The Last Boy and Girl in the World

Jesse was still in his wrestling singlet. He had his wet clothes tied up in a knot and he was holding them by a pant leg. The doors were open now and he shivered. I felt compelled to go to him. To at least say good-bye. To lie and tell him I hadn’t meant what I’d said on the dance floor, that it was obviously a joke, come on. But I was such a mess of sad and embarrassed and confused that I didn’t dare. And it wasn’t like he was looking for me, either. Instead I started talking about who the hell knows what really loudly to Morgan as we walked past him.

  Levi, wearing a thick black policeman’s poncho, helped direct cars out of the parking lot. As we drove passed him, he definitely gave me the stink eye for what happened in the hallway. I gave it right back.

  Our ride home was like a weird and meandering funeral procession, with everyone following Sheriff Hamrick’s squad car in a slow line. Officers were positioned along the way to keep us away from streets with fallen trees and power lines. It took us almost thirty minutes to go one measly mile.

  At Morgan’s house, we changed into dry clothes, made some nachos in the microwave, and brought them up to her room. As we talked about the dance, I kept glancing at my phone to see if Jesse had texted me to check that I’d gotten home safe.

  He hadn’t.

  I’d thought Morgan was already asleep, but after a while of being quiet, she rolled over and hugged me tight. “You were right,” she said. “Tonight is exactly what I needed. I don’t think I thought about Wes one single time.”

  I hugged her back.

  At least they were still broken up. At least Wes would never have to hear the story of tonight from Morgan. How it basically validated all the terrible things he’d said about me.

  She went on. “And I don’t want you to feel bad about not kissing Jesse tonight. It’s totally the storm’s fault. It screwed everything up. Seriously. There will be other chances.”

  I sighed. “I’m not sure about that.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Something weird happened tonight. Between me and Jesse.” The truth lingered just underneath my tongue.

  “Keeley, what happened? Everything was going so well!” I hated how disappointed she sounded.

  I realized in that moment that had Morgan and Elise never found out about my texts with Jesse, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to think he might like me on my own. They both egged me on, but Morgan especially. Why? Did she actually believe it could happen? Or was she just trying to pump me up in the wake of the Wes stuff?

  I blurted out, “He got a boner when he was grinding on me and it totally freaked me out.”

  She squealed and hit me with her pillow. “Oh, gross!”

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!”

  I wanted her to ask me again, press me for the truth. If she had, I bet I would have told her what really happened. She was my best friend, after all. But my joke was enough, I guess, to convince her everything was okay, because then she was snoring tiny little whispery snores. I wish it was enough for me, because I stayed awake the whole night.

  8

  * * *

  Sunday, May 15

  EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM ALERT: A Flood Warning is now in effect for Aberdeen County and the Waterford City Metro Area. A Severe Thunderstorm Warning is also in effect. Gale-force winds are expected this afternoon and continuing overnight. The heaviest rainfall will arrive Sunday evening. We anticipate the threat of flooding in low-lying areas near the river to continue into Monday afternoon.

  * * *

  With the morning came my worst nightmare: Jesse hadn’t texted me once. Not an explanation, not an olive branch. Not even a single joke or picture or video of him doing something funny, like the ten-second clip he’d sent me on Thursday, where he stuffed an entire slice of Mineo’s pizza in his mouth at once and then smiled with big chipmunk cheeks into his camera and waved hi. Clearly, I had blown the chance—if I’d ever really had one—to kiss him. And apparently I’d wrecked our whole friendship, too.

  I watched that pizza video underneath the blankets with the sound off while Morgan was asleep, and again with the sound on when she got up to pee. I sat on the side of the tub and watched it three times in a row before I got into the shower. Each time Jesse waved at me on the screen, I wanted to cry.

  Morgan wasn’t in her room when I got out of the shower. That wasn’t unusual. Sundays were always busy at her house because of Mrs. Dorsey’s hair appointments. Women from town would come in and out all day long. Around every hour, we’d pop downstairs to help out. Morgan would sweep up and make fresh coffee while I put a load of towels in the washing machine and made sure the shampoo bottles were filled.

