DRY - by Neal Shusterman

31) Jacqui

How many lifetimes have I gone through since the riot at the beach? I’m used to life changing in the flicker of an instant, but the Tap-Out has left every single moment a threat. How I live now is not the same as any of my yesterdays, and that void that always taunts me is now a moving target, making me lose all sense of direction.

But right now I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is having a nice long drink. Doesn’t even have to be cold. It just has to be liquid.

Our unlikely crew of accidental survivors now stands outside Kelton’s family bug-out, while Kelton makes a big production of opening the door.

“Welcome to Castle McCracken!”

“Just let us in already,” says Garrett.

Finally Kelton turns the key and pulls the door wide.

Castle McCracken my ass! The bug-out has bugged out. The place is a mess. There are cans on the ground, clothes tossed everywhere. Empty cereal boxes dumped on their sides. The place is small, but seems even smaller with all the junk spread around it. It’s like a bear slipped in through the keyhole.

“This isn’t right…” says Kelton. “We didn’t leave it this way…”

“When was the last time you were here?” Henry asks, examining a spoon with peanut butter caked on it.

“Maybe a year ago?” Kelton says, like it’s a question rather than a response.

It looks like I’m the only one with the courage to speak the obvious. “There was a break-in.”

But Kelton shakes his head. “There’s no sign of that. The lock was intact, and it’s not ransacked.”

“Looks ransacked to me,” says Garrett.

“Yeah,” agrees Kelton, “but not in the way a burglar would.”

Exploring deeper, Kelton pushes open a door to a bedroom. Two beds. One is made, the other disheveled. There are comic books on the floor.

Kelton seems to reel out of his skin. “No!” he says. “No no no no no!”

He doubles back, pushing past the rest of us and to the kitchen, pulling open cabinet doors. The cabinets are virtually bare.

“No no no no NOOOO!”

He kneels, pulling open a trapdoor, and drops inside. We can only watch his panic, not wanting to make it our own. He bumbles around down there. I can hear the ponging of jugs – and he hurls up a couple of them up. When I look down, there are a whole bunch of plastic jugs down there. Empty. All empty.

“If it’s not a break-in, then what the hell happened here?” I ask.

“My brother happened here!” he says, with so much anguish in his eyes, I have to look away. “This is where Brady must have been living! We knew he lost his job and bailed on his roommates. We thought he might be living with his girlfriend. It never occurred to us that he might come here. Where he knew there was food and water enough to last for months…”

And I realize that “was” is the operative word here. “Was” is the difference between salvation, and doom.

 

 

32) Alyssa

This is not the end of the world, I tell myself. This is just a glitch. And now I’m grateful that Henry was so obstinate about not opening the box of ÁguaViva. With all the forces that have been mobilized to bring relief, it will be a while until the supply chain can meet the demand – and the ÁguaViva will get us through that time. There will be people – lots of people – who won’t be able to hold out that long, but we won’t be among them. Thanks to Henry. He wanted so badly to be the hero. Now he is.

Kelton keeps digging through the storage space below, pulling out every plastic water jug, trying to get even the tiniest drops out, but all the jugs are open, and any moisture that had been left in them has long since dried up.

“I can’t believe Brady did this!” he wails. “How could he do this? He knows better!”

“Knew better,” corrects Jacqui, and I hit her hard enough to generate a warning glare, which I return with equal ferocity. Has she already forgotten how terrible Brady’s death was, or is she so callous that she just doesn’t care?

Jacqui turns to the pantry and starts pulling out Styrofoam noodle cups. “Well, at least we have plenty of chicken-flavored Top Ramen,” she says. “‘Just add hot water.’” Kelton groans.

I turn to Henry, who has been unusually quiet through all of this. He offers me a slim, pained grin, and I try to offer him one back that’s not quite so stretched.

“Some alkaline-infused goji berry mineral water sounds really good right about now,” I tell him.

“It does, doesn’t it?” he says, with a little chuckle.

“Kelton, give it up,” says Jacqui. “The bug-out’s a bust. Back to the truck.”

Kelton is reluctant. He keeps digging through the same empty jugs, like he’s going to find something different. Finally he gives up. He climbs out of the crawl space and kicks the jugs in frustration. They make a sad noise, like muted church bells. When we leave, he doesn’t even close the door, because what would be the point?

We make our way down to the truck, which still waits for us by the upturned stump, and Jacqui hops in the back, pushing things out of the way until she gets to the box. She hoists it and brings it out, setting it down. The corners are a little dented, but otherwise it’s intact. She attacks the tape with her nails, but it’s thick strapping tape, and there are multiple layers.

