by J. L. Esplin
The sound of electricity!
A loud pop. Then the floodlights in the tortoise enclosure burst to life, like a spotlight on a stage. And I’m too shocked to move.
The first thing I see in the light is Nate’s face. His dark eyelashes are coated in dust, and I watch his eyes go from hard determination to soft confusion, his pupils shrinking against his blue, invading irises.
But almost as soon as my mind registers the fact that the power is back—the power is back!—the lights dim, fading in and out before completely blacking out again. And everything is dark. Everything back to the way it was.
Only it seems darker now. And stiller. Like the world is stunned. Not just me and Nate, but every insect and animal and creature in a ten-mile radius … is stunned.
Nate’s weight leaves me. I lie on my back, breathing, staring up at the night sky, listening to Nate’s footfalls until they fade away.
22
SOMETHING HARD IS bumping against my ear, nudging me.
I roll my head toward it, my forehead creased in confusion as it scoots off. Then a stream of water hits me in the face. I choke and cough, my shoulders arching off the ground.
I press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets.
“Sorry,” Jess says. “That’s tortoise water, pretty gross, so I wouldn’t lick your lips if I were you.” She drops the wide, rock-shaped water dish in the dirt. “I couldn’t wake you up. You were mumbling things. I’ve got you some drinking water, if you can sit up.”
Her warm, familiar voice makes the corners of my eyes tighten with emotion. I press my heels back into my eye sockets. It’s been months since I’ve heard Jess’s voice.
I wipe the water from my face. She kneels in the dirt beside me. She has the flashlight, and between the light and shade of her movements, I see parts of her at a time. Her light brown hair in two smooth braids. A sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her hazel eyes. Concerned.
I roll onto my shoulder—the one that feels the least sore right now—propping myself up on my elbow. Then I reach back and explore the side of my head that hit the ground with my fingertips, flinching when I find the tender spot.
Jess takes my wrist, pulls my hand around, and places tiny things in the center of my palm. She cradles the back of my hand so I don’t drop them.
“For the pain,” she says, shining her light at the tan and white pills.
I push myself into a sitting position, my feet sliding up and my knees bending stiffly. I’m still a little confused, wondering where the pills came from. How’d she get these?
But when she puts the water bottle in my other hand and I feel the coldness of it, I’m shocked back into reality. Cold water. Running generator. Insulin. Stewart!
I immediately try getting to my feet, but Jess stops me. “Drink first,” she says, twisting the lid off the water bottle for me.
“What time is it?” I croak out.
“Drink first,” she says again.
I put the cool plastic to my lips, tip it back. When the water hits my throat, it’s both agony and relief, but I keep swallowing.
“Don’t forget the pills,” she says.
I pull the bottle back, take a breath, toss all the pills into my mouth at once. Water floods my mouth, pushing the pills toward my throat. I shut my eyes as they go down, moisture leaking from the corners of them.
It feels like I’ve swallowed a handful of sharp rocks.
I ask again, “What time is it?”
She takes out her insulin pump, checks the time. “It’s ten forty-eight,” she says.
Heart in my throat, I get up as far as my knees. I should have been back hours ago. I was supposed to be back hours ago.
Jess gets up with me, slides her arm beneath mine. She’s always been tall, taller than me, but when she helps me stand up, I’m kind of surprised that our eyes are at the same level. We’re the same height now.
“Stewart needs help,” I say, and looking into her sympathetic eyes, I can’t get anything else out after that.
I can’t let this sinking feeling overwhelm me. I can’t let emotion get in the way of my getting back to him.…
“Don’t worry,” Jess says, responding to the fear in my voice. “I heard what you said to Nate. I heard you say that Stew needs insulin. And I didn’t wait around for you guys to stop wrestling in the dirt. I went and got this.” She holds up her diabetes bag, the small shoulder bag she takes everywhere she goes. Stew’s got one just like it, but without the paisley pattern printed on the outside.
It’s cool to the touch, like she’s been storing her whole bag in the fridge. And I’m telling you, Jess is so good with this diabetes stuff. It makes me feel the smallest bit of relief in my chest that I’ve got her with me, helping me. And I use that to push down other things I’m feeling, because I need to tell her more. I need her to know what state he was in when I left him.
Making our way out of the enclosure, I say, “Stew and I have been on our own. Dad never came back from his last trip.” I don’t look at her when I say this, because … I don’t know, Jess has this way of being really sympathetic when you tell her things, and I don’t want it to get to me. I just say the rest as bluntly as I can. “We were robbed. Stew’s been without insulin for two days—almost three days now.”
I walk with her as fast as I can, going easy on my right foot. And she stays calm, but asks a lot of questions.
“When did he last test his blood sugar?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to know how high it is.
“Has he had enough water? How has he been acting? Did he say how he feels?”
Ask me how I feel, John.
“He said he feels like he did that day we took him to the ER. Remember when he threw up Dad’s spaghetti in the bush?”
“He threw up?” she says, not asking about then, but now. Those concerned eyes.
