Disappearing Earth

by Julia Phillips

  A bus from the center would take them home. Television and summer soup and their mother’s best tales of work. She would ask them what they had done that day—“Hey, don’t tell Mama what I told you,” Alyona said. “About the town.”

  At her back, Sophia said, “Why not?”

  “Just don’t.” Alyona would not be responsible for whatever nightmares Sophia did or did not have.

  “If it’s true, why can’t I ask her?”

  Alyona forced air out her nose. She climbed down, wound her way around a few heaps of stone, and stopped.

  Two meters away was the man she had seen walking along the water before. He sat on the path with his legs stuck out straight. His back was hunched. From a distance, he had looked like a grown-up, but now that she saw him better, he was more of an overgrown teenager: swollen cheeks, sun-bleached eyebrows, yellow hair that stuck up in back like the quills of a hedgehog.

  He raised his chin to her. “Hello.”

  “Hello,” Alyona said, stepping closer. “Hi.”

  “Could you help me?” he asked. “I’ve hurt my ankle.”

  She squinted at his pant legs as if she could see through cloth to the bone. Their green knees showed smudges from the ground. Funny to see a grown man sitting as scuffed up as a boy who fell too hard in the school yard.

  Sophia caught up to them, and her hand came to rest on the base of Alyona’s spine. Alyona shivered her away. “Can you walk?” Alyona asked.

  “Yes. Maybe.” The man stared down at his sneakers.

  “Did you sprain it?”

  “I must have. These damn rocks.”

  Sophia made a pleased noise at the curse. “We can go get someone,” Alyona offered. They were only a couple minutes from the city center; she could practically smell the vendors’ cooking oil.

  “I’m all right. My car is close.” He reached up one arm, and she grabbed his hand and pulled. Her weight didn’t make such a difference but it was enough to get him on his feet. “I can get there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He was wobbling a little. Stepping tenderly with pain. “If you girls would just stay with me and make sure I don’t fall.”

  “Here, you go ahead, Soph,” Alyona said. Her sister went first, then the man, carefully. Alyona walked after and watched. His shoulders were curved. Over the low wash of the waves, she could hear his breath come with slow effort.

  The path opened up to the center: the stone-covered beach, families on the benches, gray birds flapping their wings over hot-dog buns, and ship-to-shore cranes extending their long bare necks. Sophia had stopped to wait for them. The bulk of the hill was behind. “Are you okay?” Alyona asked the man.

  He pointed to their right. “We’re almost there.”

  “To the parking lot?” Nodding, he limped along behind the food stands, generators chugging exhaust around his knees. The sisters followed. An older boy in a fitted cap skateboarded past the fronts of the stands, and Alyona looked forward in shame—to be saddled with her little sister, to be trailing behind a weak stranger. She wanted to get home already. Taking Sophia’s hand, she caught up with the man.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “Alyona.”

  “Alyonka, would you take my keys”—he shook them out of his pants pocket—“and unlock the car door?”

  “I can do it,” said Sophia. They were already at the crescent-shaped lot on the other side of the hill.

  He gave the key ring to the smaller girl. “It’s the black one there. The Surf.”

  Sophia skipped forward and opened the driver’s side. He got in, exhaling as he sat. She held on to the door handle. The side panel’s flawless paint reflected her body, dressed in purple cotton and rolled khaki. “How does it feel?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “You girls really helped me.”

  “Can you drive?” Alyona asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “You’re going where now?”

  “Home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Gorizont.”

  “I’ll take you,” he said. “Get in.” Sophia let go of the door. Alyona looked across the street at the bus stop. A bus would take them more than half an hour, while in a car they’d be home in ten minutes.

  The man had started his engine. He waited for their answer. Sophia was already peering into his backseat. Alyona, as the older sister, took her time: she spent a few seconds weighing the city bus (its starting and stopping, its heaving noises, the smell of other people’s sweat) against this offer. His softness, his bad ankle, and his boyish face. How easy it would be to be driven. The car would get them home quickly enough for a snack before their evening meal. Like feeding zoo animals or telling scary stories, this would be another daytime thrill, a summer-break disobedience to be kept between her and Sophia.

