Gary turned into his driveway and put the Tesla in park. In the rear passenger seat, Jenn stared out the window. She hadn’t spoken since they loaded the supplies, strapped down the wheelbarrow, and drove away. Gary prodded, clearly sensing that something had gone amiss, but Sam answered every question for her, and she was grateful for that. Besides, what could she say? Before today, she’d never hurt anyone. Now she had and couldn’t take it back, no matter how badly she wanted to.
Her door popped open, and Sam reached in to undo her seat belt. Blood colored his lip, and a bruise was forming on his cheek.
“Let’s get this loaded up,” Gary said. Dutifully, Sam rushed off to help. Jenn stayed in the Tesla until they were ready to go inside.
Maria appeared in the hallway leading to the bedrooms and Gary’s office. “You’re home!” she exclaimed as Ajax rubbed up against Jenn’s ankles.
Gary gave his wife a tender peck on the cheek. “We’ve got an oxygen compressor and some batteries, dear, and a few other things.”
She came up to Jenn and inspected her face, then shuffled over to Sam and did the same to him. “Your faces! Are you hurt? What happened?”
“It’s okay,” Gary said. “A little trouble at the Go Market, but everyone’s all right.”
Jenn wiped a glob of dried blood from her nose. She could have recounted the whole story but chose to keep quiet instead; if Maria knew the truth, she might refuse to eat this food. That was what Jenn told herself, anyway. Really, she feared having to relive the ordeal so soon.
Maria remained silent, her oxygen hissing whenever she inhaled. Then, “Okay, I’ll believe you, even though you’re not telling me something.” She peered at Jenn over her glasses, then pushed them up and turned away, seemingly content to drop the issue for now. “Let me have a look at what you’ve brought me.” Peeking into the wheelbarrow, she added, “We can make cornbread! Gary loves it, but it’s been years since I’ve made him any.”
“It’s true.” He patted his belly. “But not as much as I like donuts, right, Jenn?”
She appreciated his nod to her long-running joke but only managed a wooden smile in return.
Sam moved around a few items to show Maria everything they’d taken. No, stolen. To Jenn’s surprise, she hardly felt any remorse; she was too busy dwelling on how that guard collapsed beneath the force of her tire iron.
“There’s also rice and pasta in there,” he said. “I even got a few jars of sauce. That should keep you guys set for a while.”
Drying a damp eye, Maria opened her mouth to speak but paused and swallowed hard, then whispered, “Thank you. You’ve helped us so much.”
“Here, sit.” At the table, Gary pulled out two chairs, and Jenn eagerly collapsed into the nearest one.
“Jenn, sweetie,” Maria said, “you look exhausted. Can I get you anything?”
Again, Sam spoke for her: “Maybe a glass of water, if you don’t mind.”
“Coming right up.”
“Let’s stay here tonight,” Sam said as he massaged the tight muscles in Jenn’s shoulders and neck. “We should help Gary and Maria a bit more and get some rest. Then we’ll make a plan for leaving tomorrow.”
“Sure.” Her first word since the Go Market.
Maria set two glasses of water on the table, one for Jenn and the other, presumably, for Sam. “I’ll start putting this stuff away while you guys relax.” Both hands on the wheelbarrow, she glanced down at the oxygen cart beside her, then up at Sam. “Sam, dear, I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Mind taking over here?”
“Yeah, of course. No problem.”
“What a gentleman. Maybe you can lift those heavy bags for me, too.”
While Sam and Maria unloaded the wheelbarrow, Gary took the seat next to Jenn. “Thank you for what you did.” He nudged her glass of water a little closer. “It means a lot to us.”
“Uh-huh.” Summoning the strength to say anything more was impossible. Thankfully, Gary didn’t push her, so they sat in silence until Sam was finished helping Maria.
“So, Mr. Ruiz,” he said. “What do you think about the Tesla? You should have tried the autodrive. I know you don’t like it, but the AI on this model’s supposed to be top-notch.”
Gary responded, but Jenn had stopped listening. Maria opened the cupboard and set two boxes of pasta inside. Nearby, Ajax stretched out on the linoleum floor. Gary laughed at something and slapped the table as Sam gulped his water. If not for the wheelbarrow in the kitchen and Sam’s bloody lip, the Ruiz house seemed normal.
But it was an illusion.
Everything had changed. Jenn pictured her family sitting here with her. Dad would serve them lunch while Mom would ask Jenn and her brothers about their days at school. Jenn would recount what she had learned, mostly in math or science class, and her parents would tell her how smart she was. Jason and Andrew would make fun of her, but in a nice, endearing way, and Dad would pretend to scold them. Then they’d have real meat, fresh fruit, and coffee made from actual coffee beans.
