The Last Boy and Girl in the World

  It was weirdly comforting that the regular channels were showing normal programming—game shows and soap operas and reruns. If things were super-dangerous, if Aberdeen was really going under, wouldn’t there be those emergency broadcast alerts blaring nonstop?

  When I got to the twenty-four-hour news channels, I saw Aberdeen everywhere.

  Mom sat down next to me on her bed. She didn’t even complain about the water I was wasting.

  We flipped through channel after channel. I don’t know what we were hoping to hear, exactly, but we didn’t linger on any one broadcast. The news flashed in snippets of talking heads, graphics, helicopter shots of waterlogged streets. The dramatic footage felt so foreign, even though I heard those helicopters in the distance.

  It was too soon to know the full extent of the damage done, exactly how many homes were ruined, the number of cars swept away, injuries and accidents. For now, the focus was on the plans for the future. Evacuate the residents of Aberdeen and turn our town into a reservoir capable of holding and controlling ninety billion gallons. The government would purchase all 4,480 acres of our town to make a man-made fortress to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again.

  It was hard to make sense of what I was seeing. Honestly, I didn’t even want to.

  Mom took the remote from me when we landed on a clip of Governor Ward. He was in a suit, standing outside the gym doors of our school, cameras and microphones surrounding him. On his left, mindlessly nodding like a bobblehead, stood Mayor Aversano. And on his right, Sheriff Hamrick.

  “This must have happened right after that presentation,” Mom said, raising the volume.

  “We are lucky that the events of the last forty-eight hours did not result in any fatalities. And it appears the imminent danger has passed. But because certain environmental issues are only now coming to light, we have no other choice but to take dramatic action. It’s not safe for residents to stay here long-term, and it’s not safe for those living downstream in Waterford City, either. And while the residents of Aberdeen will surely mourn the loss of their town, these proud working people who helped transform this valley so many years ago can take heart in the fact that their sacrifice will save future lives. This is quite the little town, believe me, and I have promised everyone here that we will not soon let anyone forget it.”

  I got a text from Morgan.

  We finally got the okay to head home. On our way now.

  I jumped up. “Mom! They’re on their way home!” I didn’t even need to say who.

  I wrote back, Be there ASAP.

  • • •

  Mom and I drove through town in stunned silence. I’m not sure what she was feeling, but to me, there’d been something about seeing Aberdeen on television that made the whole thing feel less than real. But there was no denying the destruction when it was right on the other side of the windshield. There were heaved sidewalks, uprooted trees. The front doors of houses were pitched wide open, with people pushing mud out with snow shovels. Broken furniture was piled up, possessions set out to dry on the lawns. Cars had floated out of their garages and settled into the streets. Trash was everywhere.

  But it was by no means a ghost town. Everyone was buzzing with activity. Police cars, vans from the electric and gas and telephone companies flashing emergency lights. Neighbors met out on their lawns and stared in awe. They comforted each other, or joked with each other, or told each other it would be okay.

  I felt crappy to have a wonderful little thing to hold on to but I gripped it tightly anyway. Because despite everything going on around me, I still felt tingles from when Jesse had run his hands through my hair that morning.

  “Oh no,” Mom said. The car stopped fast, pulling me tight against my seat belt.

  Morgan and Mrs. Dorsey were standing on the curb in yesterday’s clothes, both staring at the huge elm tree that had smashed into their garage. The trunk had taken out the corner and broken through the shingled roof; the limbs and leaves completely blocked the garage door.

  Mom jumped out and swept Mrs. Dorsey up in a hug.

  Mrs. Dorsey had been crying before we got there, but once she saw my mother, she began to sob. I’d only ever seen her cry one other time, and it wasn’t when she was divorcing her husband, because she was that ready to kick him to the curb. It was three summers ago, on the night before Morgan and I started high school, and that was because she and my mom had polished off two bottles of wine at their picnic table. Both of them practically tackled us on the front lawn when we came walking up after watching a Little League game, kissing us, wiping their faces dry across our cheeks, promising us they were happy tears. I wasn’t sure I believed her then, but now, seeing the other kind, I understood the difference.

