by Anna Woltz
“Your date was going on forever. So I thought: I’ll just go take a look and see if Jim’s still as handsome.”
“You could have seen that at his place, couldn’t you?” I whisper. “You didn’t have to bring him home with you!”
“I most certainly did! He has a temperature. He keeps forgetting to take his medicine, and all he has in his room is Coke and a few cookies. I couldn’t just leave him there, could I? There’s a hurricane on the way!”
Seth’s face is thunderous. “What do you think Mom’s going to say tomorrow, when she gets home?”
“But Mom’s not coming home tomorrow! Her flight’s been canceled; she just told me.”
I instantly think of my dad. And of the bed, which is now mine for one more night.
“Seriously,” says Abby. “Jim has nowhere else to go. His family lives in Detroit, he’s been fired from that restaurant because he can’t work now, and he has no friends in New York.” She looks at me. “You’re allowed to stay here, aren’t you? And you have an actual bed to sleep in. Jim has to sleep on the couch. We’re running our own hurricane shelter right here. It’s going to be fun!”
I look at the floor, because I still don’t want to be in the same apartment as Jim. I don’t know what to do when he looks at me. And he reminds me of Juno’s friends. But there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. I get that now.
“Well, I’m not going to speak to him,” mutters Seth. “He can stay until Sandy’s over, but I don’t want anything to do with him.”
“And he has to stay away from my clothes,” I say.
“Fine by me,” says Abby chirpily. “Finally, I’ll have someone all to myself. That’s even better than a dachshund.” She looks at me. “And it’s better than a sister too.”
• • •
Suddenly, everything is different inside our hurricane shelter.
I watch in silence as Jim drinks a cup of chamomile tea. As Abby plumps up the cushions. As Jim runs his feverish fingers through his hair. I really don’t want to, but when there’s a movie star lying on the couch, you can’t help but look.
The movie star turns his head three centimeters to the left. “So you’re obviously still in school … ” he says to Abby.
She nods and beams at him. “I’m the best at spelling in the whole class.”
He sighs. “You know, everyone should quit school as soon as they get the chance. The world is going to the dogs, and what is America teaching its children? That you have to make a career for yourself and earn as much money as possible.”
Abby looks serious. “Really? You think I should quit school?”
“Of course he doesn’t!” Seth yells from the kitchen.
Jim shrugs. “All those bankers who caused the financial crisis went to school. President Bush went to school … ”
“Everyone went to school,” says Seth. “What’s your point?”
But Jim isn’t listening. He’s looking at Abby and talking about all the terrible things they teach you at school. I bite my lip. It’s like I don’t even exist.
Jim doesn’t ask how I’m doing now. He doesn’t want to know where I’m actually from. And of course he still hasn’t apologized about my suitcase.
I get up. “I’m going to go dye my hair.”
He doesn’t even hear me.
• • •
Wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom. I put on rubber gloves and wrap the oldest of the five towels I had in my suitcase around my shoulders. Carefully, I mix the dye. As I shake the bottle, I think about those people who came to New York a century ago.
Two hours later, I finally dare to come out of the bathroom. On a scale that includes hurricanes and death threats, the color of your hair doesn’t really register. But still I feel nervous.
Jim hasn’t moved from the couch. He’s gesturing violently with the hand that’s not bandaged.
“… like I ever voted for fucking capitalism! And now with this economic crisis … ”
Abby is sitting in a chair opposite him. She looks like she’s in a movie theater, watching a movie that she doesn’t quite understand but still thinks is great. Seth has put his laptop on the kitchen counter and is watching the scene with simmering rage.
And then Jim stops talking and they all look at me. It feels like I just got off the boat. I’m stepping onto the waterfront and America is seeing me for the first time.
“Is it dumb?” I ask. “It looks weird, doesn’t it?”
Seth slowly shakes his head. “I … ”
“It’s fabulous!” Abby yells excitedly. “Your eyes are kind of glowing.”
