by Anna Woltz
As Seth turns the computer and the TV back on, we listen to Sandy howling. She pulls on the walls and thumps at the windows. The rain beats hard against the glass as the TV shows us that more and more parts of the city are now underwater. I hear a crash outside and, moments later, the wail of a siren.
I move closer to Abby and look up at the lamp above the counter. Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The lamp—it’s one of those glass shades on a long cord—is slowly swinging back and forth.
That’s impossible, I tell myself. The wind isn’t blowing inside the building. The door’s locked, and all the windows are closed. So how come the lamp’s swaying? And then I realize.
It’s not the lamp that’s moving. It’s the building.
The lamp is hanging perfectly still above the counter, but our building is gently moving.
I want to point and scream that bricks and concrete aren’t allowed to sway in the wind, but I can’t make a sound. All the noise in the world belongs to Sandy right now.
And then, without any warning, without a bang, without a flicker, everything goes dark.
And it stays dark.
For thirty seconds, we wait in silence.
We hear glass breaking somewhere in the distance. Sirens howl. And it stays dark. Darker than it’s ever been this century. Not even a standby light on the TV. The letters of every digital display have gone out.
“It’s not coming back on.” Abby’s voice is trembling. “What … ”
Then she gasps because suddenly something is giving off light. Seth’s turned on the screen of his cell phone. He walks over to the window to take a look outside.
“Jesus,” he says. “The whole street’s in darkness. I can’t see anything at all—not even any buildings in the distance. There’s a whole gigantic area without power!”
I feel my way toward him and look out. The stormy sky is just a shade less black than the buildings. Sandy doesn’t care that we have no light. She roars on relentlessly, pushing and pulling at the windows. The glass bulges for a moment and then, with the next gust of wind, it hollows.
Seth and I let go of the blind at the same moment.
Think about it. If the window breaks while you’re looking outside, shards of glass will go blasting into your face. And what do you do if you get seriously injured during a hurricane? Can ambulances keep driving in a storm like this? Is it dark in the hospitals now too?
“Fuck.” Jim’s cell is lighting up his face from below. “The Internet’s down and I don’t even have a signal. In the middle of Manhattan. Unbelievable.”
“Seriously?” asks Abby. “I’ve never been without a signal, not in my entire life!” She looks at her phone. “And I’ve only got a little bit of battery left … That’s what the mayor should have said: People of New York, charge your cell phones before it’s too late!”
I stand still in the middle of the room. I can feel the darkness now. It’s gently pushing against my skin from every direction. I breathe it in.
I feel like one of those really dumb farmer’s sons in a fairy tale. The kind who’s told he can make a wish, and then wishes something stupid that turns into a complete disaster.
There you go, the universe is saying to me. This is what you wanted. A city without the Internet. Without Twitter threats and without obscene text messages.
“This can’t go on for long, can it?” I ask in a strange, unsteady voice. “We had a power failure at home in the Netherlands once. They fixed it within two hours. And this is New York!”
“Exactly,” says Jim. “This is New York.”
There’s a moment of silence.
“What do you mean by that?” I ask him. Because his voice sounded a little strange too. “It’s good that this is New York, isn’t it? We’re close to Wall Street, and all those banks really can’t go without power. They’ll just call in, like, a couple thousand people to repair things, won’t they? So we’ll have the lights back on as normal, right?”
“That sounds pretty optimistic to me,” says Jim. “This could easily go on for days.”
I almost choke in the darkness. “Days? Days without light and without a cell phone signal? Days just to solder a few wires together?”
“Look.” Jim sounds calm. “America is … ”
“Christ!” Seth explodes. “We don’t need to hear some theory or other. Let’s just hope they can repair it quickly. Whatever it is that’s broken.”
I want to yell: Why don’t you just Google it to find out what’s going on! But of course that’s not possible.
This powerless, trapped feeling is something I’ve had only during exams. When you know all you have to rely on is your own brain. That there’s no new information coming. That this is it.
And then I think of something else. I haven’t answered my dad’s messages for hours. I was going to email him one more time before going to bed. But now he’s not going to hear anything from me at all.
I hate him with every cell in my body, but the thought of him sitting there in the Netherlands in the middle of the night, waiting for news from me, makes me dizzy. I haven’t told him where I’m staying, so he has no idea what’s happening to me. He doesn’t know if I’m without electricity or if I’ve been swept away by a tidal wave and am lying on the bottom of the East River.
It’s what he deserves, I say to myself. Let him worry. But the dizziness doesn’t go away.
“I thought there were candles in here,” Seth calls irritably from the other side of the room. “Abby, do you know where Mom put the things?”
She shakes her head and we look at each other by the light of two phones. We’ve been waiting for this all day. And all that time, we didn’t get any candles ready. To be honest, I simply didn’t believe it could happen. That here, at the center of the world, the power could fail.
Seth returns from the worst of the darkness and drops down into a chair.
“It’s a good thing I just filled up the bathtub.” He wipes his forehead. “At least that’s something.”
“It’s the power that’s out,” I say impatiently. “That’s not the same thing as the water.”