“Does anyone have a Swiss army knife?” She turns to Kelton. “How about you, Survival Boy?”

“Yeah, there are plenty of knives back at the bug-out,” he says, but none of us, least of all Jacqui, wants to wait that long.

“I’ll go get one,” Henry volunteers, but he’s overruled.

“Forget it,” says Jacqui, and holds out a hand to him. “Keys, please.”

Henry takes a step back from her as if there were a weapon in her empty hand, but Jacqui’s wriggling fingers are insistent. I’m pretty sure I know why he doesn’t want to hand them over. Once Jacqui has those keys, she’s never giving them back to him. In the end, he relents, and hands the keys over to Jacqui. I wonder why he didn’t just take over the task of opening the box himself – after all, it’s his box – but the thought flits out of my mind before I even have time to really consider it.

Jacqui finds the sharpest key and starts slashing at the tape, then sawing it, then stabbing it.

“C’mon!” says Garrett. “Hurry up!”

Jacqui grunts in frustration. “What idiot tapes up a box like this?”

Finally she gets a good size hole in the tape and starts working it larger, until she can get her hand in and rip a whole flap off the top of the box. Then, with the box finally open, she just stands there. Instead of reaching in and pulling out water bottles, she just stares into the box.

“Aw, you gotta be kidding!” she says. “No freaking way!”

“What?” I say. “What is it?”

Instead of answering, she dumps the box over, and out spill hundreds of glossy brochures.

ÁguaViva! Hydrate with Elegance!

Pictures of slim, happy people jogging and a glistening mountain spring that makes my soul yearn to be in the picture.

The sight of the pamphlets hits me like radiation. That is to say, I feel the sudden blast of this terrible truth, yet I know the full ramification of it hasn’t settled in yet. But it will. I think to the empty jugs in the bug-out. Then flash to the people behind the football field fence so desperate for water that they would sell their souls for a thimbleful. And then I flash to the rush Henry was in when he traded the box to get the truck keys back. How he wanted to get away as quickly as we could. Before that soldier opened the box. And I realize that this is not just a tragic mistake. Henry knew. He knew all along. Which is why I’m not entirely surprised when Garrett says:

“Henry’s gone!”

 

 

33) Henry

In life, one should always have an exit strategy for any given situation. I’ve always known this – lived by it, even – but in this particular instance, I was caught woefully off guard. It never occurred to me that the bug-out would be a nonstarter. Because as much as I dislike Psycho-Ginger, I believed he had our backs. Serves me right for letting my guard down.

In a perfect world, no one would ever have opened that box. It would have been like Schrödinger’s infamous cat. As long as the box stayed closed, there might actually have been water in there. At least as far as the others were concerned. And who’s to say if their reality was any less real than mine?

But when the box was opened, that all became moot. If I had my wits about me, I would have slipped out and taken off with the truck the moment I realized there was no water in the bug-out. I should have abandoned any and all hope of being this ill-fated group’s glorious savior, cut my losses, and bailed. But I hesitated. And that hesitation cost me everything.

So now I’m left to stumble through the woods, no vehicle, thirsty beyond belief. I remember the way we came. I know how far it is back to civilization, if you could even call it civilization anymore. My plan is simple. I will make my way back to Charity and her freeway commune. I will make myself an indispensable part of her little collective, and I will receive enough water to survive. It will be a long, difficult trip, and although I have doubts as to whether or not I can make it, I have to try. It’s all a matter of risk tolerance, and in this volatile world, what other choice do I have?

But before I even get back to the road, I’m tackled to the ground. My first thought is that it’s a bear – but then I realize it’s much worse.

 

 

34) Kelton

People trying to escape don’t act in the smartest of ways. For example: Henry Not-Roycroft. He took a direct path away from the truck – straight up the slope of the wash. But to get back to the road, he’d have to turn right once he reached the crest of the little ridge – so, just like in hunting a small-brained quadruped, I triangulated his course and ran the hypotenuse.

I scrape my knuckles on a rock pretty badly as I’m taking him down, but the pain is a good kind of pain. It helps me to focus my anger where it belongs.

Now I’ve got him pinned with my knee on his xiphoid, making it hard for him to breathe, much less move. Quickly I clamp my right thumb and forefinger around his windpipe. I’ve seen this in demonstration videos, so I know the theoreticals, but in practice it’s different than I imagined. The windpipe doesn’t stay put. It shifts and slides around. It takes a moment until I’m sure I have it. I know because I can’t hear him breathing. With all the air pushed out of him with my knee, it will only take about ten seconds to render him unconscious. Twenty seconds to give him brain damage. Thirty seconds to kill him. My fight function is now engaged. That, combined with my rage and my thirst, leaves me uncertain of which of the three outcomes I want.

