I have to say something, though. I should.
It isn’t until we’re inside the school again, heading to Principal Weaver’s office, that I find the will to speak. “Mr. Whitlock, I wasn’t involved with whatever happened. You have to know that. I honestly just had to go find my sisters.”
He stops in the dimly lit hallway. “What’s your family creed?”
“What?” That’s a strange thing to ask, given the circumstances.
“Your creed. I heard you mention it to Ms. Pennick.”
Mr. Whitlock hasn’t accused us of anything without proof, unlike Pen-cap, so I have no reason to keep it a secret. It’s not like it’s anything incriminating or shocking. In fact, I bet it’s the creed of lots of families. Especially when they go on trips and stuff where anything can happen, which is the main point.
I shrug one shoulder. “We stick together no matter what.”
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, just rakes his hand across the top of his head, smoothing down his straight golden hair where he has a cowlick. Against the sky-blue lockers, he reminds me of that highly sensing character in Fight Club and all I can think is, What would Tyler Durden do?
“I didn’t think you were involved,” he says. “Not directly. But I think you have an idea who was.”
He shifts a suspicious gaze to Birdie and my protective defenses go up.
Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react.
Thankfully, my sister keeps her mouth shut.
All three of us need to stay on the same page if we’re going to survive this meeting with Principal Weaver.
“Okay then,” Mr. Whitlock says. “If you’re not involved, and you don’t know who is, why am I taking you to Principal Weaver?”
I arch a brow at the trick question, the R in Ready kicking into high gear. “Because he told you to?”
Trick questions require trick answers.
“Did he?” Whitlock says. “I was so distraught over my car, I guess that request got lost in the confusion of the situation.”
He shifts his eyes to the exit. When we don’t respond, he tips his head toward the door.
“Are you saying we can leave?”
He moves his head in a suggested yes, but I don’t trust it. This feels like baiting a trap. Thread something shiny on a hook to tempt the fish before yanking it out of the water by its hungry mouth.
“What’s the catch?” I ask.
“No catch. I know more about you three than you might think. If needed, I can come up with something to explain your whereabouts. Where did you stash your EDCs?”
“Our what?” Birdie draws out the question, as singsong as her name implies.
Never have I ever seen my sister play dumb so well. Ruffling her bangs with her fingertips like some character in a play about babes in the woods.
Starring Birdie Juniper: Lead Ingénue.
“Your Every Day Carries.” Whitlock pats the canvas messenger bag slung across his body twice, as if to say one of these. “Where are they? I’ve never seen any one of you without one.”
“He’s a prepper,” Blue says, cutting straight through the bullshit.
“I’m a realist,” Whitlock counters. “And from what I’ve seen since I got here, so are you. I can’t fault you for leaving my class the way you did, Honey. I understand following protocol. Believe me, that’s my whole life. But you drew the kind of attention to yourself that’s hard to recover from without an advocate on your side. That’s all I was trying to say.”
You can talk to me, he told me. Let me be your confidant.
Confidant. My head shakes reflexively. We don’t have those outside of our group, unless you count Bucky. The first rule of prep club is you don’t talk about prep club. My sisters are my biggest confidantes and right now they look just as perplexed.
Never in a million years did I imagine having to do a surprise threat assessment of Mr. Whitlock, but what choice do I have? We’ve been taught to exercise caution with preppers who aren’t part of our group. Marauders are considered worse than Outsiders, because their interests lie in assessing the stashed assets of other preppers so they can steal them when the SHTF. But Mr. Whitlock, of all people, a prepper? Or worse. A marauder. I don’t know.
THREAT ASSESSMENT:
PRYCE WHITLOCK|5’11” AVERAGE-STRONG BUILD|OPEN SOCIAL GROUP|UNTRUSTING
MOST LIKELY TO: surprise you without warning.
LEAST LIKELY TO: follow the rules of the establishment.
2/10 WOULD IMPEDE GROUP SURVIVAL IN EMERGENCY SITUATION.
