DRY - by Neal Shusterman

SNAPSHOT: KZLA NEWS

“Tensions rise as the Southland enters the third day of the Tap-Out, but government officials say relief is on the way.”

Local Eyewitness News anchor Lyla Singh reads her part, then defers to Chase Buxton, her co-anchor, who recites his line from the teleprompter.

“Meanwhile, the cascade effect that has left more than twenty-three million people without running water shows no sign of abating. For more, we take you to Donavan Lee in Silverlake.”

As they cut away from the studio to the empty concrete reservoir that used to be Silverlake, Lyla reflects on the trials of her day. Getting to the studio from the Hollywood Hills was a nightmare. She had nearly missed the midmorning update, and now it looks like the news will be preempting more and more programming – which means she won’t be going home anytime soon.

“Did you hear the head of FEMA was ignoring the governor’s calls?” one of the cameramen had told her earlier. “No joke – Hurricane Noah is the only thing on FEMA’s radar right now.”

At that moment, their producer had passed by and admonished them both – as if Lyla had been doing anything more than just listening. “We deal in news, people, not rumors.”

The control booth cuts back to the studio from the Silverlake report, and Lyla quickly brings her thoughts back to the here and now.

“Thank you, Donavan. In the midst of the mayhem, earlier today, the governor had this to say.”

They roll a tape that the station has been playing over and over throughout the day, and Lyla listens for the umpteenth time, still trying to figure out if there’s anything in the governor’s voice betraying a deeper truth that he hasn’t shared with the press.

“Federal Emergency Management is aware of the situation,” the governor says, “and we are told that tankers of potable water are on their way from as far as Wyoming to satisfy Southern California’s immediate critical need.”

Wyoming? thinks Lyla. How long will it take water trucks to get here from Wyoming?

“I want to assure the people of Southern California,” continues the governor, “that help is on the way. Mobile desalination plants are going to be in place up and down the coast, to turn seawater into drinking water. Everything possible is being done to alleviate this situation. Thank you.”

Then he leaves, as always, dodging a barrage of questions.

The camera’s red light blinks on, catching Lyla a little bit off guard. But she’s a professional. Rather than stumbling, she just pauses, making the moment seem intentional.

“At this time,” she reads, “everyone is advised to stay indoors to avoid heat stroke, and stay tuned for more information.”

“That’s right, Lyla,” Chase says. “And everyone should refrain from any sort of strenuous activity.”

“Exactly. The best way to conserve water right now is to hold onto the water your body already has.”

There were two full pitchers of ice water in Lyla’s dressing room when she arrived that morning. Just thinking about them now makes her want a nice tall glass.

“We’ll be back right after this.”

Then they cut to a commercial.

Lyla relaxes, looking at her briefings of the upcoming stories. How the zoo is handling the Tap-Out. A man who was shot while trying to get water from a tanker truck heading for a hospital, and – just breaking now – the first official death from dehydration in San Bernardino.

Chase turns to her, raising an eyebrow. “This is bad,” he says, with the same vocal inflection with which he might have said, “This is fresh,” back in the days when he was a voice actor on fast food commercials – although rumor had it he did other sorts of work. But like their producer said, they deal in news, not rumors.

“And yet all we do is tell people to stay calm and keep watching.”

“What are we supposed to tell them? Go scream bloody murder naked through the streets?”

“If it will help get them through this, then yes.”

“Well,” Chase says with an irksome smirk, “that would make quite the story.”

When the afternoon report is over, Lyla goes to her dressing room, only to find that both pitchers are empty. Someone – or maybe multiple people – has pilfered her water.

“More is on the way,” a nervous intern promises. “Ten minutes, max.”

But ten minutes later, neither the water nor the intern are anywhere to be found.

In the hallway, Chase is on the line with his agent, the speakerphone blaring his personal business to anyone who cares. The agent’s telling him that if he handles this just right, this crisis could propel him to the national stage. A spot on CNN, maybe.

“I hate that you’re using this as your personal pole vault,” Lyla tells him.

Chase just shrugs, and continues his conversation.

While Lyla has her own career ambitions, she’s not the jackal that Chase is, scavenging a future from the bones of the present.

She looks out a window, trying to get a true view of this crisis from forty-three stories up. Down below there are crowds in the street. Are they demonstrating? Is it water distribution? From this high up she can’t tell. Suddenly she feels claustrophobic in this tower. Isolated.

