The Great Big One Page 2

  The siren shook him.

  rrrrrrREEEEEREREREEEEEEEEEEE

  The brutal sound shaped the air, made his shirt hum on his damp skin. It was a soft noise, at first. Like an old door opening on rusty hinges. As it grew louder, the inner parts of his ears itched. He pictured the siren like a flood. Rushing through streets. Dripping from the eaves. It washed over the lighthouse, threatening to topple it.

  Griff’s breath caught.

  What if the siren stopped it? Shattered the old Fresnel lens, the way a sudden jolt can shock an old heart to stillness.

  Flash again, he thought. Flash one more time and I’ll get to see her again.

  Wanting something badly made death seem imminent. The disaster would surely happen now. The ground would choose this moment to shake and liquify and swallow him whole.

  The lighthouse flashed.

  Griff whispered to himself—

  “Whoomp.”

  It felt like a prayer.

  TWO

  GRIFF CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF CHARITY AT LUNCH—IN THE CAFETERIA’s long, tray-clattering line—white skirt, black top, and hair in loose, dark ringlets. Brown skin. Tall. It was her. Real. She looked better than he remembered, which he’d hoped would not be the case.

  It made it less likely she’d sit with them.

  “Think she’ll come?” Thomas asked.

  In a slight smile, Thomas revealed that he knew everything. If Thomas knew, Leo knew. Griff’s cheeks burned; he had no chocolate. Chocolate helped sometimes, with a sudden rush of nausea and anxiety. The bite into a stiff, bitter bar of 70 percent dark could provide momentary reprieve, but all he had on his tray was a floury, floppy rectangle of cafeteria pizza. His existence seemed to coalesce there—hopeless, limp.

  “Charity!”

  His voice. Like the thought had gone bolting out of his own mouth—but it was Leo speaking. His brother stood, waving her over.

  And she was coming.

  Charity left a table of empirically more attractive people. Surfers, and others with unquestionable athletic gifts. She came to their table.

  “My concert people!” she said.

  Her posture, shoulders back, arms out. A hug, already? Leo stepped up first. When it was Griff’s turn—ah, the smell of her! It whipped up warm like July, turned the blank sky to a bowl of stars and campfire ash, ringing ears, and the buzzing didn’t stop when Charity sat. They put words to the feeling, patching memories together, reconjuring the night of the show.

  “—the path, coming out like, how does this barn even exist!”

  “—that was just the opening set—”

  “—I can’t even talk about the encore,” Charity said. “It might be too soon.”

  “Double encore,” Griff said.

  Leo sang a few bars from the final song—

  I can’t see what it will be—

  “Stop now,” Charity said. “You are dismantling me on the first day of school. I cried for like three weeks. I almost didn’t go to that show.”

  She’d come alone.

  Griff and Leo had spent a significant amount of time investigating the universe’s mysteries. This was one of the greatest.

  Charity Simms, a girl apparently dripping with friends, invitations, opportunities, had driven two hours to a show by herself. Griff had spotted her, studying the tour art pinned to the barn’s exterior wall. Out of context—she’d looked like a familiar stranger. Someone he’d once met in a dream.

  Thomas said it first:

  “That’s Charity Simms.”

  She’d been in Clade City since eighth grade. Griff remembered her arrival. The glittery, shooting-star popularity of the new kid—rocketing through the collective imagination of the school—maybe she’ll be my best friend, maybe we’ll fall in love—and of course Charity had found a superior group, some thrilling lover. Griff had stopped paying attention. It was as if she had vanished, and reappeared that night at the show. It killed him, knowing the months and years they’d been sharing classrooms and hallways.

  “How are you, Griff?” she asked him.

  Griff looked up at her.

  “We hung the siren,” Leo said, cutting him off. “Did you hear it?”

  “You hung that horrible thing?” Charity asked. “I hate it.”

  “It’s not supposed to sound good,” Leo said. “It’s supposed to keep us alive.”

  “They actually got it from right here,” Thomas said. “Down in the boiler room. They had that sucker rigged up during the Cold War for duck-and-cover Tuesdays. My dad still remembers crawling under his desk and cursing the Russians.”

