Matt de la Peña - The Living

Shy and Carmen turned to each other.

He saw in her terrified eyes that this was something serious, and he knew immediately his life would be forever changed.

The alarm was blaring again as they raced up the stairs toward the Normandie Theater. Shy’s heart pounding inside his chest and throat, his thoughts all half formed. They were in trouble. He knew that. And he had to get to his and Kevin’s assigned muster station, the balcony area of the theater.

Just yesterday, he’d met with his group of passengers and led them through all the emergency procedures and marched them out to the lifeboats—but never once had he considered that there might be an actual emergency.

He glanced at Carmen, her anxious stare fixed directly ahead as they hurried through the hall. Life-vested passengers all around them now, wide-eyed and clinging to one another, shouting over the alarm.

Carmen broke off from Shy, hurried toward the stage level of the theater, her own muster station.

Shy continued across the corridor, toward the far staircase. He had to get to the third floor. Check on his group. Then he could think. And Kevin would be there, too. But he was slowed by a mob near the elevators. They turned on him with their questions, yelling over one another, the blaring alarm drowning out almost every word.

During training week they’d spent three full days on emergency procedures. Drilled every possible scenario, again and again. But now that it was happening for real, Shy felt totally unprepared.

“I’m sorry,” he told them.

“I don’t know anything,” he told them. “We have to wait for another announcement.”

It wasn’t good enough.

The mob kept shouting at Shy and pressing in on him until he couldn’t take it anymore. He shoved past everyone and broke for the far stairs, climbed two at a time.

Kevin was on the next floor up, barking directions at passengers: “All guests must go to their muster stations! Let’s move it, people! This is an emergency!”

Shy ran up a final flight of stairs, stepped into the hall just outside the theater and repeated Kevin’s exact words to all passengers who were lost. It helped Shy as much as it helped them. Gave him something to focus on. A job. No time to think about the storm or what the ship alarm meant or the supposed eighteen feet of steel keeping them afloat.

Each passenger carried a ship card, which was like a credit card they used for everything on board. Shy flipped over the cards of lost passengers, directed them to the right muster station based on the color code on back. Some of the things he’d learned in training were actually returning to him.

All around were panicked faces, the ship pitching aggressively again, and sometimes a man or woman getting sick right there, in the middle of the hall, and the other passengers stepping around him, over him, through him, and it was all so chaotic and overwhelming, but Shy no longer had time to think about his own fear because he had a job.

Take a card.

Flip it over.

Shout the muster station name and point a direction. “Go!”

He spotted the foul-mouthed Muppet boy sitting against the far wall, rocking back and forth, alone. The kid wasn’t cursing now, he was crying and calling for his mom. Shy grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him up. “What’s your mom’s name?”

“Barbara!” the boy shouted.

“Barbara what?”

“Barbara Pierce!”

Shy dragged the kid into the theater and called this name, over and over, “Barbara Pierce! Mrs. Barbara Pierce!” above the crowd noise and the alarm and the kid’s continual sobbing, until a woman downstairs, in Carmen’s section, started waving her arms frantically and screaming the boy’s name: “Lawrence!”

Shy led the boy to the stairs, made the handoff, watched the mom wrap her son in a tight bear hug, her face wet with tears and relieved, and right then Shy decided something: This was what he had to do. Help people. Because when he helped people, he didn’t try to guess what was happening and he didn’t worry. He just acted.

He turned back to his muster station and shouted for everyone to line up, recalling many of the faces from yesterday’s departure, when he’d led them through the safety rules and marched them to the lifeboats off the Lido Deck—back when the lifeboats seemed like nothing more than decoration and all the faces he saw were full of excitement. The faces he looked at now were frantic and bloodless and lost.

“What’s happening?” they shouted at Shy.

“Where’s the captain?”

“We need to speak to the captain!”

“Why aren’t they telling us anything?”

“Please!” Shy shouted back, feeling more in charge now. “Right now we gotta line up! Like yesterday! Come on, guys, let’s go!”

The alarm cut out again.

Every passenger stopped in their tracks.

The entire theater went perfectly silent for a few long seconds, everyone looking around at each other, looking at Shy, but soon the quiet was broken, and the hum of conversation picked back up, the ship still bucking underneath them.

Shy moved to the balcony to see what was happening. The theater curtain opened and the movie screen lit up, but all it showed was static.

He spotted Carmen, standing off to the side of the stage with Vlad, one of the security guards.

Just the two of them.

Vlad talking and Carmen listening.

Her face suddenly fell and she grabbed at Vlad’s uniform shirt and let out a piercing scream that filled the entire theater.

Everyone turned to her.

Shy leaned over the railing and shouted Carmen’s name.

She didn’t look up, but covered her face and dropped to her knees, sobbing.

The ship emcee came on over the intercom again, his normally enthusiastic voice now slow and measured: “ Ladies and gentlemen. There has been a major earthquake east of Los Angeles.”

Shy looked around at the gasping crowd.

“A catastrophic earthquake. We’re still gathering information at this time, but we’ve been informed that its size is beyond anything previously recorded on the Richter scale. The epicenter appears to be near Palm Springs, but the effects are much more widespread, reaching all the way into Mexico.”

Shy gripped the railing.

If the earthquake affected Mexico, it affected San Diego, too. Which meant Otay Mesa.

His body went cold as he thought of his family.

“We have been advised to discontinue the voyage until we regain satellite connection. Again, ladies and gentlemen. Approximately thirty-five minutes ago, a catastrophic earthquake hit California and we have been advised…”

Shy only caught bits and pieces of the rest of the announcement. Something about connecting to a news feed. About passengers remaining in their muster stations and the threat of rough seas. Mostly, though, Shy tried to make sense of his own jumbled thoughts.

An earthquake in California.

Off the Richter scale.

It was the “Big One” everyone had always talked about.

And how bad was “catastrophic”? Did that mean everyone was dead? Was his family dead? Had all the buildings been leveled? He tried to imagine his street back home. His high school and apartment complex. The hospital where his mom and sister sat waiting for the medicine to fix Miguel.

Shy’s breathing started going way too fast, like he was hyperventilating. Because his thoughts now turned to the ship. All the way out here with no protection. The storm tossing them around and the waves growing and what did the emcee mean by a threat of rough seas? Wasn’t it rough already?

Shy kneeled down and tried to calm his breathing but he couldn’t. They had to hurry and get to Hawaii. Or turn around and go back home. They couldn’t just sit out here in the middle of the ocean; they had to do something.