Aftershock by Margaret K. McElderry Books

Author:Margaret K. McElderry Books
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children’s
Published: 2006-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

wattle:

1. a structure of interwoven sticks and twigs used as material for fences, walls, etc. 2. a red fleshy fold of skin hanging from the head or throat of certain birds, as the turkey.

The outside walls were no more than boards nailed together. The roof was corrugated steel. Outside, there was an old cooler that said COCA-COLA, the kind of thing that used to hold sodas back when they came in glass bottles. I rushed over and opened it. There was nothing in it but a hammer, a crowbar, and a community of spiders.

I slammed the lid down. Attached to the wall was a pay phone. I grabbed the receiver. There was actually a dial tone. I tried to remember my phone number. I’d always had a good head for numbers—I kept the accounts for our store, and I aced math, even though I don’t enjoy it, certainly not compared to English. But now, standing in the sweltering heat of what I assumed was Texas, I couldn’t remember my own phone number.

It didn’t matter. I didn’t have any money.

I looked at my watch again. 6:23. Why, if time was going to freeze, could it not have frozen weeks ago, before we left on the trip? Why couldn’t our car have died, or one of us have gotten food poisoning? Anything not to have let us leave home.

If Mom had been here, she would have blamed her death on George Bush, or the “House of Bush,” as she called the father and son who seemed so careless about sending other people’s children to war. There wouldn’t have been a peace vigil. There would not have needed to be one.

The door to the shed was secured with a rusted padlock. Still, like an idiot, I knocked, as if someone would come out and invite me to tea.

No one answered. I went back to the cooler, hoping that an ice-cold Coke had magically appeared.

The crowbar. It was as if someone had left a key. But what would I find in the shed, even if I got in? A four-course meal? A nice warm bed? Shade? At least there was that. Maybe water.

The crowbar could have easily pried off the rusted lock, but I didn’t pry. I swung at the lock. I battered it. And when it dropped to the ground, I whacked at it there in the dust like a maniac.

We’d broken into places a couple of times in eighth grade, me and Cory and Jacks and Bud, at that age when we were aching for something, anything to happen: for our bodies to grow to match our sudden, fiendish sexuality, for the world to notice our shining talents.

Instead, we stumbled pale-legged and scrawny through gym class, tried to hide ourselves when we showered, looked ten while the girls looked twenty, had acne and creaking voices. It was not pretty.

To compensate, we committed little crimes. We made dummies out of old clothes and hung them from the Mt. Hope Bridge, then laughed ourselves hoarse when it was reported as vandalism in the local paper.

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