Then more reports of dehydration deaths begin to roll in as the afternoon churns on. They come fast and furious, and she knows they have to report them, and can only imagine what it would be like to be on the listening end, trapped in your neighborhood, wondering if someone on your street is going to be next.

And all this time, no water comes to her dressing room. Chase is dry, too. There doesn’t seem to be water for anyone, and no one’s promising anything anymore.

That’s when she gets an idea. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only idea she’s got.

“Put me in Sky-Three chopper,” she tells her producer.

“What?” He looks at her as if she’s become delirious. “Lyla, you’re an anchor – you haven’t done an aerial report since your days covering traffic.”

“Riots, fires, and gridlock – the stories aren’t in here, they’re out there. People will respond to it,” she says, pretending that, like Chase, this is all about ambition. “An anchor in the sky will hold their attention. Keep them on us instead of switching channels.”

“No,” he tells her. “I need you at your desk.”

But once he’s gone, she goes to the roof anyway.

Sky-Three chopper is on the helipad, as the traffic reporters’ shifts are changing. For a moment she flashes to Vietnam, where some of the best reporting ever took place. Of course, it was long before she was born, but she can’t help but look at that helicopter and imagine what it must have been like for those reporters desperately waiting to get airlifted out as Saigon fell.

Kurt, the same pilot who used to take her out in her early days with the station, leans against the stairwell shaft, having a smoke – which is not allowed so close to the chopper, but he doesn’t care. She’s hoping that’s not the only rule he doesn’t care about.

“Kurt, what’s the range of your chopper?”

“About two-fifty on a full tank,” he tells her. “Right now, probably closer to two hundred – why?”

She takes a deep breath. “I need a favor.”

Five minutes later, they’re soaring away from downtown LA, heading east. And once she feels they’ve put enough distance between themselves and the newsroom, she texts her producer.

Taking Sky-Three to Arrowhead. Will report on refugee situation.

She sends it. Thinks for a moment, then texts, Cover for me, or fire me.

There, it’s done. Whatever happens now, she’ll be in one of the few places that still has water. The high lakes might be below their usual waterline, but they’re still lakes. She takes a deep, relieved breath, feeling a sense of connection to her fellow journalists all those years ago, as they boarded helicopters halfway around the world to escape the Viet Cong.

 

 

DAY THREE

MONDAY, JUNE 6TH

4) Kelton

No school today. No news on when classes will resume. With just two weeks left to the school year, I wonder if we’ll be going back at all.

I try to keep busy by flipping through comic books, but for some reason they don’t feel engaging today. I search online for hunting gear to add to my Christmas wish list – still not gripping my attention. So I go to watch YouTube videos of chess boxing – a hybrid fighting sport where you alternate between chess and a round of boxing. It’s the one non-weapon-related sport that I excel in. It’s also the only thing that’s landed me in disciplinary Saturday school in my entire high school career – because after doing an oral report on it in English last year, I was cornered by a trio of nonbelievers, and forced to demonstrate the boxing aspect on one of their noses. I would have pummeled them in chess, too, but was hauled into the dean’s office.

I watch a couple of videos, but today, even chess boxing is no match for how listless I feel. It’s more than that, though. I’m troubled about the state of the world outside, even considering how prepared we are.

It started when Burnside showed up at our door with a gift. Sure, I love the idea of our family’s arch-enemies turning into sycophantic suck-ups, but when the strange actually materializes into reality, it definitely leaves you reeling. Much like that what-now feeling when you look into the dark eyes of the first stag you’ve brought down – or the triumphant despair of shooting a game duck out of the air, only for it to fall down a cliff, never to be retrieved for all of eternity. And the more I think about it … the more I realize that everything can be effectively related to hunting. I mean, they do say our every action and inaction is related to some primordial fight or flight hardwiring…

For example, winning the affection of a girl is a lot like shooting a deer. It’s important that you approach slowly and with caution – and preferably from a posterior angle, where they have little to no vision. Women, like deer, can be scared away by a strong musk, which is why it’s important to always wear deodorant. Dressing in camouflage doesn’t hurt either, because in my experience, girls find camouflage really cool. But all of that aside, I think the most important aspect of obtaining a girl of the opposite sex is knowing when to pull the trigger. Metaphorically, that is. You gotta make your move when it feels right, or else you’ll come off as creepy. This I know from experience, too.

