The Great Big One Read online

  “Okay,” Leo said. “So do we go again tonight?”

  “I’m grounded until my wedding day,” Charity said. “But I’ve got my radio at home.”

  “We’ve got access to the best receiver in the tricounty area,” Griff said.

  They all looked at him.

  “The radio station,” Griff said. “Thomas and I will be there tonight.”

  “It’s not as close to the ocean,” Leo said. “You won’t get the same refraction.”

  Leo gave him a go-ahead-and-try look, like two middle Cs on the piano.

  Da dun!

  “Let’s make a promise,” Charity said. “When we find this band—no matter where they are, how far away, or how expensive, we have to go see them. All of us.”

  “Obviously,” Leo said. Thomas laughed. “We’ll open for them.”

  Hands to the center. It was a deal.

  FOURTEEN

  “HELLO, LISTENERS,” THOMAS SAID. HE TURNED HIS RADIO MONITOR up. “You’ve got K-NOW, AM 550 Disaster Preparedness Radio, and if you can hear this—you’re still alive.”

  Griff removed the audio gear from his bag: headphone splitter, cassette tapes harvested from their father’s stash. Two pairs of earbuds. Thomas pressed the ON AIR button, which dimmed to gray.

  “Leo’s not coming?” Thomas asked.

  “No,” Griff said. “He’s out with Jonesy, I guess.”

  “With Jonesy the Troll?”

  Griff laughed.

  “Bullshit,” Thomas said. “After last night? Leo’s going to stand and shiver with Jonesy, looking for Russians? We’ve got the best receiver on the West Coast!”

  “He’s up to something,” Griff said.

  “Always,” Thomas said. “But is it a race to find this band? Aren’t we working together?”

  It’s always a race, Griff wanted to tell him. We’re always working together.

  “Okay,” Thomas said. “Fifteen minutes until the pleece reports.”

  “Great,” Griff said. He double-checked the switches—made sure he was using the monitor, not the broadcast stream.

  GO, the switch said on the left. NO GO, to the right.

  Griff flipped the switch right and pressed the power, flooding studio-quality headphones with luscious white noise.

  “Surf’s up,” Griff said. This was their chance.

  He and Thomas listened, threading swarms of buzzing voices, screeching feedback, trying to match a tone to the memory of last night. Of note: a community baseball game tied at the bottom of the fifth. “Runaround Sue,” playing simultaneously on two stations. One particularly abrasive patch of noise—like a metal-toothed toboggan screeching down pavement. After an hour, the throbbing behind Griff’s eyes made him pull off the headphones.

  “This was a lot more fun last night,” Thomas said, “with the touching and the bodies.”

  “It usually takes time,” Griff said.

  Last night was exceptional. It could take hours to find anything surprising. Song fishing didn’t always benefit from direct attention. The family often surfed the Skip during preserving sessions—out in the garage simmering tomatoes, mashing blackberries through wire mesh, listening to water boil and white noise churn. Already, Thomas was growing irate. Dark lines beneath his eyes, thickening. He pushed the microphone toward Griff.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  “I’m not talking,” Griff said.

  “Why did you want a show?”

  “To play music!”

  “Sink or swim,” Thomas said. He pushed the microphone toward Griff. In Griff’s stomach, a feeling like a quivering hiccup just under the lungs. He smacked his lips, cleared his throat. Thomas punched the button yellow.

  ON AIR

  “This is Griffin Tripp and you’re listening to K-NOW,” he said. He looked over the controls, his mind still as a photograph. Thomas reached over and pressed PLAY. AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” He released the ON AIR button. Glared at Griff.

  “That one sentence really took it out of you, huh?”

  “It did,” Griff said.

  “You straight-up panicked, Tripp,” Thomas said. “What would you do in an actual disaster?”

  “I’d be great,” Griff said. “A total dreamboat.”

  “Oh shit,” Thomas said, jolting.

  “Oh shit what?” Griff said.

  Thomas pointed at a small, blinking yellow light.

  “Is that an alert?” Griff asked.

  “Live caller,” Thomas said. “Get it.”

  “Me?” Griff said.