CASUALTY POTENTIAL: low
“They’re in a gym locker,” I tell him. “We’ll go get them.”
I’m mad at myself for not thinking my cautionary plan all the way through. The school can check lockers because they’re school property. Checking our bags requires probable cause. Doing so without viable suspicion would be a fourth amendment violation.
“So you’re just gonna let us go home?” Blue asks.
I hold my breath, unconvinced, waiting for the shiny thing dangling in front of us to be yanked away.
“I’ll think of something to tell Principal Weaver. And the authorities. They may decide they want to talk to you at another time, but I’ll do what I can for now.”
“What about Daniel?” Birdie asks.
I’m leery of how easily she’s fallen into trusting my chemistry teacher. I like Mr. Whitlock, like I said, but trusting him begs me to follow a different set of rules.
“I can only offer the three of you a chance to get out of here before anyone else comes looking for you. I don’t know what they found on Daniel Dobbs, yet. If that’s going to stop you from leaving, that’s fine. I can take you to Principal Weaver’s office now. But if you want me to CYA, you need to collect your EDCs and get out of here. And I suggest you think long and hard about what you’re going to carry inside those bags when you return tomorrow.”
I nod, knowing, even if we leave, this conversation feels far from over.
“Tomorrow, then,” I say. “We’ll go. Thank you.” I pull Birdie by the sleeve because she seems reluctant to move without knowing what’s happening to Daniel.
Mr. Whitlock adjusts the strap on his own EDC, completely straight-faced. “Tomorrow it is.”
BSTS
BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY
WE’RE LATE. MOTHER is standing under the portico with her arms crossed, mouth pulled in a grim frown as we roll up in the station wagon. When she knows we’re home, she walks inside without changing her stoic expression. Since coming here, our mother almost always thinks prepping and safety first, feelings second. Right now, she’s got that disappointed, we-have-work-to-do vibe draped across her shoulders like a tattered shawl.
I stay behind the wheel an extra second, letting the rain flood the windshield in waves. We didn’t do anything wrong. Birdie may have, but that’s not the position I’m planning to take.
“Let me do the talking,” I tell my sisters. “She’s got that look.” Ripe for a dustup with Birdie if my sister doesn’t keep her mouth shut.
“Maybe I can explain,” Birdie offers.
I snap the wagon’s gearshift into Park and whip my head to the back seat. “Can you?” I know it’s snippy, but an hour ago she claimed she couldn’t remember what she’d done. “I’ll do what I can to keep Mother off the scent of your involvement in whatever the hell you were doing. Don’t say a word until she tells us what she knows.”
Blue exits the car quietly, but stares longingly at Achilles’s mew. He doesn’t like to fly in the rain. Falcons need the updraft of wind, and anything more than light rain makes their wings too heavy. Achilles screeches from inside the mew like he senses her presence, and she smiles, knowing he’s safe and sound.
We enter the house rank and file, oldest to youngest, shaking the wet weather onto the ugly brown tiles by the door.
The TV in the living room is tuned to the national news, as always, with the constant chattering of what’s happening around the
globe. It underscores our daily existence and keeps us informed, or will keep us informed until something or someone takes us out. The POTUS has been dropping instigating comments about the Supreme Leader of North Korea like they’re fighting over who has the biggest toy collection instead of focusing on the reality of what a nuclear bomb would do to either country. The wood-burning stove is lit. On any other day, it would take the chill from the house, but it’s being replenished by Mother’s icy countenance.
“I tried to reach you girls on the cellphone several times. You know how much I worry when you don’t answer, especially when the weather is like this. Would one of you care to explain?”
So much for waiting until she gives us her intel.
I swipe away the drops of rain sliding down my forehead. “It’s my fault,” I tell her. “There was an incident at the school. I was rushing to leave and left the phone in my locker. In my defense, it was out of battery and needs to be charged anyway.”
I peel off my wet socks, trying to act as natural as possible.
