Susan Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It

“Mrs. Nesbitt, you’re a genius,” I said. “I got oil lamps.”

“We’re both geniuses,” she said.

We got in the van and waited for Mom. When she showed up, she had a dozen flats. I had no idea how we were going to fit them in, but it turned out to be easy. Mrs. Nesbitt sat on my lap, and we used up all her space with flats of tomatoes and cucumbers and string beans and strawberries.

“The more we harvest, the longer the canned foods will last,” Mom said. “Okay, is there anything anyone didn’t buy that we might need?”

“Batteries,” I said. The transistor radio in the shop had made me think of them.

“Matches,” Mrs. Nesbitt said.

“That convenience store should have them,” Mom said. “And it doesn’t sell gas, so it should be pretty quiet.”

She was right. There was only one other car in the lot. Mom bought all their batteries and boxed matches and bars of soap. She even bought a coffee cake and a box of donuts.

“Just in case the world ends tomorrow,” she said. “We might as well enjoy today.”

We dropped Mrs. Nesbitt off at her house and we all carried food and supplies for her. We didn’t fuss over which can of soup belonged to who or whether she was entitled to more candles. We just divvied stuff up, so that she had plenty. We kept the cat food and the vegetable flats. I made sure she had one of the oil lamps and oil to go with it.

It took a long time to get her stuff out, and a longer time to unload the car when we finally got home. Mom got shopping bags and we filled them and put everything in the dining room, except for the donuts. Those we ate as soon as we were finished.

“I’ll sort things out later,” she said. “Thanks, kids. I never could have done this without you.” And then she started crying.

That was two hours ago. I don’t think she’s stopped crying yet.

No school today.

The electricity came back on around 4 this morning. It’s still dark and cloudy outside, so it felt good to be able to turn lights back on.

Horton has been acting like a maniac the past couple of days. He seems to wake up with a start from his naps and he’s been running around all night long, hopping from bedroom to bedroom. He raced onto my bed around midnight and yowled at me—which woke me up, naturally. Then he sniffed my face to make sure it was me. We both fell asleep, but he woke me up again around 2, when he began running through the house, meowing like crazy. Exactly what none of us needs right now.

There was an e-mail from Matt waiting for us. He’s fine, everything there is fine, although they’re having blackouts, also, and school remains on schedule. He says it’s tricky taking finals with limited light, but the professors all say that’ll be taken into account when they’re marked. He’s still planning to get back here on Wednesday.

Mom let Jonny and me each have half an hour on the Internet. I used part of my time to go to Brandon’s fan site. There was a thread where we were all supposed to say where we live and how conditions are. A lot of names were missing, some of them I know from people who live around New York or on the West Coast. There were 14 PMs waiting for me. Twelve people asked how I was and if I’d heard anything about Brandon. The other two just asked if I’d heard anything about Brandon.

With all that had been going on, I’d forgotten that Brandon’s training in LA now. I guess no one has heard from him or seen any reports about him.

I posted about how things were in northeastern PA, but added I hadn’t seen or heard about Brandon. It’s not like I run into his parents or Mrs. Daley every day, but I guess I’ve made it sound like I’m closer to them than I really am. Or maybe everyone’s just desperate to hear how Brandon is, to make sure he’s still alive.

I’ve got to believe he is.

Mom and Jonny and I spent most of the day putting the food and supplies away. I don’t know what Horton’s complaining about. Jonny got him enough food to last for years. Mom was almost laughing at herself when she looked at all the food she made us get. With the electricity back on, things seem a lot more normal. And with the day so cloudy, you can’t really see the moon hovering.

Uh-oh. The lights are flickering. I hope we’re not about to lose.

The president was on TV tonight. He didn’t say much that we didn’t already know. Tsunamis and floods. Untold numbers of people dead, the moon out of its orbit, etc. Monday is a national day of mourning, and we should all pray a lot.

He did say, and he didn’t look too happy about it, that we needed to prepare ourselves for even worse. Jonny asked Mom what that could mean, but Mom said she didn’t know, but she guessed the president did only he didn’t want to tell us because he was an evil jerk.

That was the first normal-sounding thing Mom’s said in days, and we all laughed.

The president said that almost every offshore oil refinery was gone, and that it was believed most of the oil tankers had been lost at sea. I guess that was part of what’s going to be worse.

Mom said later that didn’t just mean oil companies would gouge us, but that there might not be enough gas and oil to heat all the houses in the winter. But I don’t think that’s true. It’s only May now, and there’s got to be time to get oil over here. They can’t let people freeze to death.

When the president finished, he said that the governors of every state would follow, and we should watch to see what our governor had to say.

Then the governor came on, and he didn’t look too happy about things, either. He said there’d be no school throughout the state Monday or Tuesday, but that school should resume on Wednesday, although some districts might not be able to. He said the state was looking into the possibility of rationing gas, but as of the moment, he asked for an honor system. Only get gas if you have less than a quarter tank. He also said that if any gas stations were found to be overcharging, they’d face serious consequences. Mom laughed at that. He didn’t know when the blackouts would stop. We weren’t alone, he said. Just about every state had reported some power outages.

Jonny was upset because the governor didn’t say anything about the Phillies and the Pirates. The Phillies were in San Francisco on Wednesday and no one had mentioned if they made it out okay.

Mom said the governor has a lot of things on his mind and a lot of things he has to tell us, but then she paused and said, “You know, he should have told us if the Phillies and the Pirates are okay. I bet the governor of New York told everyone how the Yankees and Mets are.”

I thought about saying no one makes any announcements about how figure skaters are, but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

I’ll feel better when Matt is home.

Jonny asked this afternoon if we could go to McDonald’s or someplace. The electricity has been so on and off the past few days that Mom emptied the freezer and we’ve finished everything that was in it.

So Mom said we might as well try, and we got in the van and went food hunting.

The first thing we noticed was that gas had gone up. It’s $7 a gallon now, and there were lines at all the gas stations.

“How much gas do we have in the tank?” I asked.

“We’re okay for a while,” Mom said. “But I think we’ll switch over to Matt’s car next week. This thing gets zero mileage.”

“When do you think gas prices will go down?” I asked. “They can’t stay this high forever.”

“They’ll go up before they go down,” Mom said. “We’ll have to be very careful about where we drive to. No more hopping in the car and just going someplace.”