Jenn felt cold, freezing, like she’d been caught outside in the middle of a snowstorm without a jacket. She let go of Sam’s hand and darted for the man who’d yelled about the attack.
“Wait!” Sam said from behind her.
The man had begun moving away. Shouting for him to stop, she broke into a sprint and caught up. The blood had drained from his face, and patches of sweat darkened the neckline and armpits of his shirt. One of his shoelaces had come untied. “What happened?” she asked him. “Do you know why the power’s out?”
“Phoenix.” He wiped spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s been bombed.”
An image of her parents flashed in her mind: her mother and father standing on the sidewalk and waving as she drove away with Sam after Christmas break. That was the last time she saw them in person.
“Bombed how?” Intuitively, she already knew, but her instinct was to reject that reality. For as long as possible, even if it was only another second, she wanted to believe this wasn’t real. Phoenix couldn’t have been attacked. Kolkata or Warsaw, yes. Maybe Taipei or Mexico City. But not here. The war was a thousand miles away.
He grabbed two handfuls of his wavy hair and said, “Roof of the library. Look for yourself,” then left Jenn behind.
Sam touched her arm. “Jenn, I think we—”
“I want to see it.”
He gripped her shoulders with both hands and lowered his face to hers. “Let’s head over to Gary’s. It’ll be safe there, and he’ll know what to do.”
“No.” The word fell from her mouth. Sam was right: of course they should go to Gary’s. But for reasons she couldn’t explain, running and hiding when her parents were in danger—or worse—stung of betrayal. “My family’s down there.”
She waited for him to argue with her, but he dropped his chin, exhaled, and asked, “Where?”
“He said the library.”
They rushed away from McKay Village and toward the towering green glass structure near the center of campus. At fifteen stories high, the library was the tallest building in Flagstaff. It was also the newest, and its clean, shimmering windows lorded over the grays and browns of the aging town below, earning it the nickname Emerald City.
Students and faculty poured out of the brick buildings on either side of the street. Instead of a steady stream toward the library or in one direction, bodies scurried left, right, forward, and backward at random like a colony of ants escaping the nest.
Someone crashed into her shoulder, spilling a tablet and books onto the road. “Sorry,” said a girl around Jenn’s age, her expression vacant and hollow. Trails of mascara ran down her cheeks, and she stumbled away without picking up her things.
“Wait!” Jenn called after her. “Your stuff!”
The girl didn’t respond, and a few steps later, she disappeared into the crowd.
Sam pulled on Jenn’s hand. “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”
At the library’s main entrance, the automatic doors were propped open, and Jenn went inside. She expected the bright white of the LEDs to greet her, but the lobby was dark. The sun streaked through the glass and colored the room a faint green. Nobody manned the help desk, and above it, the lounge chairs and desks on the mezzanine were vacant. Normally abuzz with chatter, Emerald City sounded like a tomb.
She led him to a stairwell next to a bank of elevators. Bounding the steps two at a time, she climbed as though she’d find her parents at the top. Her calves ached in opposition after only four floors. On the eighth, she passed a group of six heading down but didn’t ask them what they’d seen; the women’s puffy, glistening eyes and the men’s ashen faces told her everything she needed to know.
When she checked for Sam, he was a full flight behind her and pulling himself up by the handrail. “Wait,” he sputtered, “slow down.”
She ignored him and continued pushing until she reached the roof access door. Fifteen stories of winding stairs had made her dizzy, and atop rubber legs, she staggered toward a group of twenty or thirty at the edge of the building. Two of them, library staff by the looks of it, were hugging. A third, perhaps faculty, his blue collared shirt unbuttoned, sat with his arms resting on his knees.
Sam caught up, and together, they maneuvered to the front of the crowd and gazed southward. The town gave way to forest, and a break in the trees marked the interstate in the distance. Beyond lay nothing but miles of low, pine-covered hills.
“You see anything?” Sam asked.
“They’re over there.” A woman in a green NAU staff T-shirt sniffled and pointed. “Look that way.”
Jenn followed her finger.
And then she saw them.
