. I feared Daren would get angry and beat up on me. Now I saw that there are worse things in this life than getting thrashed, and one of them is feeling shame for not having the courage to do what’s right.

  I wished with all my heart that I had stood up to Daren when he wrecked my sea picture. With my parents in shouting distance, it had been the perfect chance to tell him to knock it off, but I hadn’t done it. Now I might never be able to, and I would always regret acting like a coward.

  I’m not a coward, I thought. I saved us from the fire, and so far we’ve survived the tsunami because of me. Daren’s the one who panicked on the hotel stairs, not me.

  Why did I ever let him bully me? If I had stopped him years ago when his bullying first began, he might never have picked on BeeBee at all.

  “If Daren escapes from the tsunami,” I vowed, “I’ll see that he never bothers you again.”

  “I thought you were scared of him too.”

  “I used to be, but I’m not anymore.”

  BeeBee thought about that for a minute. Then she said, “If Mom and Dad don’t come back, what will happen to us?”

  I’d already thought about that, and I knew the answer. “We’ll live with Grandma and Grandpa,” I said. “They’d move to a bigger house so they could take us.”

  “Good.” BeeBee laid her head in my lap and promptly fell asleep.

  Pan
sy draped her muzzle across my ankle and resumed snoring.

  I was more tired than I’d ever been in my life, but I couldn’t sleep. I was too anxious. I sat in the dark thinking about everything that had happened and wondering what tomorrow would bring. Would there be a joyous reunion with Mom and Dad? Or would BeeBee and I learn that we were orphans? I loved Grandma and Grandpa, but I wanted Mom and Dad back.

  The night dragged on. No more waves came.

  Eventually I must have dozed off because when I opened my eyes, I saw the first hint of daylight. BeeBee had shifted away from me and lay on her side, curled around Pansy. Pansy’s ears pricked up when I stirred. Her tail thumped the sand.

  I moved my head from side to side, working the stiffness out of my neck. Then I looked at my burned right palm. It was blistered and red, but it didn’t hurt as much as it had the night before.

  The sun rose, bringing light and warmth and hope.

  As soon as I stood up, BeeBee awoke. “Is it safe to go back?” she asked. “Did you hear the all-clear signal?”

  “I didn’t hear a signal, but I’m sure the tsunami is over.”

  “Good. I’m starving.”

  We walked through the sand, stepping over downed trees and going around an astonishing amount of debris. What had been a woods last night now looked more like a movie set for a film about the end of the world.

  A woman’s straw hat lay upside down, pink ribbons trailing across the sand. A portable barbecue was wedged into the ground. An inflatable raft with a crab pot still attached to a cord nested six feet up in a tree.

  Pansy ran a short way ahead, then returned. It was clear that she wanted to stay close to us.

  “Is that a refrigerator?” BeeBee asked.

  I looked where she was pointing. A full-size white refrigerator had been plucked from a seaside cottage or a home in Fisher and deposited on top of the hill.

  “Maybe there’s something in it that we can eat,” I said.

  “Like cold Snickers bars.”

  We hurried to the refrigerator and opened the door. It was no colder inside the appliance than it was outside, but the shelves contained a package of sliced ham, a carton of eggs, a half loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a jar of dill pickles.

  Curious, I opened the egg carton. Not a single egg was broken.

  “No Snickers,” BeeBee said, “but we can make ham sandwiches.”

  “We can’t eat the ham,” I said. “The fridge has been off too long; we might get food poisoning. We can’t drink the milk either, but we can eat the bread and the pickles.”

  We each wrapped a slice of bread around a dill pickle. I gave Pansy a piece of bread too, which she gobbled without chewing. I gave her a second piece.

  “This bread is stale,” BeeBee said. Then she smiled. “Maybe we should complain and ask for our money back.”

  “It could be worse,” I said. “The fridge might have been full of cauliflower and spinach.”

  “I’m thirsty,” BeeBee said. “Too bad whoever owns this refrigerator didn’t keep bottled water or soft drinks on hand.”

  Unsure when we’d get a chance to eat again, I took the rest of the bread with us.

  “Do you want me to carry the jar of pickles?” BeeBee asked.

  “No. They’re too salty. They’ll make us even thirstier.”

  Pansy walked as if she were glued to my pant leg, whining and poking her nose at the bread bag, until I let her eat a third slice. BeeBee and I each ate another piece too. Stale bread was better than hunger pangs.

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” BeeBee asked. “This doesn’t look anything like it did last night.”

  I looked in every direction. The sun was higher now, and the sunlight still came from behind us. That meant we were walking westward, toward the ocean. “This is right,” I said. “We need to keep the sun at our backs.”

  A short while after we found the refrigerator, I spotted something green half-buried in the sand. Kicking at it with my foot, I uncovered a six-pack of 7-Up.

  “How about a warm 7-Up for breakfast?” I asked.

  “Yum, yum,” said BeeBee. “Stale bread and warm 7-Up.”

  I still had the hotel towel, so I used it to wipe the sand off the tops of two cans. We each popped one open. The 7-Up fizzed over the top and ran down the side. It wasn’t cold, but it tasted fantastic.

