And Then There Were Four

  I gulp in air. There’s air. There is air. Bad air, chalky somehow but I feel it in my lungs and it helps me push the panic a half inch away. I manage, and now I know what has happened and what to do. I will get out. I grit my teeth and push firmly upward with my hands and shoulders, because I am not going to suffocate to death in this rat-hole (Antoine was right) with its rotten roof which (Kenyon was right) should have been freaking condemned—

  “No! Stop! Please stop moving. For the love of God, don’t push at me!”

  It’s a whisper from directly above because it is not something on top of me, it is someone.

  Someone who has saved me from being crushed, broken, and suffocated by the ceiling.

  That is when I realize I am truly okay because (1) I know what pain is like and this is not it. This is fear and I can push it another half inch away and hold it there. Then (2) I can after all breathe, and finally (3) there is another living human being with me, physically with me. Which is a good thing, oh it is such a good thing hooray living human being.

  “Kenyon?” If this were a romance novel it would be Antoine who saved me but it is Kenyon and ha! guess what, in real life that is utterly fine as far as I am concerned.

  “Yeah,” she whispers. “It’s me. Don’t move. Please don’t ask me to move either. From what I can tell, we’re buried under a mountain of stuff. There’s an air hole, and I can see, but—I don’t know—everything on my back feels unstable. I don’t think we should even talk loudly. It might, uh, avalanche.”

  My chicken salad lunch shoots from my stomach toward my throat but I shut my mouth in time and swallow it back along with stomach acid which we are old friends when I am anxious. I breathe. Okay I am okay.

  As reported before, I am lying on my back. I now see that Kenyon is on top of me with her stomach to mine, and she is also sort of propped up on her forearms like a sphinx, which is what is giving me room to breathe.

  The wind howls. It is no longer outside, it is inside, it is with us, it is on us.

  I whisper to Kenyon, “You saved me.”

  “Yeah, don’t give me too much credit. I don’t know what I did. It’s kind of a blur.”

  I squint to see what I can. Soaked ceiling material, I deduce. And gravel. All piled around us.

  We are buried.

  “So there’s a pile of debris on your back,” I say. “The same stuff that’s all around us.”

  “Yeah.” Kenyon pauses. “It’s pretty heavy.”

  “You said there’s an air hole. Can you see anything out of it?”

  “It’s only a small hole to the left of my face. I see rain.”

  “Okay, do you hear anybody? The—the others?”

  “No.”

  My throat closes up for a second. Antoine. Evangeline. And Caleb Colchester. Hurt bleeding broken? Buried like us? Unconscious? Dead or dying?

  Except wait. Caleb wasn’t under the main roof. He was in the turret, which has its own roof, pointed and independent. Less likely to crash? Maybe so. Which means he could probably help, except—

  Except he is Caleb Colchester Jr.

  There are school stories about him.

  I say, “Kenyon, listen. We can’t wait for help because it might not come. We have to get ourselves out of this.”

  Kenyon’s voice is dry. “Oh really? How? We can’t move or we’ll be buried. I’m the one with the crap on my back here, girlfriend. We need help from outside. Somebody’s got to come eventually, right? Like, 911 people. We need to hold out. I need to hold out.”

  I hear something in her tone, at the end there. I say what I should have said at the start but I did not think of it then, because to be honest self-absorbed.

  “Are you all right? Does anything hurt? What?”

  Kenyon pauses for a fraction of a second too long. “I can hold on until help comes.”

  I have another bad moment but panic will do us no good, so I push it away. At which point I have an actual idea. “Do you have your phone on you?” Mine unfortunately is in the pocket of my backpack. (I don’t always answer my mother which is easier when you accidentally leave your phone in things.)

  “Yes! Yes, I do. My left back pocket.” She hesitates, shifting slightly. “There’s no way I can reach it.”

  Because her arms and hands are occupied in holding her sphinx position and incidentally that is what is also keeping me sheltered and safe.

  “Maybe I can,” I say.

  “Try. But move very carefully?”

  “Oh yes. I am not interested in an avalanche ruining our air hole,” I say.

  I edge one hand up alongside our bodies where her hips press into mine, trying to get to her rear pocket (and by the way there is nothing sexy-times about this believe me for either one of us). But the debris is so packed around us that it’s like trying to force my hand slowly through a wall.

  I try I try I try, sort of gently yet firmly.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

  Kenyon exhales. “It’s all right. Help will come.”

  If I were bigger. If I were stronger. “You were right,” I offer. “This place should have been condemned.”

  She sounds resigned. “I’m right a lot. Guess what, it’s always bad news. My whole life is bad news.”

  I choke back a hysterical laugh. “Mine too, pretty much.”

  “Really? What’s your story?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Tell me,” she says. “What else do we have to do but talk?”