“You should be careful,” says Jim. “If you go out looking like that, everyone will be asking if you want to be a model.”
“Don’t be silly!” I try to sound cool.
He tilts his head and looks at me. But before he can say anything else, Abby starts rattling away again.
“They should ask you to be a model, Jim.”
Jim shrugs. “They do.”
“Really? And?”
“I think it’s really fucked up, the amount of money that companies spend on advertising campaigns. And then they want me to pose in some tailor-made suit, or with a cell phone that no one really needs? No way.”
“Not even if you can make loads of money doing it?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “That,” he says, suddenly looking very serious, “is exactly what’s wrong with the world. People doing things they don’t really want to do, just because someone gives them loads of money to do it. Selling drugs. Making banks go bust. Prostituting themselves. I don’t think anyone would do that stuff just for the sake of it. But they will do it for money.”
The three of us stare at him. Seth is frowning. Abby still looks as if she’s sitting in the movie theater. And me? I feel a little short of breath.
Jim nods. “I have a theory … ”
“How about butternut squash soup this evening?” says Seth, cutting him off. “We’ve got some in the freezer downstairs. Emilia, do you want to see the basement?”
“Of course she doesn’t want to see the basement!” snaps Jim. “Why would she want to do that?”
“Emilia?” asks Seth.
They both look at me. And they wait. Even Abby is quiet.
I can feel my heart pounding weirdly. Of course they’re not really interested in me—I get that. They’re just dumb adolescent boys who have to turn everything into a competition. Jim hardly even looked at me before Seth offered to show me the basement. And Seth never asked if I wanted to see the basement until Jim got here.
“Okay,” I say, “show me this basement.”
Seth looks triumphant, but he shouldn’t think he’s won. It just so happens that there’s one thing I’d rather do now than listen to Jim. And that one thing is to talk about him.
Together we walk downstairs, past an old-fashioned balustrade with curls of metal. There’s a smudge of hair dye on my wrist that will probably never come off, but oddly enough I’m not that bothered about it.
We stop at the door to the shared basement. Seth looks at me.
“This building,” he says, “was constructed in … ”
“Jim is so different than I thought,” I whisper. “When you look at him, you think: That guy must be so superficial. But he really thinks about what’s going on in the world! Don’t you think it’s cool that he doesn’t want to be a model?”
“Nope,” says Seth. “Whenever anyone asks me to be a model, I say no too. It’s really nothing special.”
“Seth!” I sigh. “Don’t be so childish.”
“I’m not being childish,” he whispers angrily. “Believe me. If I were Jim, I’d kill myself. There are guys like that who ruin every school. They think they can do whatever they like and that it’s perfectly natural for the world to fall at their feet. Just imagine Jim was at your school. Who do you think he’d be hanging out with?”
I don’t have to think
too hard.
“Yeah. Juno,” he spits. “If she’s the captain of the cheerleading squad in a movie, then Jim’s her boyfriend. He’s that kind of guy. An asshole.”
“That’s not true!” I’m still feeling a bit short of breath. “I thought the same at first. But all that stuff in the movies—it’s not true. Because Juno, the most popular girl in school, doesn’t have a good-looking boyfriend in real life. No, in real life she meets up in secret with my dad. And it turns out that Jim, who looks like a movie star, is thinking about a solution for the financial crisis … ”
Seth just looks at me. Not as if I’ve just arrived on the boat, but as if I’m leaving.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like you care.” He pulls open the heavy basement door and walks down the stairs. “I’ll talk to you again in ten years,” he calls up from below. “When Jim’s still a loser without a high-school diploma. And I’ve just made my first million.”
“Idiot!” I call after him. “You really don’t get it. It’s not about how much money you have.”
“Ha!” His laughter echoes. “You can think that as long as you have enough. As long as you can use your dad’s credit card to run away from him.”
And then the door closes behind him.