Never again, though. Deep down, she’d known since the explosions. When she tried running from the roof of Emerald City, she was running from the truth. Then she buried that truth under hypotheticals: her mother and father would drive up to meet her, they lived too far away from the bombs, they were waiting for her to come home. Lies, she admitted, to hide reality.
They were gone. Jenn was the last of the Jansen family.
“Sam,” she uttered, interrupting his talk with Gary. Her hands trembled, so she thrust them into her lap.
Sam finished a long sip of water, concern darkening his features. “What’s up? Everything okay?”
“We’re not leaving tomorrow.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re dead.” The admission stung like a spear straight through the heart. “My parents. I know they are. You guys are all I have left. This is home now.”
—
Jenn had excused herself from the table and withdrawn to her room, where she lay atop her sheets in bed. Ajax tried following her in, but she wanted to be alone and shut the door to keep him out. Both legs felt like jelly, and her skull pulsed with a headache, but mercifully, the blood in her nose had cleared. As she curled up on her side, a tightness in her back and stomach eased. She allowed her eyes to close, and the scratching sound of Ajax begging to be let in faded and her world went quiet.
Then she found herself standing in the hallway of the Ruiz house. Her clothes were different—shorts and her green NAU T-shirt, not jeans and a tank top—and the walls and floor appeared fuzzy and indistinct. The framed photograph of Gary, Maria, and a teenage Camila with a mouthful of braces was missing from its spot beside the office. Jenn peered through the doorway and saw that the room had bunk beds, the same as her bedroom in Peoria, not a desk and bookshelves filled with military history.
“Garcia’s on deck,” her brother Jason said from the couch. He had the same square jaw as their father, but he had their mother’s dark, wavy hair. It was going gray in the temples, even though he was only twenty-eight. Well, he was twenty-eight when he died. He would have turned thirty this August.
“What’s the score?” Jenn asked.
“Tied at three, top of the fifth. Rockies scored two last inning. Garcia’s two for two with a double and an RBI already.”
Juan Garcia was the Arizona Diamondbacks’ rookie shortstop, a real five-tool guy with enormous power for a middle infielder. Almost a month into the season, he was leading the National League in both home runs and batting average and was second in RBI. Not bad for a twenty-year-old who escaped Brazilian-occupied Venezuela to play baseball in the United States. If he kept this up, he’d win the triple crown. Jenn wondered if a rookie had ever done that before. Jason would know. She made a mental note to ask him.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”
“You hungry?” her father asked from the kitchen. He wore his apron with World’s Greatest Chef across the chest. One Christmas, Jenn and her mother bought it for him as a joke, but he insisted on wearing it whenever he was cooking. “I’ve got burgers on the barbecue. Real burgers.”
Her stomach rumbled. “Thanks. No onions on mine. And don’t try to sneak them in like last time.”
Her father waved a pair of tongs at her, then clicked them together twice. “Sure thing.”
She snatched a slice of cheddar from a plate on the counter and folded it into her mouth. The cheese was firm, the texture just right. Either it was real or a near-perfect imitation. Dad, apparently, had spared no expense today. “Where’s Mom?” she asked.
In her purple housecoat, Maria shut a cupboard door and turned around. “She’s out for a walk, sweetie, but she’ll be home in time for lunch.”
Ajax jumped onto the table and meowed at Jenn, asking for scratches and pets.
“Get down from there!” Maria stormed over and clapped her hands. “Shoosh!”
Defiant to the last, Ajax didn’t budge.
“Jenn!” Jason called from the living room. “He’s up!”
“Coming,” she said, then darted over to the couch and sat beside her brother. Gary was here now, his nose in a book with a mushroom cloud on the front cover.
“Good thing it’s an away game.” He licked his finger and flipped a page without looking up. “Unless Denver got hit as well.”
He laid the book over his knee and reached for a bowl on the coffee table. Jenn did, too, and scooped out a handful of chips. Salt and vinegar, her favorite. On the TV, the ambient chatter of the fans grew louder, and someone blew a horn. She could almost smell the popcorn and whatever passed for hot dogs these days.
“Here comes the payoff pitch,” the commentator said, his voice full of anticipation.
The pitcher wound up and threw. Garcia, a lefty with a relaxed, open stance, loaded and swung—a fluid, effortless motion. Jenn thought it was beautiful: equal parts science and art. He made contact, and the flawless crack of the bat told her it was gone. By the looks of it, Garcia knew as well. Bat still in hand, he sidestepped out of the box and watched the ball sail away.