  I came over to Morgan and knocked into her.

  “We’re okay,” Morgan quickly assured me, sniffing back tears. “This is really the worst of it.”

  Mrs. Dorsey pulled her arm inside her sweatshirt sleeve and wiped her eyes. “It’s my fault. I should have had that tree taken down months ago. I have the stupid estimate in the house. It was just so much money. And I didn’t know if the guy was trying to take advantage of me because I’m a single woman, so I was going to get another guy to give me a price and—”

  “Annie, stop.”

  “And now it’s going to cost me so much more. If I can even get someone over here with all this mess. Not to mention I don’t even know if my car is drivable. I definitely can’t afford to get a new car right now!”

  “Let me call Jim,” my mom said. She pulled out her phone. “He’s out with some other guys working on a neighbor’s place, but maybe they can swing by here next.”

  “What?” Mrs. Dorsey said, slowly turning away from the scene for the first time. “Jim is where?”

  Mom couldn’t help but grin. She covered her phone with her hand and whispered, “We’ve had a crazy morning,” before my dad picked up. “Jim, it’s me. I need your help.”

  As my mom stepped over toward her car to speak with my dad, both Morgan and Mrs. Dorsey looked at me to explain. I shrugged. “Crazy morning!” I said, like a bad sitcom.

  • • •

  My mom stayed for a cup of coffee, and by the time she left to check on her patients, Dad had arrived with three other pickup trucks and a team of guys, some old, some young, all carrying tools. They made quick work of the tree, sawing it up into logs, rolling them down to the street and stacking them curbside. Dad acted more like a foreman, directing the guys. For a while he set aside his cane and wielded a chain saw himself, but people on the street kept coming over, wanting to speak to him.

  After the tree was cut down, the guys collected the broken bits of roof and secured a tarp over the gaping hole. It definitely wasn’t fixed by any means. In fact, I assumed it would probably need to come down at some point. But the guys were able to use a crowbar to force the garage door open, because the track was off and the door dented. They started up Mrs. Dorsey’s car to make sure it was running fine.

  Mrs. Dorsey was outside, watching them, her arms wrapped around her. She kept bear-hugging Dad. He patted her stiffly on the back.

  Morgan and I were up in her room, kneeling on her floor and sharing space at the window, watching it all. Behind us, her television was tuned to a news channel on mute.

  I shouted “Bye!” to my dad before he got into his truck and drove off to the next house. When I turned back around, Morgan was on her bed, staring at me. Her face began to redden and her bottom lip trembled.

  “No!” I said, and tackled her backward into a hug that made her bed creak. “No more crying!” I fought her for the remote and turned the TV off.

  She shook her head, fat tears rolling down the sides of her face, falling into her ears. “Why aren’t you crying?”

  “Because nothing’s for sure yet. I mean, who knows what’s really going to happen? If they’ll go through with it.” And also, because of the Jesse thing, though it felt like the wrong time to say so.

  She
reached for a tissue. “Oh, it’s happening,” she said, her voice low. “They made that super-clear.”

  Of course I believed her. I’d seen the news reports, and also Morgan had heard what the governor had said firsthand. But it still seemed too weird to imagine. And our house had been full of people who weren’t going to roll over and give up Aberdeen without a fight. There had to be more of them in town. This was a prideful place. If enough people made noise, maybe, just maybe, the governor would reevaluate. Come up with some other plan.

  “I mean, where are we all supposed to go?” I asked.

  Morgan shrugged.

  “Seriously. Did they say anything about that?”

  “Not really” was her answer. And then she opened her laptop and brought up the website of a newspaper. On the front page was an aerial shot, one I hadn’t seen on television. It was almost unrecognizable. A green slope with jagged seams of broken dirt and debris where a cluster of houses had slid free, like a kid dragging each of their five fingers deep across different parts of a freshly iced chocolate cake.