But when it comes to my next-door neighbor, Alyssa Morrow, she feels like the deer I’ve never been able to shoot. Like I’m so close to making a move, or at least telling her how I feel, but for some reason the moment never feels right. I always figured that if I was in the right place, the right time would present itself, so this year I hacked the school computer and arranged to get five of my six classes with her … I would’ve done all six, but that would have been too obvious.

On this particular morning Alyssa’s finishing up yard work out front. It looks like she’s trying to siphon water out of their irrigation system, but that’s not going to work. Judging by their brown lawn, their sprinklers have been dry for months, just like most everyone else’s. As far as timing goes, I’m starting to get the feeling that it’s now or never, so I slip on a desert camouflage tactical vest and head next door.

I step outside and locate Alyssa heading toward her garage, struggling to carry some tools. I have positioning to my advantage, so I flank left. As I near, I swallow hard, my nerves making my throat go thick. “Need any help?” I manage to get out. I realize it’s the exact same thing I said the other day when they were unloading their ice. I’m hoping she appreciates consistency.

“That’s okay, I think I got it.” Though clearly she doesn’t. Perhaps she’s trying not to look weak in front of me. So I push forward.

“Here, let me at least grab these for you,” I say, as I take a few wrenches and store them in my pocket. Cargo shorts are essential. Girls love a guy with lots of pockets.

“Thanks,” she says, as we put the tools away in their respective places in the garage. That’s when I catch a whiff of something nasty coming from the house. I must wrinkle my nose, because she notices it and looks away, as if I might think the smell is coming from her.

“Septic problems?” I ask.

“We think sewer gas is backing up into our house because of the lack of water,” she tells me. “My dad’s working on some plumbing modifications to stop it.”

This, I knew, was inevitable. Probably every house in the neighborhood but ours will be smelling the same right about now. But not everyone seems as diligent about doing something about it as Alyssa and her family. Of course, they’re going about it all wrong.

“All you need is zero-evaporation trap seal liquid. Pour about a cup into every drain, and no sewer gas can get through.” And then I add, “It’s the stuff they use in waterless urinals.”

She makes an “ew” face at me, and I realize that was too much information.

“Anyhoo,” I say, stumbling over my words a bit, and looking away involuntarily, “I can give you a bottle. We’ve got plenty of it.” Which is true, but when my dad finds out I gave it away, he’ll chew me a new one.

But it’s worth it, because Alyssa lights up. “Thanks, Kelton – that’s really generous of you.”

And after seeing her smile like that at me, something compels me to go all in. I hold out my canteen to her. “Here, have some,” I say. “You look thirsty.”

She cautiously takes the canteen. “Are you sure?” she asks.

I shrug like it’s nothing. “What are friends for?”

She takes a few gulps and hands it back. Then I take a swig. Alyssa and I just shared a canteen. Considering the saliva exchange involved, that’s almost like kissing. I suppress a little shiver at the thought.

“Thank you, Kelton,” she says again. Then we stand there in silence, but for the first time the silence that lingers between us feels a little more natural. It feels good.

Without warning Garrett appears out of what feels like thin air, and snatches the canteen from me.

“Thanks, Kelton!” he teases.

“Don’t be rude,” Alyssa says. “That’s not yours!”

Just then their father enters with a box of dirty rags, and her mother just a few moments later. She smiles, barely able to contain herself. “News says there’ll be desalination machines along the coast. They’ll have a few up and running down at Laguna Beach by this afternoon.”

“What’s a desalination machine?” Garrett asks.

“It converts saltwater into freshwater,” I tell him. “They’ve actually got a big plant down in San Diego, but it’s not going to help us.” Truth be told, it won’t help San Diego much either now. It was forward-thinking of them to build it a few years back, so for once it’s not a case of too little too late. Instead, it’s too little right on time. Because at full capacity, it can provide enough water for eight percent of San Diego’s population. Less than one in ten people. Not the solution they hoped it would be.

Alyssa’s father wipes sweat from his brow. “We pay big taxes to fund organizations like FEMA. It’s about time they stepped in and did something.”

“Well, it’s not like they can just let us die of thirst,” her mother adds, as if this notion were preposterous, but then waits for someone to chime in with validation.

Her father nods in agreement. “It’s a matter of numbers,” he says. “After all, California is one of the largest work economies. They need us, and I don’t think they would be so stupid as to neglect us.”