“That part was my fault,” Birdie says, and I wish she’d shut up. “It was my turn to make sure the phone was charged.”
“That’s not the only complication, though, is it?” Mother says. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have received a call from Principal Weaver saying Honey climbed out of her classroom through the air shaft.”
I’m standing in front of her with my back against a proverbial wall. “I did, but only because it sounded like someone was firing a gun, and we got put on lockdown. I did what I was supposed to do. Find Birdie and Blue. Isn’t that why we’ve been training, to be ready to react responsibly during tense situations? BSTS.”
“I can do without the sass,” Mother says. “I know very well why we’ve been training.”
She picks up a glass of water from the counter with her bandaged hand, and I see her make the slightest wince.
“Is your antibiotic not working?” I ask. “I can go to the store and buy some Neosporin.” I need it for my knee as much as she does.
“The antibiotic is fine. Don’t change the subject, Honey.” She stares past me to Birdie. “You didn’t feel the need to use an air shaft in this situation, did you?”
Birdie shakes her head. “I was on the field for PE.”
“I used the air shaft,” Blue offers, ever at my defense. “I slipped out of my classroom as soon as everyone started to panic and went up through a vent in the bathroom.”
Mother looks down her nose at me, as if to say Blue had the right idea and I messed up.
“My teacher had already locked the door,” I explain. “What would you have had me do, leave them to their own fates?”
Mother is silent, thinking.
She knows I’m right. She knows I’m right. She knows I’m right. I try to will her into believing this.
“It’s always better to be safe than sorry,” she finally concedes. “Which is why I told your principal, who for some reason knew our family creed, that you had a habit of taking things literally and perhaps too far. That as the oldest you’ve always felt a larger sense of responsibility to your sisters. I assured him it wouldn’t happen again.”
“It won’t,” I say. “Unless it does.”
Mother’s disappointed scowl softens. “The world is largely unpredictable, but I had to say something to dissuade him from further questions.”
The good thing is there’s no mention of Birdie’s EDC, so Daniel must have kept his mouth shut. Whitlock probably told Principal Weaver our creed in my defense. I’m grateful we’re off the hook with Principal Weaver, but I’m still concerned about the fishbowl I’ll be in at school. Speculated upon like some circus freak. The Girl with the Juniper Branch Tattoo. We all have one, actually. I’m not being funny. Mother wanted us to have a distinguishing mark in case we got lost, abducted, or worse. They’re dainty, a single sprig on the back of our left arms above the elbow, black ink with three berries positioned in descending order. The one on my arm has the highest berry inked in, Birdie’s is the middle berry, and Blue’s the lowest. I remember Birdie arguing that she had a mole under her left breast and that was her distinguishing mark. But once I had mine, she wanted one, too.
“Are you gonna tell Dieter?” I ask.
“I haven’t yet,” she says. “Is there anything else I should know?”
Loads. But I shake my head. It would be so much easier to pass the buck to the Burrow Boys, tell Mother they were up to something for Dieter Ackerman, but I can’t. Not until we know more.
I don’t have to say another word because the TV switches over to local news, and the royal blue banner at the bottom of the screen spills their version of our story.
SHOTS FIRED AT LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL CALLED AN ELABORATE PRANK.
The flat voice grabs the rest of my family’s attention, and we all move closer to the TV without speaking, watching the deadpan news anchor publicize what happened at school earlier. Publicize being the operative word.
In local news, what sounded like gunfire this afternoon at Elkwood High School brought authorities racing to the scene in anticipation of what might have been the twenty-fourth school shooting across the nation this year.
Students recall hearing the sound of gunshots before the school’s principal issued a mandatory lockdown on what’s now being called an elaborate, but dangerous, prank. The student responsible has been identified and could be charged with explosives and fireworks offenses, as well as reckless conduct, as Elkwood Police continue to investigate the incident. According to the school’s website, an automated phone call was sent to parents, assuring them all students were safe and able to return to classes as scheduled tomorrow.