  “What’s it for now?” Charity asked. “Like an air-raid siren?”

  “The earthquake, mostly,” Griff said.

  “And here we thought fear was a thing of the past!” Thomas said. He did a great Mid-Atlantic accent, like a black-and-white-TV news anchor.

  “That camo, Thomas. I didn’t know you guys were so serious,” Charity said.

  “I’m in it for the radio show,” Griff said.

  “Yo,” Thomas said.

  Griff and Thomas high-fived.

  “You’re getting a radio show?” She smiled. “On the disaster channel?”

  “Yep,” Thomas said. “K-NOW Disaster Radio, late night. Griff and I will rock this sleepy little town to its core.”

  Thomas clenched his fist as if crushing an aluminum can.

  “Really?” Leo said. “That’s the secret plan? A graveyard radio show no one listens to?”

  “I’ll listen,” Charity said.

  “Our fans don’t even know they’re fans yet,” Thomas said.

  “Speaking of the siren,” Leo said, “you know Thomas invented EARS.”

  “Thomas invented ears?” Charity said, pinching her lobes. Unattached.

  “The Early Alert Response System,” Leo said. She stared back. “EARS. For the Juan de Fuca Plate?”

  Charity shrugged.

  “Oh man.” Thomas palmed his forehead. “What’s the musical equivalent? That’s like—you don’t know the Beatles. Paul McWho?”

  “The Cascadia Quake?” Leo said. “The big one?”

  “The Rolling Whatsits?” Thomas said.

  “I know about the impending tsunami,” Charity said. “I just forgot the fault line’s special name. I’m reminded regularly—I didn’t grow up here.”

  Charity was looking at them differently. Whatever spider thread of a miracle had pulled her softly to their table was fraying. Griff could feel her about to stand up and float away.

  “Did you see our water balloons?” Thomas asked. “The ones that said Don’t Turn Your Back on the Ocean. My idea.”

  Not helpful.

  “It’s real,” Leo said. “The quake is going to happen.”

  Charity looked across the cafeteria.

  Past dozens of tables, buzzing conversations, two people alone.

  Slim and Jonesy. She nodded toward them.

  “True. But also—with every piece of camo, every hung siren and awareness campaign, you’re all drifting closer to the Lonesome Table of Scary White Boys.”

  They assessed their fate in silence.

  Jonesy ate his pizza with a stabbing motion, like it wasn’t dead yet.

  Slim was doing what? Stroking or—whittling, of all things. Whittling wood in front of God and everybody. Griff could attest that Slim was an artful whittler, cute animals and such, but did not think his repertoire would impact Charity’s opinion.

  “And poor Thomas in camo socks. You boys might already be too far gone,” Charity said.

  “I may be invisible,” Thomas said, “but I can still hear you.”

  “It’s just a phase,” Griff said. “Remember in eighth grade, how he wore suits and carried a pocket watch?”

  Charity squinted.

  “Ohh,” Charity said. “That was you, Thomas?”

  “The Amazing Thomas to you,” he said.

  “And the semester he made balloon animals and dressed like a clown?” />
  “Wow,” Charity said. “When I moved here I thought the town was full of weirdos. It was just Thomas in different costumes.”

  Griff laughed.

  “So, Charity,” Leo said. “How was the rest of summer? Still making music?”

  Just like that, Leo cut in. Dropped the survival talk. Quick pivots. A master of the jibe—moving to catch someone’s full interest, to get himself, eventually, where he wanted to be.

  Charity shrugged.

  “I had a few projects fall through,” she said. “People flake. Stunning how folks cannot follow through. Do you have this problem? That’s why I drove to the show by myself. I was like—to hell with those who cannot execute a plan.”

  “I follow through,” Leo said.

  “We do,” Griff said. “Maybe we should see more shows together.”

  “Maybe we should have a band,” Charity said.

  “Us?” Thomas asked.

  Charity shrugged.

  “Y’all play piano,” she said to Leo and Griff. “You’re good. I can sing. Thomas, what can you do?”

