Skylark and Wallcreeper

by Anne O'Brien Carelli

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An imprint of Bonnier Publishing USA

  251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010

  Copyright © 2018 by Anne O’Brien Carelli

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Yellow Jacket is an imprint of Bonnier Publishing USA, and associated colophon is a trademark of Bonnier Publishing USA.

  Manufactured in the United States of America BVG 0718

  First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-4998-0745-5

  yellowjacketreads.com

  bonnierpublishingusa.com

  To Phoebe

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Three Feet

  Chapter 2: Four Feet

  Chapter 3: Low Tide

  Chapter 4: Resist

  Chapter 5: Curfew

  Chapter 6: Shelter

  Chapter 7: Noah’s Ark

  Chapter 8: The News

  Chapter 9: Worst Dressed

  Chapter 10: The Tour

  Chapter 11: Rabbit

  Chapter 12: Skylark

  Chapter 13: Keepsakes

  Chapter 14: The Code

  Chapter 15: Invisible

  Chapter 16: A Bridge to Cross

  Chapter 17: Standing Order

  Chapter 18: Fearless

  Chapter 19: Bonjour! Bonjour!

  Chapter 20: The Letters

  Chapter 21: Letters from London

  Chapter 22: On the Train

  Chapter 23: Up the Coast

  Chapter 24: A Shiny Bird

  Chapter 25: Tools of the Trade

  Chapter 26: Les Belles Fleurs

  Chapter 27: Le Roi

  Chapter 28: Thunderclaps

  Chapter 29: Chocolate Croissants

  Chapter 30: Evacuation

  Chapter 31: Huzzah!

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Three Feet

  Queens, New York

  October 2012—Day 1

  It sounds like she’s in a tunnel.

  But they closed all the tunnels.

  “Mom, you can’t come! The water’s too high.”

  “Can you hear me, Lily? Are you there?”

  I hold my phone in front of me. “Mom! Trust me, I’m fine.”

  The phone buzzes, and my mom’s voice breaks up, then fades away. I end the call, slip the phone into the back pocket of my jeans, and race up the metal stairs. Behind me, a heavy door holds back sloshing water that smells like dead fish and gasoline. I had just checked on the boxes we’d stacked on tables on the main floor. I hope we raised them high enough, but that water’s coming in fast.

  The door to the second floor slams against something hard when I push on the bar. I can see the end of a gurney blocking the way, so I give it a shove and squeeze through the opening. “Careful!” a woman in a wheelchair yells at me. “Shut that door! Keep the water out!” She’s wearing a red winter coat and knit cap, even though it’s October and she never goes outside.

  “Sorry.” I rush past her and several other people sitting quietly in wheelchairs in the long hallway. They’re holding stuffed plastic bags in their laps and look at me expectantly as I race by.

  I see Veronica at the end of the hall calming a group of residents who are clustered around her. “Go back to your rooms.” She gently turns Mr. Michaels toward room 212. “No one’s going anywhere.”

  “It’s higher,” I whisper to her as I help steer everyone toward their rooms. She stiffens and grabs the radio hanging on her hip.

  “How high?” she asks as she flicks the switch.

  “It’s probably two feet—maybe two and a half. But it keeps coming. It’s definitely not slowing down.”

  “This shelter in place is BS,” Veronica mumbles. “Nicole?” she speaks into the radio. “Nicole?”

  “On third!” Nicole responds, her voice crackly. “What’s the word?”

  “Lily says two feet and climbing.” She steps away from two very old men who are leaning in and listening.

  “Lily’s still here?”

  Veronica shakes her head at me and touches my cheek. “She won’t leave. She’s our water checker. She says maybe two and a half and still coming in.”

  “Better start Phase One for the second floor. I’ll be right down.” The green light on the radio turns red, just as the hall lights flicker. Sounds of surprise come from the rooms, and more residents start to appear at their doorways.

  “Don’t worry—we have a generator!” Veronica works her way up and down the hallway, stroking thin, weak arms and smiling at worried faces. “Just stay where you are so we don’t have to track anyone down, okay?”

  Mrs. Sidobeth, always one to raise a few questions, points her cane at me. “Why aren’t you safe at home?”

  “I was visiting my granny.” Mrs. Sidobeth looks confused, but that could be because her dementia has taken over. “She’s on the fifth floor. You know, your friend? Miss Collette?” Sometimes you can have a good conversation with Mrs. S, but then she’ll repeat the entire talk the next day. She plays poker with my granny on Wednesday afternoons in the resident lounge. It’s pretty funny to watch because most of them can’t remember anything.

  I won’t be watching penny poker for a while. The resident lounge is on the first floor and almost under water.

  “I’m going up,” I say to Veronica, and head back to the stairwell. We’ve been warned that we shouldn’t use the elevators in case the power goes out. The lights flicker again, and I grab the last flashlight from the supply box at the nurses’ station.

  The nursing home has eight floors. My granny has been on four different floors since we moved her here three years ago. She says that they keep moving her up closer to the Big Pie in the Sky. I hope she stayed in her room because I really don’t want to hunt for her. She tends to wander.

