I stay up until after midnight finishing Claire’s bracelet. Focusing on the intricate knotting pattern is the only thing I can do to keep my mind off of the recipe book.
Until I go to bed, where there’s nothing to do but think. My body feels tired, but my brain is wide awake with images of canned goods and respirator masks and tactical knives. All the things on my father’s lists. Sweat gathers on my skin, and I kick off the blanket. He’s cataloged exactly what we would need to survive a real apocalypse.
I finally drift off around two a.m., lulled by the patter of rain on my window. The next morning, it’s pouring and my limbs are heavy with exhaustion. Claire’s car appears in the gloom and I sprint, trying not to get soaked as I throw myself into her messy landfill of a front seat. I shake out my hair, dripping water all over her dashboard. Oops.
“So, I’m freaking out,” she says as we pull away. Our rides to school are routine at this point, and she’s not one to bother with small talk. “Ms. Grandy posted the grades for that precalc unit test we had last week. You know, the one I thought went pretty well?”
I lift my head and try to look alert. “And did it?”
“No.” Claire flicks the wipers to the highest speed. “I got a seventy-six, Iz. A seventy-six. It brought my grade down like five points. And we have the final exam coming up, which is worth thirty per cent.”
“You’ll do fine,” I say calmly. The tightness in my stomach releases a little. Listening to my best friend spiral over school feels normal and familiar, and comforting her is making me feel better, too. “It’s next year that really matters anyway. Colleges don’t care about your junior year grades unless you’re applying early. So it’s not worth worrying about.”
She glances at me, eyes wide. “I am applying early. Aren’t you?”
“I mean, yeah. Probably. But art school focuses more on the portfolio. I don’t really need to worry about precalc.” I shrug.
Sometimes I wonder how Claire and I ever got to be friends. She takes advanced sciences and math and gym; I take art and design and the bare minimum of everything else. She wants to go to a good college and study civil engineering; I’m not even entirely sure what that is. I want to go to art school and study jewelry design and metalsmithing. She’s athletic and slim with thick auburn hair; I inherited my mom’s wide hips and incoordination and my dad’s dull brown hair and slightly-too-big nose. If the proximity of our lockers hadn’t thrown us together daily in ninth grade, we probably never would have gotten close.
“You amaze me, Isobel,” Claire says with a shake of her head. “How do you do it? How do you not worry about the future?”
“Because the future is unpredictable,” I reply. “Things change. Plans go awry. Forty-one-year-old moms die of cancer. The way I see it, worrying about what may or may not happen is pointless.”
Claire nods. “Good point.”
She parks the car as close as possible to the school, but we’re still dripping by the time we get inside. Her first class is right across from my locker, so we head there.
“Are you okay?” Claire asks as we shoulder our way through the hallway crowd.
“Yeah, why?”
“Because your concealer isn’t enough to hide those dark circles and you didn’t even notice Miguel walking by.”
I blink and glance behind me, but Miguel—Claire’s friend and the focus of a tiny unrequited crush I’ve been harboring for weeks—has been absorbed into the crowd. “Oh, I almost forgot,” I say, sidestepping her concern. “I have something for you.”
I wait until we’re at my locker, then I unhook my backpack from my shoulder and unzip the front pocket. Inside, wrapped in several pieces of tissue paper, is the ladder wrap bracelet.
Claire’s face lights up. “Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. Thank you.” She carefully slips the bracelet onto her narrow wrist. “You’re so talented, Iz.”
I smile. “Just try not to lose it on the soccer field.”
The bell rings, and I have only three minutes to get to English on the opposite side of the school. I fling open my locker to stow my jacket and gather my things, an action that’s usually automatic for me. But today, I just stand there, frozen and staring.
The long rectangular shape seems to contort into neat lines and sharp corners, carefully drawn in pencil. Suddenly, I’m overcome by a strange suffocating feeling as I stare into the small space. My dented locker fades away, and I see a room—four walls, a low concrete ceiling, metal bed frames, a tiny kitchen. A bunker.
My lungs constrict as if I’m in that room right now, the air getting thinner until there’s barely enough left to draw a breath. The damp earth surrounds me, pressing me deeper underground, so strong I’ll never break free from the weight of it. Trapped.
Last fall, Dad “gifted” April and me with bug-out bags. Maybe I should’ve known then that my father had turned a corner in his quest for preparedness. For months, half my closet has been taken up by an extra-large tan backpack, its sides bulging with enough emergency survival supplies to keep me going for seventy-two hours after disaster strikes. Until now, I’ve mostly ignored its hulking presence in my room, hiding it when Claire comes over because I don’t want her to know how excessive my dad can be. But after yesterday, I can’t help wondering how far he’ll go to protect us from some hypothetical apocalypse.
As far as drawing up plans for a bunker, apparently.
Would he actually build that thing? In our backyard? And what does he think is going to happen to us that we’d need a hidden, underground fortress?
“Iz? You okay?”
I look over at Claire, shoving the strange feeling down as fast as it came up. I could talk to her about Dad—she was there for me two years ago during the horrible months Mom was sick, and the even more horrible months after she died—but how would I even explain it to her? I don’t want people to think of my father as some weirdo in a tinfoil hat.
“I’m fine,” I say. When I look at my locker again, it’s back to being just a dented old locker.