  That morning, though, it was strangely quiet when I came downstairs. There were no women sitting in the living room, gossiping or flipping through magazines while they waited for their turn in Mrs. Dorsey’s styling chair. The lights in the dining room were off, the brushes and combs laid out untouched, capes hanging on their wall hooks, laundry basket empty.

  I heard laughing coming from the kitchen.

  Morgan and her mother were at the table. Morgan was still in her pajamas, and she was picking at a bagel with cream cheese. Mrs. Dorsey wore black jeans and a tight black sweater, but she had her house slippers on instead of the flats she wore when she was working. She wasn’t eating breakfast, just sipping coffee.

  Lowering her mug, Mrs. Dorsey said, “Morning, Keeley. I’m just getting the recap on last night. You want a frozen bagel?”

  “Yes, please.” I sat down at the table. “Are you closed today or something?”

  Mrs. Dorsey put a bagel in the toaster for me. As soon as she pushed the lever down, the lights flickered out. “Not again,” she groaned. “This is the fourth time this morning! I canceled all my morning appointments because of the power cutting in and out.”

  “Here,” Morgan said, passing me the uneaten half of bagel on her plate.

  “Morgan, can you get me my appointment book? I’m just going to reschedule everyone else.” Morgan got up, and to me Mrs. Dorsey said, “I haven’t had a Sunday off in Lord knows how long! I’ll call your mother, see what she’s up to.” Her face lit up. “We can have a girls’ day together. Jammies, maybe even a movie, if the electricity holds up.” She winked. “We can’t let our kids have all the fun.”

  “I think she’s working.”

  “Again? But she worked yesterday. That’s why she missed out on taking Spring Formal pictures. When’s the last time she had a day off?”

  I shrugged. “It’s been a while.” There was an awkward silence then, which I tried to fill. “She was so glad you texted her those pictures,” I said. “Did you send her the one of us posing like the shot in your photo album? Did she recognize it?”

  Mrs. Dorsey nodded, her smile slightly faded. “Of course she did. Right away.”

  • • •

  The next time we lost power, Morgan said we should probably eat the ice cream in the freezer before it melted. Which was my cue to go downstairs and get us some. Morgan had no vision when it came to snack foods. If left in charge, she’d grab whatever random crackers or half-empty bag of chips she could find, no bowl, no napkins. I liked making a presentation of it . . . perfectly cut cubes of Cracker Barrel cheddar, onion dip scooped out of the plastic tub and into a big mug, actual melted butter poured over the microwave popcorn, our glasses of soda filled tall with ice cubes. A little extra showmanship went a long way.

  Morgan was in charge of picking our entertainment. She was the one to control the remote, channel, volume, content. My favorite was when she’d create some kind of theme for the day, like Movies with Hot Guys Who Play Guitar or Ladies Who Time-Travel.

  This used to be how we always spent our sleepovers before boys and before Elise. But that afternoon, maybe because of the rain and the fact that we weren’t supposed to be on the roads, that’s what we did. We were halfway through the second film in a Witches block, and Morgan’s laptop was low on battery, so I hurried downstairs and got two matching bowls.
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  The ice cream had begun to soften, so it was easy to scoop. I added a thick drizzle of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and some crushed-up peanuts, and then sprayed a dollop of Reddi-wip on top. In the fridge door, I spotted a glass jar of maraschino cherries. There was only one inside, so I cut it in half and nestled a piece on the very top for each of us.

  I thought about doing a video for Jesse, me filling my mouth with Reddi-wip and licking my lips. Funny but a little bit flirty, too. But that couldn’t be the way to reach out to him, not after his silence. Not if he didn’t like me the way I’d convinced myself he did. Then I’d just look pathetic. I imagined him and Victoria watching the video and laughing at how clueless I was.