“That’s deep to center . . . and out of here!”
Garcia trotted down to first, the Colorado crowd now deathly silent.
Jason shot up from his seat and hollered at the TV. Jenn hugged him, and he hugged her back. They stayed like that for a while, and she cherished every second.
A bang came from the front door, and Sam barreled through, his face red and his eyes wide. “Jenn!” he shouted. “Come with me!”
“What? Where are we going? It’s only the fifth and Garcia just—”
“There’s no time!” Sam grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away from Jason, who stood there motionless. For some reason, he now wore his patterned black and brown uniform, and his hair was buzzed to the scalp. The left half of his face was charred and burnt, blood dribbling from his mouth. In the kitchen, Maria waved goodbye as Ajax rolled over on the linoleum floor. Where had her father gone?
Sam pulled her outside, into the streets, but they weren’t in Flagstaff anymore; this was Peoria. The sun hurt her skin, and the air smelled like trash. Distant sirens and thumping music, probably from the nearby modular housing complex, fought for dominance in her ears. Gunshots rang out and temporarily overpowered both.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked Sam. A sense of unease wormed its way into her bowels as he dragged her past foreclosed single-story duplexes. She wanted to yell at him for bringing her here.
Sam stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, his arm raised and his finger pointing across the road. Jenn followed it to her Peoria home. Smoke billowed from the windows, and flames licked the walls and roof. Her father’s red Nissan was parked on the street out front.
“We have to help them,” Sam said. “Your parents.”
He pulled at her some more, but her feet were glued to the asphalt beneath her. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to will the inferno away, but when she opened them again, the flames stretched into the sky. A scream came from inside the house. Then the roof collapsed into a ball of fire.
Finally, she could move, but when she ran forward, her foot caught on something, and she fell to the ground. When she checked to see what had tripped her, she found a man with a bushy beard and a shaved head—the security guard from the Go Market. He lay unmoving on his stomach, and blood pooled around his skull.
Jenn crawled over to him. “Wake up!” she yelled, then put her hands on his shoulders and shook. He didn’t so much as flinch, so she lowered her ear to his back. No sound of breathing. She placed two shaky fingers on his throat and felt for a pulse. His skin was ice cold.
Her eyes shot open. In her jeans and tank top, she stared at the popcorn ceiling from her bed at the Ruiz house. Cool sweat drenched her shirt. Her heart raced and her stomach churned. Then it churned again, and acid climbed into her throat. Mouth filling with saliva, she ran to the bathroom, slammed the door behind her, and threw up, then slumped down beside the sink. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and her sinuses burned. She smelled vomit. Some had splattered the rim of the toilet.
There, on her backside, the tile cool against her skin, she focused on her dream. In it, she had hugged Jason and watched a game with him, but when she fought to remember more, the image of the security guard forced itself into her mind. She had dreamed he was bleeding. Did she see blood at the Go Market? No, she didn’t think so. Really, she hadn’t even hit him that hard. At most, she’d knocked him unconscious. In the majors, a few times a season, a line drive would strike a pitcher in the face at a hundred miles per hour. None of them ever died. A few years ago, one had reconstructive surgery, but he was on the mound for spring training the following year. Something similar happened in her high school softball league. During her senior year, a girl caught the catcher in the temple with the end of her bat. She left the game for fear of a concussion but was playing again the next weekend. No way a tire iron to the head was worse than a bat to the temple or a line drive to the forehead. That man was okay. He must be.
Satisfied she was done vomiting, Jenn wiped the toilet clean and flushed it, then splashed cool water on her face and washed her hands in the sink. In her bedroom, she dug out the old analog-style watch her parents had given her as a high school graduation present. At the time, it seemed like an odd gift; nobody wore watches anymore. The antique embarrassed her, so she always hid it away in her dresser. She hadn’t even worn it when she visited her family last Christmas. Now she wanted to keep it close. This watch was one of the only things left of her mother and father.
She strapped it to her wrist and tapped at the glass. The hands showed the time as 2:45 p.m. Good, the battery still worked. And she’d been asleep for hours. Aside from the dream, the day had passed by in a blink.
In the kitchen, Maria sat at the table and read a cookbook. Beside her, the new oxygen compressor from Carla’s hummed melodically. Jenn checked the couch for Jason. She couldn’t help herself. Of course, he wasn’t there. His absence made her heart sink.
Maria closed her book. “You’re up! Are you feeling all right? I heard you run to the bathroom.”
“Yeah, I’m fine. How are you? Does that compressor work okay?”