Monday morning. The sun’s only just come up, but we’re ready and waiting for the storm. We’ve showered and had breakfast and brushed our teeth, and now we can’t think of anything else to do.
This is insane. Here we are in our hurricane shelter, waiting for a storm that’s “most likely” going to tear across the city. Along with eight million other people, we’re watching the hurricane’s every move. No one knows exactly what’s going to happen. Maybe Sandy will swerve around New York and everything will be fine. But maybe half the city will end up in ruins.
Gray drizzle is falling outside. A strong wind’s blowing, but I wouldn’t call it a storm yet. Seth and Abby’s mom is stuck in San Francisco, and now I know for sure that my dad hasn’t been able to get a flight today. He’ll have to wait, just like us.
The pathetic jerk’s emailing me every hour now to ask how I’m doing, and I send him a short and carefully considered reply every three hours. Even the famous artist Nora Quinn has taken the time to send a message to her daughter before the deluge descends. She didn’t write a single word about last week. Nothing about Juno. Nothing about the people who want to hang, draw, and quarter us, or the ones who want to rape us. She just told me that when she was twenty, back before she became scared of flying, she once went to New York. And that if I get the chance, I should definitely go see the Frick Collection. It’s the most beautiful art museum in the whole city.
• • •
In the early afternoon, Abby and I go outside, because sitting around inside the apartment is driving us crazy. Nothing’s happened yet, but New York is already a ghost town. It’s like some deadly virus has hit the city, and we’re the only two survivors.
Everything is closed: stores, restaurants, schools. The hospitals are the only places that are still open. There’s hardly any traffic. Very occasionally, a wet cyclist rides by or we see someone dash outside to walk their dog.
“So what are you going to wear on Wednesday?” asks Abby as we go past a dark store full of Halloween costumes.
“I’m Dutch,” I say, peering at the cobwebs and skeletons in the window display. “I don’t do Halloween.”
“Really? I’m going as a megascary zombie.” She pulls off her yellow hat and lets the wind blow through her hair. “All the other girls have sexy costumes, but that’s just dumb. Like monsters and witches would ever wear miniskirts and curl their hair. Monsters don’t even have hair. Monsters have slime.” And then she stops walking and turns to look at me. “Hey, do you think Jim likes sexy witches?”
I can’t help laughing. “I’m sure Jim thinks sexy witches are ‘corrupt and capitalist’ in these times of economic crisis.”
She looks puzzled.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think he likes sexy witches.”
All the same, though, I wonder if Abby’s mom might have some clothes I could borrow for a costume. Not really sexy clothes, of course. But not unsexy either. As sexy as is kind of believable for a witch.
• • •
When we get home, cold and wet, I discover that there’s one place in the world that’s weirder than the abandoned streets of New York—and that’s the living room in our hurricane shelter. There are too few people out on the streets today, but inside the apartment there are obviously too many.
Seth has pulled his hood down over his head and is refusing to talk to Jim. Whereas I am saying as little as possible to Seth, because I think he’s being childish. Abby’s changed her clothes in the meantime and is now wearing a sky-blue party dress with patent leather shoes, and Jim is blissfully smiling at everyone. His fever’s gone, and he and Abby have gone through two bags of tortilla chips.
Outside, the heart trees are waving their colorful arms, and Sandy’s getting closer and closer as we watch her “live” out the window, but we’re also following her on TV and on the computer and on our phones. The local networks have reporters in raincoats on standby throughout New York. The news keeps switching to them, but there’s nothing to report. Every hour, they get colder and wetter and, every hour, they repeat that Sandy really is almost here now. But not quite …
Even the news sites in Holland are telling me how we’re all doing over here. It’s making my head spin. Far away, back at home, they’re calling Sandy a “devastating superstorm.” They say America is “trembling and quaking,” and they’re predicting dozens of deaths.
I can feel goose bumps on my arms beneath my sweater.