Her father’s words stick with me … and though they have merit, I can’t help but hear my own father’s voice echoing in my head, complaining about the thousands of cumulative mistakes that have led us to this point – the failed consumer rebates, conservation councils, and radical attempts to save water, like the millions of black “shade balls” Los Angeles released into reservoirs to prevent evaporation, which did nothing. And now I can’t decide whether we’re headed toward a real solution, or if we’re desperately throwing water bottles at the problem…

I open my mouth to raise such questions, but then suddenly stop myself, remembering what my father always told me about the sheep. Their behavior. How their main instinct is to follow members of the herd directly ahead of them, and how being thrown off course even the slightest bit would elicit an overwhelming primordial sense of panic that can be deadly. I did a current events presentation once about a flock of five hundred sheep somewhere in Turkey that plummeted to their deaths one by one in a ravine, because each sheep followed the one directly ahead of it, never comprehending the bigger picture. Which is worse, I wonder – watching everyone you know fall into that ravine, or shaking their reality with such force that it ruins them.

 

 

5) Alyssa

Today the toilet is really getting back at us for all the years of cruel and unsanitary labor. It’s been making strange gurgling sounds and expelling six-month-old-rotten-egg smells. So our current mission is to clean the toilet bowls the best we can, and then pour in two cups of Kelton’s trap seal liquid stuff, so our house can smell like a house again and less like a spiteful septic tank. And as supreme ruler of the household, Dad has elected Garrett and me to take care of the toilets.

This morning Dad has taken the liberty of delegating tasks through passive-aggressive Post-it notes hidden like Easter eggs all over the house. One on the fridge reads, “Six cups of water per day!” Another on our shower reads, “Dry bathing only!” which consists of shower gel and paper towels. But I think the worst one of all is the “Clean me please!” Post-it just above the toilets. Dad craftily installed bags under each toilet seat, which we are to throw out after using, like a giant camping nightmare. The bag thing is manageable, but having to actually clean the bowl in its current state is just cruel and unusual punishment.

Garrett and I start with the downstairs bathroom, seeing as our water is stored in the bathtub adjacent to the toilet. I take a look into the bathtub and realize that the water line has really receded since Saturday. This morning Mom discreetly gave away a couple of gallons to some friends around the corner. With desalination units being set up along the coast, she figures there’ll be enough water for everyone soon enough, so why not be generous? If it were up to me, I’d probably do the same.

“How are we supposed to clean a toilet if we can’t use water?” Garrett asks, as he crams his hands into those yellow cleaning gloves that squeak when you rub your fingers together.

“Dad said the cleaning supplies are under the sink. I’m sure you can figure it out.”

I pinch my nostrils together, and dare myself to look into the toilet bowl. Black liquid bubbles to the surface.

“Why do I have to do it?” he nags.

“Because we’re taking turns,” I remind him, then appeal to his male ego. “Plus you’re a guy; you’re naturally going to be better than me at plumbing.”

He nods in accordance, clearly satisfied to hear me say he’s better than me at something. Then he fishes under the sink for the cleaning supplies.

“Bleach will do,” I tell him.

He eventually settles on the green canister of powdered Comet, a bleach-based multipurpose cleaner, and goes to set it on the edge of the bathtub. The moment its bottom touches the edge, I can already see the worst-case scenario playing in my head, but it isn’t until he lets go of the Comet that my worst fear materializes into reality. The container, sitting precariously on the uneven edge, begins to slip…

My heart quicksteps. “Garrett!” I yell, which is all I can manage to get out.

He spins around, and before he’s even able to grasp the situation, the container of powdered bleach has already slipped down the side of the tub and splashed into the water.

He looks back to me, his face completely drained of color. And next comes the most torturous of silences.

He quickly goes for the Comet, but it slips from his grasp, only to float farther away. The water is already clouding with a swirling murk of poisonous multipurpose cleanser. And then reality finally hits me.

Garrett has just tainted the only water we have…

“Maybe we can save some of it,” he says as he finally grasps the Comet can and pulls it out of the water upside down, dumping even more liquefying powder into the tub.

“It’s already contaminated, idiot,” I tell him sharply.

“It’s your fault,” he snaps. “You told me to use the bleach!”

“You’ve always been a klutz! Do you have any idea what you just did?”