  The thing is, I am not quite sure why I said what I said. I don’t feel like my whole life is bad news. There’s a lot of good in it. It’s hard sometimes physically but the foot operations did work and I don’t walk lopsided even and I don’t know how to express this but getting used to pain can teach you things, which is not saying pain is good or worth it but something else happens. I told you I can’t express it but I’m not sorry to be who I am—something like that. I have become tough in a peculiar way that doesn’t show. And then many people have diabetes and it is not strange or odd, people get it. Basically, I am alive and there is my mother who did agree to let me go to school and live more normally, and I absolutely believe in counting your blessings.

  Maybe I said my life was bad news to distract Kenyon, to be more one with her? Because she is in pain. You cannot be pressed up close against someone like we are and not feel what they feel, trust me.

  But now I am stuck with having said it.

  I say, “So I was a preemie and sort of sickly for a long time. Also, I was born with a birth defect called club foot.”

  “Is that why you have a cane?”

  “Yes. I had operations to reposition my foot properly. It’s still smaller than my other one which gets expensive for shoes. One foot is size five and the other one is six and a half. But it basically worked. The operation, I mean. I don’t need Georg—my cane—very much anymore. I mean, sometimes I do.” I trail off because I have messed up. “Okay so I call my cane Georgia,” I add lamely (oh no, terrible pun unintended).

  “Georgia is a pretty name,” Kenyon says gently, like I am four, and I think of punching her in the stomach for condescension (except maybe that should wait until after we’re rescued and she is okay again, and also mentioning Georgia’s name did make me sound pathetic probably) when she adds, “Saralinda is pretty too. I’ve never heard that name before.”

  “It’s from an old book called The Thirteen Clocks that my mother loves.”

  I do not say the rest which is that I used to love it too until I realized that Princess Saralinda is one of those princesses who is beautiful but has very little character and also she is under a curse that stops her from speaking her mind (which troubles me though I understand the curse on Princess Saralinda is necessary for the plot). I like my name in any case and there are still things I like about the boo
k but I can’t love it anymore is my point.

  However I’m reminded of Princess Saralinda every time I don’t tell my mother what I think.

  Kenyon says, “There’re a lot of bones in the foot, right?”

  “Yes,” I say and I am not unhappy for the conversational topic to change to feet. She is right, there are twenty-six bones in the human foot and ankle. In fact, one-fourth of all the bones in the human body are located in the feet. All the bones are small obviously and interact in complicated ways which means that foot surgeons think very highly of themselves and charge a lot of money.

  We should never be mad at our feet. They work hard and they are beautiful and I have taught myself never to say “my good foot” and “my bad foot” because they are both my feet equally. Thank you, feet. I also believe that it is a good idea to regularly say thank you to the rest of your body because really the whole system works hard on your behalf and is a miracle. So even if your pancreas doesn’t work and you monitor your blood sugar and take insulin shots, you should not resent it but be grateful.

  “Also, I have diabetes,” I say. “Which sucks.”

  Not a word I normally say aloud even when I think it but it’s not every day that a roof collapses on you and there’s nothing you can do but wait and hope. (Which ought to give me more insight into Princess Saralinda’s situation.) Still I am so surprised I said it—and it’s true, diabetes does suck and don’t tell me I could get an insulin pump instead of shooting up because I tried that and for me that was worse, I felt like I was part machine not in a good way and I would rather test all the time and worry all the time too. And yet I am glad I said it yet shocked yet ashamed yet (again) glad that I laugh, and then Kenyon laughs too. Then we are cackling like hysterical witches but trying to do it quietly so all the stuff on her back doesn’t shake, and in the middle of it I gasp out:

  “Plus! Guess what? I’m a huge burden to my mother. She’s single, and deciding to have me basically ruined her life!”

  At this point we are dying laughing.

  Also I have shocked myself to the core. My mother has never said that and she would be devastated that I did which means in a way I just betrayed her. So I suck too but I don’t care it feels so good to laugh.

  To tell the truth aloud.

  Finally I can talk and I say, “What about your family? Why is it all bad news?” Then too late I remember about her mother and I freeze for a second because I cannot believe I forgot, I do suck, and I start a stumbling apology but she cuts me off.

  “Saralinda, it’s okay. Right now it’s that my grandfather hates me. I mean, hates me hates me.”

  Somehow this sets first her and then me off laughing like hyenas again. I don’t know why. It’s not even slightly funny.

  Sometimes you laugh instead of crying I guess.

  When we stop and she finally talks, her voice is quiet and thoughtful and sad. “So my grandfather is my guardian now, and he blames me for my mom’s death and maybe I am to blame. Um. You know what happened? You heard about it?”

  “Yes,” I say quickly because I don’t want to make her talk about it, it is so horrifying. Basically after the teenage boy rapists that Kenyon got on videotape were arrested, then this crazy man who didn’t even know any of them went to Kenyon’s house with a gun and hid there and then when Kenyon’s mother came out, he shot her in the head. He thought she was Kenyon. This was a truly crazy person whose ex-wife had a restraining order out against him and he had no connection in real life to Kenyon or her mom, none.

  But he had a gun.

  So Kenyon’s mom died just like that in the driveway with no head anymore.

  “Also,” Kenyon says in a voice with no expression, “my grandfather is kind of homophobic. So. There you go. He’s got two good reasons to hate me.”