He looks at me. “Do you really think so?”
I wave my arms around. “Duh! Look, no light! That’s the problem.”
“So why did you and Abby buy bottles of mineral water?”
“Just because. Because it was on the checklist. To be prepared for a hurricane.”
I suddenly realize that I really did buy the water “just because.” Because it was on the list. And that I didn’t stop to think about why Americans think you might need water in your perfectly stocked kitchen cabinet during a power failure.
“The water here,” says Seth, “is pumped up to the higher stories by electric pumps. So no power means no water.”
“I don’t believe it.” I head straight to the kitchen. I just don’t want to believe it.
“Wait!” calls Jim. “Put a pan under the faucet before you turn on the water. There’s always some water left in the pipes. We can use it.”
I look for a pan. My hands are shaking. No water—that doesn’t only mean nothing to drink. It also means no shower. No water to flush the toilet. No water to wash your hands.
Abby stands beside me as I turn on the faucet. At first I think: See! Those dumb boys don’t know anything! We still have water. But the flow thins. Soon it’s just a drip. And then it stops.
By the light of my cell phone, I look at the empty faucet. I can feel the bacteria dancing over my hands. Cheering, because the universe has also made their dearest wish come true.
I bite my lip and I feel the world wobble. Why didn’t I take another shower an hour ago, just to be on the safe side? Why didn’t I wonder sooner why on earth I was buying bottles of water?
“Are you okay?” whispers Abby. She turns her cell on again. “Are you scared of the dark?”
“No,” I say hoarsely, “the darkness isn’t the problem.”
I think of the nights when Dad and I climbed up onto
our roof with our telescope. He told me about comets and taught me how to calculate in light-years—quietly, so we wouldn’t disturb the neighbors. Up there on the roof, I discovered that you can actually see more in the dark, not less.
I stare at the faucet, which is gleaming by the dim light of Abby’s cell phone, and attempt to breathe calmly. I try to come up with some kind of story to calm myself, a reason why it’s not all so bad. But it doesn’t work. Days without a shower—no story’s good enough to cope with that.
“Oh,” says Abby. “I get it!” She looks at me seriously. “Okay, so there’s no water for now. But you still have your wipes, don’t you?”
I don’t reply.
“Emilia!” she says sternly. “How many packages of those things do you have in your suitcase?”
“Four,” I whisper. “And I bought another three yesterday.”
She nods. “So you can use an entire pack every day, for a whole week. Seriously, you’re going to stay superclean.”
I’m still looking at the empty faucet.
“Just think about it,” whispers Abby. “This is an adventure. A real adventure. Normally, you have to try really hard to find some excitement, but now it’s happening all by itself !”
There’s a dull thud somewhere outside.
“Emilia?” she asks quickly. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”
I look at her and know that I can’t refuse. If her mom had been here, then of course Abby would have been allowed to sleep in the big bed. But without power and without water, the washing machine won’t work either. And you can’t clean sheets with disinfectant wipes.
From now on everything’s just going to get dirtier and dirtier.
“Yo!” Jim calls from the couch. “Are you guys holding a funeral service for that faucet? What are you doing over there?”
Abby skips back to the living room. “I get to sleep in the same bed as Emilia tonight!”
He laughs. “I already got to sleep next to Emilia on Friday.”
“Does she snore?”
“No, but she does talk in her sleep. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, though, because it was in that weird language of hers. Oh, and if you don’t watch out, she snuggles up to you.”
Seth gives something hard a kick. “I can’t find any candles anywhere! And I don’t want to drain my cell phone battery this evening. I’m going to bed. Then at least the dark will be normal.”
“Wait,” cries Abby. “Jim needs to take his antibiotics!”
He can take his pills without an audience, of course. But still Seth and I stand and watch. We watch Abby walk to the kitchen with her illuminated phone. We watch her take water from our supplies.
“The first bottle,” she says solemnly. She unscrews the top and pours out half a glass.
“How many bottles did you actually buy?” asks Jim.
“Six,” I say. I don’t look at their faces. “Six times one and a half liters.”
That’s nine liters of water. For four people.
For days and days, if Jim’s right.
I want to scream, but I hold it in. I dig my nails into my palms and listen to Sandy. Today, she does all of my gasping and wailing and screaming for me.
In the middle of the night, I awake with a start. Maybe another window broke somewhere. Maybe a tree fell. Abby’s dark hair beside me is perfectly still. I pull my sleeping bag up over my nose and listen to Sandy. When there’s a storm, you have to count the seconds between the thunder and lightning to work out how far away it is. But Sandy’s raging on without stopping.
I have no idea how the rest of New York is doing right now. All over the world, people know more about it than we do. I wonder if my dad’s still sitting at his computer. If he’s read anything about the “first death.” And then I wonder if he’s been in touch with Juno since Tuesday, and suddenly I don’t give a damn.
It’s a strange thought that light isn’t even an option right now. That I’m not lying here in the darkness because I want to, but because I have no choice. I hear sirens howling outside.
And then suddenly I sit up straight.
I don’t know where my passport is. I thought it was too dangerous to leave it in my bag, but now I’ve forgotten where I hid it.