They were faint, each less than the width of her thumb, but she made them out against the sky: four black plumes peeking above the horizon. No, there were five.
Without warning, the library started spinning. The roof, too, started wobbling, and Jenn stumbled and fell onto her backside. She tried to stand, but her legs didn’t work anymore. Neither did her eyes; everything had gone blurry. Sam knelt in front of her, his mouth moving as if he were speaking, though no sound came out. Her stomach convulsed, then convulsed again, so she inhaled long and deep through her nose, but it was too late. The potatoes and soy bacon she ate for breakfast forced their way out as the sky crashed down around her and the world turned dark.
—
“Does anybody have any water?”
Jenn heard Sam say it, but she felt like she’d drunk six beers in as many minutes. She was horizontal—mostly—her head resting awkwardly on Sam’s thigh.
Mom and Dad. She needed to get to them.
With both hands, she braced herself and tried to push up, but Sam wouldn’t release her.
“Easy there,” he said. “You passed out.”
She pushed up again, this time hard enough to break free of his grasp. Her knees wobbled and her vision blacked out, but she planted her feet firmly beneath her and faced the service door.
“What’re you doing?”
“Going home.”
“Home?” He reached for her hand, but she yanked it away. “You can’t go marching toward mushroom clouds.”
Of course Sam wouldn’t understand. How could he? He’d come to college in Flagstaff to escape his family. He wanted nothing to do with them. But Jenn’s parents were everything to her. They stepped in after her birthparents threw her out like a piece of trash and then loved her as their own. So did her brothers, but they were gone. She couldn’t lose her mother and father, too. Not like this.
Her lip quivered. “Watch me.”
“Jenn, wait.”
She stormed away from him. The first step felt good, so good; she was finally taking control after playing catch-up all morning. But each one after that became heavier and heavier. An invisible weight was bearing down in the opposite direction, reminding her of when she was eleven and the Jansen family drove to the coast. Everyone was there, even Jason and Andrew. She had never seen the ocean and was determined to march in, but the force of the waves resisted her as though she didn’t belong. Up to her hips, she was too afraid to go any deeper. She nearly gave up, but a supportive hand from Dad encouraged her to dive in. Thanks to him, Jenn conquered the Pacific that day. She wished Sam would do the same and push her forward. But instead, he grabbed her wrist and tugged at her. He wasn’t anything like her father, and she hated him for that right now.
“Please, let’s go to Gary’s,” he pleaded.
She jerked her arm free and wiped her eyes. Then, her hands balled into fists, she ran. If Sam wouldn’t help, she wanted to be as far away from him as possible. He was the wave pushing her back. But halfway to the service door, two arms wrapped around her midsection. She screamed and cursed and threw elbows, but Sam had lifted her clean into the air.
When her feet touched the roof again, her knees nearly gave out. The tears flowed freely now, and she smelled Sam’s deodorant. A minute ago, she hated him, but the familiar scent conjured feelings of trust and safety. No, Sam wasn’t like her father; he was more like her mother. At the ocean, Mom told her to shut her eyes tight and take a deep breath before going under. It might seem scary at first, she’d said. But you can do anything. Sam thought the same way.
His embrace beckoned, so she buried her face in his chest. He pulled her close, then rested his chin on her head. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “They’re okay.”
She desperately wanted to believe him, but she needed to see for herself. “Will you come with me?” she mumbled into his T-shirt.
“Yes. For sure. But you have family here, too.”
People were watching them, and Jenn felt a pang of self-consciousness. She checked if anyone else had passed out or thrown up. No one had. Only her.
After swallowing the burn of stomach acid in her throat, she said, “What do you mean?”
“Gary and Maria.”
“What about them?”
“You can’t leave them behind.”
Her cheeks warmed. She’d have to pack her things for the trip to Phoenix, so she could say goodbye then. She pictured Maria’s face—her bright-blue eyes, her permanent smile, and the hose wrapped around her ears. And Gary, his lopsided mustache and the ugly polo shirts. He always tucked them in, and it looked terrible. She imagined standing at their front door, ready to leave, as they stared at her from the living room.
