My eyelids droop. Heavy. Like weights are pulling them down. I take a quick peek at my phone. Eleven o’clock at night. I attempt to dial my mom but get nothing. Again. Six hours of nothing.
On school nights, I’m usually finishing up homework and going to bed right now. On a typical Friday night, eleven o’clock would be my curfew. I’d just be getting home, putting on my pajamas, logging into Netflix, and firing off one last text to Leo. I’d crawl between the cool sheets of my bed and tuck the puffy purple comforter underneath my chin.
I want to be there.
I want to hear the sounds of my house falling asleep.
I want to hear the hum of late-night television through the wall to my mom’s room. Her faint laugh over a joke from the opening monologue.
I want the soft flicker of the night-light in the hallway.
I want to sink into my mattress.
I want to drift.
I want to dream.
But I’m stuck on this hard slice of cold ground in a darkness so dark it fills me with fear. My thoughts narrow to focus on different points of pain. My head. My arm. My right elbow screams loudest, the knot of it bruised from grinding into the ground like the mortar and pestle set my mom uses to smash garlic cloves. The skin is rubbed raw. The simple thought of the Minnie Mouse Band-Aids my mom used to put on my cuts when I was a kid makes me want to cry.
Charlie mumbles in the dark. His words a chant under his breath. The sound has kept me company for the last hour, the repetition somehow soothing. His words aren’t loud enough for me to decipher, so I let him keep his secrets. Maybe he’s processing what he told me. I want to tell him over and over again that what happened isn’t his fault. But I understand the way he needs to be quiet with himself right now.
There’s a slow build to a new spot of pain. Like it’s growing. Expanding. Pushing.
My bladder.
I have to pee. I have to pee so bad that my insides ache.
I can’t hold it any longer.
I close my eyes like it will somehow hide what I’m doing.
I’m about to pee my pants.
On purpose.
I want to make noise with my hands to drown out the sound of it, so I pat them against the sides of my legs.
And then I relax enough to go.
The relief is instant and makes me sigh. The way I’ve felt on long road trips after scanning the horizon for an exit and finally finding a bathroom. My pee is warm at first, almost hot against my body that’s gone so cold, I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t feel good. Is it gross to think my pee feels like a warm bath? Yes. But then there’s the smell of urine mixing with the ground grime and I want to gag.
Charlie rustles.
Can he smell it? Does he know?
Has he gone pee himself?
In between his mumbling he’s been breathing tight, short, shallow breaths, which worry me. The labored sound of them. I tell myself he’s okay because I have to believe he is.
Because I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.
Last fall, our school participated in the Great ShakeOut Earthquake Drill. It was supposed to teach all of us how to survive earthquakes. The drama department coordinated the whole thing like it was the spring musical instead of preparation for the worst thing that might ever happen to us. Mila played someone with a broken leg. There were triage tents on the football field—one for the dead and one for the dying. Coach tagged bodies in the dead tent.
Leo and I watched from the bleachers while sucking on Tootsie Pops. It was an excuse to get out of class early. I should’ve paid closer attention. I should’ve taken notes.
I miss Leo. I want him here now.
A thought creeps in. One I’ve kept squashing.
What if he isn’t okay?
Would I sense it? If he’s gone? Leo with his chlorine curls and his crooked smile, with one AirPod plugged into his head. In his flip-flops and his board shorts and his sweatshirt with the broken zipper. Leo who does a perfect imitation of our AP English teacher reading Shakespeare sonnets out loud. Leo who rides a skateboard to school and carries an endless supply of Cuties oranges. Leo who presses his fingers into the small of my back in the hallway between classes, making me want to grab his face and kiss him all the way through sixth period. Leo who understands me.
He has to be okay.
He wouldn’t have been on campus yesterday evening.
He would’ve been at home.
With his little brother.
Who he would’ve done everything to protect.
There are people who walk away from earthquakes. Even The Big One. People without badges and hard hats rush into toppled buildings to help. I know this. I’ve seen it. On television. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
That is what Leo would do. That is where he’d be. I’m sure of it.
But who was on campus and who wasn’t when the earthquake hit? There would’ve been sports teams and band practice and after-school activities. There would’ve been soccer teams on the football field and basketball players in the gym.
I can see it. The buildings of Pacific Shore broken apart like this laundromat.
And all of the people I know who might’ve been inside them.
I think of the girl in my US government class who kicks ass on Model UN. Is she okay, or was she flattened in a car underneath a broken freeway overpass? And the boy who built the robot that won a national contest and a five-hundred-dollar prize. Is he okay, or is he trapped inside the lab at school where the robotics club works on projects deep into the night? What about the college-and-career-center counselor who helped me compose an email to the coach at Cal? Is she okay, or did she get crushed like Charlie?
The water polo team was in the pool. My friends. My teammates. Coach. What happened there? Did Coach tell everyone what to do like he always does? Was he right? Did they listen? Did he make things better or worse? Or could he not help? Because he isn’t okay?
I wonder these things.
My own version of what happened.
But I don’t know if it’s true.
I don’t know what is and isn’t true anymore.