I try calling my mom again but still can’t get a connection. I think of our last conversation. About Coach Sanchez. And the romantic getaway. And me losing my shit. You’ve ruined my life. Some of the last words I said to her.
And why? Because she fell in love? Because she found someone she actually wants to be with after I leave for college? Is that really the worst thing that ever could’ve happened to me? Because it could very well be the best thing that ever happened to her. After my dad died when I was four months old, my mom sank all her energy into a doctorate degree and work. But now she could have love, too, and I don’t want her to. All because I’m afraid of how it will make me look.
I’ve got only thirty-seven percent left on my phone’s charge, but I allow myself one more glance at my lock screen. It’s a photo Leo took of us in front of my locker before the first-period bell rang on the first day of school. He told me to smile at the camera, but then he surprised me with a kiss on my cheek at the last minute. The picture is slightly blurry and a little bit sideways, but it captures me laughing and happy and whole, so the sight of it makes my heart hurt.
I dial Leo at the risk of losing another percentage point on my battery, but nothing happens, so I let the screen go dark and picture him in my head instead. I see him with his skateboard dangling from his fingertips and his backpack slung over his shoulder, waiting for me outside the gate of the pool deck. Telling me about his own afternoon workout or his homework load for the night. Leaning over and kissing me even though I smell like chlorine and sunblock. I want to be there with him now. But instead I’m sweaty and cold all at once, with sticky armpits and a bloody sweatshirt and chattering teeth. I smell like this laundromat. Like dirt and wood rot and the dank mildew scent of leftover washing machine water. I’m sure that smell has crept into every square inch of my skin and hair follicles. Festering.
The blood on my sweatshirt is dry now. The sleeve is hard and crackly and pulling at the fine hairs on my arm as the winter darkness of a February evening takes over. There isn’t light coming from that sliver above me anymore. A little less hope.
I try to stretch my back. I twist one way and then the other. My muscles are cramping, and I want to be able to stand up and extend my arms high over my head to stretch the way I do before a game. But nothing in here is the way it is out there.
This space is too quiet.
Charlie is too quiet.
I whisper his name through the dark.
He doesn’t answer, and I call out louder.
More silence.
What if ?
No. I can’t think it.
“Charlie!” I yell. “Answer me!”
“Shit,” he hisses. “What is it? I’m here.”
The sound of his voice is a relief. Hope again.
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me think I’m here alone.”
“Don’t worry. It was just a catnap.”
A catnap. That’s what my mom used to tell me when I was four and started protesting weekend naps because I’d gotten old enough to know what I’d be missing while I was asleep. Sprinklers and swings and snacks and shows. Time with her after a long week of work and school. My mom would settle me in her own bed, surrounded by her pillows and her safe mom scent. She’d smooth my hair back from my face.
“It’s just a catnap,” she’d say.
“Meow,” I’d say back, and she’d smile.
“Sleepy kitten. Close your eyes. Think of balls of yarn as blue as the sky. And walking through the tall green grass. And bowls of cold milk.”
“Meow,” I’d say again, softer this time. I was seeing all she wanted me to imagine and I’d push my hand across my face, pretending it was a paw. “Meow.”
My mom would keep petting my head, a relaxing, perfect rhythm that made my eyelids heavy.
“Sleep, little kitten,” she’d say. “There will be plenty of time to play and see the big wide world when you wake up again.”
“Hey, Ruby?” There’s an uptick in Charlie’s voice that interrupts my kitten dreams. I can tell he has a new thought. A new worry.
“Yeah?”
“Should we be concerned about a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning? Asking for a friend.”
I hadn’t even thought of those things. What does carbon monoxide poisoning feel like? Would we drift off to sleep and not know we were dying?
“Ruby? Did you hear me?”
“I’m thinking.” Wouldn’t we already be dead if there was a carbon monoxide leak? “Isn’t that what those switches were on that panel? The ones the lady turned off ?”
It’s a flash of a memory. That woman’s final act of heroism. Trying to save a laundromat from going up in flames. Trying to save Charlie and me from whatever could’ve happened if those switches had stayed on. How did she have the good sense to do that but then run out into the parking lot where she could’ve been killed by flying debris? Electrocuted by a downed power line. She probably didn’t survive. Sometimes people know one thing but not another when it comes to earthquake safety. There are people who think you’re still supposed to huddle in a doorframe, but I learned from drills at school that they changed that a few years ago. Maybe she was trying to get to the doorway but decided outside looked like a better option.
“I thought that was an electrical panel,” Charlie says.
“I think it was an emergency shutoff system for everything. Don’t you have to have those in California? We have one at our house. You barely have to jostle it and it turns off. I hit it once when I was moving the trash cans to the curb, and my mom lost hot water in the middle of her shower.”
“So you think we’re okay?”
I feel the pressure of having to say the right thing because when Charlie isn’t calm, I’m not calm. And we have to stay calm. I need him to stay calm for me.
“I’m sure. That lady saved us, Charlie.”
“I wish we could thank her.” I hear that tiny tick of worry finally slipping like fingers loosening their grip on the wet rungs of a ladder.
“Yeah,” I say, even though my words aren’t entirely true.
Because that woman might’ve saved us from gas leaks and carbon monoxide poisoning, but she didn’t really save us.
We’re still here.