The Great Big One Page 3

  He told himself: I will never wear that bracelet, brother.

  Griff thought it deep into the dirt.

  Leo looked at him, prying with his eyes.

  “Dinner!” their mother called. “Special Corn.”

  “Where have you been practicing?” Leo asked, standing.

  “Your mom’s house,” Griff said, slapping him on the back of the head.

  Leo punched him and then they crashed into the wall, headlocked—but the fight had somewhere to go. An old, ingrained tradition to race like human bumper cars to the table when there was Special Corn involved, pinging off the hallway walls as they raced to get there first.

  So that’s what they did.

  FOUR

  THE NEXT DAY—THEIR FIRST FULL DAY OF CLASSES—A SIXTH-period miracle.

  Charity was in Griff’s study hall.

  There she was. Sitting at a four-person table in the library.

  Never once had Griff received a gift from the Scheduling Gods. Forever separated from Thomas. Every potential crush had landed in the wrong homeroom, the opposite table group—but this made up for everything.

  Griff cupped his face. He breathed deeply.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  A square of light fell from a high window and came to rest on her lower neck—a miraculous clavicle—glowing as if spotlit by museum directors. He walked in and promptly ignored her.

  Turned toward books.

  He took a breath. He must sit far away. He could in no possible way picture himself walking up to the table, saying hello, sitting down.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Looking at him.

  Hey—the same way Griff’s father said it when he didn’t know which son.

  “Griff,” Griff said.

  He pointed to himself when he said it. Like a caveman—oh man.

  “I know.” She smiled. “You have homework yet?”

  “Syllabus week,” Griff said.

  “Right?” She laughed. “Killing time. Do you like puzzles?”

  Sure, he could like puzzles. They went over to the pile of games. Being the beginning of the year, everything was neatly stacked and ready. She went straight for the jigsaws.

  “I don’t mess with any less than five hundred pieces,” she said.

  “You’re into puzzles.”

  “Just like you guys,” Charity said. “My life is mostly about survival. When you spend your life in church basements, you do what you have to. Let’s do a big bad one.”

  “Well,” Griff said. “This is the stupidest one.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “Love it.”

  The puzzle, Open Water, was based on an award-winning painting in Grand Rapids. A thousand pieces cast in subtle shades of blue and white. They tipped the puzzle onto the table. The water was almost as inscrutable as the brown cardboard backing.

  “I feel absolutely destined for failure,” Griff said.

  She looked at him.

  “C’mon now. Apply some strategy. Edges. Corners. Look for anything that stands out. Right there. Little piece of sunlight.”

  Near the center, a bright sunburst struck the water. They searched for it, flipping pieces. Griff couldn’t think of a single word to float over to her. Head full of stupid synonyms—turquoise, aqua, periwinkle, azure, cerulean, another word for blue.

  “What did you do all summer?” Griff asked, finally.

  Brilliant query, Inquisitor!

  “Went to LA,” she said. “Caught up with friends.”

  “The ones who flaked on you?”

  He bit the inside of his cheek.

  “Some,” she said. He had her eyes now. Soft, golden. “I miss them. No one here makes me laugh like them. You know, when you just have that flow with people?”

  “I do. Thomas makes me laugh harder than anyone.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’m looking forward to laughing with you and Thomas.”

  What did he say now? Griff reached into his backpack. Endorphins needed. Snapped off a piece of chocolate and placed it under his tongue. Good stuff. Melted slow with notes of berry and plum and what tree bark would taste like in heaven.

  She smiled at him. Confidence and chocolate surged in the blood.

  “You really want to be in a band with us?” Griff asked.

  “Do you always carry around chocolate?”

  He snapped her off a piece.

  “Mmm,” she said, closing her eyes. “That is good. I think yes.”

  “Who do you usually hang out with?” Griff asked.

  Charity stared at him. “Want to know a secret?”

  She motioned him in.

  “Nobody,” she whispered.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I’ve been keeping that secret since I moved here.”