  “You have to live with him?”

  “I live at school,” she corrects me.

  “Right,” I say.

  “A teacher at my old school helped me get this scholarship to Rockland Academy. It’s just until I’m eighteen and then my grandfather won’t be my guardian anymore. Maybe I’ll never see him again after that. I think that’s what he wants.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh. I don’t know . . . I guess for now, just to get the hell out.”

  I imagine all the details that she’s not saying. I feel honored that she has told me what she has. “I am so sorry about your mother. It was not your fault. You were doing the right thing. You are not responsible for the choices of an insane person.”

  “I don’t know about that. If I could go back—but I can’t. You know what? I wish I could wish that he’d gotten me instead. That’s what my grandfather wishes. But I’m not sorry to be alive. Which isn’t the same thing as wanting my mother dead. It’s—I can’t explain.”

  “I think I understand anyway,” I say.

  “Thanks.”

  I want to confide more to Kenyon about myself, things that before this moment I didn’t know—didn’t let myself know—bother me. Like how my mother won’t tell me anything about my father (who was a sperm donor but there is supposed to be at least some pictures and some other basic information and why can’t I at least see them I won’t love her less). Our last name isn’t anything to do with me since it’s the name of my white mother’s ex-husband who wasn’t my father, and because I am darkish and have the name de la Flor everyone assumes I am Latina but I don’t know what I am. I would like to know, is that wrong? The thing is that I feel like I’m assembled out of spare parts, some of which are (to be honest) dysfunctional. I don’t only mean my foot and my pancreas but something inside to do with my soul feels like it is not connected properly. It doesn’t help that we have no other family but each other, I mean me and my mom.

  But this feels extremely petty next to Kenyon’s situation because at base my mother is alive and she loves me and wants the best for me.

  I say, “I think you’re amazing.”

  “And I think you are a sweetheart, Saralinda.”

  It is lovely to hear this.

  We are both silent then. The wind roars and the rain slams.

  It is very strange circumstances under which to make my first real friend.

  “Kenyon?” I say.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not die today. Not even to make things easier for my mom and your grandfather.”

  She laughs. She has a wonderful laugh, it is like a trill.

  “Do you have an idea?” she asks.

  Yes. Yes, I do. Caleb Colchester was in the turret. That is a fact. He is out there and I believe he is unlikely to be injured.

  Antoine.

  Evangeline.

  I pray they are okay too.

  I say to Kenyon, “I’ll shout for help, as loud as I can. If the others are okay, they’ll be able to find us. If you can hold still while I yell, maybe the stuff on top of us will stay stable. Maybe it won’t, you know, vibrate.”

  She thinks it over.

  “Do it.”

  I am scared. It doesn’t matter. I draw in a deep breath. Then I yell as loud as I can, over the wind and the pounding rain.

  “It’s Saralinda and Kenyon! We’re buried! We need help! Help!”

  Sharp gravel pours in beside my head. Kenyon’s body shakes in reaction. Panic spikes through my heart, but then the gravel fall slows and I go again.

  “Is anybody there? Help! Help!”

  Nothing but the rain and howling wind and more gravel dribbling down alongside my face in a relentless stream. Above me Kenyon shakes.

  “Help! Help us!” I yell.

  The wind. The rain. More gravel pouring down on us, around us.

  “Help! Help! Help!”

  Then a voice bellows above the wind. “Where are you, Saralinda? Kenyon! Shout again! We’ve called 911! Hold on! I’ll find you!?
??

  It’s not Antoine.

  It’s Caleb Colchester Jr.

  Chapter 7. Caleb

  You sit fully dressed in a cubicle of the emergency unit. You could walk out. Get an Uber and go right back to school. You always spend weekends there even though your parents live in the city and you could be home inside an hour. But that apartment is not your home, and why should the roof collapse make this weekend any different?

  You hold Saralinda’s cane. You dug it out of the rubble while Saralinda and Kenyon were being loaded onto stretchers—Saralinda protesting that she was not hurt. You like holding her cane. It is even heavier than it looks: She must be stronger than she looks to be carrying it all the time. You put it down and pull your phone from your pocket. You look again at the text from your father.

  On my way. Don’t say anything.

  He thinks you did it. It angers you, but maybe he’s right.

  Maybe you are responsible.

  Only how?

  You get up. You push aside the curtain around your cubicle and catch the eye of a passing nurse. She approaches you, smiling.

  “We’ll be with you shortly. You’re not an emergency, I hope you understand. We’ll need to check you over—”

  You hold up your hands. They’re filthy and covered with cuts. “No problem. Just, can you tell me how my friends are?” The word friends is a lie. It’s what came out.

  “You’re the hero, aren’t you?” The nurse lowers her voice. “I shouldn’t say anything, medical privacy, but you deserve to know. Plus, I understand you’re Dr. Colchester’s son.” Her eyes go starry, like most people if they have met your father, or read his articles on the human mind in The New Yorker. “I see the resemblance. Don’t worry about your friends. That one girl has some lower spine bruising, which can be tricky, but—”