  I wondered if it was okay for a dog to drink soda pop. Since Pansy must be every bit as thirsty as we were, I decided to let her have some.

  I cupped my left hand and poured some of my pop into it. Then I held my hand in front of Pansy, who lapped up some 7-Up, stopped in surprise, stuck her tongue in and out a couple of times, and then drank the rest, licking my hand to be sure she got it all.

  Refreshed by the food and drink, we continued walking. Maybe Norm and Josie did survive, I thought. Daren too. It’s easier to be optimistic when you’re not hungry.

  When we came to a clump of tall trees, Pansy stood at the base of the trees and yipped, a high excited bark. She ran behind the trees and came back with a piece of white fabric in her mouth, which she dropped at BeeBee’s feet.

  “She found Josie’s handkerchief!” BeeBee said. “Josie let me use it last night, and I noticed the roses on it.”

  Pansy stood on her hind legs, put her front paws on the trunk of the largest tree, and yipped again.

  BeeBee and I looked up into the branches. I half expected Norm and Josie to be perched on one of the limbs like two big birds, though I knew that was silly. Even if they had climbed a tree to escape the tsunami, they’d have come down by now.

  “Norm and Josie must have been here,” BeeBee said.

  “Maybe they stood behind these trees, the way we stood behind that big cedar. Maybe the trees protected them.”

  “I bet that’s what happened,” BeeBee said. She put the handkerchief in her pants pocket. “I’ll give this to Josie when I see her.”

  I hope you will, I thought. Oh, I hope you will.

  We hurried on, expecting to come out of the last of the trees and see the wide area of low shrubs that had stretched from the park bench to the beginning of the woods. The woods ended, but now, instead of the open area, there was a sharp drop-off. The wave had washed away the whole west side of the hill.

  “The road is gone,” BeeBee said. “So is the bench.”

  We walked to within ten feet of the edge. “Don’t go any closer,” I said. “It might crumble.”

  As we looked at the destruction, Pansy ran off to one side, sniffing the sand. “What has Pansy found?” I asked, and went to find out.

  “It’s footprints!” I called. “Someone else has been here this morning!”

  We squatted beside the footprints and saw that they were two different sizes. “Two people,” BeeBee said.

  I watched Pansy closely. If Norm and Josie had made those footprints, I thought Pansy would get all excited. She didn’t. She smelled the footprints while we looked at them, but when we walked on, she came with us.

  We could see the remains of the two hotels now, and we saw the beach, although the wooden steps that had led from the hotels to the beach were no longer there.

  Gentle waves lapped the shore just as they had before the tsunami. It was as if the ocean had forgotten all about yesterday’s violence and returned to business as usual.

  “I see people!” BeeBee said.

  Sure enough. People were walking on the beach.

  “They’re probably looking for souvenirs of the tsunami,” she said.

  “Or they’re looking for survivors. Maybe Mom and Dad are down there!”

  That possibility gave both of us a spurt of energy, and we looked for a way to get off the hill. With the road washed away, it took us awhile. Most of the way, we simply sat down and slid in the sand, letting Pansy get down as best she could. When we reached the bottom, we headed toward the remains of the Totem Pole Inn.

  Anticipation and dread wrestled within me. Would we see Mom and Dad soon—o
r would we learn that the Elegant Empress had disappeared? I didn’t know whether to rush forward or hang back.

  BeeBee made the decision for me by taking off at a trot, with Pansy loping beside her. I had to run to catch up to them.

  Two women saw us approaching and hurried toward us. “Were you up on the hill all night?” one of them asked. When I said yes, she held out a snapshot of a young man and said, “I’m looking for my nephew. Did you see him?”

  “No. There was an older couple up there for awhile but we got separated from them. We never saw your nephew. I’m sorry.”

  “He worked at the Frontier Lodge,” the woman said, “in the kitchen.”

  I wondered if he had made our pizza and the two milkshakes.

  “Do you know anything about the Elegant Empress?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “It’s a ship. Our parents were on it when the earthquake hit, and we don’t know what happened to them.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about a ship,” the woman said.

  “Nor have I,” said her companion.

  “Good luck,” the woman said.

  “I hope you find your nephew,” BeeBee said.

  We had similar conversations with other people. One was hunting for his son, who was a bellhop at the Totem Pole Inn. Another said her teenage daughter had been at a birthday party on the beach the night before. The third asked if we had seen any of the firefighters.

  We disappointed each person with our answers—and they disappointed us with theirs.

  “The power is still out in most of the county,” the last man told us. “Phone lines are out too, and the cell phone tower washed away. I haven’t heard a news broadcast since I came out here about two this morning, when a Portland station broadcast an all-clear.”

  We asked everyone we saw, but nobody knew what had happened to the Elegant Empress.

  12

  BeeBee and I walked slowly around the remains of the Totem Pole Inn. “If Mom and Dad are okay,” I said, “I know they’ll come here.”

  BeeBee poked at the ashes with a stick. “Bill’s gone,” she said.

  Helicopters droned overhead, following the coastline.

  A woman wearing an armband approached. “Do you need help?” she asked. “I’m with the emergency management service, and we’re here to help survivors.”