  “You always seem to be with people.”

  “When your secret is being lonely, sometimes you need people to help you keep it.”

  Her honesty pulled like a draft through an open door. He could fall straight in.

  “You’re lonely?” Griff asked. How, then, could there be hope for anyone? “Will you go back to LA after next year?”

  She shrugged, ran a hand through her long black curls.

  “I think—it’s like we talked about after the show. I’m following the music. Wherever it goes. It’s a big world out there.”

  It’s a big world out there.

  The words rang a bell in his chest.

  “Well,” Griff said. “Now we have a band.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I need it bad after this summer. Mother Simms’s Crazy Carnival of Church Camps. Catholic Ladies’ Camp. Lady Rangers Camp. Touchdown Jesus Camp.”

  “Touchdown Jesus?” Griff said.

  “In Colorado,” she said. “Jesus stands on a hill like this.”

  Charity held her hands in the air. Griff laughed.

  “Do you like it?”

  Her eyes went still, looking into last summer.

  “Parts of it,” she said.

  “What was the best part?”

  He offered her more chocolate.

  She smiled. “You want the truth?”

  “Let’s be real,” Griff said. “We could die tomorrow.”

  “Skinny-dipping,” she said.

  Griff made sure the words he heard matched her lips. Ran them over in his head.

  “You swam naked?” he asked.

  “Shhh,” she said. “Don’t boys always do that?”

  “Always?” Griff said. Where had she gotten her information about boys? “Have you been in the ocean here? I wouldn’t find my testicles until next July.”

  He was chocolate-drunk. She laughed.

  “So you’ve never?” she asked.

  “I’d be terrified.”

  “Ha! The survivalist!” she said. “What’s terrifying? It’s just you out there.”

  “What’s more terrifying than that?”

  “Vale la pena,” she said, then looked at him. “Worth the risk.”

  “Spanish?”

  “It comes out in the summer,” she said. “My dad’s Dominican.”

  It was the first time she’d mentioned her father. They’d talked for hours on the way home from the Collection show, but almost all about music. First the show itself—then the life-altering power of a song. How the right one at the right time could sear itself into a season. Pull you apart, put you together. It was then he’d decided to get the radio show. He wanted to be on-air, playing the perfect song for whoever was listening.

  “Hey,” Charity said. “Where do you go when you do that, with the glassy eyes?”

  His throat tightened. He’d gotten lost behind his brick wall of wanting.

  “You want the truth?” he said.

  “Yep,” she said. “We’re dead tomorrow.”

  “Sometimes I’m thinking about what I want,” Griff said. “Sometimes I’m trying to figure out the secrets of the universe.”

  “Ooo,” she said. “Tell me mo
re.”

  “There’s this box in our bedroom.”

  “You share a room?” Her nose scrunched up. “That’s cute.”

  He bit his cheek.

  “Anyhow, there’s this mailbox—”

  “The TOE Box!” Charity said.

  He stared—did others keep TOE Boxes?

  “Leo was telling me about your files,” she said. “Tell me more.”

  Leo. Pilfering all their best idiosyncrasies for his own endearing purposes. Asshole! What could Griff tell her to appear more fascinating? Political coincidences? Astrological observations?

  “So Einstein said ‘God does not play dice with the universe.’ It means, everything fits together somehow. From the stars to subatomic particles. It’s all part of the same story.”

  “Like what?” Charity asked.

  “Take the moon,” Griff said. “The moon’s polar circumference is 27.3 percent of the Earth’s circumference, and the moon orbits the Earth every 27.3 days. Also, the Earth turns 366 times each orbit of the sun. And the moon orbits the Earth 366 times every 10,000 days.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked.

  “Who knows?” Griff said. “But it feels like a plan. A secret map in the stars. Hidden in white noise. If you listen hard enough, it’s almost like a voice trying to whisper something.”

  Charity leaned over the puzzle. Whispered:

  “What’s the voice say?”

  He smiled.

  “Have you ever heard of the Skip?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t know!

