The Great Big One Page 6

  “No,” Thomas said. “We have a limited license agreement. There’s good stuff, though.”

  Five AC/DC songs. Aerosmith. Everly Brothers. Garth Brooks. The Eagles.

  “Sadly, no ‘Thunderstruck,’” Thomas said.

  “No,” Griff whispered.

  “Can you imagine a better evacuation song?” Thomas said, perking up for the first time. “If I was sitting up here when the missiles came screaming in, I’d cue that motherfucker up for sure. Thun-der. THUN-DER!”

  He spread his fingers out like imaginary vapor trails, raked them across the sky.

  “Ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne—” He attempted the solo with his mouth.

  “You didn’t tell me there was a playlist,” Griff said, standing.

  Griff’s chair tipped back, hit the floor. He clutched the sheet.

  “Whoa,” Thomas said.

  “Why would I do all this for a fucking classic rock playlist? Hanging the siren? Hanging out with goddamn Slim and Jonesy? Canning parties? For a radio show where I can’t even play any real music! You know how much time I spent picking our songs!”

  Griff threw the sheet as hard as he could. It took a soft glide path in the space between them. Landed with a whisper on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I thought maybe you wanted some quality time.”

  “With you?”

  Thomas shrugged, looked to the side.

  “Hey, hey. I do. Thomas. Buddy. I’m sorry.”

  Thomas looked around the station. Hollow look, creeping in.

  “I would’ve missed you if it was real,” Thomas said. “And Leo. My parents had this whole plan. I don’t know if I ever would’ve seen you again.”

  “Yeah,” Griff said.

  “But still. It felt like—I don’t know. An adventure.”

  Thomas looked down at the town. Three lit blocks. And darkness.

  “Feels small, doesn’t it?” Thomas said.

  The sea washed in, high tide. Yes, the town looked small. The ocean did not. Between them and the whole world—the most refractive, musical thing on earth. Water bounced radio waves the way a mirror bounces light. And in the thrum of the ocean, Griff understood how to win Charity’s heart. He hadn’t been thinking big enough.

  “It feels small,” Griff said. “But it’s not.”

  TEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, GRIFF WOKE TO FIND THE CONTENTS OF THE TOE Box spread over the floor—file folders, note cards, maps, diagrams.

  “Just doing a little research,” Leo said at breakfast.

  Such a lie.

  Griff did not need to ask Leo what he was doing—his brother was somehow trying to impress Charity. Griff had looked over the small, neat stacks—EVPs, intergalactic visitors, time travel. What was Leo’s angle?

  Sometimes on a family hike, Leo would duck off onto a side trail—claim to be exploring, picking thimbleberries—then around the next switchback, there was Leo, 20 feet ahead, arms raised in a V for Victory.

  It couldn’t happen again.

  Griff decided right there, eating an over-easy egg between toast, the only way to win was to be better at absolutely everything.

  Now that Leo was back into music for Charity’s sake—Griff heard him constantly hammering on the Knabe, sometimes taunting him with the C-sharp summons—Da dun!—often playing when Griff was busy, sneaking practices. Leo practiced during their study hall, which Charity had skipped for days—doing independent work for student government. Their puzzle sat in disarray on a table Griff had begged the teacher to keep safe. He was losing the game of time with Charity. He was losing at piano.

  He arranged to have his own after-school practice that Monday.

  In the music room, their teacher, Mr. Jung, was delighted.

  “Of course!” He peered up from his tiny round glasses, sitting at his desk. “Just you?”

  Griff nodded.

  “I can’t wait to see what you and your brother have on offer this winter. May I ask, will it still be Liszt?”

  “And Stravinsky. Symphony in Three Movements.”

  “Ooo. Delightful.”

  Mr. Jung unlocked the small room, and Griff was alone. Inside, buzzing fluorescents and the plink-plink upright. A soundproof door and a tiny window. No audience. He did not want to be watched. No one could see his hands or face.

  It took a few minutes to adjust to the instrument.

  A loose pedal. The action on the whole right side was off, the sticky B-flat, but there was something good about this little wood shanty of a piano in practice room 5.