“Kelton, enough!”

I snap out of it at the sound of Alyssa’s voice and release Henry’s throat, grateful that she was there to make the right decision for me, because I know I might not have. Henry gasps and coughs and gasps again. There’s no fight or even flight left in him now. He’s little more than a rag doll on the ground, just as he was when I dislocated his shoulder.

“Call off your goddamn pit bull!” he rasps.

“It’s okay, Kelton,” Alyssa says. “He’s not going anywhere.”

And so I let him go. Not because I want to, but because the orders Alyssa is giving me now are the first things she’s said to me all day.

By now, Garrett and Jacqui have arrived. And it looks like I’m not the only one harboring homicidal intentions, because Jacqui pulls out my gun and aims it point-blank at Henry’s forehead.

“I will be solving so many problems if I pull this trigger,” she growls.

“Stop it!” demands Alyssa. “Killing him won’t solve anything!”

“All right, maybe not, but it’ll feel really good.”

“Put that away!” Alyssa yells, but Jacqui is not following anyone’s commands, least of all Alyssa’s.

And then Henry begins to grovel for his life. “Please,” he whimpers. “I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry for everything…”

“The only thing you’re sorry for is being caught,” says Jacqui, which is probably true.

And then Garrett, feeling this betrayal more deeply than anyone, says, “Do it! Do it, Jacqui!”

Alyssa reels at that, horrified. “Garrett!”

“Do it! He deserves it! He lied to us! He tricked us! He pretended to be our friend!”

As I recall, Garrett had also wanted me to pull the trigger on the blond water-zombie at the beach.

Now a stain spreads across Henry’s crotch. He’s wet himself. Not much of a stain – he doesn’t have much water in him. I have no sympathy. Maybe I will if Jacqui shoots him. Right now, not so much.

Jacqui looks at Garrett, almost as surprised by his outburst as Alyssa is. Then she ejects the magazine and fires the bullet that’s already in the chamber into the sky. It echoes back and forth between the mountains around us.

“What is wrong with you?” Alyssa yells.

“If I didn’t shoot it in the sky, it would be in his skull right now,” Jacqui says.

“More likely the ground right behind his skull,” I point out, being that it’s such close range.

Jacqui storms off, and Alyssa burns Garrett a glare. “Go with her. Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“Like I could stop her.”

Alyssa holds her brother’s gaze, and I know what she’s thinking. Are you broken, Garrett? Has all of this broken you worse than it’s broken the rest of us? And if the gun was in your hands, would Henry be dead now?

“Just go,” she says.

Now it’s just me, Alyssa, and Henry. He’s recovered enough to make a run for it, but he doesn’t even try because he knows I’ll just take him down again, and he’s deathly afraid of me. Funny, but no one has ever actually thought of me as a legitimate threat before. No one’s ever called me a pit bull. Mostly, kids like Henry have either ignored me or seen me as a joke. But now I’m Kelton the Intimidator. If I survive this, I’ll have a shirt made.

“I just want to know why,” Alyssa says.

Henry can’t look at her. Good. He doesn’t deserve to look at her anymore.

“If I didn’t have something to offer, you would have just left me there in Dove Canyon to die along with everyone else!”

“So you lied.”

“I never said there was water in that box. You just assumed.”

Alyssa looks like she might kick him. That look is sweet revenge. Almost as good as if she actually did kick him. But since she doesn’t, I do a little bit of my own tormenting.

“If we change our minds, there’s a shovel back in the bug-out,” I say. “And the ground here on the ridge is soft enough to dig a grave…”

“I’ll make it up to you!” Henry pleads. “All of you. I promise.”

“Just shut up, Henry,” Alyssa says. “Or I swear I’ll get that shovel myself.”

 

 

35) Alyssa

Henry may have killed us all.

I don’t want that thought in my head. I want to focus on the solution, not the problem. But the thought keeps worming back in, undermining every attempt to rout it out. I think of all the things we might have done differently if we knew there was no water in that box – including leaving Henry in his fancy air-conditioned house. But who am I kidding? If I knew he had no water left, and he wanted to come with us, I would have fought to bring him with us.

But had we known, maybe we would have made a real back-up plan. Now we have nothing. Nothing but despair and that singular nagging thought: Henry may have killed us all.