  The fifth floor is a lot quieter than the second floor, probably because it’s late in the afternoon and a lot of residents are napping. They aren’t as close to the rising waters, and most won’t remember that a hurricane has been banging against New York City. Some of them won’t even remember they’re living in Queens, right on the ocean.

  I visit Granny as much as possible. She still knows who I am. I can tell her about all the weird things that happen in school. She loves hearing about Mr. Simpson, my sixth-grade science teacher, and his horrible BO, and what my best friend, Johnny, brings for lunch every day. Granny was an amazing cook and always laughs at Johnny’s latest creations. His family owns a restaurant, and they let him try out recipes on the regular customers.

  Yesterday he brought bright green cookies in his lunch. They were made out of broccoli and spinach, with bacon and maple syrup frosting. I was the only one willing to try one, and they were surprisingly good.

  School was canceled because of the hurricane today. Granny won’t care about me missing school. She never asks about my grades or homework. I read her the stories that I write, and when she’s able to focus, her suggestions always make them better. I never leave her without putting my cheek close to her face so that she can kiss me and say, “So good. You are so good, my Lilybelle.”

  I enter the small room that is now my granny’s home. Her bed takes up most of the space, but my mom and I managed to squeeze in Granny’s favorite comfy chair. On the walls are large pictures th
at seem to glow in the dim light. They’re photos of the gardens that Granny planted all over the world. My granny’s been everywhere. She tells me about her travels to places with names like Kathmandu and Bujumbura.

  I haven’t been anywhere outside of the city yet, but it was Granny who helped me get my first passport. My mom wasn’t too pleased, but I always keep my passport zipped into the pocket of my backpack.

  When she can’t remember much, Granny can still tell me about all the places she’s been. On the days when she has no idea what she had for breakfast, she can still tell me the name of every flower and every person who worked beside her in those gardens.

  She’s sitting up in bed, dozing against a pillow covered in the bright pink pillowcase that she brought with her from her old apartment. Every time I come to see her, I’m struck by how tiny and pale she looks. I hope we don’t have to evacuate the building because she doesn’t look like she could stand the excitement.

  She always seems to know that I’ve arrived because her eyes pop open, and she grins. She fusses with her short, wavy white hair, which is silly because I don’t care what she looks like. “I like to look presentable,” she says. “So should you.”

  “Hey, Granny!” I slide a chair next to her bed.

  “So nobody moved me?” We both laugh. She likes to claim that when she’s sleeping they move her to another floor. Little does she know that it may happen again.

  Maria appears at the door. Her normally cheerful face is grim. She’s wearing an orange smock decorated with huge yellow daisies, and her wide pockets are bulging. She carries all the paraphernalia she needs to treat her residents with when she moves swiftly from room to room during her shift. A large black flashlight pokes out of one of the pockets. “Nicole needs you on the second floor,” she says, gesturing for me to come. “Miss Collette, I think your Lily’s going to be pretty busy for a while. Can you spare her?”

  “Doing what?” Granny pulls herself up and points at the rain that’s blowing sideways and beating against her small window. “Sandy’s here?”

  “Yep—Superstorm Sandy is right at our doorstep.” Maria strides over and tries to gently help Granny lie back down, but Granny resists. I push back my chair and step out of the way. I know that nurses like Maria can be firm but kind when residents get stubborn. This time Granny wins, and her thin legs dangle off the edge of the bed, far from the floor. I want to stop everything, climb on the bed next to her, and hold her nice and steady.

  Maria squats down to look at Granny eye to eye. “You need to stay in your bed and let Lily go help on the second floor. No arguments this time, okay?”

  I make sure Granny’s comfortable, but she waves me off. She can tell I’m anxious to find Nicole. I squeeze her gnarled hand. “I’ll be back, but do as they say.” She settles back down as Maria straightens her favorite pink-flowered coverlet.

  The lights go out, and the room turns gray. The rain sounds more like winter sleet and pounds on the window. Granny grasps the sides of her bed and glances at her oxygen tank plugged into the socket near her bed. “We have a generator, right?” She’s tough, my granny, but I can tell from her wide, bright blue eyes that she’s scared.

  “Count to twenty,” Maria shouts down the hall. “At twenty you’ll hear the generator come on!”

  I grab the jean jacket I’d hung on the unused IV stand in the corner of Granny’s room and work my way down the darkened hall, silently counting to twenty. There are people who normally work the night shift moving from room to room. They were here all night and stayed today, and they’re not going home now. Someone has stacked the evacuation sleds along the walls, but it doesn’t look like there’s enough for all the residents on the floor.

  The normally glowing red EXIT lights are dim. I may need my flashlight in the stairwell. I can’t see anything out the window that faces the ocean—just clouds of swirling water flying by. But the lights come back on as the generator kicks in. Maria catches up with me. “Three feet of water on the first floor,” she says in a low voice. “They’re moving second floor to third. What a mess.”

  The hall abruptly goes dark. For a moment, there’s complete silence on the floor. The computers at the nurses’ station go down. The beeping and humming from the medical equipment stop.

  Maria grabs my arm. “Oh, no. This is not good. The generator’s on the first floor.”

