When We Vanished by Alanna Peterson

Author:Alanna Peterson [Peterson, Alanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rootcity Press
Published: 2020-06-03T00:39:08+00:00

24

Andi

Sunday, June 21

Andi stepped through the forest as twilight fell on Sunday, scanning for berry bushes. She was getting better at identifying edible plants. The woods, which she’d always seen as a random jumble of vegetation, had begun to look different, more organized. She kept hoping for berries, but every time they found a bush—usually salal, which was everywhere—the hard green beginnings of fruit taunted them. None were ripe this early in the season, so they were stuck with tough, bitter leaves that did little to satisfy their appetites.

They had been hiking for two full days. From time to time, they’d heard the helicopter in the distance, but were careful to keep under the thick canopy of trees. Now, they barely talked; everyone was cranky and exhausted. Andi glared at the back of Cyrus’s head as he followed the compass westward. She hated not knowing what had happened to Naveed. It felt like they’d given up on him. Just like she’d given up on her father.

As she walked through the muggy heat of evening, breathing the oppressive air, her father’s song played in her head. We have to surrender, we have to swerve…. She wished she could go back in time and convince him not to volunteer for the clinical trial. Or prevent the record store from going out of business in the first place.

The day after the store closed, Andi had gone with her father to pack up what remained. She wanted to say goodbye to the space, and to spend some time with him before she and her mother flew down to Berkeley to visit her grandparents for Chinese New Year. Her father would not accompany them this time. Andi understood more Mandarin than she let on, so she’d gleaned that her grandfather, who owned a tea importing business and dozens of tea plantations in Taiwan, had loaned her father a large sum to start the store. He had never made enough profit to pay it back.

Inside the store, they worked in silence. Andi removed the pictures from the walls, but hesitated at the last one, the photograph of one of her dad’s sold-out shows at the Paramount. Her mother had taken it from backstage, so Andi saw what he’d seen: the rows and rows of people, filling even the balconies, all of them eager to hear him play.

Her father stepped next to her, taking off his black-framed glasses to wipe them on his flannel shirt. He’d always had a larger presence at the record store: there, he was Jake Powell, frontman for Mile Seven, who had once toured the world. But now, he was only her dad.

When he spoke, the words echoed in the empty room. “I should have known back then,” he said. “Once you make it to the top, the only direction left to go is down.” He laughed halfheartedly, as if it were a joke.

“Dad,” Andi started, but she wasn’t sure what to say. “It’s not your fault. This just wasn’t the right location. Maybe you could try selling things online, building a website.

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