  It had heart.

  When Griff was alone, it only took a few minutes to calibrate to the piano. For the keys to sink into dreamspace. The bench, untethered from the room. Fluent, unburdened.

  —gone—

  A slim crack in the world, and he slipped inside. Like a river. Like water. He found himself in a section of Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2. Deep in the heartbeat of the piece, chasing the flow toward the cadenza. He did not know how badly he wanted to play until he was playing at liberty, as you desire—

  In the background, words fluttered, trying to describe:

  Forget words.

  Let him be a vessel. Let him be pen and ink but never words.

  He played two pieces. Three. Four. He’d play forever. More than an hour later, something flickered in the room’s small window. Mr. Jung’s wide eyes. An O of a mouth, gaping like a fleshy bowling ball. Griff’s fingers fumbled to a stop.

  Mr. Jung ducked out of the window.

  But the spell was broken. Griff placed his hands on the keys. Just hands again.

  Plink-plink.

  Outside, beyond the school’s front lawn, everything popped. Autumn light draped the maples in warm velvet. His body buzzed from the playing. A warm, pleasant exhaustion, like having spent the afternoon in a sunny river.

  And Charity. Right there.

  Standing on a curb. The practice had sharpened his eyes, dialed up his sensitivity. She leapt from the backdrop of the world, like she’d been cut in from a different movie. Higher definition, sharper colors.

  She was staring at him. He knew the look. Which twin?

  “Griff! What are you doing here?”

  He walked to her but it was unclear where to stop, how close to get.

  “Practicing.”

  “Practicing what?”

  The music had turned his sensations fluid, everything spilling over and unable to fit in the boxy containers of words. He wanted—what? To hold her. He imagined the feel of rocking in her arms. A perfect harbor. To hold her would be like lying stretched in the well of a wood-bottomed boat, turning in a stone bowl.

  “Piano,” he exhaled.

  Door 5 clapped shut in the parking lot. Two strong engines. One white truck with an American flag. Tires squealed. One guy yelled something out the window. At them, maybe. Like—Have a good time, hope y’all get something. Both trucks blasted out of the parking lot, blaring the same song.

  New Country AM.

  They turned the corner, chirping their tires.

  “Do you like living here?” Charity asked.

  “Sometimes,” he said. “You?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s like a tiny American diorama. This town is a shoe box.”

  “So, hey,” Griff said. “I had this idea, during our radio show.”

  “Your show!” She shoved his shoulder. “What happened? I was listening for the Collection. Some beats. It sounded like the soundtrack to an old white guy’s garage.”

  Griff pinched the flesh on his wrist. She’d actually listened.

  “There’s a stupid playlist,” he said.

  “Of course!” she said. “Always. That’s why we’re trapped in a Radio Bermuda Triangle with the same hundred songs, all fenced in by old people. You know people over thirty mostly stop discovering new music? At all? Can you believe these people are making decisions about radio stations or politics or the environment? How can they think differently listening to the sam
e music?”

  He laughed.

  “Nailed it,” he said. “The problem with humanity.”

  “Humanity,” she said. “Society. Let’s solve it all, Griff. Make a playlist to save the world.”

  They talked for an hour. About music. About the Collection. Rhiannon Giddens and the New Basement Tapes and Donald Glover and their band. Talking about music widened her eyes, lifted her voice, and runways of conversation shot out into the wider world. She wanted to see France. Brazil. Walk the Camino in Spain.

  They talked about the far-off and far-away. They stood closer together.

  Standing on the curb in the circle drive, balancing on one foot, then the other, they wove something in a slow-looping dance. Charity twined with the low thunder of windblown leaves. The mossy smell of wet grass and the moment merged with September the way a good song sinks into an evening and etches itself in memory.

  From now on, every September would have her in it.

  “I should go,” she said. “The mother meltdown is coming.”

  Talking to her, the concept of time was impossible. In silence, the world cobbled itself back together crudely around them—pale green weeds in the sidewalk, a buzzing streetlight with a hopeless halo of moths, scabby parking lot. The whole sad shoe box.

