Light shoots through the crack above me.
It’s the sun. The sun!
I’ve been in the dark for so long I forgot light existed. I shut my eyes. Wish for it to warm the frozen tip of my nose, the drenched cold of my thighs. I imagine Hawaii and summertime and a perfect August day. I hear Charlie move in the distance.
“Morning,” he says, like an acknowledgment and not a greeting.
“Do you see the sun?”
“One streak. Through a crack by my chest.”
Today is so unlike a normal morning in our town. Where the diner across the street from here has a line out the door and the smell of coffee and bacon seeps out to the sidewalk. My teammates and I pass it on our bikes on our way back from morning practice.
Hair wet.
Ugg boots working hard to keep our feet warm. I wish I were wearing them now. I can’t even feel my toes anymore.
Sometimes, on Saturdays, we have time to stop. We load up on pancakes. Or scrambled eggs. And we never see the bottoms of our coffee mugs because the waitress tops us off with every other sip.
My stomach growls.
Then sinks.
What if the diner is no longer standing?
What if the fifties-style jukebox is broken? The hand-painted front windows advertising weekly specials shattered? Surely there were people eating there when the earthquake happened.
I think of everywhere I know. All the places in town. The places where my friends could’ve been. All the ways they could be hurt.
Dying.
Dead.
I would’ve been in the pool. Surrounded by my team. Would that have been better than being here with Charlie? Would we have survived? Or would we have been scattered like broken toothpicks across the pool deck?
“Do you hear that?” Charlie says.
Not far away there is noise. Shouts. I can’t tell what they’re saying, but whoever is making the noise is close to us.
My heartbeat kicks up. Hope. They’re looking for us.
“Help!” I shout.
Then Charlie: “Over here!”
There is relief in my muscles and bones over the realization that we’ve been found. Finally. Soft beds. Hot showers. Clean pants. Mountains of food. Help has finally arrived.
There are more hollers farther away.
The screech of a whistle.
“Where are they?!” I yell to Charlie. I try to move in this space. To make myself loud enough.
I need something more.
I reach for my phone. It’ll make noise. An alarm. A song from my pregame pump-up playlist. Something loud. Something strong.
Something.
I pull my phone to my face. Tap the screen. Heart hoping. Heart crashing.
There’s nothing but fizz.
The water fried it.
The puddle of water I sucked into my mouth from the tips of my fingers to save my life killed my phone.
I don’t even have Leo’s picture anymore.
Charlie can’t even hear me tell him it’s gone. He’s yelling too loud to hear anything but his own voice. I yell, too. I yell loud and long. Until my throat is as raw and scratchy as it was before I found water. I yell until my voice is nearly lost.
The whistles back off. They push away like a bus from the curb. They didn’t come for us. False alarm. They decided nothing’s here.
Going.
Going.
Gone.