  The power came back on again as I was passing through the living room. Mrs. Dorsey was asleep on the couch and she didn’t wake up when the television flickered on to The Weather Channel. I stood there with the cold bowls chilling the palms of my hands and watched the bottom of the screen, where there was a running clock with urgent red numbers tracking how many hours, minutes, seconds it had been raining.

  Above that were loops of Waterford City footage. Waterfront real estate flooded up to the doorman lobbies, the doors of beautiful glass office buildings sandbagged shut, people dressed in suits and ties and fancy dresses trying to wade through flooded streets. Caution tape roping off the train stations and the wharf. An airport full of stranded travelers.

  Then they switched to Aberdeen, cut to a live shot of the river. The sandbags had seemed almost stupidly far from the banks when we’d stacked them last week, but now there was river water splashing over the tops in waves.

  My phone was upstairs. I felt the pull to check in with my mom and dad, to make sure they were okay. But mostly, I left the room because the news was depressing me even more than I already was and our ice cream was turning to soup.

  • • •

  Saint Ann’s offered a Sunday Mass at 4:30 p.m., and they held a dinner and youth group meeting after it. I usually stayed at Morgan’s house all day and then got dropped off on their way out of town. We’d be lounging around pretty casually, but sometime around three, Morgan would start getting ready. I knew she took the church aspect of it seriously, a thing I always reminded myself of when she’d ignore me to be on the phone with Elise while she got ready, doing her makeup or her hair. She got more dressed up for church than she did for school. If I had my book bag with me, I tried to catch up on homework or whatever. But I didn’t that day, so I just packed up my things.

  I decided to leave my Spring Formal dress at Morgan’s house, because I knew my mom would be upset that it’d been ruined. If I couldn’t find a dry cleaner to fix it, I would buy myself another dress so Mom would never know this one was ruined. I’d use the money I earned from my summer job. It was supposed to be college money, but I had to do that for her or the guilt would eat me alive.

  Then, because Morgan was still on the phone, I wandered downstairs.

  Mrs. Dorsey stared out her kitchen window at a huge oak tree. “I keep telling myself I should take that thing down. Do you think it’s swaying more than it should?”

  I went up beside her. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Even though dinner would be served at the church, Mrs. Dorsey was fixing my mom’s favorite dish, baked ziti. Aside from two scoops for her and Morgan that went into her fridge, she told me to take the rest home. “This will give your mom the night off,” she said. “But don’t let her have a single bite unless she promises to do nothing but lie on the couch with her feet up.”

  Morgan finally came down. She had on a cap-sleeve blouse under a navy jumper, paired with her green galoshes with cream knee socks. Her hair was bouncy, she’d tried hot rollers. I felt like a kid sister next to her, still in my pajamas, no makeup. I tucked my sweats into my rain boots.

  Then the three of us got in the car and Mrs. Dorsey drove me home.

  Though it was still raining, a few people dressed in rain gear were prepping their houses, laying down their own sandbags. The water rushed down the edges of the streets like rivers, so we drove in the very center of the street. There were bits of broken branches and bark sprinkled over the ground, like tree confetti.

  I leaned forward to Morgan. “We never went to look for your shoe in the parking lot.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I never wear them anyway.”

  “Oh. Okay.” But I didn’t like the thought of that shoe out there. I didn’t want to see it on Monday morning when we got to school. It was just a reminder of Jesse and how things had gone so off the rails.

  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “What’s with the sad face? Have you not heard from him today?”

  I avoided the question. “I don’t even know if I like him anymore.” This, I thought, would be a great plan. To extricate myself from Jesse. Make Morgan think it was my decision, not his.

  “What? Shut up! You do too!”

  “He’s honestly not that cute or that funny now that I’ve gotten to know him.”

  Morgan turned around to face me. “Are you talking like this because of what Wes said about you? Because if you are, then I want you to cut it out right now.”

  Mrs. Dorsey’s eyes found me in the rearview mirror.

  I knew Morgan and her mom talked about everything, but somehow I thought this might be off-limits. And if Mrs. Dorsey knew what Wes had said about me, did she also know what I had done to Wes to make him so angry? My stomach twisted into a big fat knot. “No. I’m just saying . . .”