I crawl out of my sleeping bag, pick up my cell phone, and start looking. I know exactly which places I considered as hiding places. But I don’t have the faintest idea which one I finally chose. Heart pounding, I drag my suitcase out of the closet and search every compartment. I pull drawers wide open and rummage around in the socks and underwear of a woman I don’t know.
“Emilia?” Abby’s voice sounds thin and reedy in the darkness. “What’s wrong? Do you want me to get up?”
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “I’m just looking for my passport.”
“But why?”
“I suddenly thought about all those candles out there.” I’m out of breath. “Other people must have had candles to light. If a fire breaks out and we have to run, then I’ll need my passport.”
“Me too!” she says.
“But you’re American. They know who you are here. If I collapse and lose consciousness, there’s no one in this country who can tell anyone who I am.”
“There’s me.”
“Do you know my last name?” I shine the light on her face. Her eyes are big and dark. Slowly, she shakes her head. And then she jumps out of bed.
“I’m going to get my school ID card.”
I go on looking. The light of my cell phone screen keeps going off, and the light’s actually way too weak anyway. I still don’t have my passport, so I start taking the books off the shelves, one by one, and shaking them. Suddenly, I feel like the boy from that documentary—the one who thought for years that he wasn’t real. I see myself as if I’m an actress in some impenetrable black-and-white movie, shaking books like a madwoman. Panting, sweating, sneezing from the dust. I could almost laugh at that girl in her checked pajamas—almost, but not quite. Because I know that girl is me.
Once upon a time, up on the roof with my dad, I learned that darkness isn’t scary. But this darkness, now, feels too much like my own darkness. That breathless darkness where you can get lost and drop down dead. Without a passport. In a strange land.
Finally, I look at the back of the bottom drawer of the bedside table and I can’t imagine how I could ever have forgotten that my passport was there. I put it into my flowery bag, together with the folder full of printouts and my cell phone. And my charger and adapter. And painkillers, disinfectant wipes, antibacterial gel, toothpaste, and my toothbrush.
“Here,” says Abby. She hands me a laminated ID card. “And can you put this in there too?” She’s holding up a grayish bunny rabbit with ears that have been kissed and cuddled to death. I step back.
“Oh right,” she says. She sighs.
I put the bag next to the door, and Abby places her rabbit on the other side of the doorway.
“I’ll carry him if we have to make a run for it.”
Shivering, we go back to bed. My dirty bare feet rub against the sides of my sleeping bag. Outside, something breaks again.
“Emilia?” whispers Abby. “Would you tell me a story? So I don’t have to listen to Sandy?”
“I don’t like made-up stories,” I say quietly. “But I can tell you something that’s true.” I turn onto my side. “My last name is De Wit, by the way.” I spell it for her. I tell her my date of birth too. And my mom’s name, because that’s easy enough to Google—in places that have the Internet, in any case. I know Abby will remember it.
And then I tell her about Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a storm to catch the lightning.
• • •
When I wake, the other side of the bed is empty. I get up, open the curtains, and stare outside. Light.
I’ve never thought before how amazing it is that it actually gets light again every morning. Without us having to pay for it. Without two thousand Americans having to repair something�
��it simply gets light.
Sandy has passed. I can see that right away. The streets are gleaming. There are leaves and branches and garbage lying all around. No one is walking around outside yet, and the sky is still cloudy, but the heart trees have stopped whipping back and forth. And it’s not raining.
In the cold living room, Seth, Abby, and Jim are huddled together on the couch. It’s strange to see them sitting so closely together, but then I spot the gray radio in Abby’s hands.
“We’re listening to the news,” she whispers when she sees me.
A radio. I don’t believe I’ve ever seriously listened to a radio in my entire life. Why would you when there are cell phones and computers and TVs?
But just as I’m suddenly seeing daylight in a different way, I’m also seeing the radio with fresh eyes. This little one works with batteries, so there’s no need for electricity. And while our dumb cell phones still aren’t working, the radio is picking up a signal. Breathlessly, we listen to the crackling voices.
Since yesterday evening, a huge part of Manhattan has been without power. From where we are, all the way down to the southern tip of the island, where Seth and I stood on the waterfront, it’s dark. And from us to the north it’s black for another forty blocks.
But, as I listen, I realize that in fact we’ve been lucky. I take out my maps to get a better idea of the situation. I want to see where Breezy Point is, where more than a hundred houses burned to the ground. I need to know where Staten Island is, because that borough was hit really hard. Flooded. Washed away. Wrecked.
We greedily slurp up all the information, and at the same time I think: This is so inconvenient! All we can do is listen without any way to reply. And we can’t just click a link if we want to find out more.
“We need to go north,” I say when the news items start to repeat. “They have power and we’ll be able to get a signal. I need to let my mom and dad know I’m still alive.”
Abby jumps to her feet. “We have to call Mom.”
And even Jim nods. “I’ve got to go to the hospital. My hand should have had a fresh bandage yesterday, but I’m not up for doing it myself. If I’m not careful, I could pull off my finger.”