  “Make balloon animals and drop sick beats.”

  She laughed.

  Thomas covered his mouth, made a few bass thumps, worked his hand like a DJ.

  “That’s terrifying,” Charity said.

  “He’s got great recording gear,” Leo said.

  Charity raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  “Yeah,” Griff said. “Like a total recording studio down in the Rat’s Nest.”

  “In the what?” Charity asked.

  “Very exclusive,” Thomas said. “I’ll see if I can get you in.”

  “He’s good with sound,” Leo said.

  “Well, I’m serious,” Charity said. “What else is there to do? We live in Clade City.”

  “Okay,” Leo said. “We’re now a band. The four of us.”

  Leo stood and high-fived each in turn, pinning them down into the plan like spokes in a wheel he’d built. But it still felt good. He was a master of certainty. Always the one to harvest wisps of late-night dream talk and bring the idea into daylight. Leo could turn a fantasy into a list and draw the map to get there.

  So he led the conversation. Set their first date for a practice.

  Here was the problem: Griff had dared to want something.

  When they left the lunch table, Charity was walking with Leo.

  THREE

  BACK HOME THAT NIGHT, GRIFF WAS IN THE BATHROOM. LEO WAS summoning him to practice.

  Da dun!

  C-sharps. The call from the Knabe piano. Another gauntlet. Another contest. Griff had just finished showering. He could hear the key-strikes through the drywall. Leo must’ve heard the water turn off. He went to the mirror, thinking of Charity. How she’d walked off with Leo.

  Griff wiped the condensation from the mirror and relaxed his features.

  Let his brow drop. Lips fall naturally.

  When he looked at himself this way—straight-on—he saw Leo.

  It was a habit, making himself ugly. Griff sucked in his chin. Puckered his lips. Showed imperfect bottom teeth and a whale of a tongue, crinkled his nose until the reflection fit.

  Da dun!

  The sharps struck the door like thrown knives.

  It was from one of the pieces they were meant to learn for the winter concert. Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Strikingly beautiful, playful, and equally challenging to play with four hands as with two. An extremely popular piece. So much so that at a four-hand-piano music camp, players summoned one another to the bench by playing the opening two C-sharps. Leo had grabbed right on to that.

  Da dun!

  There was no avoiding it.

  The French doors to the piano room were open. Their instrument was a thing of beauty. An 1887 Knabe, chestnut wood, meticulously cared for, with lush golden pedals and a soundboard that made every note ring full and soulful.

  Leo rose from the bench. Stepped back.

  “Glad you could make it,” he said. “Ready?” They always played piano four hands. Their thing. Twenty fingers and eighty-eight keys. Their next show was incredibly ambitious. Stravinsky and Liszt. The Liszt should have been committed to minds and hands by August. Delayed due to a three-day survival camp in the Coastal Range, two bunker meetings per week, the Jams & Jellies Preservation Party, all Lost Coast Prepper commitments Leo attended with increasing frequency.

  Together, they approached the bench. “I thought you didn’t have time for music,” Griff said. “Now you want to start a band?”

  “I’ll start a band with Charity,” Leo said.

  “You like Charity?” Griff asked.

  “Who doesn’t?” Leo asked. “Have you heard her sing?”

  Why would this be any different than Milena in eighth grade? Why any different than the mysterious Australian girl, Rhiannon, on the beach last summer?

  Leo had the bench too close. Griff jerked it backward.

  Bench position was incredibly important. Distance from arms to elbows to wrists to fingers to keys was a game of inches, and it started with the bench. Leo looked down, scooted the bench forward. Leaned on it, like he was trying to burrow a hole in the carpet.

  “It goes there,” Leo said.

  A famous family story: Once, on a family kayaking trip to Alaska, the burly guide had asked their mother and father if they wanted individual kayaks or a two-person model. When they picked the two-person, he shouted into the storage shed—One divorce boat!

  Two people, one instrument—the same:

  Divorce Piano.

  Leo sat, so the bench couldn’t be moved. “Let’s play.”