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “I think that’s Elise’s,” she said, and moved her mouse so it pointed at a pile of debris in the picture.

  “Have you heard from her?” I asked, realizing simultaneously that I hadn’t. I clicked my phone screen on. Maybe she’d tried me when it was dead. Or maybe the call hadn’t gone through.

  I actually typed out a few possible texts in the car ride over to Morgan’s house, but didn’t send any because they just looked so awkward and stiff on the screen. How are you? How’s your family? Sentiments that could have come from anyone. Elise was my friend. I needed to do better. Except I was dreading talking to her, because I didn’t know what to say.

  “We traded a few texts. She’s going to try us later.”

  I didn’t want to linger on feeling crappy, so I changed the subject. “Has anyone said anything about school? I mean, we still have a month left.” It was odd to think of the end of the year with the same enthusiasm as the beginning, to suddenly be looking forward to every single day instead of counting them down, the way you normally would before summer officially begins.

  “It’s canceled at least through tomorrow.”

  Then Morgan was crying again. Sobbing this time.

  “Morgan, come on,” I play-whined. “Your house is fine, mine is okay. We’ve got another day off from school! We’re lucky. We should be celebrating.” I said it even though I felt the good feelings about Jesse unspooling their grip on me.

  She sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but it only made her shudder. “I can’t imagine not living in this town, not living near you.”

  Her words hit me hard. I hadn’t even considered that. The idea that someone from my family wouldn’t always live in the cottage on Hewitt Road, that my best friend wouldn’t be within walking distance from me.

  I couldn’t consider that.

  “Then don’t!” I said, cuddling next to her.

  “But what if it happens?”

  “It won’t.”

  “Why won’t it? What makes you so sure?”

  I closed Morgan’s laptop and leaned back in her bed, my hands behind my head. “The power of our friendship.”

  Morgan rolled on top of me. “Keeley! Be serious, will you?” She swatted me with a pillow.

  “I am being serious,” I said. “See? You’re already feeling better. Am I right?”

  She laughed and a snot bubble popped out of her nose. I’d released a pressure valve.

  “Okay, yeah. I guess I am.”

  “Power of friendship,” I said again, grinning. “Now say it with me.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes, but she lay down next to me and put her hands behind her head, just like me. “Power of friendship,” she mimicked.

  I leaned up on my elbow. “You’ve got to say it like you mean it,” I cautioned. “Like you believe.”

  “Oh jeez, fine, you goofball.” She wiped her eyes. And she did say it again, exactly how I asked.

  Morgan had always been the most important person in my life, but I sometimes worried if the same still went for her. But here was our friendship, zipping up like a coat readying for a storm.

  People say that it sometimes takes a tragedy to put your life into perspective, to show you what really matters.

  It was amazing, really, my talent for finding silver linings in even the darkest clouds.

  13

  * * *

  Monday, May 16

  Clear skies in the evening, low of 42°F

  * * *

  Morgan hadn’t slept much at the gym the night before. She was yawning like crazy and her eyes were puffy red from crying, but she couldn’t fall asleep. I put on a movie that we’d both seen a hundred times before. Aladdin over Little Mermaid, for obvious reasons. She passed out cold about five minutes into it.

  Morgan’s phone was on the pillow next to her head. I kept glancing over at it, waiting for Elise to reach out, like Morgan had said she would, but she didn’t.

  Wes did.

  He sent her a text.

  Trying you one more time to see if you’re okay.

  One more time? I scrolled up. He’d sent several messages to her. Morgan hadn’t responded to any of them, and it made my heart swell up like a big red balloon for her.

  Then came another.

  Just wanted to make sure you are okay with this flood stuff.

  A minute later, another.

  Keeley too.

  I rolled my eyes.

  He wrote again.

  I know you’re still mad, but just let me know you’re safe and I promise I’ll stop texting.

