Matt de la Peña - The Living

“You feel better?” Shy asked Addie.

She shrugged. Something was seriously bothering her.

Shy thought he understood what it was. “I know you wanna look for your old man,” he said, “but everybody’s supposed to be coming to this meeting, right? So I guess…”

“He’ll either be there or he won’t,” Addie said, finishing Shy’s thought. She glanced down at the ground, all sad-looking.

It went quiet again, so Shy told Carmen: “Addie’s dad was on the ship.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured that out,” Carmen said.

“No, but then he got on a boat and headed here,” Shy added. “She’s not sure if he made it or not.”

“Oh,” Carmen said. “Sorry to hear that.”

It went quiet again, until Carmen said to Addie: “No offense, girl, but you look like you might need to spend some time with a bar of soap.”

“Come on, Carm,” Shy said. “She was in here resting.”

“I know that, Shy. I’m saying, I can show her where the freshwater pool is. We still got time before people start showing up at the restaurant.”

“Wait, what?” Shy tried to imagine them hanging out, just the two of them. “Or how about we could all go together,” he said.

Carmen rolled her eyes and looked at Addie. “You see how this vato is, right? Next he’s gonna wanna soap up your back.”

Addie smiled uncomfortably and looked to Shy for help. But before he could say anything, Carmen was walking into the room and grabbing Addie’s stack of fresh clothes off the foot of the bed. She linked her elbow in Addie’s and started them out the door, telling Shy: “Meet you in the restaurant in fifteen, Sancho.”

Addie looked over her shoulder at Shy, but he was helpless. Carmen did what she wanted. Nothing he said was gonna change that.

Shy sat down at an empty table inside the buzzing restaurant. There was food on a buffet-style counter near the miniature stage: chips, cookies, pretzels, oranges, bags of beef jerky and hundreds of personal-sized bottles of water. Nothing that needed refrigeration, because, as Shoeshine had told him, the island didn’t have electricity.

Shy started wolfing down everything he could get his hands on, and he looked around at all the survivors. A couple of them had worked with him on the cruise ship. Everyone else had been a passenger. They were all wearing clothes left behind by previous hotel guests or the people who worked on the island.

Shoeshine wasn’t there.

Neither was Marcus.

But he recognized many of the other faces. One of the women the oilman had shown the ring to by the pool. An older gray-haired man from Shy’s muster station. A mustached guy he always saw at the blackjack table in the casino. When Shy noticed that someone was staring back at him, his stomach dropped.

It was the man in the black suit. Bill.

He was all the way across the restaurant and no longer in his suit—their eyes stayed locked for a few long seconds until Shy looked away. He flashed back to when he helped the guy get out from under the chandelier in the Destiny Dining Room. He remembered the heat from the fire as he’d leaped through the flames. How he and Kevin got the man onto one of the lifeboats. How was it that this Bill guy was still alive and Kevin was dead?

Carmen and Addie walked into the restaurant just then and headed straight toward Shy’s table. Carmen pointed at him and said something he couldn’t make out and both girls laughed a little. When they sat down he frowned and said: “What’s so funny?”

“That’s between me and her,” Carmen said.

Shy turned to Addie, who was grinning. It didn’t seem as fake this time. She was dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized blue T-shirt, hair all wet and clean-looking. She looked a hundred times better than she had on the lifeboat. “Addie, you gonna help me out here?”

Carmen cut in again. “This is an A and B, bro. So why don’t you C your ass out of it.”

Addie shrugged.

“That’s like something you tell people in third grade,” Shy said to Carmen.

“Sometimes you gotta speak to children in a language they understand.” She winked at Addie, all proud of herself.

Before Shy could think of anything to say back, three people from the research crew walked to the front of the restaurant and stood near the tiny stage. The one with the beard, Greg, tapped a fork against a drinking glass until everyone quieted down and faced them.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “As many of you already know, we were sent here to study the effects of the tsunamis on this tiny island. Some of the most unique sea life in the world lives in the reefs off the northern coast. However, as soon as we discovered you guys, our agenda changed. We’ve radioed back to our base and received clearance to cancel our original mission effective immediately. I’m happy to report that we will be setting off for California tonight.”

Everyone cheered.

Shy felt a surge of emotion as he looked around at all the happy faces. He thought of his mom and his sister and his nephew. He couldn’t wait to get back to Otay Mesa to try and track them down.

“The coast guard has agreed to meet us halfway and guide us back to Long Beach Harbor.”

A man with his hair pulled back into a ponytail stepped forward. “Many of you have asked about the state of the West Coast after the earthquakes. We’ve been hesitant to say too much until we gathered more facts. But I can now say this: there is major damage and a pretty significant loss of life near all the fault lines. But rescue crews from all over the country, and even other parts of the world, are there in full force. They are confident that the affected states will be built back up much sooner than anyone expected.”

“The moral of the story,” the bearded man said, “never underestimate the resilience of the American people.”

Shy watched the crowd of survivors smile and turn to each other. Everyone was as excited as he was. But at the same time, he wanted to hear more details about the earthquake. He wanted to know specifics.

The ponytailed man raised his hand, waiting for the reaction to die down. “The fact is, you people may have caught the worst of it. Scientists are saying that the tsunamis you experienced were the most powerful in recorded history. As you can see, they’ve all but decimated this island. They also caused major damage in Hawaii, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.”

Shy was now wondering if these guys were trying to sugarcoat shit. Just tell us the truth, he wanted to say.

The man in the beard looked at his watch. “I’m sure you all have more questions,” he said, “but there will be plenty of time on our voyage home. That must be a great word to hear right about now, huh? ‘Home.’ ” He motioned a fourth man up from the front table. “Larry here is going to run you through the launch procedures. We’re leaving tonight at seven-thirty, just as the sun sets. It’s imperative that everyone follow his directions exactly. We want to get you all home as safely and efficiently as possible. And this includes our friends currently recovering in the penthouse.”

Shy and Carmen nodded to each other, thinking of Rodney. Shy wanted to raise his hand and ask about San Diego, but the first three researchers were already walking away.

The guy who’d just been called up to the stage, Larry, began describing how they needed everyone to line up single file along the shore by six o’clock. Motorized rafts would take them out to the ship, a dozen at a time. The sick would be loaded last. They had a team of fifteen, he said, and if they did things as efficiently as they hoped, the ship would be on its way by seven-thirty. Their estimated arrival back in Long Beach was roughly two days.