They pan the crowd of students outside the school. My sisters and I are huddled in the shot, plain as daylight.
“Why is that camera pointed at you, Honey?”
Not exactly pointed. I shrug and Mother’s scowl returns. This isn’t good.
Birdie is sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at the screen like she’s hypnotized long after they’ve moved on to a different story. “What happens when someone is charged with explosives and fireworks offenses? Would they go to jail?”
She twists to look at Mother, gnawing her middle fingernail again.
“Not if they’re a minor,” Mother says. “Why do you ask? Do you know the student they’re talking about?”
I’m primed to kick my sister in her seated bottom. Thankfully, she shakes her head in denial. Mother doesn’t know about her and Daniel being a couple, only that they’re friends. It’s best to keep it that way. The bigger problem we have is if we’re watching this air on mainstream media, so is everybody else on the compound.
The CB radio used for compound-wide communication crackles to life in our kitchen with Dieter Ackerman’s sharp voice. Piercing the room like the edge of a dull blade being sharpened against a whetstone. None of us has the energy to feign surprise.
“Juniper 4321, this is Ackerman1. Special mandatory meeting called at eighteen-hundred hours in the central training area. Confirm. Over.”
Mother gives us a reproachful scowl before walking to the radio in the foyer. “This is Juniper 4321. Confirming receipt of transmission for special mandatory meeting. Over.” She turns the radio off and faces us. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I need to know?”
I shrug and shake my head before glancing left and right at my sisters, who are, in varying degrees, giving Mother the same nonverbal answer.
“Do I have time to feed the animals?” Blue asks, acting like everything is fine and normal.
Mother checks her field watch. “You should all do it. The other chores will have to wait until tomorrow. Blue, you take care of the chickens, Birdie, the goats. Honey can pull vegetables from the garden for dinner. I’ll check our rain barrels before going down there to see what’s going on. You have an hour.”
“I need dry socks,” I tell my sisters. “You want me to get you some?”
They nod and I head for the st
airs to our bedroom, ignoring the nagging sensation arising in my mind for why my mother always goes down there early or alone.
What I really need is a minute alone to get some bandages and process everything that’s happened. I pull three pairs of thick socks from the dresser and change into a heavy sweatshirt. I grab one for Blue, too, because her lips were starting to match her hair in the rain. My knee is throbbing out of sync with my heart like it has a separate sympathetic nervous system. I’m glad Mother didn’t spot the jagged tear in my jeans. I leave my pants in a heap on the floor and grab the hydrogen peroxide and first aid kit from the hallway linen closet. The door is slightly askew. Birdie is usually the one to fix things like loose screws on outlet covers or a burned-out lightbulb. Mostly because her patience gets worn by small stuff faster than mine or Blue’s.
I douse the two-inch gash over the tub to save cleanup time. Pink, blood-tinged water runs down the drain before the H2O2 bubbles up white and foamy. I pat it dry and put a couple of butterfly stitches across it to keep it from bleeding. If that doesn’t work, I’ll glue it shut later. I change into a fresh pair of pants and slip my feet inside the wool hiking socks, covering my damp, shriveled toes, instantly feeling better. I head downstairs, but at the last minute turn and go into our bedroom for the interchangeable screwdriver we keep in the pencil jar. It only takes a minute to fix the crooked door, but it satisfies my itch to have something go right today.
When I get back downstairs, Birdie passes me a pair of knee-high rain boots the color of Spanish olives. “We’re gonna need these.”
I hand her a pair of wool socks and toss the other pair to Blue with her sweatshirt. Once we’re dressed in new layers, we head outside. I grab one of the vegetable-collecting baskets hanging outside our house, thankful Mother didn’t assign me the goats. Chickens don’t mind the rain, but the goats bray like every drop is acid rain, even though they have a barn that’s plenty dry. If you ever wanted to know what stubborn and sensitive looks like, get yourself a goat. Or, better yet, just hang with my sister Birdie. Same-same.
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