  It took all my self-control not to write back, Yup, all good, now lose my number, asshole.

  The movie ended. I switched to the news to distract myself.

  The reporters were saying there was no rain in the forecast for the immediate future. And the water had begun to slip back into the river. The fact that our power lines were up in the air, and not underground like the more affluent areas, actually worked in our favor, and nearly all residents were back on the grid. It seemed like really good news. I almost woke Morgan up to see it.

  But they kept showing the same clips of the governor’s speech, applauding our town for making this great sacrifice, as if he’d given us any say in what was happening. And the talking heads repeated the same environmental mumbo jumbo, voiced over computer projections of future rainstorms causing future floods, wiping out more homes, extending beyond Aberdeen to towns downstream.

  What wasn’t being made clear was . . . how soon could something like that happen again? Would another rain shower do it? Or did it have to be a whopper of a storm, as bad as we’d already had?

  I put on Aladdin again.

  For the rest of the afternoon, both Morgan’s and my phone kept blowing up, friends texting to check in on each other, sending pictures of themselves posed in the flood damage to their homes, their neighbor’s homes, inside their church, on their street.

  And then I saw Jesse’s name pop up on my screen.

  Are you getting any of this crap?

  Any of what crap? I wrote back.

  Disaster selfies.

  Jesse sent a picture next, of him draped on a fallen tree, lips pursed and eyes downcast, trying to look tragic yet sexy. I laughed so loud, I had to quickly cover my mouth so I wouldn’t wake Morgan. It probably sounds strange, but because this was our reality, that somehow gave us permission, I think, to laugh at things other people probably wouldn’t find funny.

  LOL

  People are so stupid. Hey, make sure you check out my site later. Julia and I shot a fake Jaws reenactment. I’m gonna post it in a bit.

  Which one of you plays the shark? I hope it’s Julia.

  No spoilers, but there’s a celebrity cameo. You around tomorrow?

  It was just enough of a something to completely push Wes’s texts to Morgan out of my mind.

  I wrote back, Yup, a
nd hoped that was true. That I’d be around, and Jesse, and Aberdeen, too.

  • • •

  I came home and found our living room blanketed in paper. Dad was on the phone, excitedly gesturing and pacing back and forth.

  I half expected a more pronounced limp, just because of the work he’d done that day, but if anything, there seemed to be an extra bounce to his step. I quietly hugged him, breathed in sawdust and sweat, two things I hadn’t smelled on him in years. Then I sat down on the couch and listened. I had no idea what was going on, but it definitely sounded good.

  “I think I’ve got something here, Dwight.” He leaned over a stack of papers and traced a paragraph with his finger. “There are rules in place for when and how the government can take privately owned land for things like highways and mass transit.” He traced his finger along some of the lines. “But the law is very clear that the land may not be used ‘for the purpose of advancing the economic interest of private parties.’ The governor’s waterfront development deal would definitely fall under that category.” He made eye contact with me. “Right. Yes. Okay. I’ll be over in a bit.”

  Dad hung up and eased down onto the armrest of the couch. He was breathing heavy, as if he’d just finished running a race.

  “You’re seriously going to make me ask?”

  Grinning, he said, “Eminent domain. We’ve got rights, Keeley. And I think what the governor’s trying to pull might be just enough out of bounds that we can make him put the brakes on this. But I’m hoping to hear back from a lawyer on that.”

  “You hired a lawyer?”

  “Well . . . no. I made a few calls to ones who specialize in this sort of thing. So far, none of them are biting. Or they want some retainer money up front, which we obviously can’t afford. But I’m not sure I’ll need them.” He reached over to another pile. “It’s all pretty clearly spelled out. I’ve written up a protest letter, making a case against what the governor’s trying to do. Legally and ethically. And I sent it off to every single news organization, elected official, our representative in Washington. Someone’s got to listen.” The phone rang again and I nodded for him to answer.