  “Thank you,” Alyona said. She went around the front and climbed into the passenger seat, warm from the sun. Its leather was soft as a lap underneath her. A cross-shaped icon was fixed to the face of the glove compartment. If only the skateboarder could see her now—sitting in the front seat of a big car. Sophia slid into the row behind. A few parking spots away, a woman let a white dog out of the back of a van for a walk.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Akademika Koroleva, thirty-one.”

  He signaled and rolled out of the lot. A pack of cigarettes slid across the top of the dashboard. His car smelled of soap, tobacco, faint gasoline. The woman and her dog were crossing the line of food stands. “Does it hurt?” Sophia said.

  “I’m better already, thanks to you.” He merged into traffic. The sidewalks were clotted by local teenagers wearing neon and Asian cruise-ship tourists posing for pictures. A short-haired woman held up a sign with the name of some adventure agency. As the center of the only city on the peninsula, this was the first stop for Kamchatka’s summer visitors; they were rushed from their boat or plane to see the bay, then rushed away, beyond city limits, to hike or raft or hunt in the empty wilderness. A truck honked. People kept stepping out into the crosswalk. The light changed and then their car was free.

  From the passenger seat, Alyona took the man’s features apart. A wide nose and a mouth underneath that matched. Short brown eyelashes. Round chin. His body looked carved out of fresh butter. He was too heavy, probably. That must be why he had stepped clumsily on the shore.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Sophia.

  He laughed and shifted gears, accelerating up a hill. The car hummed underneath them. The bay drew away behind. “No, I don’t.”

  “And you’re not married.”

  “Nope.” He lifted his hand, fingers spread, to show.

  Sophia said, “I saw already.”

  “Clever thing,” he said. “How old are you?”

  “Eight.”

  He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “And you’re also not married, am I right?”

  Sophia giggled. Alyona turned to watch the road. His car was taller than their mother’s sedan. She could look down on roof racks and along the pink lines of drivers’ arms. People were sunburned after this one day of good weather. “Can I put the window down?” she asked.

  “I prefer the air-conditioning. Straight through this intersection?”

  “Yes, please.” The trees along the sidewalks were fat and green from this rainy summer. They passed ragged billboards on their left and concrete-paneled apartment buildings on their right. “Here,” Alyona said. “Here. Oh.” She twisted in her seat. “You missed the turn.”

  “You missed the turn,” Sophia said from the back.

  “I want to take you to my place first,” the man said. “I need a little more help.”

  The road pulled them forward. They hit the traffic circle, and he kept going, into it and through and out the other side. “Help with your
ankle?” Alyona asked.

  “Exactly.”

  She remembered she didn’t know his name. She looked over her shoulder at Sophia, who was looking back the way they came. “I’m just going to let our mother know,” Alyona said, slipping her phone out from her pocket. The man reached off the gearshift to pluck it away. “Hey,” she said. “Hey!” He was switching her phone to his other hand. Dropping it in a compartment of his door. The thunk the phone made when it hit the door’s plastic bottom. “Give that back to me,” she said.

  “You can call when we get there.”

  Fingers empty, she was wild. “Please give it back.”

  “I will when we’re there.”

  The seatbelt was too tight on her. It might as well have been wrapped around her lungs. She couldn’t take in enough air. She was silent. Concentrating. Then she lunged in his direction, reaching for the door. The belt snapped her backward.

  “Alyona!” Sophia said.

  She went to unfasten the seatbelt but the man moved fast again, clamping his hand over hers, forcing the buckle in place. “Stop,” he said.

  Alyona said, “Give it back!”

  “Sit and wait and I will. I promise.” Under his hand, her knuckles were bent almost to cracking. If they popped in his grip, Alyona believed she would vomit. Her mouth was already wet with it. Sophia leaned forward and the man said, “Sit down.”