  He wanted to grab her hand, her arm, anything to make her stay. He used words.

  “Wait. What are you doing here, anyway?” he asked.

  “I didn’t tell you? I’m a student leader now. That’s why our puzzle is so neglected.”

  She opened her mouth. Gagging.

  “Student leader of a diorama town?” He laughed. “Why?”

  “I think melanin,” she said. “They were way down. So now they get a Dominican and a Black person. Two for one. Someone actually said that. I told them they’re just getting a Black girl. Anything else costs extra.”

  “Good ol’ Clade City,” Griff said.

  “Yep,” she said. “Welcome to Oregon. Where the white people are even whiter.”

  He laughed. “Weather doesn’t help.”

  “It really doesn’t,” Charity said. “I don’t know what you all did out here to scare summer away. I’ve been cold since the day I moved.”

  Griff looked down at his jacket. Not as nice as their dad’s.

  “Want my coat?”

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m not ready for camo yet. That’s going to be a big step.”

  Her phone buzzed.

  “How does time vanish with you, Tripp?” Charity asked. “Can you figure that out with your crazy TOE Box?”

  She nudged his foot with hers and he remembered the way her bare foot had looked that first time, and before he could feel the shiver of that she said—

  “See you soon—”

  And leapt forward—almost a pounce—and kissed his cheek. His hand went to the warm place she kissed, like something with wings had just landed there.

  She laughed. “It’s okay. That’s how they say goodbye in France.”

  “Are you—also French?” he asked. She laughed.

  “Sure. I’d love to be French for a while. That’s a nice thought.”

  She was walking to her car. One leg at a time. Somehow moving with the same locomotive logic of simple humans. He, however, could fly. He shut his eyes and recalled photos of the Albuquerque Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. Great, bulbous, fireblown jewels tracing paths over a blue-sands desert.

  That was him. A colorful whoosh through the dark sky.

  A car honked, but he was aloft.

  Honk, fool! I’m flying!

  “Griff!”

  The voice cut through.

  “Griff! Geez, get in.”

  His father. Griff got in the truck.

  “Who was that?” his father asked.

  “Who?”

  “The Black girl.”

  “Dad,” he said.

  “What? African-American?”

  “Her father is Dominican. Her mom’s Black. Why do you need to know?”

  “I want to know what to call her.”

  “How about Charity,” Griff said. “That’s her name.”

  “I see,” his father said. “So who is Charity?”

  “A friend.”

  “Yeah?” his father said. “Friend. You know, I once led a workshop on the twenty-seven dead giveaways for habitual liars. Your face is doing seventeen of them right now.”

  Griff stared back at his father.

  “You’re lying, Dad.”

  His father smiled.

  “I see you’ve taken the same workshop.”

  Griff snuggled in against the truck’s warmest vent. He could close his eyes. He didn’t want to go home. He wanted his father to vanish and the truck to roll toward the 2. He wanted to sleep and dream until it was all real and he woke up with the sun through the windows and Charity in the driver’s seat. She would reach out and take his hand.

  “We’re here,” she would say in the morning, far from this place. “We made it.”

  ELEVEN

  BY PRACTICE THE NEXT NIGHT, GRIFF HAD MENTALLY MAPPED Leo’s plan with the band. Step one: Leo gets them a gig to force rehearsals. Step two. Leo cements his role as lead singer. Step three: Names the band something like: Leo Tripp & the Other Guys. Step four: Leo Seduces Charity like a creepy record exec, using promises of power and billboard chart domination.

  He did not expect Charity to show up to practice in hiking boots.

  “Are you wearing a hiking costume?” Griff asked. She was standing on Thomas’s front porch with Leo.

  “You didn’t tell him?” Charity asked Leo.

  Thomas came outside. Also wearing boots, long camo jacket.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Leo said.

  “Are we rehearsing at all?” Thomas said. “Half an hour?”

  “What surprise?” Griff asked.

  “Let’s go,” Leo said.

  Leo stepped from the front patio. No practice?