  “You were the DJ, so it’s your call. That’s the rule.”

  Griff smiled.

  “Look at you,” Griff said. “You’re terrified.”

  “I just do this because I assume nobody’s listening!” Thomas said. “Okay. Press that button. There. Now switch the source.”

  Griff pressed the receiver to his ear and heard a light breath on the other side.

  “K-NOW Radio. Griffin speaking.”

  “Griffin!” she said. “Ha!”

  “Charity?”

  “Oh fuck, it’s just Charity?” Thomas said.

  “I thought you were grounded from your phone,” Griff said.

  “Landline,” she said. “And I’ve still got my radio, Mr. DJ. Is your knob going to be stuck on AC/DC all night?”

  “That’s all Thomas,” Griff said.

  “What?” Thomas said.

  “It’s nice to hear your radio voice,” Charity said.

  She said it like a soft growl. Griff’s neck hair prickled. Just words, and somewhere in his brain, a dump truck of chemicals crashed into the bloodstream. Itchy, eager, hot.

  “Great to hear your voice,” he said. He wanted to lean through the phone and fall into her lap.

  “Oh, c’mon,” Thomas said.

  “Where are you calling from?” Griff asked.

  “The sex room,” Thomas said, tossing a pen in the air.

  “My basement,” she said. “I’m literally crocheting.”

  Charity in a basement.

  “You crochet?”

  “Yes. I’m actually seventy-eight years old, didn’t I tell you?”

  With studio-quality headphones, Charity’s voice sat right in the canal of his ear.

  “I want to hear you sing again,” he said. “Like you sang last night.”

  Quiet.

  “Okay,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be allowed at the Rat’s Nest for months.”

  Griff’s mind turned corners, groped for a solution.

  “We could get a room, I guess.”

  “What?” she said. Like she just sat straight up.

  “A practice room. Like, a practice room. Choir. Choir practice room,” he said. Had he just said get a room?

  “Fun. Let’s do that. Maybe, what day—”

  She stopped.

  “Charity?” he asked.

  “Footsteps. Location compromised. Simms, signing out.”

  Supposed to be signing off. God. That was the cutest.

  Griff hung up and Thomas eyed him like a specimen mashed on a slide.

  “You, sir, are wearing the idiot goggles. The moron blanket.”

  Griffin narrowed his eyes. Frowned.

  “No use. You still look like you’re in love.”

  Griff let himself smile.

  “You’re getting a room?” Thomas asked.

  “Are you spying on me?” Griff asked.

  “I’m a trained spy.”

  “Just a practice room. Like, for music.”

  “What’s wrong with the Rat’s Nest?”

  “She’s grounded. I thought we might—”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Thomas said. “Are you starting a side project with Charity?”

  “No.”

  “Listen,” Thomas said. “Side projects kill bands. Like, the Breeders were a side project of the Pixies. And then the Amps were a side project of the Breeders. Members start splitting off like unstable atoms in an uncontrolled envir
onment. Meltdown! Boom!”

  “We’re just going to try something,” Griff said.

  “Am I invited?” Thomas asked. “Is Leo invited?”

  Griff tilted his head. Then shook it. Thomas laid his hands out flat and seesawed them like a crashing wave. Clenched his fists with a jolt. Preppers sometimes used American Sign Language to communicate in disasters. That was ASL for tsunami, disaster, SHTF, Armageddon.

  Thomas pressed the ON AIR button and quietly mouthed the word:

  Boom.

  FIFTEEN

  LEO WAS STILL NOT HOME WHEN GRIFF UNDRESSED AND CLIMBED into bed. He stared at the quiet blue slab of his brother’s mattress and wondered about Leo. If Griff had built a wall to disguise his few, limited desires, then Leo—being the better prepper—had probably dug a bunker. Reinforced steel. Large enough for a pool and dog park. The entire state of Florida.

  Leo dreamed big. Griff couldn’t see his dreams anymore.

  Hours later—the peck of a key at the front door, ka-thump of boots, hush of bathroom water, rumple of clothing—it all blended with the routine sounds of nighttime until the door to the TOE Box creaked open. Griff lifted his eyelids to find his brother cross-legged on the floor with his small black backpack.