We take him back to the bug-out with us – because if we just let him go, he’ll probably die before he gets out of the woods, and I don’t want that on my conscience. Jacqui insists on binding his hands so he can’t do much of anything – and so he won’t forget he is now under house arrest. I don’t argue with her because maybe it’s the right move. I trusted Henry and look where it got us. Even Kelton agrees that it’s better having him under our watchful eyes than out there where we can’t see what he’s up to. From this moment on, the best policy is suspicion on all fronts.

In the bug-out we strategize our next move. Garrett is despondent, just slumped in a corner. “I’m conserving energy,” he says. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Conserve energy?”

“We have enough gas to get back to the freeway,” I tell everyone. “We’ll find Charity, let her know what happened. She’ll help us.”

“If she hasn’t been taken out by marauders,” says Jacqui – a ray of light, as always.

“I have a better idea,” says Kelton. Then he searches through a few drawers, until coming up with a map. He spreads it out on the small kitchen table.

“We’re here,” he says, pointing. “And Charity’s there – about thirty miles away. But look at this.” He brings his finger to a long, Y-shaped lake west of us. “The San Gabriel Reservoir.”

Jacqui scoffs at it. “Haven’t you heard? The reservoirs are all dry. That’s what you get for looking at an old paper map.”

“Yes,” says Kelton. “The Cogswell and Morris Reservoirs are gone – but the lake behind the San Gabriel Dam is maintained for firefighting aircraft. I’m sure of it.”

“How can you be sure about anything?” Jacqui snorts.

“Because it’s why my father chose this spot for the bug-out. It will be way down from its usual level – but there’ll still be some water there.”

By checking the distances on the map, I can tell it’s just ten miles west of us – much closer than going back to Charity.

“We’ll have to go totally off-road for a while. We can cross this ridge here,” Kelton says, dragging his finger along the paper, “and pick up East Fork Road here. That will wind to the lake.”

“Sounds like a plan,” says Henry from his spot in the corner. Jacqui kicks him – not hard enough to hurt him, but just enough to make it clear his input is not welcome anymore.

“Are we all game for this?” Kelton asks.

The answer is no, but no one admits that. Because if we want to live, it’s the best choice we have.

There are a few backpacks and drawstring bags around the bug-out. I gather them up and hand them out. “Let’s look around and grab things we might need – but don’t weigh yourselves down.”

I’m about to hand one to Henry, but he holds up his bound hands and shrugs. If I want him to participate, I’ll need to cut him loose. So I don’t give him a bag.

Then Jacqui does something I’d never expect her to. She gives Kelton back his gun.

“Here, take it,” she says. “I don’t want it in my belt anymore; it’s giving me a rash.” Then she glances over at Henry. “Besides, I don’t trust myself with it, considering our current company.”

Kelton takes the gun back, surprised by the offer. “So you trust me now?”

“Absolutely not,” Jacqui says. “But at least if you do something stupid, it will be your problem, not mine.”

Jacqui herself is a loaded gun with a hair trigger – and the fact that she, in this moment, is able to recognize that, makes her seem slightly less mental. Maybe even trustworthy.

I open the pantry, trying to see if there’s anything other than the dry ramen cups. Nothing, but that doesn’t mean we won’t find something lying around.

“We should probably eat anything we find that’s actually edible,” I tell the others. “We’ll need the energy.” I pick up the spoon with dried peanut butter, hold it out to Garrett, and he gives me a look of profound disgust. “Beggars can’t be choosers,” I tell him.

“Obviously you’ve never met the beggars in Laguna Beach,” Jacqui says. “I happen to know several of them.” And then she starts to mimic them in various different voices. “‘Hey, lady, this sandwich has a bite taken out of it!’ ‘Excuse me, but is this bread gluten-free?’ ‘Just a dollar, dude? Maybe you could send me a little more on Venmo.’”

It sets me off giggling, which gets everyone else laughing. And it occurs to me that even in these do-or-die moments, there’s still space for us to laugh. I guess that means we still have some fight left in us.

 

 

36) Kelton

There is absolutely no reason for me to take comic books with me. They will take up space, and I’m definitely not going to be reading them. But there they are on the floor of the second bedroom. The room that was supposed to be for me and Brady if our family ever had to use the bug-out. As I lean over to pick them up, I can smell his sheets. Sour. There’s no air-conditioning in the bug-out – just a fan, powered off the same miniature solar grid that powers the lights. The fan probably drains the battery halfway through the night.

It smells like his room used to when he lived at home, a faint vinegary reek that would cause Mom to break out the Febreze on a regular basis. After today I will never smell that again.