  Sophia sat back. Her breath was quick.

  He would have to lift his hand sometime. Alyona had never wanted anything in her life, ever, as badly as she wanted her phone. Its black back, its grease-marked face, the ivory bird charm dangling off its top corner. She had never hated anybody as much as him. She was sick with it. She swallowed.

  “I have a rule,” the man said. They were already at the tenth kilometer, passing the bus station that marked Petropavlovsk’s northern border. “No phones while I’m driving. But when we get there, if you can both behave that long, I will give it back, and I will take you home, and you’ll be eating dinner with your mother tonight. Understand?” He squeezed her fingers.

  “Yes,” Alyona said.

  “Then we’re agreed.” He let her go.

  She tucked her hands, one sore, under her thighs, and sat up straight. She inhaled through an open mouth to dry her tongue. The tenth kilometer. Before it, buses stopped at the eighth for the library, the sixth for the cinema, the fourth for the church, the second for the university. Beyond the tenth kilometer were limited settlements, scattered villages, tourist bases, and then nothing. Nowhere. Their mother used to travel for work, so she told them what waited outside the city: pipelines, power stations, helipads, hot springs, geysers, mountains, and tundra. Thousands of kilometers of open tundra. Nothing else. North.

  “Where do you live?” Alyona asked.

  “You’re going to see.”

  Behind her she heard Sophia, breath in-out, in-out, quick as a little dog’s. Alyona stared at the man. She was going to memorize him. Then she turned around to her sister. “We’re having an adventure,” she said.

  Sophia’s elfin face was overexposed in the sunlight. Her eyes were bright, wide. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Are you scared?” Sophia shook her head no. Her teeth showed. “Good.”

  “Good girl,” the man said. One of his hands was off the wheel and hidden in his car door. Alyona heard the falling chime of her phone shutting off.

  He kept watching them in the mirror. Blue eyes. Dark lashes. He didn’t have any tattoos on his arms—he wasn’t a criminal. How was Alyona only noticing his arms now? When they got back, their mother was going to kill them.

  Twisted around, Alyona pressed her chest to the passenger seat. A pair of work gloves, palms coated red with latex, was tucked into a cup holder in the car’s center console. The gloves were dirty. Alyona forced herself to look at Sophia. “Want another story?”

  “No,” her sister said.

  Alyona couldn’t think of a new one anyway. She turned back around.

  Gravel popped under the tires. Fields of clumped grass flashed by. The sun made shadows short on the road. They passed the sign, dark metal, marking the turnoff for the city airport, and kept going.

  The car shook under them as the pavement got worse. The door handle on her side was jittering. For an instant, she tried to picture herself taking hold of it, pulling the latch, tumbling out, but then—it was picturing dying. The speed, the ground, the tires. And Sophia. What would Alyona do, leave Sophia?

  If only Alyona had been allowed to be alone today. Their mother always made her take Sophia along. Now—if something happened.

  Sophia couldn’t take care of herself. The other day she asked if elephants actually existed—she thought they’d gone extinct with the dinosaurs. What a baby.

  Alyona jammed her fists against her thighs. Don’t think about elephants. The leather under her was still hot, her lungs were tight, and inside her mind was all shimmery, the air waving up off fresh-pressed tar. She had told her sister that stupid thing about the wave. The piece of earth that disappeared. She wished she’d thought of something else. But now she couldn’t undo it—she had to focus. They were in this car. They were headed somewhere. They’d be home soon. She had to be strong for Sophia.

  “Alyona?” her sister asked.

  She made her face happy and turned. The muscles in her cheeks were trembling. “Uh-huh?”

  “Yeah,” Sophia said. Alyona looked at her. Not remembering. “Yes, a story.”

  “Right,” she said. The road was dusty and empty, lined by skinny trees. Leaning forward, rushing them along. On the horizon, the cones of the city’s three closest volcanoes were exposed. The mountains were a line of sawteeth. No more buildings stood in their way. Alyona thought again of the tsunami. Its sudden weight. “A story,” she said. “I will.”