But instead of coming back with another defense, his face constricts, his eyes take on a shiny squint, and tears begin to seep out, his body giving way to hopelessness.

My sisterly conscience kicks in and I’m suddenly wishing I could take back my words.

“I’m sorry,” he says through snivels, burying his face in his hands.

“It’s okay,” I tell him, and I give him a hug – something I realize I haven’t done in a long time. “We have the desalination machines down by the beach. Mom and Dad are going to stock up, remember?”

Garrett nods, collecting himself.

“Drinking from the bathtub was totally disgusting anyway,” I say, and he laughs, disrupting the tears long enough to bring him back from despair.

I agree that I’ll be the one to tell Mom and Dad about what happened to the bathwater, because Garrett argued that it would sound better coming from me. Of course, the real reason is that he’s too afraid to break the news to them himself. For some reason he thinks our parents are a lot scarier than they really are … but then again, this isn’t the routine spoiled dinner, stink bomb, or broken window. “I’ll tell them, but I won’t take the blame,” I say to Garrett. “I know it was an accident, but you still have to own up to it.” Because what kind of sister would I be if I didn’t teach him the importance of taking responsibility?

I go downstairs to tell Mom and Dad, bracing for the worst – but they don’t get angry. Which, I soon realize, is much worse than if they had.

“All of it?” Dad says – as if there were a way to divide the Comet water from the drinkable water.

“It wasn’t Garrett’s fault,” I tell them, even though it was. “He was just trying to clean the toilet, like you told him.”

I expect Mom to say something like, Don’t you go putting this back on us! But she doesn’t even return my slow lob. This isn’t just a screw-up, I realize. It’s an Event. Events bypass anger, straight to damage control.

“We still have the pitcher in the fridge,” Mom says, looking at Dad.

Dad nods. “The desalination rigs should be up and running sometime today. We’ll head out there as soon as we can.”

“Maybe we can boil the water in the tub, one pot at a time,” I suggest, “and collect the steam.” We made a distillery like that back in seventh grade as part of a science lab. As I recall, we barely managed to get a test tube of water out of it – but I’ll bet Kelton could make a functional one.

Did I actually just think about asking Kelton for help?

“That’s a project for another day,” Dad says, already overwhelmed with the weight of the news I just delivered.

“I’m sorry,” I tell them. “It sucks, and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t cry over spilt milk, honey,” says Mom.

“Or poisoned water,” adds Dad, which makes me grimace, but I press my lips tight so they can’t see.

I go upstairs to notify Garrett that he won’t be put up for adoption, sent to a forced labor camp, or cooked into meat pies – but he’s nowhere to be found. I check the bathroom, the backyard, and even the garage … and that’s when I notice that his bike is missing. He took off without telling anyone, so afraid of what Mom and Dad would do.

Mom and Dad drop everything to find Garrett. They want us to split up and systematically search every place he might go. They’re a little more worried than I thought they’d be. They’re always overreacting when it comes to Garrett. He was born a month premature, and it sent my parents into this eternal hypersensitive protection mode; even to this day, if he so much as gets a scratch, it’s like they’ve got the hospital on speed dial for an emergency skin graft. I try to tell myself that it’s just my parents being parents, but today I can’t help but worry a little, considering the circumstances.

I agree to check the parks where he and his friends like to hang out, and the bike trail that runs parallel to the freeway. I go to get my bike, but both tires are flat, since I haven’t really used the thing in years, and the tires don’t take air now, no matter how much I pump. All that’s left is Garrett’s GoPed, which I have no idea how to use, and a pogo stick – which was clearly invented by Satan right after he invented the unicycle. So after exhausting all options, I realize that I’m going to have to ask Kelton for some neighborly help. Maybe he’ll let me borrow a bike – or create a work-around out of bubblegum and earwax.

I ring the doorbell and he answers, almost too quickly.

No time for small talk. I get right to the point. “I have a favor to ask. Garrett’s missing, and I need a bike.”

Rather than being weird, he responds like a regular human being. “You can use my dad’s,” he says. “I’ll go get it.”

He goes back in, and meets me at the side gate. It’s a nice bike. Then I realize that he’s bringing his own bike out as well.

“Two heads are better than one,” he says. “And it’s really not a good idea for you to be out on your own right now. Things might look quiet, but it’s always that way right before a storm.”

Scratch the normal human being thing.