  “Oh my god,” Griff said. “This is like—I get to give you a gift. The Skip is about radio waves. The way they behave, but only at night.”

  “Only at night?”

  A warm memory—the evening in their father’s workshop when Griff learned how to catch a song. He and Leo, taking turns, exploring the AM radio band. He could tell her everything. And then Charity was looking up.

  Leo.

  Impossible, but Leo was now walking into the library. That way he walked at things, like he was chasing something to wrestle it to the ground.

  “Study hall together?” he said. “That’s lucky.”

  “Where are you supposed to be?” Griff asked.

  “Wherever I want,” Leo said. “Independent study.”

  Leo was supposed to be playing piano.

  “Griff was telling me about the Skip,” Charity said.

  Leo raised his eyebrows. “Where’s your teacher?”

  Griff and Charity looked. Mr. Michaelson was nowhere in sight. When they looked back at Leo, he was smiling like he’d gotten away with something. Please, no, Griff thought—what’s his plan? Please don’t let him transfer into this study hall.

  “Friday,” Leo said. “Band practice. Thomas’s place.”

  “I’ll see what the Warden says,” Charity said.

  “We can always sneak you out,” Leo said.

  He winked. Leo could wink with impunity. Perform shoulder touches. If it was Leo at this table, he and Charity would’ve stripped down to nothing and gone swimming naked in the puzzle.

  “Tell me more,” Charity asked when Leo finally left.

  The bell made Griff jump in his seat.

  Time had run out.

  FIVE

  WEDNESDAY EVENING, BLINDFOLDED IN THE BACKSEAT OF HIS father’s truck, Griff considered Charity’s comment.

  You boys might already be too far gone.

  Griff was blindfolded because he was not yet in the inner circle. If you had a bunker, you didn’t tell anyone. Passcodes and encrypted maps. Acronyms like SHTF and TEOTWAWKI, because when Shit Hit The Fan and it was The End Of The World As We Know It, there would only be so much to go around.

  Griff jolted in the truck, teeth clicking.

  Something about blindfolds made him feel like he had a rag stuffed in his mouth. Like it was hard to breathe. The truck bent left, floating around a hairpin turn. He focused on the rise and fall of his chest. Facts.

  This was okay. Not terribly strange.

  Thousands of backyard bunkers in the US. There were Raven Rock and Mount Weather for government employees. Rising S, named after the Rising Son Jesus Christ, which offered basic backyard models and UnderEarth Luxury Condos. Underground dog parks, movie theaters, saunas, in-ground pools. Bunkers were the United States of America’s new gated communities.

  The truck stopped, engine ticking.

  “Clear,” his father said.

  Griff removed his blindfold and squinted, sweat chilling the creases of his eyes. They were parked on Highway 2. At the cusp of the redwood forests, the air hung heavy, chilled with mist. They walked into a grove of ash trees, each an identical height and wingspan. It tickled the primal brain with a flutter of panic—trees don’t grow up naturally together and all at once unless something bad happened.

  They walked into the woods. Sky darkened.

  Leo and their father walked up ahead, talking too low to hear. They used to walk all together. Mosquitos here, notoriously small and quick, drawn to the damp corners of your eyes. A whine in Griff’s left ear. He slapped at it. Jammed a finger in. Nothing. You couldn’t catch them.

  They walked for half an hour.

  In a nondescript clearing, they stopped at a concrete plug in the earth. Their father got on his knees and showed his face to the camera. The bunker plug made a deep-throated click. Griff was last inside the vertical tunnel. Welded rungs bubbled up where they met concrete. The powdery dry-goods scent made his throat constrict. In a town where the greatest threat was a tsunami, it seemed unwise to descend into an airless cement egg in the ground.

  Someone belched in the main room. You could smell every bodily thing.