I’m taking his comic books. I don’t need them, but I don’t care. I’m taking them anyway.

Then, when I look up, Alyssa’s standing at the door. I don’t know how long she’s been there watching me.

I pick up the comic books and put them on the bed. I won’t let her see me pack them. This is between me and Brady.

“My brother was a real screw-up,” I tell her. “I mean, he uses up everything in the bug-out, doesn’t answer our calls, and then shows up at home just in time to get himself killed. If that’s not the definition of screw-up, I don’t know what is.”

“I’m sorry, Kelton.”

And then things start coming out of my mouth that I don’t mean to say out loud, but I can’t stop myself. “I don’t have a brother anymore. I might not have parents. I don’t even know what happens if I live through this. I mean, if my parents are gone too, what then? Do I go to Boise to live with my goddamn Aunt Eunice and her cats? How is that better than dying of thirst?”

“Tomorrow is going to have to take care of itself for a while,” Alyssa says. Then she adds, “Yesterday, too.”

I know what yesterday she’s talking about. I force myself to hold her gaze, no matter how raw and stupidly naked I feel in front of her – and make no mistake about it, this is the true meaning of nakedness. If I had no clothes on, that would be nothing compared to the kind of bareness that’s exposed to her right now.

“Saying I’m sorry for that thing I did in eighth grade feels stupid – because sorry isn’t enough. Sorry is almost an insult.”

“You’re right, it’s not enough,” she says. “People go to jail for stuff like that.”

“True. But I’m a minor,” I point out. “I’d have just gotten juvie and counseling – but yeah, I get your point.”

I look down at the comic book in my hand, which I’ve managed to spindle without even realizing it. I lay it flat and try to smooth it out. “I won’t even say, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time,’ because even then, I knew it was a really bad idea.”

“But you did it anyway.”

“Haven’t you ever done something really stupid, and you knew it was stupid but did it anyway?”

She bristles at the suggestion. Maybe because she’s never done anything so entirely stupid and misguided in her whole life. I realize she has not once asked me why I did it. Maybe because she knows. The truth is, loneliness and hormones and parents who keep you like a fish in a bowl can do weird things to a person. Life through a fishbowl lens is only one step away from life behind the lens of a drone’s camera.

“It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever done, and I was so disgusted with myself, I never did it again.” I hope she believes me, because it’s true.

Then Alyssa asks me the last thing I expect her to ask.

“So what did you see?”

“Huh?” I say, not because I didn’t hear her, but because I’m not ready to go there.

“You looked, you saw. I want to know what you stole from me that night.”

I wonder what she’s expecting me to say. I wonder what she wants me to say. It doesn’t matter, because I just tell the truth.

“It was the week of that air-band contest at school – you remember that?”

She groans. “I try not to.”

“Anyway, you and your friends had been practicing a routine, lip-synching some ridiculous pop song, but I guess you couldn’t get the moves right because that night you were in your room by yourself. You turned on the song, and you were practicing in the mirror.”

“Really?” she says flatly. “Is that what you wasted your drone on?”

“You were using Kingston’s brush as a microphone, but dog hair kept whipping in your face, and it kept throwing you off. I remember thinking, Here she is, looking in the mirror, watching herself doing something so silly and so dumb, but she doesn’t feel dumb about it at all. But me? I can’t even look in the mirror and do anything without feeling like an idiot.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Kelton,” she says. “I did feel like an idiot. But I did it anyway.”

Then she asks me to stand up for a second, so I do. I’m facing her, not quite sure what this is about … until she suddenly hauls off and slaps me.

This is not your ordinary slap. This is like a Major League Baseball swing, with a wind-up and full follow-through. My head whips nearly around with the force of it. It leaves me in shock. I can’t even speak, and I know there’s going to be a puffy red handprint on my left cheek for a good long time.

Finally I find my words somewhere in the far corner of my rattled brain. “I guess I deserved that,” I tell her.

“Yes, you did,” she says.

“Are we even?”

“No, we’re not.”

I sigh. “I didn’t think so.”

“Part of your punishment is that we’ll never be even.”

And I get that. The worst part about doing something inexcusable is that you can never take it back. It’s like breaking a glass. It can’t unbreak. The best you can do is sweep it up, and hope you don’t step on the slivers you left behind.

But then she leans in and places a gentle kiss on my stinging cheek, like a mother kissing a little kid’s boo-boo. She leaves without a word of explanation – and I come to the grand realization that from now and until the end of the universe, if I live a hundred thousand lifetimes, I will never understand girls. And somehow that’s okay, I think.