My left arm is hot where I cut it. Throbbing. The heartbeat inside of it getting stronger.
Ba-thump, ba-thump, ba-thump.
The bleeding has long stopped, but that heartbeat and that hot, hot heat tell me it’s angry.
“I think I need stitches, Charlie.”
“On your arm?”
“Yeah.”
We’ve been here way longer than I thought we would be. It’s hard to hang on to hope when there’s nobody else on the other side of this rubble. The dark and the cold have slithered in like a shadow. Taking over this space. Taking over me.
High above us helicopter blades swoop and swivel.
Womp, womp, womp.
They never stop. Each rotation is another second ticking away.
What’s taking so long?
Every time I try to move an arm or leg, it goes in slow motion. All of it stiff and wedged in place. What does it mean? To feel like I’m stuck in thick, sticky syrup? And that my arm is hot with a heartbeat?
“Can you have rigor mortis when you’re still alive?” I ask.
“Try to move, even if only to wiggle your fingers or toes. Whatever you can do,” he says. “You need to keep the blood flowing.” He rustles in his space. “Force it.” He talks like he knows something I don’t. Something desperate. Something important.
“Why? What’ll happen if I don’t?”
“Just do it.” He grunts. “If you do it, I’ll feel like I know something. And since I don’t know shit about most things, this’ll make me feel less useless.”
“You aren’t useless.”
I press down on the heat in my arm and feel the warmth seep into my fingertips. Too hot. “I’m a horrible person for saying this, but I’m so glad you’re here, Charleston Smith.”
“I get it, Ruby Tuesday. Your misery loves my company.”
“It does.”
“Are you moving? Are you keeping the blood flowing?” His breath is hitched with exertion.
I roll inches to my right then inches to my left. Back and forth. I knot my hands into fists and wiggle my toes. I jiggle my legs and arms as much as they’ll give. I imagine the blood flowing through my veins. Feeding my cells. Pumping my heart.
“Tell me something,” I say. “Distract me.”
“You like questions?”
“Depends.”
“Ones that are personal but not too personal?”
“My favorite kind.” I smile, feeling the muscles move in my face, around my bones. Warming.
“What does college look like for you besides water polo? Like will you actually get a degree in something?”
“Ha ha.”
“Now see? Ha ha isn’t technically an answer. You’ve hinted at your plan to be a beast in the pool. Where do you want to go? You said Stanford has a good program.”
“I want to go to Cal.”
“Cal?” he sputters. “Are you saying that to mess with me? You do realize Stanford and Cal are hard-core rivals, right?”
“I’m aware.”
Charlie responds with a tsk. “You’re making this very hard on me, Ruby. I won’t exactly be able to cheer you on at your water polo game when your school is Cal.”
I laugh. “Whatever.”
“Whatever? Okay, fine. In the spirit of continuing to get along in our dire circumstances, let’s dump the college rivalry . . . for now. . . What about books? Do you plan on cracking any? Picking a major?”
“Maybe biology. What was your major?”
“Art stuff. Creative writing. Film or theater. You know, all the things that pay the big bucks.”
“Did you take those classes?”
“Not yet. Freshman year is all about knocking out requirements. But I did try improv.”
“That’s a class?” I flutter my arms as far as they will go. Inches.
“It’s a hobby. I was terrible, by the way. I’m not funny.”
“But you are funny.”
“Not according to my audition.”
I move my legs. Inches up. Inches down. “Is improv really all about being funny? I thought it was about reacting to whatever gets thrown at you.”
“Based on the fact that you already know that, you’d be better at improv than I was.”
“Oh, come on. It can’t have been that bad.” I roll my neck.
“Oh, it was bad. Categorically. Abysmally.”
I curl my toes. “What happened?”
“Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“Yes. Please. Tell me about how not funny you are.”
He laughs. “Okay. Fine. So Stanford has this improv comedy troupe and when I went on my college tour, they were performing on the lawn in the middle of the day. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. To just be funny in the middle of the day at such a serious place. My parents had made it out like college would be four years of me putting my head down and working my ass off. Probably because of my scholarship and them being afraid I would screw it up. So to see anything that looked remotely fun was unexpected.”
“And you joined immediately. Left the tour to run off with the improv circus?”
He snorts. “I had to audition. Once I got there. But I didn’t make it, Rubik’s Cube.”
“Groan. That one was really bad, Charleston.”
“Right. See? Not funny. You should have zero ounces of surprise that I didn’t make it.”
“What happened?”
“Well, everyone who wasn’t me was really funny. So sharp. So quick.” He snaps his fingers, and it’s a relief to hear the sound of something so simple. “Their jokes legit made my hands sweat. But it’s spontaneous, so I figured I’d come up with something good in the moment. I hadn’t considered my nerves and my not being funny. Plus, I was in the last group to audition.” He grunts. “It was a disaster.”
“No, Charlie. This is a disaster. Bombing an audition is a party.”
“Now see? That’s a funny line, Ruby. Please keep improv in mind if you can find the time to do it in between all that eggbeater stuff you like to do.”
“Okay, okay. So it was complete and utter humiliation for Charleston Smith. I want details.”
I hear the scratch of his shuffles. “The scene was supposed to be about moving into your dorm and meeting your roommate and neighbors for the first time. Should’ve been easy enough given the fact that I’d literally just done that. Like two days before. But yeah. I basically froze. There were five of us in the scene. Two of them were pros. Seniors. They were the ones that kept changing the stuff around to help us newbies find our way to the jokes.”
“Makes sense.”
“So the scene turned into this bit about what was in the box I was carrying. The whole thing about improv is that you always have to say ‘Yes, and’ to whatever gets thrown at you. So then one of them says, ‘Why is your box moving?’ Suddenly, I had to act like the box was bouncing all over the place and I couldn’t control it, like I had a living thing in there.”
“I can picture it.”
“But I knew someone was going to ask me what was in the box soon enough.”
“So what was in it?”
“That’s the thing. I had no idea. I didn’t want to come up with something expected.”
“Like a puppy?”
“Like a puppy.” He coughs. “But I couldn’t even focus on what was happening or what anybody else was saying because my brain just kept screaming, What’s in the box, dumbass? I didn’t really hear what anyone else was saying. It was like underwater echo sounds. So I never said what was in the box. I bombed. And when it was over, the seniors said thanks a lot and have a nice life.”
“Brutal.”
“Yeah.” A chuckle. “It wasn’t until I was walking back to my dorm that I realized I didn’t need to be the one to come up with what was in the box. I just thought I did.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I could’ve dropped the box and let someone else say what was in it. But instead I thought it was all up to me because I was holding the damn box. So welcome to my life, Ruby Tuesday. Freeze in the moment but come up with the perfect solution after the fact.”
“That seems pretty normal. I do that all the time.”
“But at some point don’t you need to be able to figure out your shit when it’s happening?”
“Like right now?”
“I wish I had right now figured out.” His voice drifts. Like he’s trying to solve the mess we’re in.
“I can’t keep my eyes open, Charlie.”
“Rest. It’s your turn. I’ll try to figure out how to tunnel us out of here using mind control.”
“Okay.” I close my eyes. I slip.