“Twice,” I say, pushing back the emotion, the moisture building in my eyes. “I had to leave him behind. He’s about twenty-three miles back—”
“It’s good you left him,” Jess says encouragingly when my voice breaks, like she’s trying to think of something positive to say. “Physical activity will only make it worse. And he needs water. Just as much as insulin now.”
She says that last part almost to herself. She starts walking ahead of me, leading the way through the last part of the enclosure, stepping around the occasional tortoise—just the ones we’ve disturbed, most of them are in their burrows for the night.
She has to know I’m exhausted, in pain, but she’s pushing me to keep her pace, to walk a little faster. When we get to the back gate of the tortoise enclosure, she opens it, waits for me. And I get there soon after.
“Your dad’s not here, is he?” I say, out of breath. Already knowing the answer, already thinking of other ways to get back to Stew quickly, without Mr. Brighton’s truck.…
“No, he went to Las Vegas the day before yesterday. To check on our mom.”
I look at her, a little surprised, since Jess’s parents do not get along at all. But then again, survival situations make people do crazy things, things they never thought they’d do, right?
“My dad wouldn’t let us go with him. And Nate’s been acting weird ever since he left,” she says, “paranoid. You know how he gets. The smallest thing goes wrong in his life, and he acts like people are out to get him. Failing geometry again. Getting suspended from school for fighting. As if he had no control over any of that.” She shakes her head. “Well, now a lot of things have gone wrong. Everyone is out to get him.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I say dryly, gritting my teeth as we cross their back lawn. “‘Wrestling in the dirt.’ That’s an interesting way to describe your brother almost bludgeoning me to death.”
Her eyes go wide. “You don’t think he was actually going to kill you?”
“I don’t know. That rifle was pretty convincing.”
“I am really sorry,” she says,
her voice so sincere. “I’m not sure what he was thinking.”
“You don’t have to apologize for him. And anyway, he got off me when the power came back on.” I look over at her. I guess to make sure that really happened, that I wasn’t imagining those lights. Nate’s washed-out face, his wide blue eyes …
She nods. “It came on in the house too. For just a few seconds. Then it went out again.”
I feel something new stir in my chest. Hope? Jess feels it too. I can tell.
“Do you have gas storage left?” I ask. “Can we take your dad’s four-wheeler or something?”
“The engine’s out on his four-wheeler right now. He was working on it.” My heart starts to drop, but then she says, “We can take Nate’s truck, though.”
I almost stop walking. “Nate has a truck?”
She nods and rolls her eyes. “My mom bought it for him for his birthday. Big sixteen. Dad was so mad. He wanted Nate to earn the money and buy his own truck. Anyway, he can drive us—”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. She gives me a confused look, because I’m grinning.
Guess what? my body is saying. We don’t have to walk anymore! We’ve got a ride all the way back to Stew.…
“I can drive us,” I tell her. Then I move ahead, taking those back porch steps two at a time, wincing only a little bit.
Sammie’s waiting on the wraparound porch, looking up at us with his tongue hanging out, his tail wagging. I get to the back sliding door, and he slips in alongside Jess and me as I open it.
I slide the door shut behind us, just as we hear a door close upstairs. We look up at the ceiling. Nate’s up there.
“I can force him to drive us,” she says quietly, “threaten to tell Dad if he doesn’t.”
“No, really. I can do it.”
“You’ve driven one time—”
“Twice! I drove part of the way here, Jess. Before we ran out of gas.”
She looks unsure about that, but doesn’t ask me to explain. “All right. I’ll get his keys.”
My heart rate starts to pick up. “Is it in the garage?”
She nods and veers off toward the kitchen with the flashlight to get the keys.
I know my way through the Brightons’ house like I know my way through my own, so I don’t have a problem getting around in the dark. I cut across the family room quietly, past the sagging plaid couches where Stew and I sometimes crash when we stay over, past the breakfast bar where we eat pretty much every meal we have at the Brightons’, and head down the long hallway that leads to the garage.
I grab the doorknob, try to turn it, yank on it, but it sticks. I yank again.
Time is passing by. Time we don’t have. I grab hold of the knob with both hands, jiggling it, twisting it as hard as I can.
Soon, the beam of Jess’s flashlight comes bouncing down the hallway toward me, lighting the family portraits on the wall.
“Are you guys ever gonna fix this stupid doorknob?”
“It’s okay,” she says, her voice calming. She takes the doorknob, does some little trick to get it to turn, and pushes the door open for me.
Okay, I tell myself, taking a breath. I knew that trick. Calm down. Stay calm like Jess.
I take the steps down into the garage and notice the sound of the generator right away. They’ve got it set up outside, an extension cord running to the large storage fridge in the garage, between racks of bottled water. Jess goes out the side door and around to open the garage manually from outside. And I go straight to the fridge, barely glancing at the shadowy outline of Nate’s truck, parked in the second bay.
The light comes on when I open it. Jess’s insulin, but also rows and rows of more water bottles. I grab one, twist off the lid, and start gulping it down—it doesn’t help the pain in my throat, but otherwise, it’s the best drink of water I’ve ever had in my life.
I come up for air and notice there’s Gatorade down on a lower shelf. I reach down to grab one—and freeze. There’s a case of Coke behind the Gatorade. Ice-cold soda.