  “It’s late,” Griff said.

  Leo looked up. “Yeah. SubWatch.”

  Hard to imagine spending hours with Jonesy spitting sunflower seeds, spitting chew, spitting, listening, spitting. Leo was pulling things out of the backpack. Griff scooted to the foot of the bed. Hung his head backward off the mattress and saw his brother upside down. They used to do this together. See who could hang the longest, then whip themselves up for a giant head rush. They’d pretend they could float and walk on the ceiling. Climb over the doorframes. Pebbled paint on bare feet.

  “What are you doing?” Leo asked.

  Griff whipped his head up. Dizzy. Crawled back to his pillow.

  “You should’ve come to the station,” Griff said.

  “I’ve got to get my hours,” Leo said.

  Leo scribbled something on a wide sheet of paper. He looked hungry in the pale light. Physically hungry. Shaky in the eyes. He rolled the paper like a scroll and placed it in a cardboard tube. Then something else. A flashing silver square. Leo held it, then set it down and climbed into bed.

  Griff remained silent.

  “Did you see her today?” Leo asked.

  His tongue, heavy with sleep. The way they used to talk together in a tent, back when they still shared one.

  “No,” Griff said.

  Maybe it was fatigue, or the upside-down head rush, or the tent-feeling. He wanted to spill a secret. Tell Leo—“Today was a no-circle day.” As preppers, they kept paper calendars and recorded events in inscrutable symbols. Dashes. Asterisks. A little black dot stood for Bunker Meeting. The tiny fork meant Radio Station. Griff’s used circles for the days he saw Charity. Sometimes he’d touch the circle. Or trace it over and over. Days without them looked empty. Today was a no-circle day. He wanted to tell his brother.

  “I hope she doesn’t leave the band,” Leo said.

  Griff propped himself on an elbow. “Why would she leave?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?” Leo asked.

  Griff stared at the ceiling. He thought his brother never doubted anything anymore. If doubt had survived, what else prowled around in his brother’s mind when the lights went low? Griff’s went still with the sudden weight of it. Leo’s voice at the half shell. The way he’d looked hearing the band. Griff missed him so badly. Pressure against the back of his nose, throat, his eyes.

  Griff exhaled a shuddering breath.

  He wanted to release it all. The whole untamed reservoir. How he wanted out of the Preppers, wanted his own show, wanted to sail on a boat of any proportion into any possible horizon with Charity Simms and—brother, I want you to know how her lips brushing my cheek feel like flying—how mad and out of control I feel now, and how sorry I am for how awkward and how hopeless we’ve made this, how tired I am of winner and loser and what are you hungry for, brother? Do you love her? Do you feel alone and outside this whole mess of a town like me? Are you lost like me?

  The lighthouse flickered in the window.

  “Whoomp,” Griff breathed.

  “What?”

  Griff held his breath, and held the words in his mind. I sing along with the lighthouse. It struck him—that was the first thing he’d ever hidden from his brother. Griff opened his mouth, tasted the still air. He could say it. Awkward, absurd, and true.

  “Stop talking to yourself,” Leo said.

  Griff pinched his lips shut. Pressed them tightly. Closed his eyes and waited for the pressure to stop. Leo got out of bed. The small silver square, flashing in his hand. He wove it through the eyelet of the TOE Box, seated the hasp with a click. It was a padlock.

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN THE DOOR SHUT IN PRACTICE ROOM 5, IT WAS THE FIRST time Griff had been sealed in a space alone with Charity Simms, with a door that could close. The primary feeling was a breathless panic, like Thomas’s breath puffing—

  Boom.

  The door clicked shut. Charity’s eyes leapt around, the way they had when they’d run to the Ruins. They were getting away with something. Without open space to dilute the electricity, it seemed to tremble in the air. Griff focused on the feeling of his toes mashed in his shoes on the instrument’s pedals. Wrists and fingers. He was here to play piano. That’s all he was here to do.

  He sat at the bench. But, also, he could smell her.

