Coach turns his car onto my street. There have been stories of people looting and squatting at damaged and abandoned homes, so my mom sent Coach and me to not only see if our house is still standing, but to retrieve her Parental Box of Important Papers along with some other must-haves. I tick off the houses as we go. The Richardsons. The Chens. The Storeys. The young hipster couple with the year-round Christmas lights. Nobody is walking dogs or riding bikes or bringing in their groceries in reusable Trader Joe’s bags.
Nobody is here.
Nothing is normal.
Our house is literally sagging sideways. Off-kilter. Like some suburban Leaning Tower of Pisa. And the magnolia tree from our front yard has fallen straight across the driveway. Coach pulls to the curb and I’m out of the car before he’s even put it in park.
“Stop!” Coach yells. “It might not be safe to go inside!”
I don’t care. I turn the knob of the front door, somehow expecting it to swing open even though we always lock our doors, but the dead bolt is in place just as my mom would’ve left it when she went to work the day of the earthquake. I jiggle the doorknob again, like I can unlock it by sheer force of will.
“Slow down. We need to be careful,” Coach says.
I twist the knob again. Try to break it. Kick the wood. Pound with my fist. All of these things make my whole body hurt. I push past Coach to kneel down and sift through the dirt and flowers by the front door, trying to unearth our hidden key. I work around the broken remnants of terra-cotta flowerpots, slicing my finger on one of them. I don’t stop to check the cut. I don’t even care. Soil pushes up underneath my fingernails as I tear the garden apart. I finally find the key and turn it in the lock. I push the door open with such force it bounces against the wall of the entryway and swings back in Coach’s face. He stops it with an outstretched arm.
Inside there’s nothing. Only silence. And the remnants of what was.
Pictures have fallen off the walls, their frames shattered. I lunge forward as broken shards of glass crunch underneath the bright white sneakers Nurse Cathy gave me at the hospital. Coach puts his arm across me like he’s stopped short at a stoplight and wants to protect me from hurtling through the windshield.
“Goddammit,” Coach says, making me wait while he gingerly takes a step forward. “Hold on, Ruby. This is serious.”
I stand still for him and look around.
I want this house to feel like home. For my mom to emerge from the kitchen to ask about my day. For Leo to be sitting next to me on the couch, our hands in a bowl of popcorn, the movie too loud. All the little things I’ve taken for granted.
But home is broken.
The shelves have toppled over. The books are spread across the living room like bodies. Spines twisted. Pages bent.
Like Charlie in the rubble.
Securing our bookshelves was one of those weekend projects my mom kept talking about but never did. One of those things you’re supposed to do to be earthquake ready, but then a weekend matinee or sleeping in or a sunny day at the beach sounds better.
I slowly crunch my way through the carnage to get to the kitchen. Pantry doors have been flung wide open. Pots and pans, dishes, coffee mugs, and glass jars of spaghetti sauce have broken free, the sauce leaving smears of red, chunky liquid across the white tile floor.
I’m exhausted. It’s too much. I crumble to the floor and push a cabinet door shut so I can lean against it for support.
“Mom’s box of papers is upstairs, in her closet, on the top shelf,” I tell Coach. “It’s probably on the floor now.”
“Let me go first and make sure it’s safe up there.”
“I want to get some of my stuff. Better clothes, too. And something for my mom to change into when she’s released.”
Coach nods.
I curl into myself after he goes. Hold my breath. Hold my stomach. Stuff my feelings in. Because we don’t have a house. We don’t have a home.
We just have silence.
Like when Charlie went quiet.
Charlie.
Coach comes back to the kitchen minutes later.
“About the same up there as here,” he says.
“Can I go up to change clothes and pack a backpack?”
“Get enough clothes for you and your mom. You won’t be coming back here. You two will stay with me. My house had minimal damage.” Coach commutes to work, and his town didn’t get hit as hard as ours did.
I unearth my team duffel bag from the mess of clothes on my closet floor and shove jeans and sweats and shirts and underwear inside. A toothbrush. Toothpaste. Tampons. Shampoo. I go to my mom’s room and do the same.
On the way out, my eye catches on a photo. One of her and my dad in Italy. Laughing on the beach with sun-streaked hair. I pull it loose from the broken frame and shove it into my bag.
“I’m ready,” I say. Coach holds the door open for me, grabs my bag and slings it over his shoulder. I stop short at the threshold. Look him in the eye.
“Wait. Is this going to be weird? My mom and me living with you?”
“I don’t want it to be weird. I can make it not weird if you can.”
That makes me laugh, and I guess I’m lucky. At least I like Coach. And respect him. And he is funny when he wants to be.
“Let’s go,” Coach says. “I’m sure your mom is missing you since she just got you back.”