  Chapter 2

  Four Feet

  Everyone is moving up the stairs as I slide along the cool wall to get down to the second floor. The nurses and orderlies are carrying frightened residents on short stretchers. Some of the nurses are also carrying IV bags or portable oxygen tanks, but they keep up a constant chatter.

  “I knew I should’ve quit smoking!” one of them gasps as she lifts the end of a stretcher that holds a wiggling and moaning old man.

  Another nurse chuckles, even though she’s trying to drag a medicine cart up the steps. “Well, your cigarettes are soggy now!” I guess their lockers on the first floor must be under water.

  There are luminescent dots scattered throughout the dark stairwell. They’re coming from glow sticks that the nurses have twisted around their necks and hung on their belts. Last year, one of the orderlies brought back hundreds of glow sticks that he bought at a concert at Madison Square Garden. “They lit up the arena,” he said when he dumped the boxes at Nicole’s feet. “And I figured you can’t hold a flashlight while you’re changing a bandage, so here you go.” We laughed at him at the time. He was always preparing for emergencies we thought would never happen. Now those skinny glow sticks are lighting the way.

  “Lily!” As I reach the second floor, Nicole rushes down the hallway toward me. “Go down and do a water check. But be careful—don’t touch the water. We don’t need you electrocuted.” She spins two residents in wheelchairs at the same time and lines them up to be carried to the third floor. “Elevator’s out. Hang in there, folks. Just going for a little ride.”

  By this time it’s as black as the middle of the night both inside and out, and the wind screeches like an eighteen-wheeler slamming on its brakes. As I enter the stairwell down to the first floor, the door slams behind me. I’m all alone, and I can’t hear any of the activity on the other side of the door. But somehow the distant whirring of the storm is still in the background.

  I flick on my flashlight and carefully take one step at a time. The railing feels slimy. I’m glad I’m wearing my clunky black pirate boots. I hope Nicole remembers that she sent me here.

  I don’t really work at the nursing home. I’m just a regular visitor and probably the youngest person who comes and stays a lot. It takes two subway transfers from our apartment and my middle school, but they can always use an extra hand. They put me to work doing errands and keeping the residents occupied. But mostly I sit near my granny and read to her and tell her stuff. She’s listening, even if she looks like she’s not.

  I’m just about to push open the door to the first floor, but the air is damp and the temperature has dropped, so I stop to zip up my thin cotton hoodie. What if the ocean is waiting there, ready to pour through the doorway and wash me away?

  But I have to check—Nicole needs my report. I reach forward to push on the bar, when the door flies open and a blinding light blasts into my face. “Anybody there?” The biggest man I’ve ever seen shouts up the stairwell. “National Guard! Coming up!”

  I don’t think he’s seen me, even though I’m covered in light. I guess it would be weird to plow through floodwaters to rescue people in a nursing home and see a skinny, twelve-year-old girl with a pixie cut and freckles standing in the stairwell.

  He’s wearing green overalls that look like they’re made of plastic. The water comes almost to his knees and would probably cover me to my waist. “Hey!” He pushes his flashlight even closer so that I wave my hand in front of my face. I almost clunk him with my own flashlight. “This is Rockaway Manor, right? The nursing home?”

  “Yes it is! And they could use some hel
p moving everyone up to the third floor. The water’s climbing.”

  “No kidding.” He turns and yells behind him. “We’ll have to get ’em out this way! Let’s move!”

  “Out?” I can barely say the word. “You’re evacuating?”

  “Honey,” he says as he waves people in camouflage and headlamps past me, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. That water’s not going to stop. Not even for a bunch of old people.” He steps by me, shouting orders.

  Granny! She’s on the fifth floor, but are they going to evacuate all the floors?

  I scoot up the stairs, winding my way around the National Guard soldiers as they pour into the second floor. Three more flights to go.

  Granny’s sitting on the side of the bed, and Maria’s tearing long strips of duct tape and sticking them to the bed frame. “Put your coat on and lie down, Miss Collette. Everyone has to stay in their beds.”

  “Don’t you tape me into this bed!” Granny pushes Maria.

  “Granny, listen to Maria.” I come around the other side of the bed and help her slide her skinny arms into the sleeves of her wool coat. I gently pull her back, but she shakes her head and clutches my arm.

  “Get a diaper cover.” Maria points to Granny’s small closet. “Get two. Wrap this medical record in it and seal it to Miss Collette’s bed.” She hands Granny’s thick file to me and a baggie filled with bottles of medicines. “We’ve run out of plastic bags, but her records have to stay dry. Attach these to her and don’t let them get lost.”

  She grabs Granny’s hand, snaps a white plastic band around her wrist, and scribbles Granny’s name and room number on it. “Don’t you go disappearing on me now.” She moves quickly toward the door and points to the closet again. “Go, Lily. Then come help me with everyone else.”

  Granny’s shaking when I help her settle down under her coverlet and pull the coat collar up around her neck. I stretch long pieces of duct tape and stick them across the coverlet. “This will keep the blanket on, Granny. Looks like they’re going to take us someplace else, and we need to keep you warm.”