  SEPTEMBER

  Olya came home to an apartment that smelled the way it always did when her mother was gone: a little sweet, a little rotten. Maybe Olya didn’t empty the trash enough. She opened the windows in the living room, so a breeze could clean the place while she changed out of her school clothes. Then she lay on her back on the futon. From that angle, she could see nothing but sky.

  Blue bleeding up to heaven. Forget the news reports, the stricter curfews, the posters of the missing girls—today was a perfect day to spend outside with someone. After the last school bell rang this afternoon, Olya had tried to get Diana to hang out in Petropavlovsk’s city center, but Diana said she couldn’t, that her parents were still worried, that they wanted her home. “It isn’t safe,” Diana said, with her voice high and cold in an imitation of adulthood. Diana’s mother’s voice oozing out of Diana’s mouth.

  Besides, best friends, Diana reminded Olya, didn’t need to see each other constantly. This had been Diana’s refrain for the month since the sisters’ kidnapping. Olya couldn’t tell from Diana’s intonation, which these days gave every pronouncement a grown-up spin, whether this was Diana’s idea or her mother’s, but Diana certainly stood behind it. After those girls got lost, Olya and Diana saw each other just about never. Even now that the school year had started, Diana insisted: best friends had to put hangouts on hold, understand if there were sudden foolish rules in place, and bite their tongues instead of getting into another looping argument about danger.

  Olya’s own mother was not worried. She trusted Olya to look after herself. An interpreter, she was up north with a tourist group from Tokyo, turning their official guide’s speech from Russian to Japanese so the peninsula’s rich visitors could learn how to spot brown bears, pick late-season berries, and bathe in thermal springs. Whenever Olya’s mother left, there was less music, less perfume, no lipstick-marked mugs in the apartment. Before the sisters vanished, Diana would come by Olya’s during solo weeks like this one to waste away their afternoons together, but now summer vacation was over and everyone had become pa
ranoid. Olya had no one to make noise with until her mother came back on Sunday with foreign candies as secondhand gifts.

  Strands of hair brushed Olya’s face. It was fine enough here by herself, anyway. Familiar, sun-warmed. Last spring, their year-seven history teacher had called Olya’s hair a rat’s nest in front of the class, and she had boiled with humiliation. But over this summer tourist season, as Olya turned thirteen years old, explored the city beside Diana, and felt her tangles tickle her neck, she thought again and liked that—a rat’s nest. She was a beast. This was her hollow.

  She sniffed—even the smell had stopped bothering her.

  A truck honked outside and another one answered. She rolled over to scroll through the news feed on her phone: selfies, skate parks, classmates in short skirts. Someone’s girlfriend had commented on his status with a heart. Olya clicked on that girl’s profile, looked through all its pictures, and moved on, finding mutual friends, scrolling, clicking, skipping. She went back to her feed and refreshed. She stopped.

  A girl they knew had just posted a picture of Diana. Diana’s smile suspended between gleaming cheeks. Diana in her home clothes: that ridiculous red T-shirt, rhinestones lining the Union Jack on her chest, and those pink leggings cut off at the knee. Diana sitting cross-legged on her bed, and one of their classmates lying down beside her, and another leaning over in her school uniform while flashing victory signs with both hands.

  Olya sat up. Texted Diana: What are you doing? Couldn’t wait. Sent another. Can I come over?

  She shoved off the futon, found her jeans, grabbed her jacket, filled her pockets with her wallet and lip balm and headphones and keys. After class, Diana had told Olya she had to go home, but maybe she meant Olya should come with her. Maybe both of them had misunderstood. Olya looked again at the picture. There were four of them together? The girl who posted it didn’t even live in Diana’s neighborhood. Olya refreshed. Nothing new. She made sure she had her bus pass, slammed the apartment doors, then ran down the stairs.