15

Sasha

At first, Sasha thought the aftershock had come and gone without changing much.

And then she smelled it: a scent that reminded her of rotten eggs.

Gas.

Crap. We have a gas leak.

That was how most fires started after earthquakes. Gas leaks turned into explosions, swallowing houses in flames.

Instinctively, Sasha reached for her phone—but she’d never manage to get a call through now. Thanks to the aftershock, the cell towers were probably even more jammed than before.

She would have to take care of this herself.

Okay, there’s a gas leak. What do you do when there’s a gas leak? You shut off the gas.

The gas meter was outside, attached to back of the house. She needed to get to it—fast.

You can do this.

But that had never worked—the you can approach. It was too theoretical. It felt too much as if she was trying to trick herself. Like when teachers said, You can do anything you put your mind to. Bull. You can was what you told people who were failing, people who weren’t making progress.

So instead she told herself, You’re doing this.

That usually worked a lot better.

To shut off the gas valve, she’d need a wrench. Which meant she needed to find her mom’s toolkit.

Sasha wheeled herself over to the hall closet. She pulled up alongside the closet door and braced herself. Everything in the closets has probably shifted, her mom had said. Taking a deep breath, Sasha pulled open the door.

Her mom’s ironing board flew out at her, followed by the iron itself. Sasha managed to use the board as a shield, deflecting the iron, as well as the value pack of tissues that tumbled out of the closet. Everything else seemed to have settled already. Sasha tossed the ironing board to the ground and reached her right hand into the closet, leaning sideways out of her chair to rummage around on the shelves.

The rotten egg smell was getting stronger.

Come on, come on, I know it’s in here somewhere . . . She leaned as far to the side as she could, stretching her arm toward the back of the closet.

Aha.

Her fingers brushed the fabric of the tool bag. With her left hand, which still gripped her wheelchair’s armrest, she pushed her body up and to the right. Her right hand shot forward just a couple more inches. Now she had a decent grip on the bag. She dragged it forward, over the shelf’s remaining clutter—scattered soap bars and spare razors. At last she heaved the bag out of the closet and onto her lap.

The smell of the gas was starting to make her sick to her stomach.

She unzipped the bag and dug around for the wrench. Hammer, screwdriver, pliers, box of drill bits, another screwdriver . . . If this house explodes just because Mom has too many tools . . .

Wrench. Got it.

Sasha flung the toolkit onto the floor, gripped the wrench in her right hand, and spun herself into a 180-degree turn. Move, Hill, move . . .

The path her mom had cleared through the living room was sort of still there. The aftershock had moved the furniture again, but Sasha was able to weave around the obstacles. She shoved open the front door and pushed herself down the slope of cement that had replaced the front steps two years ago.

Wheeling herself on grass always took extra effort. Sasha propelled herself as fast as she could, moving along the side of the house. She pulled up beside the gas meter—the sort-of rectangular gray tank mounted to the siding.

The valve was just a few inches off the ground. She couldn’t reach it from her chair. Time to dismount.

She tossed the wrench to the ground and locked her wheels. Then she braced herself against the wall with one arm and gripped the handle of her chair with the other. “Here we go, Peg.” Yes, she talked to her wheelchair sometimes. Liam talked to his car—and he didn’t even spend sixteen hours a day in it.

Carefully, supporting herself with her arms, she heaved herself out of the chair and eased onto the ground. Now she could get at the gas valve. With the wrench, she cranked the valve’s metal notch so that it rotated by 90 degrees.

Done.

Explosion averted.

Getting off the ground was always trickier than getting out of the chair, but she managed it. As her physical therapist liked to say, Never underestimate a lady’s upper-arm strength. The wrench was still lying in the grass, but someone could come back for it later. Sasha wiped the sweat from her brow. She knew she shouldn’t go back inside until the gas company did an inspection, but that could be days from now . . .

Her phone buzzed. A text had come through! Maybe the cell towers were starting to get a handle on the phone traffic.

Sasha expected the text to be from her mom.

But it was from Harper.

All it said was PH.

A feeling of pure relief punched Sasha in the stomach. She dragged in a deep, grateful breath. If Harper had sent a text, Harper was at least alive.

But—PH? What did that mean? Was it just a random pocket-dial, a mistake? Or . . .?

Of course.

She used the video chat app to call Liam again just in case cell service wasn’t completely back yet.

Liam’s panicked face appeared on her phone screen. “Sasha, you won’t believe what just happened—”

“I think I know where Harper is.”

“What? Where?”

“Meet me at Neptune Park as soon as you can.”

Now she just had to find those mountain bike tires.