I let out a scream that doesn’t sound human. I slap my hands at this muddled mess. I would toss and turn and kick and punch if I could move. Instead every inch of me clenches in anger. Fists folded. Eyes scrunched. Teeth mashing. Head popping. I scream like a person in the middle of nowhere. And then I scream for my friend. I just met Charlie, but trust grows faster in crisis. We told each other things we’d never told another person. Now he’s someone I know almost as well as I know myself.
Someone I knew.
“Charlie!” I shout.
There isn’t an answer. There’s nothing.
But still I shout. Because it’s all I have.
Now that I don’t have Charlie.
He stays quiet. He doesn’t hear me.
He can’t.
I suck in air. I can’t get it into my lungs. Quick. Quicker. I inhale. Exhale faster.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Why him and not me?
Fate isn’t fateful. Fate is fickle.
The world brings people together in the strangest ways, making us know things we might’ve missed on ordinary days. Letting us see kindness. Letting us be kind. Too much of life is getting from one thing to the next without stopping to make new connections. We don’t slow down enough to get out of our own heads and realize the person next to us might be struggling with big things, too. Bigger things.
I’ve devoted too much effort to worrying about the smaller things. Like my mom and Coach Sanchez. Or what Leo said about my hands. Or acne! For crying out loud, the amount of time I have spent worrying about a zit . . . And for what? It’s the big things that matter. Because the world can change in an instant. People die. My mom knows this. Charlie knew it, too. And now I know it as well.
I think of the way I saw Charlie before. The tiny surface things I glimpsed in the minutes before I knew him. His paint-stained knuckles. His perfectly folded T-shirts. The confident way he walked, all artistic in khaki pants. The way he nodded his head of faded blond hair to say hey. The way he wrote in his journal. And then I think of the way I knew him after. The jokes he made. The way he talked to me and kept me from losing hope. I think of the guilt he carried. The guilt. Charlie died before he could forgive himself.
It’s not supposed to be this way. Charlie is supposed to get out of here. Make amends. He’s supposed to live his life.
How long until death comes for me, too? Will it be another aftershock, or will it be something far worse? Starvation? Dehydration? Flesh-eating bacteria? My organs shutting down? A slow, painful progression of things? Will I be too delirious to even understand what’s happening, or will I be in excruciating pain?
Was Charlie lucky to go quickly? Is waiting for death the hard part? How long will it take? How long do I have to wait?
And what if Charlie is the only reason I’ve stayed alive this long?
Without him, who will shout my name when I sleep too deep and too long? Now that he’s gone, nobody is here to wake me up to remind me to breathe.
To remind me to live.
My hand is a fist above my face. I move it to stretch my fingers.
And when I do, I notice something.
Wait.
The rubble above me gives. I slide it aside. Push my whole hand through a hole that’s a little bigger than my fist. Something shifted. Something changed.
There is space.
I reach through the darkness. Push again. Out and through. I wave my hand around in the empty air. Swat at the open space around it.
“Help!” I shout into the emptiness. My hand swings this way and that even though I know I’m alone in the dark.
But now there is this space. This opening.
This hope.
I pat around it. Gently at first. Quiet. Soft.
Careful.
When I realize it seems to have some give, I begin to claw.