  The group walked quickly. Leo was carrying their black backpack—the one they kept inside the TOE Box. Charity and Thomas raced ahead. Griff was behind, and had no idea where they were going. They moved west, toward the ocean.

  They hustled through neighborhoods. It felt like curfew-busting middle school thrills.

  Thomas did tuck-and-rolls on front lawns. Army-crawled. When Leo said Hide! they flattened against trees and light posts. Giggling took hold. Thomas discovered and performed his new signature move—a somersault tumble into ornamental shrubbery—and they lost it, howling. The laughing fueled more moves, they crossed the whole town in a wild zigzag.

  “I’m glad we skipped practice,” Charity said, catching her breath by a tall wooden fence.

  “Yeah,” Griff said.

  Thomas, just ahead, chattered about gradients of twilight: Civil ends at 7:53 PM. Nautical twilight at 8:30 PM. She was breathing beside him. The air had a certain lovely heaviness to it. The still night seemed to hold him in its palm. Charity’s clavicle looked slightly sweaty and delicious. He wanted to put his tongue against it. Weirdo.

  “Leo didn’t tell you anything about this?” Charity asked.

  Griff shook his head, trying to erase neck-based thinking.

  They ran and caught up with the others in Flagg Park. Overgrown with gone-to-seed wild grass, cathedrals of glistening gorse. They wove to a mammoth grove of Pacific rhododendrons. It shaped itself around the mouth of an aromatic cave bursting with swollen flowers, leaves waxy-sheened and prehistoric looking. Big as kites.

  “It’s a dream,” Charity said.

  Her face, dappled in moonlight—this air! You could float, swim, but Thomas had brought a rope ladder.

  “We’re going to the Ruins,” Griff said.

  “Bravo,” Thomas said. They would descend from Flagg Park. Safer than trying to scale the floodgates, where Dunbar or another bored cop might snap them up.

  “Charity,” Leo said. “Come here quick.”

  She went with him, vanishing into a pocket of
shadow.

  Griff’s fingers pinched the skin on his jawbone. He pinched his tongue between front teeth and counted to thirty-seven before they returned—the horrors of what might happen in thirty-seven seconds—but she did not come back flushed or giddy or handholding. Just holding a small red radio. The nicest one their father kept in the basement.

  A small trapdoor opened in Griff’s stomach, a nauseated rush.

  Which shortcut was Leo taking?

  She pocketed the radio, and Griff helped tie the ladder to staggered ash trees, then let the roped rungs unspool against the rock like a muffled collapse of dominoes. They peered over the leafy edge into a gaping mouth of darkness.

  “I’ll go first,” Leo said.

  They descended through a grove of prickly octopus spruce trees. Clothes caught on stiff-fingered branches, the sharp, enlivening smell of living needles. He took a breath, deep in the lungs of the trees, then his boots touched soft earth.

  They’d passed through the barbed canopy into their town’s low-lying, forbidden city. A long, soggy park stretched off to their right. A scrap of land in a slow-motion tug-of-war with the ocean, spanning decades. They’d rebuilt the park when they’d planned to reopen the Ruins, before it had been abandoned to an uncertain time in the future, then abandoned altogether—steel floodgates closed and locked.

  The historic downtown had been built to mimic the gentle swoops and bends of a river finding the ocean. The intended effect for a visitor would be a slow, gentle descent through shops and parks to the water.

  Having snuck in the back way, they walked the intended route in reverse, passing a phalanx of danger signs.

  NO TRESPASSING!

  WE PROSECUTE!

  They hurried past the signs, quickly surrounded by tall, still structures. Brick buildings, bay windows, clapboard-sided shops. Every shop seemed to be holding its breath.

  Underfoot, the concrete wore a patina of sand and crunched like brittle snow. Street posts tapered toward their tips and bloomed into empty lamps that caught the silver halo of the full moon. Storefronts showed real character—no two the same. The New Frontier with sconces like torchlights. The Looking Glass with its bulbous bay windows, driftwood seats, the Gallery Hutch with a hand-carved cornice above the door, depicting a warren of rabbits chasing a man.