I look at Seth. I want to ask him if I should be frightened. Abby’s just a kid, and all Jim ever talks about is the financial crisis. If anyone can tell me if we’re really in danger, it’s Seth. But he doesn’t look up. He’s slouched over the counter, frowning as he rips a yellow sticky note to pieces. I suddenly realize it’s my sticky note. The one I scribbled all over in black.
• • •
By the end of the afternoon, the trees in front of the window are whipping back and forth, faster and faster. It’s almost dark now, and the rain’s pouring down. On the TV, Mayor Bloomberg advises us to close our curtains and blinds so the glass won’t go flying across the room if the windows are blown in.
“I hadn’t even thought about that,” says Abby. She looks worried.
Seth lets down the blind. I’m secretly glad we don’t have to look at those cold, reflective rectangles anymore.
The mayor announces that the schools will have to remain closed tomorrow. He repeats that it’s not only people who are welcome at the emergency shelters, but also pets, and we see pictures of a scared-looking cat and a yellow dog pooping on the floor of a school gym.
Gravely, Mayor Bloomberg announces that lots of people have refused to leave their homes, even though they’re in danger. He says they’re being very selfish. If they have to be rescued by the fire department, they’ll have knowingly put those firefighters’ lives at risk.
“If you are in your home, or somewhere safe where you can remain—stay there,” he says ominously. “The time for relocation or evacuation is over.”
I feel a chill at the back of my neck.
Sitting in silence, we watch the reporters in their raincoats, who finally have some news. The rivers to our left and our right have risen and are beginning to wash over the edges of Manhattan. I spot the waterfront where Seth and I stood and looked at the Statue of Liberty only yesterday. Right where we were standing, it’s now flooded. The water isn’t over the sandbags yet, but the soaking-wet reporter is yelling into his microphone that he’s been told to leave the waterfront. It’s getting too dangerous.
I walk to the window and lift the blind. The rain’s coming down in giant sheets of water that blow horizontally in the wind, slapping the windows, as if we’re driving through a car was
h. You can hardly see the streetlights now, and the branches of the heart trees are whipping wildly about.
I keep thinking: The wind can’t blow any harder. It’s impossible. Any harder and it’ll tear the houses from the ground. But Sandy just keeps blasting away, harder and harder.
Now I can see the hurricane for myself and hear her hysterical shrieks. She howls around the buildings, pulling so furiously at the windows that I let go of the blind and back away. Suddenly, I can imagine how air really is capable of breaking glass.
We’ve abandoned the snacks. Sometimes comfort food is too distracting. We watch the TV and listen to the wind. Abby’s been sitting with Jim for a while now, and I quietly go sit beside her. Seth stops what he was doing at the counter and comes to join us on the couch. We know the worst is still to come. That’s what the newscasters keep telling us. And that’s what we can hear outside. Every crack of the whip is a little louder. Every punch of the storm hits a little harder.
Then the lights begin to flicker.
I hold my breath and I feel Abby stiffen next to me. But before anyone can say anything, it’s already over and the lights are on again, as if everything’s fine.
“What was that?” whispers Abby. “Why did that happen?”
No one answers her.
The voices on the TV get louder and shriller. The waiting’s over. The hurricane’s right above our heads now. In the borough of Queens, some way to the east of where we are, the first death has occurred: A tree crushed a house, along with the man inside. I actually gasp. “The first death”—as if they’re sure there’ll be more.
Then the lights flicker again.
For two seconds, it’s dark. The TV screen goes black and the computer switches itself off.
My heart seems to stop along with them.
And then suddenly the lights are back on, nice and steady, with no flickering at all.
“This is kind of eerie,” says Jim.
“But I don’t understand how it’s happening,” Abby squeaks. “The way the power’s going off, and then back on again. That means it must be okay. It can’t actually be, like, really broken, can it? But then why were the lights flickering? I don’t get it.”