“That’s okay, Kelton. You don’t have to come.”

“The cost of borrowing my dad’s bike is letting me come with you.”

He’s not mincing words any more than I am – and clearly, he’s not negotiating.

“Fine,” I tell him. Actually, I don’t really mind, considering he’s officially been moved down from orange to yellow on the threat-to-my-sanity scale.

We start with the back trails, which eventually spits us back out to the main road near Garrett’s school – my high school being just across the street. Which gives rise to the thought that maybe he’s hiding in the last place we’d expect; the place he despises more than cauliflower and piano lessons combined – Meadow Creek Elementary School.

I lean left, redirecting my bike’s trajectory, but before I can even turn, a truck flies by, nearly running us over. At first I find myself pissed that someone could drive so recklessly, but as soon as I realize what kind of truck it is, my spine stiffens, and without even thinking, my legs stop pedaling.

It’s a camouflage-green open-top military truck, packed with armed soldiers. My first thought is stupid. The kind of thing you think before your mind has time to run it past your brain.

“What the hell? Did my parents call the freaking national guard?”

“Quiet before the storm,” is all Kelton says.

My brain has kicked in by now, and I realize that this is much bigger than my AWOL brother. It’s pretty disturbing to see war machines traverse the neighborhood you grew up in – and if that’s not troubling enough, the truck turns left, directly into the high school parking lot.

“What do you think’s going on?” I ask Kelton, hoping that his extensive knowledge of useless military factoids will come in handy.

“I don’t know,” he says. “It’s too soon for martial law…”

“English, please.”

“It’s when the military takes over,” he says. “It means that government brass thinks the local police can’t handle the situation by themselves.”

“Well, that would be a good thing, right?” I say, really wanting to convince myself. I push back onto the seat of the bike. “It means we’ll be safer…”

Kelton attempts to smile. “Could be,” he says, even though I get the feeling he doesn’t believe it could be a good thing at all. “Maybe.”

Maybe. I’m so sick of maybe!

Maybe it’s martial law. Maybe FEMA will bring in water trucks. Maybe everything will be fine tomorrow. Living in this world of complete uncertainty is more and more frustrating. So I ride forward and follow the transport truck. It’s not just that I’m angry, it’s because I have to know. I need to kill the maybe. Kelton is on the same wavelength, because he’s pedaling right behind me.

We ride past lower campus, the football stadium, and then the tennis courts, just waiting to see where the truck will stop. But it isn’t until we pass the aquatics center that we get our answer.

It’s not just one truck, but a whole bunch of military vehicles. They’ve got the swimming pool on total lockdown … because high school pools were the only ones that were excluded from the Frivolous Use Initiative. They’re the only pools left that still have water.

The perimeter of the aquatics center is now guarded by soldiers with automatic rifles. And spidering into the pool are a dozen thick fire hoses – which seem to be sucking up water and depositing it into a series of tanker trucks. Then one of the military guards spots us and locks eyes. I don’t look away, but I don’t get any closer either. It’s like somehow I’m the enemy.

“I should’ve guessed it,” Kelton says, upset at himself for not knowing everything in the history of everything.

“Those idiots think we’re going to drink that?” I laugh. “I have friends on the water polo team. I’ve heard stories. They’d have to pay me to drink that water.”

“If they can filter the salt and fish guts and whale turds out of ocean water, I’m sure they can manage anything left behind by the water polo meatheads,” Kelton says.

And for some reason this strikes a chord, piquing a memory. Something that Garrett said when we were pushing that broken cart in Costco…

I gasp, and Kelton looks to me, wondering why.

“Garrett’s friend Jason has a huge fish tank! I’ll bet he went to his house to ask for water from it!” Though Garrett’s always been hard on himself, he was never much of a sulker, so it makes perfect sense that he’d try to fix the situation rather than run from it. I reach for my phone and realize I don’t have it. I left it to charge on my nightstand. Stupid.

“Can I borrow your phone? I should tell my parents. They can get there quicker.”

He hands me the phone, but after a few moments of blankly staring at the screen, I realize that I don’t even know my parents’ numbers. In fact, I don’t know anyone’s number by heart, except my stupid eighth grade boyfriend’s, who is the last person on this or any other planet that I’d call.

I don’t want to admit to Kelton my current uselessness, so I just say, “We’re not that far. Let’s just go.”