If not for the Ruiz family, Jenn would have stayed in Phoenix, where, even in the suburbs, she was afraid to go out alone. Here, in Flagstaff, the air was fresh, it snowed in the winter, and almost all the drug addicts and criminals had moved into the city. It was quiet, thanks to most of the businesses having closed during the depression, but at least it was safe. Most of all, she’d met Sam at NAU. Gary and Maria were to thank for that. She tried to make it up to them by pitching in with the household chores, but the truth was, if not for Jenn, they would have had plenty of surplus income, possibly enough to afford real meat a few times a week. She owed them and couldn’t leave Flagstaff now.
“I wouldn’t do that,” she said. “You think I would?”
“No. That’s my point.”
“Okay. How can we help?”
Sam brushed a strand of hair from her face. “I’m mostly thinking about Maria. She’s got, what, four spare oxygen tanks?”
The mention of Maria’s oxygen made her guts swirl some more. How could she have forgotten? For Maria, who depended on her electric compressor to survive, an extended blackout was a death sentence. “Four including the one we hooked up this morning.”
“Right. Those’ll last her how long? A day or two?”
“Yeah, probably two.”
“So she’ll need more.”
She blinked the tears from her eyes, cleared away the remnants with her wrist, and patted Sam on the chest. “Okay then. So let’s go to Gary’s and see if we can help get Maria some oxygen tanks and whatever else. After that, we’ll talk about Phoenix.”
“Good idea.” He squeezed her hand. “And who knows? Maybe your parents will come up here.”
How hadn’t she considered that yet? Her father had insisted on keeping their old red Nissan sedan even though they struggled to afford the insurance payments. Although the car looked like scrap, it ran like a dream. Jenn drove it around all last summer, a testament to its resilience. The air-conditioning didn’t work, but Dad bragged that he’d jump in and drive it across the country without hesitating. It would get them to Flagstaff if it wasn’t damaged in the attack.
“You’re right,” she said.
“Let’s stay here for a day or so in case they come up. If we drove down now, we might pass them on the highway and never even know.”
“Good point.”
They sat on the concrete, holding each other close. For a while, they didn’t speak, only watched the others on the roof gradually disperse and return to the stairwell. In the silence, a million questions ran through her mind. Why was Phoenix attacked? Who did it? The Russians? The Chinese? How many people had died? Had those bombs knocked out the power?
She wondered if she was dreaming, if this was all part of her imagination. Stress often gave her nightmares. Had exams really caused her that much anxiety? She finished applied math and fluid dynamics in half the allotted time and expected A’s on both. Only her elective, organic chemistry, gave her a whiff of trouble, but not a single question came as a surprise or caught her off guard. Maybe she was worried about the draft this summer. That was the only explanation.
Pinching herself, she hoped to wake up in her bed at the Ruiz house or next to Sam in his apartment, but she didn’t. The nightmare continued.
Her thoughts wandered to Sam; he was from Phoenix, too, and hadn’t mentioned his family yet. She’d never met his mother, stepfather, or younger sister. He hardly ever talked about them, and whenever she asked, he promptly changed the subject. His mother, Barbara, Jenn knew, was a narcissist. To describe her, Sam defaulted to the terms “toxic” or “self-obsessed.” His parents divorced when he was only six or seven, and Barbara quickly remarried. His father died in a car accident shortly thereafter. The stepfather owned a cabin near Payson, far outside Phoenix in Gila County, and he and Barbara spent their springs and summers there, usually with his sister, Nicole. They might be there now, not at home in the city. Before she could ask him, he spoke again.
“Let’s go check in on Gary and Maria. She’s probably freaking out that you’re not home.”
Sam’s optimism wore off on her. She imagined her mother and father tearing down I-17 in the old Nissan. The drive only took a couple of hours. The traffic on the highway out of town would be ugly if cars had broken down in Phoenix like they had in Flagstaff, but Dad knew all the back routes. He’d find his way here and he’d find Jenn.
She just hoped they’d fixed the air-conditioning.