  The first piece in the winter show would be a piano adaptation of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements. With a full orchestra, the overture came barreling at you with blood-rushing theatrics, a giant swell of fearsome sound that felt more like climax than introduction—to Griff, it sounded thin on a solo piano, but Leo had chosen the work for its wild, virtuosic key-slides, flying fingers, and elbow-jerking theatrics.

  All the best pyrotechnics on the bass clef.

  Griff was left dangling on the treble, pecking out notes here and there, filling in. He got to shine in the second movement—andante. Slower. Deeper. The part in the show when Grandpa fell asleep and people went home.

  When Griff brought up the Sleepy Grandpa Issue, Leo reassured him:

  “The scherzo, bro! We’ve got to make them earn it!”

  The final act. The Italians call it scherzo—(pronounced scared-so): the joke, the dance. Here, the twins would trade sides on the bench, leapfrogging fluttering hands to pound octaves on opposite sides of the imaginary-mirror line that split them, giving the audience thrilling, if slightly contrived, twin-bending thrills!

  Griff loved playing this way with his brother. Leo was fun, but lately, he’d worked only on the overture. A gnawing suspicion that Leo would never play the scherzo with him. Maybe he only intended to play the first movement, win Charity’s heart, and leave Griff dribbling out with his tinkle-tinkle andante. Even now, as Griff took his turn with a slow, measured section, Leo took one hand off his side of the piano and checked his phone.

  “Seriously?” Griff said.

  “Sorry!”

  “Skip it,” Griff said. “Let’s do the scherzo. Or Liszt.”

  “Let’s go rock star,” Leo said, confirming Griff’s suspicion about the scherzo.

  Leo meant Franz Liszt—composer, pianist, the first rock star in the world. The man who pioneered playing in profile to the audience. Stunning hair. Jawline suitable for a minted coin. Apparently, women would pelt Liszt with medieval undergarments. Griff wondered if he’d been knocked over by ancient underwear—industrial belts, buckles, steel hoops.

  “Just one bra,” Leo had said, choosing the piece. “That’s all I ask for.”

  Again, Leo played the opening C-sharps:

  Da dun!

  This was the hardest possible engraving of the piece. Between bunker meetings and survival camps, Gr
iff had spent comparatively more time on the keys. Secret practices. His goal, to leave Leo gobsmacked at the cadenza. They played slowly. Then faster. Their first time in over a week.

  The piano bench shook beneath their weight.

  Four-hands playing was like call-and-response:

  Are you there, brother?

  Right here, Leo.

  Can you keep up, brother?

  Damn right.

  “Been playing a lot?” Leo asked, breathing hard.

  “Maybe,” Griff said. He turned the page.

  The stand, thick with duets—page turning was his job. Griff, who had the song committed to memory. And when he turned the page, Leo often whispered—good. That little breath. Infuriating.

  “Good,” Leo said. “Slower.”

  Not tonight. Leo pounded harder, trying to compensate for Griff’s superior finger-rolls. For once, Griff was playing better. They hadn’t even reached the cadenza—the optional improvisation at liberty, as you desire—which Griff had drilled for hours. Hands flying, pounding, Griff hit his hardest arpeggio, fingers blasting to the key block and back—Leo grabbed his wrist.

  “Where’s your bracelet?” he asked.

  “Hey!” Griff said, shaking free. “What was that? Let go!”

  Griff leapt up from the bench.

  “I can’t believe you grabbed me.”

  “Sorry, I just noticed,” Leo said. “You should never take that off. That’s life or death.”

  “Life or death at the piano?” Griff said.

  “You never know when it’s coming.”

  The bracelet was a gift from their father. Twin paracords. One white, one black. Woven in a clever way that mimicked piano keys.

  “Plus, we should match,” Leo said.

  Griff stared at Leo. Was this asshole serious?

  Griff had learned he could not win a direct argument with Leo. He must be like water. Absorb impact. Flow away from conflict. Drip down through floorboard cracks in the sacred crawl space even Leo couldn’t see. There, Griff buried his minor, essential pieces of resistance.