The roof of Nowhere came into sight. Was Big there? I didn’t hear any plinky, out-of-tune piano. As we reached the clearing, a high-pitched voice called, “Hey!”
“Hey yourself!” I called back.
Cody was sitting cross-legged on the scorched foundation of the house, surrounded by burned-up stuff. “Look at this!” He held up an old bottle. “Wait.” He wiped it with his T-shirt and held it up again.
Cass leaned over him, her hands on her thighs. “You’re wrecking your clothes. Does Ben know you’re playing with this stuff?”
“I’m not playing.”
“Then what are you doing?” I asked. Looked to me like he was playing—and he was definitely wrecking his clothes.
Cody stood and brushed off his butt with his filthy hands. Ben would have some explaining to do when his mom tried to scrub those stains—his little brother for sure wasn’t playing video games on the couch.
Hugging the bottle to his chest, Cody walked slowly around a rickety pile he was building out of the stuff he’d found. He stuck the upside-down bottle on the post of what looked like the end of a metal crib. “I’m building a mom-u…I mean, mon-u-ment.”
So far his junk-pile monument was about waist high, everything balanced one thing on top of another. He pointed out Ike’s dog dish, the one labeled Sparky. It sat on a bucket inside an empty picture frame. A toy truck, tires burned off, rested on its rims; Cody had parked it on top of a singed sneaker. Some things were too black or melted to identify. I know I wouldn’t mess with this stuff even if I was wearing old clothes.
“Some of it is pretty.” Cody swirled a finger along the inside of a metal curlicue. The curlicue was on one of the two heavy pieces of wrought iron he’d leaned together to hold up his monument.
Cass tossed her ponytail back over her shoulder and took a closer look. “These look like the ends of a bench. The wood slats of the seat must’ve burned away. If we had some wood, we could replace ’em.”
I gave her a friendly shove. “Ben’s rubbing off on you, girl.”
That was all it took to remind her that it had been a whole eighteen hours since she’d seen her boyfriend.
She ran toward the building and I followed her. It was either that or help Cody—and my shirt was pretty new.
As Cass pushed the door open, Ben and Big looked up. They sat sneaker to sneaker in two stuffed chairs they’d turned toward each other.
“Hey.” Ben looked like we’d maybe caught them talking about some kind of a secret. I knew for sure when Justin got suddenly interested in the knee of his jeans.
“What is all this?” I walked around Big’s chair and over to the shelf where the old board games had been. Now it was full of food. A rolled-up Boy Scouts sleeping bag sat on top of the piano. “What’s going on?”
“Just put in a few supplies,” Big mumbled. “For, you know. Contingencies.”
“Yeah,” said Ben. “Contingencies.”
Big got out of the armchair and began to pace.
I fell into his empty seat. “What kind of contingencies?” I looked at Ben and Ben looked at Big.
“Okay.” Big held up both hands. “Let’s say things get so bad at home—your home, my home—this goes for any of us. Anyway, say home gets so bad it goes radioactive, or implodes, then I—I mean, any one of us—could come here and hole up, now that we have the place supplied.”
I hung my legs over the arm of the chair. “You won’t have water or electricity.”
Cass perched on the edge of Ben’s chair. “Or a bathroom.” So far we’d never stayed long enough to need one.
“I’m talking emergency response here, people.” Justin played a nervous rhythm on the thighs of his jeans. “Remember the bomb shelters we read about in social studies? How back when Russia was about to bomb the crap out of us, people dug holes in their yards and made underground rooms where they could hang out till the radiation went away in, like, a million years? You think they worried about comfort?”
“It would be scary here at night,” Cass said quietly.
He stood in the middle of the hot, dusty room, sweating. “Not as scary as it gets at my house.”
“You should try talking to them,” I said. Big needed to stand up to his parents, tell them how he felt.
“You try making them listen!” he shot back, like he’d caught my comment on the rebound. “This is just a backup plan. Those bomb shelters never got used—and this one probably won’t either—but just in case, I’m set. I mean, we’re set. The thing is, if one of us does hole up here, no one can tell anyone.”
Ben tipped his head back against the seat with a quiet thump and stared at the ceiling. “If Dad asked me flat-out and I lied, I’d be grounded for life. But hey, I’ve been grounded for life before.” He sat back up. “Cass?” he prodded. “You’re in, right?”
She twisted the end of her ponytail; her dad would kill her if she lied.
But she nodded. Of course she was in. She always went along with Ben.
Justin took a deep breath, looking at me last. “Jemmie?”
I swung my legs, listening to the soft thud of my heels against the upholstery. I always thought Big exaggerated about how bad it was at home, but if camping out eating chips and cold beans and peeing in the bushes was an improvement, maybe he was telling the truth. “Sure. Why not? You’ll never do it anyway.” Watching him flinch, I wished I hadn’t said the last part, but it was the kind of stuff I always said to Big. “Maybe I can bring out an old air mattress,” I added fast.
“We’ll collect jugs from the recycling bins and fill ’em.” Ben sounded like he was wishing it was his parents who were about to go radioactive so he’d have an excuse to run away to the woods.
“Don’t forget toilet paper,” I said.
Big blushed right up to the roots of his hair.