The garage door rumbles, starts to roll up the tracks, and I put the water bottle down in the fridge for a minute, shut the door, and go help Jess. We get it all the way open after a few shoves. It makes a lot of noise, and we both hesitate, listening for the sounds of Nate.
Nothing.
I check out Nate’s truck in the dim moonlight, walking alongside it. It’s massive compared to Spike’s piece of crap. Extended cab, midnight blue.
“Hey,” I say quietly, swallowing down my second thoughts about driving something like that, “mind if I take a couple of those Cokes?”
“Of course not. Take anything you want.”
Jess has already grabbed a plastic crate and is on her way to the fridge. She puts a bunch of non-refrigerated water in there first; then we quickly throw in some cold waters and Gatorades, and I grab two Cokes from the case.
“We need food too,” I say quickly. “Do you have anything resembling a cheeseburger or fries?”
She squints at me funny, but says, “Potato chips?”
“That’ll have to do,” I say to myself, picking up one side of the heavy crate. Jess takes the other side, and we carry it around to the back of the truck.
She shakes her head. “Potato chips aren’t the best thing for Stew right now.”
I agree, but the chips aren’t for Stew, I start to tell her. But then she says, “I keep thinking about him being on his own out there, in the dark.”
Feelings rush back to me. Will standing up on the bumper of that truck. Cleverly holding out the canteen, insisting I take it. Neither of them had to stay behind. But both of them did.
We set down the crate, and I look at Jess, reassuring her. “He’s not alone.”
* * *
I start the truck, and the cab is filled with Nate’s weird music—screaming metal blasting out of the speakers. We both cringe and Jess grabs the volume nob, turning it all the way down. I throw the gear in reverse, turn to watch out the rear window as I back up, and immediately bump the passenger side-view mirror against the side of the garage, bending it back.
I brake hard. Look at Jess.
She shrugs. “It’s fine.”
I turn around to look behind me again, give it some gas. But I’m really close to that side of the garage, for some reason. The front wheel cover scrapes along the garage door rail, metal on metal, and the bumper sort of catches at the end, prying back. It makes a terrible sound—kind of like Nate’s music.
I brake again. “Sorry.”
“You’re sure you can drive?” Jess asks, gripping her seat belt and looking up at the house for any signs of Nate.
“Yeah, I got this. I mean, now that I’m out of the garage, I got this.”
I give it more gas and reverse all the way down the long drive. And I keep it pretty straight, too, except for at the end, when the back tires go off-road. I back it out onto the highway, turning too late and going off-road again. After braking hard, I throw it into drive and floor the gas pedal without really meaning to. The tires slip a little in the dirt before gaining traction.
“Don’t worry, now I got this,” I say to Jess again, because she’s either really freaked out about my driving or I’m making her sick. “Not bad for a new driver, though, right?” I add just as the wheels hit the rumble strip on the right side of the road. It’s like rolling thunder in the cab. I quickly correct it.
“I’m just going to keep holding on, if that’s okay,” she says.
I grip the steering wheel tighter, the pain in my hand not too bad now.
The road is really dark, so I take one hand off, reach around the steering wheel, and find the brights. I flip them on and it’s like the whole road opens up in front of me, the whole road is lit. And I think I can take it a little faster, faster than I took Spike’s piece-of-crap truck. Glancing at the speedometer, I bring the truck up to fifty-five miles an hour, then sixty-five, then seventy-five, then eighty.
The clock on the dashboard s
ays it’s 11:19.
“What did you say their names were again?” Jess asks, I guess to either get her mind off my driving or to get her mind off Stewart. Probably both.
“Cleverly and Will. You’ll like them,” I say confidently.
I start to explain why, but Jess says, “They stayed behind with Stew. I already do like them. Where did you meet them?”
I think about that one for a second, and I know Jess wouldn’t hold the whole toilet-water thing against us, but I just say, “It’s kind of a long story. And you didn’t finish telling me about your dad. He went to check on your mom?”
“Yeah. He’d already checked on my mom once before. But he heard from someone in Alamo that they drove down to Vegas and were able to get cell service. It was worth the gas to see if it was true.”
If Mr. Brighton got cell service, one of the first people he’d try calling is my dad.
“When is he coming back?” I ask.
“He was supposed to be back this morning.”
I can hear the frown in her voice, the uncertainty. Feelings come back, of the night my dad didn’t come home, when Stew and I first realized we would be on our own.
“Are you worried about him?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “I’m not. How could I be? Nate is worried enough for the both of us.” Then she says, “I just think, something caused my dad to stay away longer than he planned. But I know him, and I know he can figure a way out of anything. And as soon as he does, he’ll be back.”
“What about you?” she says. “Are you worried about your dad?”
I think about what I heard on the shortwave radio, about the borders being closed. Then I think about the floodlights coming on in the tortoise enclosure, the possibility of cell service in Las Vegas.
Like Jess said. Something kept him from coming home. But he’ll figure a way out of it. “No,” I answer.
We’re coming out of a bend, onto a straight stretch of road. I glance at the clock—11:38.
“We should be getting close,” I say. Close to where Spike’s truck died. Close to where I left them behind.