  “Good. Because I couldn’t imagine a more perfect boy for you.”

  Me either, which really sucked.

  • • •

  When I came up our walkway, the curtain in our front window was pulled aside. My mom met my eyes and smiled. She was going to want to talk with me about the dance, how crazy everyone went for my dress. She’d want to see pictures. I realized the only ones I’d taken were when I was in Morgan’s car. After my rain dance with Jesse, I’d looked like total crap. I didn’t want to lie to her, so my plan was to get up to my bedroom as fast as I possibly could.

  I started peeling off my wet layers as soon as I walked in.

  Mom was on the couch, typing on her laptop with two fingers. That was just the weird and inefficient way she typed. “Just give me one second to finish this last chart!” Mom works as a nurse, the kind who travels to people’s homes and cares for them there. She loves her job, loves being there for her patients, but she sucks at the paperwork part.

  Dad was on his computer too, a small off-brand laptop he’d gotten at a Black Friday sale. Since he could no longer work as a carpenter, my dad had taken a liking to politics, even though he thought most of the people in charge were a bunch of liars. Local, national, international . . . he was a junkie for all of it. He also didn’t trust news reports, preferring instead to get information through message boards. If there was something shady going on with the government of Ireland, he’d find a message board and talk to the people who were there, living through it. Israel, South Korea, Mexico—you name it. My dad liked to say he had friends all over the world. Probably because he didn’t have many left in Aberdeen.

  It wasn’t always that way.

  My dad had been relatively successful before the accident. If people didn’t know him personally, they at least recognized the Hewitt name, and they trusted it. My family went back a long way in Aberdeen. Grandpa and Great-Grandpa had both worked at the mill. Dad, too, right out of high school, until it closed eight years later. Then he became a carpenter. Dad was strong then. Muscular and always tan from working outside. Now he barely left the house except for town meetings.

  “Hey, Keeley,” he said to me, without looking up from his screen.

  “Mrs. Dorsey sent food over. Ziti.” Mom’s eyes lit up, which made me laugh. I set the baking tin on the counter. “But she says Mom can’t have any unless she doesn’t work tonight.”

  Mom smiled to herself. She shut her laptop.

  “How come
I can’t ever get you to do that?” Dad said with a smirk.

  Mom picked up her phone, presumably to text Mrs. Dorsey a thank-you, and asked me, “Is your phone working, Keeley?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Some people are saying service is being affected by the constant cloud cover. Satellites can’t pick up the signals.”

  “Oh,” I said, cheery now. Maybe that was why I hadn’t heard from Jesse. “Did you guys lose power?”

  “Our lights flickered a few times,” Mom said. “But we’ve been lucky. How was it down in the valley?”

  “Lots of flooding and downed trees and stuff,” I told them. “And it’s supposed to rain more tonight, you know.”

  “We know,” Mom said, pausing to rub her tired eyes. “It’s the only thing on the news. This storm is actually starting to scare me.”

  Dad laughed. “That’s what they want to do. Scare you into watching.” Mom slid her glasses down from the top of her head and pointed knowingly at the newspaper next to him on the desk. Grumbling, he flipped it over to hide the headline, IS ABERDEEN SINKING? in big bold type.

  9

  * * *

  Sunday, May 15

  EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM ALERT: As of 11:00 PM, Governor Ward has issued a mandatory evacuation for Aberdeen County, as well as those residing in Zone A of Waterford City. Emergency shelters are open and operating, and local police and fire are working to inform residents and provide transport as necessary. This order is scheduled to expire by 6:00 AM, but may be extended as needed.

  * * *

  Just before midnight, a loud knock at the front door jolted me out of sleep. I sat straight up in my bed. No one ever came to our house, and definitely not this late.

  I heard my mom get out of bed and race across the room for her robe. My dad got up too, slower and with a little more effort, from his seat downstairs in the living room.