  Griff followed Leo and his father past a sign printed on typing paper in bold font, duct-taped at the corners:

  COMMUNITY ROOM

  The space was roughly the size of a small classroom. Bricked in by neatly packed Rubbermaids, stackable blue bricks of purified water, and sealed #10 cans that held the provisions for a survival force of twelve:

  4800 pounds of hard white grains

  360 pounds of powdered milk and canned cheese

  720 pounds of sugar

  72 pounds of powdered eggs and baking powder

  72 pounds of salt

  360 pounds of fat

  720 pounds of beans and lentils

  Survival had a powdery taste.

  Griff looked into the room at the other Preppers bleached white by LED lights. He felt the gravity of Scruggs’s approaching beard before he saw him. Even post-pandemic, the Senior Prepper was a hugger.

  “Hey, buddy!” Scruggs said.

  Griff’s vision was eclipsed by the man’s wreath of facial hair, squeezed by strong arms and a broad chest. Griff couldn’t fathom why someone so genuinely joyful could live by himself, have so little to do. Aside from the radio station, a beard was the closest thing Scruggs had to a hobby.

  “Missed seeing you at the Hanging,” Scruggs said. He chewed his lip, like something was wrong. “You and Thomas still planning to do a late-night show?”

  “Oh yeah,” Griff said. “If you’ve still got space.”

  “All we got is space and time,” Scruggs said. “Let’s get you trained up. Thomas, you still in?”

  “Rock and roll!” Thomas called from across the room.

  It felt good. Something he could do that Leo couldn’t touch.

  Dunbar used a bike bell to bring them to order.

  Each member took a seat in a stackable green chair: Jonesy, Slim, Dunbar, Thomas, their father. Jonesy took a Bug Detector from the shelf and scanned the room. Griff tapped his own pocket. He’d remembered this time.

  “Scruggs,” Jonesy said.

  “Oops, dangit,” Scruggs said. He took his phone from his pocket and removed the battery. Standard security protocol.

  The first item of business was the Board—a ten-foot magnetic spreadsheet with DISASTER TYPE (Y-axis) vs. THREAT LEVEL (X-axis). Current p
otential disasters included:

  Mudslide

  Forest Fire

  Terrorism

  EMPs

  Solar Flares

  Global Pandemic

  The Great Big One

  Nuclear Strike

  Dirty Bomb

  Threat levels: MILD, MODERATE, SEVERE, IMPENDING, INEVITABLE. Being September, forest fires dialed back from Severe to Moderate. Pandemic moved from Moderate to Severe. The Great Big One never budged from Impending, and the most robust conversation happened around Nuclear Strike. Dunbar perseverated on the likelihood of being nuked, maybe because that was the only scenario in which the bunker made sense.

  Griff had initially found these conversations fascinating. Terrifying, even.

  They’d watched videos of nuclear tests. Like God breathing fire. Nevada palms turned to feather dusters, then dust. The nuclear flash burned shadows into permanent ink stains and turned sand to melted glass. Kilotons, megatons. The bunker felt like the most thrilling backyard fort a boy could dream up and a man could build.

  Now Griff mainly dwelled on the shrinking chance of losing his virginity before the apocalypse.

  “We’ve got intel on twenty-three new missing warheads—” Dunbar said.

  Sitting up in his green plastic chair, Griff contemplated never having laid his hands on an actual set of breasts. The mechanics of clasps and the one-handed bra removal trick Leo had bragged about. Despite his ability to tie knots. One simple clasp. Griff’s fingers fidgeted, imagining. Clasp, release.

  “—a single activated warhead can deploy a cluster of thirty-six devastating explosions, and I don’t need to remind you that this will make Hiroshima look like a game of patty-cake—”

  Griff sized up his fellow Preppers. Fairly certain all of them, even Jonesy, had probably been with a girl or at least made out for a satisfactory amount of time. He felt a sudden surge of jealousy. It seemed impossible anyone would let these boys’ tongues, willingly, into their mouths. And here he was, thoughtful. Cared about music. Played piano. Yet something was apparently wrong with him—

  “—the fires would be worse than the bombs, we’d get swallowed—”