My skin prickles. Like thousands of tiny bugs have found my body and burrowed into every inch of me. They take up residence in the pinholes of my hair shafts. All over my scalp. Along my right arm. Deep down in the pulsing cut of my left arm. In each millimeter of stubble on my legs. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. My left foot has been asleep and frozen for so long I’ve forgotten what it feels like. I twist it. Shake. I can’t feel it move. I kick again.
Too hard.
Part of this safe space crumbles. I squeeze my eyes shut. Turn my head. Shout. There’s nothing I can do. Nowhere I can go to save myself.
“What’s happening?!” Charlie yells.
I scream when something falls sideways and lands across my thighs. My body stills. Waits. I attempt to fathom how broken I am.
“The bottom half of the table fell on me. But there’s something else on top of it,” I say. If I push it away, everything else could come crashing down. I’ll be buried alive.
And then my fingertips hit something wet. Blood? It’s soaking my jeans. I suck in a breath, release a yelp.
“Dammit, Ruby! What’s going on?” The panic’s returned in the rise of his voice.
“I think I’m bleeding.”
I don’t even hear what Charlie asks me after that. He yells something about my arm but I can’t hold on to his words. Everything is numb. I might not be able to feel the pain of being broken. Maybe I’m impaled. Maybe my thighs are ripped open, exposing flesh and bone.
Maybe my mind is blocking out the agony to protect me.
“Ruby!” Charlie’s voice is so loud. It’s a roar. He’s a lion. Ferocious. I’m surprised it doesn’t break down these walls. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.”
The wetness keeps coming, stopping in a puddle against my hand. I dip my fingertips. Pull them to my face. Let them linger. Afraid to know. But finally, I bring them to my nose. Sniff. I expect the rust-and-salt smell of blood, but it isn’t that. It’s something else.
Soap.
I stick my tongue out, brave a taste.
Water.
“Water!” I shout.
It’s tinged with the flavor of laundry detergent but it’s so diluted I can’t imagine there’s much of it. I can’t feel actual soap bubbles. They aren’t popping on my tongue or in my hands. I dip my fingertips into the puddle again. Stick them into my mouth.
I try not to think of the filthy floor because the relief of something wet on my dry tongue and parched throat is too good.
“Water?!” Charlie shouts. “Where?”
“I knocked something over. With my foot. It opened up a space for water from a washing machine. It’s a little bit soapy.” It’s weird to think it might be from the load of towels I was washing. That moment feels so normal and far away now. A time when my biggest problem was my mom dating my coach. I walked into this laundromat trying to find the courage to ask a stranger to buy me beer, and now that stranger is my friend and I’m trying to find the courage to stay alive. Life can change in an instant. With a phone call like my mom got the day my dad was hit by a car. Like yesterday when the earthquake hit. I can’t help but rethink what matters and what doesn’t. What once felt so big suddenly seems so small.
And things I would’ve taken for granted, like water, are an enormous gift.
I cup my hand against the stream, suck down what I can get into my mouth, but the rivulet is running away from me fast. My heart races, terrified I’ll lose it before I get enough. My hands slap at the ground, collecting as much as I can.
“Ruby. Be careful.”
I freeze, my hand across my mouth, suddenly ashamed of my good fortune. Like I never should’ve spoken of it.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. The laundry detergent, maybe?”
“I can barely taste it.”
My washing machine was filling up when the earthquake hit. It’s mostly water. With traces of soap. But even if it tasted more strongly of soap, I’m not sure I would stop drinking.
“I’m glad you have water,” he says, but I can hear the break in his voice. The part I know he doesn’t want me to hear.
Why her and not me?
I want to know that, too. Why me and not him?
“Can you move something out of the way?” I say. “To make space for water to get to you?”
“I’m afraid to try. Things are pretty tight here.”
But I hear him rustling around. I hear him trying.
“It’s not getting to me,” he says.
I curve my hand against the puddle, trying to train it to run in Charlie’s direction.
“What about now?”
“No.”
I adjust my fingers.
The water is ice-cold. I hadn’t noticed before. It hits me now. Too cold to ever be blood. But it’s dangerous, too. Because I’m sitting in a near-freezing puddle of water in the dead of winter.
I lift my hand to my mouth, suck in another swallow.
It goes down my throat along with the guilt and the fear.
What’s one more ounce of guilt anyway? I’m already filled with it. I’m such a hypocrite to sit here and tell Charlie to stop feeling guilty when I carry my own around with me everywhere I go. Mila has made sure of it.