  “So what now?” she asked.

  Tame the beast, Griff told himself. Lash those hormones with a rope, ride them into significant artistic achievements. It had been done by greater men. Van Gogh. Mozart. He placed his fingers on the keys. Straight lines. Stiff angles. She stood very close to the bench. Her hair bounced, tossing off the sweetest scent, like honey, peaches in the sun, god you wanted to bury your face—

  “What kind of singing do you want me to do?” Charity asked.

  “Like at the ocean,” he said. Words, a challenge.

  She nodded.

  “How do we start?” she asked.

  He hadn’t done this before, but maybe like kissing. You lean in, then a little closer, time trembles, slips, and suddenly you’re kissing. He released his fingers. The music came slowly, like drawing water from an old well. Creaky pulls at the pump, but it got better. He even played around the edges of the cadenza, and still Charity did not sing.

  He looked at her. She flinched.

  Was he making a face? He’d seen it in his concert tapes, after Leo mentioned it. Griff’s Piano Face. Blank, slack-jawed, fish-lipped. God, he was doing it now.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “For what?” She smiled. “You’re amazing.”

  “You’re not singing.”

  “It’s scary,” she said. “You’re too good.”

  “Let’s start loose,” Griff said. “Okay? Da, da, da, da—”

  He sang. She sang back, but her voice was tight. Rubber-banded at the top of her throat. Griff played another riff, teasing her:

  “This room is soundproof,” he sang.

  She laughed.

  “C’mon!” he said.

  “This room is soundproof—” she sang.

  “Griff loves my voice,” he sang.

  “Griff loves my voice!”

  Call-and-response, they sang about their study hall teacher—Gonna sing it loud, wake Michaelson up from his hundred-year naaaaaaaap—and when she’d found her deep, glowing sound, he dropped them straight into a song—

  “Because we’ve got to find them,” Griff sang, hitting chords he remembered from the broadcast. She sang it back, her own words, new words, and with Charity unleashed, Griff needed more tones. He was still only using half the piano. Her voice crushed the invisible wall. Griff’s hands spread out over all the keys and Charity drove the melody. They left the song they’d heard and moved into something new.

  Just sounds.<
br />
  Like they’d both forgotten words and remembered only language.

  Chasing Charity’s voice, the piece took shape. They kept going. Her eyes closed, riding the current. Lost together, a playful tug-of-war, coming slowly up the underside of a wave and then building, building, crashing down together, sweating, hands trembling, and—was that a sound at the window? A tap at the door?

  Griff’s hands faltered.

  Mr. Jung? Leo? No one, but it couldn’t last—a familiar impulse to end it, do it quick before it collapses anyway, before you ruined it all. He played a final flourish and pulled back and Charity was watching him with changed eyes.

  Burning. He’d not seen these eyes before. Eyes that could swallow the whole world.

  “That’s the best music I’ve ever made,” she said.

  Griff examined his hands, as if they’d been under the control of someone else.

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said, very loud. She laughed. “Yes! Yes! We’ve got something. Ah, and time again! I have to go.”

  She smiled.

  “You have to?” he said.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She nodded. Moved closer. She leaned down and kissed one of his cheeks. Her hair brushed his skin—a shivery delight.

  “They do that in France,” he said.

  His jaw could not stop shaking. What if she tried a kiss? On his underpracticed lips, sluggish tongue. Better if she didn’t, get out RUN—

  “They actually do two kisses in France,” Charity said.

  She kissed him again, on the other cheek. A long, lingering kiss. He could feel the shape of her lips, the soft sound when they left.

  “Three sometimes,” he exhaled.

  She was breathing like she’d been running a race, his breathing like they’d run it together and she was kissing him a third time. On the first cheek again, and a fourth kiss on his jawline, where her mouth was hot and wet and moving slowly, happy, taking time to his ear and—

  Breathe, balance on this bench—

  Her tongue merged with his ear like a galactic sensation, a door in his chest opened to a hot breeze and he was nowhere near himself, not in his cage of a body but twirling, shuddering, shivering, and she was again in front of him smiling, breathing the last of the room’s air.