“It’s great. “Maria pushed herself up from her seat and wrapped her arms around Jenn. “You’re very brave—and very strong. We’re here if you need us.”
Jenn sniffled and held her tight. “Thanks,” she mumbled into Maria’s shoulder.
Maria let her go and smiled that smile of hers. It told Jenn that everything would be okay; Maria would make sure of it.
“Where are the boys?” Jenn asked.
“Outside. Probably bonding over Sam’s car.”
That was surprising and a little unbelievable, but she liked hearing it regardless. She’d always wanted Gary and Sam to accept each other. “Best buddies now, hey?”
“Apparently,” Maria said. “I’m not complaining.”
“Neither am I.”
On cue, the front door creaked open, and in came Gary, Sam a few steps behind.
“There you are,” Gary said. The words weren’t accusatory. He hated when Jenn slept in late, but he sounded genuinely happy to see her out of bed.
Sam planted a kiss on her head. If he smelled vomit, he didn’t say anything, and she appreciated that right now. “You doing okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, not sure if she meant it or not. “Where were you guys?”
“Gary and I went to check on Erin. Liam’s still out.”
Jenn gulped. Was Liam at the Go Market this morning? Did he find that security guard on the floor? Did he know what Jenn had done? Anxiety flooded her stomach, and she wanted to throw up again.
“Any news?” she sputtered.
“Not really.” Gary laid his keys into a bowl beside the door. “The smoke’s thicker. You can smell it.”
Maria touched the plastic hose wrapped around her ears. Although they had found her an oxygen compressor, Jenn wished she could do more. First the power outage and now this. How much more difficult would things get for Maria?
Gary eased himself into a seat at the kitchen table. “We’ll have to keep the doors and windows shut to limit our exposure.”
“Mr. Ruiz,” Sam started. “Should we fill the tub like you said?”
“Fill the what?” Jenn asked.
“The tub. Mr. Ruiz said we should fill it because the water towers will run out by tomorrow at the latest, so we should store as much as we can.”
“That’d be great, Sam,” Gary said. “Thanks.”
Sam rushed toward the bathroom while Maria pulled out a chair. “Have a seat,” she told Jenn, then returned to her spot at the head of the table.
The sound of running water came from down the hall. Gary cleared his throat and said, “I think it’s best if Sam stays here again tonight.”
Ajax meowed happily and jumped onto Maria’s lap. “I agree, but maybe he should just move into Jenn’s room instead. At least for now. It’s safer if we’re all together.”
The blood drained from Gary’s face. He and Sam were showing signs of friendship, so he must not be worried about having Sam in his home. No, he was worried about Jenn moving in with a boy. His ghostly complexion suggested that he thought it was too soon. How would Jenn’s father have reacted? He met Sam for the first time last summer, when Jenn brought him to meet her parents in Peoria. They hit it off, thanks in large part to Sam’s charisma. There was no doubt in her mind that Dad would have supported Sam moving in if she felt the timing was right.
Sam appeared from the hallway. Maria asked him, “What do you think, Sam? We’re discussing you moving in with us.”
He hooked his thumbs into his pants pockets. “I don’t want to impose. I’ll be fine at—”
Maria quieted him with a shushing sound. “Nonsense. You’re more than welcome here, assuming Jenn’s okay with it.”
Was she? Sam moving in made logical sense. She also wanted him nearby, especially now. After all they’d gone through yesterday and this morning, she felt closer to him than ever. They might have only been together for a year, but she couldn’t imagine going to bed at night without him at her side.
She playfully nudged him with her foot. “I think it’s a good idea. Hope you don’t mind, Gary.”
He tapped the table with his fingers, then said, with some reluctance, “Makes sense.”
Looking serious now, Maria eyed Sam closely. “Expect a list of chores by tomorrow morning.”
A joke. Jenn could tell by Maria’s tone. Sam, though, seemed to take Maria at her word. “I’ll do everything I can to help.”
“I’m holding you to it.” Maria nodded toward the bathroom, where the trickle of water continued. “You can start by checking on that tub.”
A second passed before he clued in. As soon as he did, he spun on a heel and shot down the hallway. Jenn had never seen him move so fast.
“Please don’t scare my boyfriend like that,” she said to Maria.
“Oh, he knows I’m kidding.” She pushed up her glasses. “He does, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Jenn assured her. “I hope so, anyway.”
The tub went quiet. Sam returned and said, “All full.”
“Thanks, Sam.” Gary crossed his arms and checked his watch. “Let’s go get your stuff later. You should come, Jenn, if you’re feeling up to it. Maybe we’ll head over there after dinner. Hopefully things have calmed down around town by then.”