Aftershocks by Marisa Reichardt

Author:Marisa Reichardt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2020-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

6:05 A.M.

It feels like I’ve been waiting for daylight forever. Hours have surely passed since I initially stuck my hands through the hole. But finally, the first specks of morning light hit my face, warming my nose and cheeks.

I pull from the small well of strength still left in me. Manage to push myself up again. And then I poke my head out. I’ve barely got enough room. I want to be able to pull my whole body out, but I can’t. I look around. You’d never know this was a laundromat if not for the washers and dryers. The walls and doorway have been hollowed out, everything collapsed and broken. Metal. Glass. Concrete. Dust and dirt. I see the road through the shattered window and crushed cars abandoned in the middle of the street. Collapsed buildings. Buckled asphalt. Above me, half of the roof of the laundromat is gone. A blue sky and puffy clouds hover overhead. Looking up, the world seems the same. I can almost pretend nothing has changed. I lean back and pretend I’m gazing up at the sky in the middle of that beach in Hawaii that Charlie helped me imagine one time.

“Feel it,” he’d said. “Smell it. Like you’re there. Like you’re home.”

I take a moment to pretend. But then I have to return to where I am. Where the rubble is concrete and heavy and I’m not sure how to free myself.

And then I spot it.

Charlie’s hand.

A glimpse of his wrist.

Poking out from the rubble.

His bloodied knuckles.

The blue streaks of paint on his fingernails.

I suck in a breath and use my shoulder to push against the hole enough to get my arm through. It scrapes up and down from my shoulder to my fingertips, everything too tight. Too sharp. But I can’t care. I won’t. All this time, when I kept reaching for Charlie, I couldn’t.

But I see how close he is now.

How close he was.

I’ve spent so much time digging that I can barely breathe. My lungs are full of dust, and it hurts to suck in air. Still, I wiggle. I roll. I push and shove until I have enough room to get my other arm out. I’m twisted sideways on my back with my head outside of the hole and my arms above my head. I need leverage. Something to give me purchase or pull me free.

My eyes dart. Frantic. They snag on rubble and metal and dust and dirt.

But then. Charlie’s hand again.

I reach for him. Grasp his hand to help me. It’s cold and his fingers don’t tangle with mine the way I want them to. I’ve longed for that contact for hours. Days. To know I didn’t make him up in my head. To know I wasn’t alone.

I summon up the last ounce of strength I have to pull myself free. And when I’m finally all the way out, I collapse.

Exhausted.

Panting.

Sweating.

I’m a fish pulled from the sea, struggling for breath on the hardwood planks of the pier.

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