Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

“It sounds like she does,” Mom said. “But there are no doctors, no hospitals anymore. Not here. All we can do is make Julie comfortable.”

“No, Mom,” I said. “No.”

“You have to be strong, Miranda,” Mom said. “I’m going to work by the window, where your father was. You stay on the ground. Can you do that? Can you work on the rubble down here?”

I nodded, but I could hardly hear what she was saying. Julie was badly hurt and Alex was still missing. Charlie was in the cellar, dead for all we knew. Lisa and Gabriel were trapped, and we had no equipment, nothing but our hands and our will, to get them out.

Syl had told me not to think. I did as she’d said.

It took a few minutes before Syl spotted Jon. I stopped working and raced toward him. Dad and Matt had improvised a stretcher and were carefully carrying Julie.

I didn’t dare ask, but I looked straight at Matt, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.

For a horrible instant I thought he meant Julie had died. But then I heard Dad say, “Hold on, sweetie. We’re almost there.”

“Alex?” Julie asked.

I’d gotten close enough so she could see and hear me. “He’s not back yet,” I said. “He’ll be home soon.”

“I can’t move,” Julie said. “I tried to. I really tried, but I can’t. And I feel strange, like my body isn’t attached to me anymore. I’ve never felt like this, not ever.”

“It’s okay,” Dad said, bending over to stroke her forehead. “Your back is hurt, that’s all. You’ll be up and around in no time.”

She looked so small, so young. I kissed her on her cheek. “Alex will be so proud of you,” I said. “You’re being very brave.”

“He’ll be mad,” she said. “He gets mad at me when I do things he doesn’t like.”

“He loves you more than anything,” I said.

“We’d better get her inside,” Dad said. “Where’s Laura?”

“Working by the window,” I said.

“Get her and send her in,” Dad said. “She can watch after Julie while the rest of us work.”

I walked rapidly toward Mom, and for the first time I can ever remember, I cherished the sensation of movement. Hours ago I’d been trapped in the closet, and now I was outside and I could walk and run. Julie had lost that, most likely forever.

Mom seemed reluctant to go indoors. I guess after all those months, she was cherishing the sensation of sky and air and freedom. Dad took her place at the cellar window, and he insisted Jon work by his side. Matt worked on the ground, and I went back to the top of the mound and resumed throwing things down.

It got dark eventually, and Dad sent Jon to the house to get lanterns and flashlights. Hours later they broke through to the cellar window. It had blown out during the storm, but it was too small for Lisa to crawl through.

Still, Dad was able to talk to her, and when she held Gabriel up, he could hold him. Jon was sent back to our house to get food for Lisa.

Dad returned a while later to tell us what he knew.

“Charlie was pushing against the cellar door,” he said. “Trying to open it, but of course he couldn’t. Lisa isn’t sure what happened, because it was so dark, but she thinks he had a heart attack. She heard him make a funny noise, and then he fell down the cellar stairs. She went to him, but she couldn’t find a pulse. He probably died instantly.”

I thought, Charlie’s dead because of me. I told him to go to the cellar. He tried to open the door to rescue me.

I knew that was crazy. If I caused Charlie’s death, then I saved Lisa’s and Gabriel’s lives. If Charlie tried to get out for me, he was also trying for himself and for them. But I still felt the guilt, like the tornado was somehow my fault, and Julie was hurt because of me, and Alex missing.

“We’re not telling Lisa about Julie or Alex,” Dad said, much more softly. “I told Jon not to say anything. I told her Julie’s back in the house and Alex has gone to look for help.”

“How long can we keep that up, Dad?” Matt asked.

Dad grabbed him by the arm. “As long as we damn well have to,” he said. “Now get back to work.”

And we did. I’d be working there still, except Dad decided we should work in shifts, and I was sent back to the house to eat and get some rest and stay with Julie. Mom left as soon as I got here.

Julie’s sleeping, but I can’t. I’m too scared.

I wish more than anything that it was last night.

The rest of my life, I’m going to be living a lie, so I’m writing now to tell what really happened.

No, even that is a lie. It isn’t what really happened. It’s what I made happen. If I don’t admit that here, now, then I’ll be lying to myself just as I’ll be lying to everyone else every day of my life.

We spent all day working, trying to move the mountain of rubble that was blocking the cellar door and keeping Lisa and Gabriel trapped. We can get Gabriel out through the window, but only Lisa can feed him, so there’s no point. She has food and water, and Mom cut up a couple of Matt’s flannel shirts, for diapers. Sometimes when he cries, we hear him, and it makes us smile, at least for a moment, at least on the inside.

We hardly talk. The only breaks we take are when we’re coughing so hard we have to stop. A few sips of boiled water, and we get back to the job. It’s better that we don’t talk. There’s nothing we could say that wouldn’t make us sadder or more afraid.

All the food Jon and Julie got is gone. All the food at Mrs. Nesbitt’s is gone. We don’t know for sure, but we can’t count on more food deliveries from town. We don’t know if there is still a town.

The electricity is out, but this time it will never return. Wires are down and there’s nobody to repair them. There are two big tree limbs on the front of our house, and part of the roof has caved in. A handful of the windows shattered as well. It’s funny. Matt used to worry about us losing the sunroom roof, but that made it through. It’s the rest of the house that’s collapsing around us.

Dad had put Julie on the sunroom mattress. We took turns going in, checking up on her, making sure the fire was still burning, and eating enough to keep ourselves going, grabbing what sleep we could by Julie’s side.

We didn’t talk about Julie except once. Mom said she’d taken a pin and stuck Julie’s hands and feet with it. She told Julie to close her eyes and let her know when she felt something. Six times Julie hadn’t felt anything. Three times she said she thought she felt the pin, but two out of those three times Mom hadn’t pricked her.

“I don’t understand,” Jon said. “What does that mean?”

“It means Julie wants to believe she still has feeling,” Syl said. “But believing it and having it are two different things.”

“But she’ll get well,” Jon said. “Won’t she?”

“No,” Mom said. “She won’t, Jon.”

“Is she going to die?” he cried.

“Not so loud,” Dad said. “We don’t want Lisa to hear.”

“I don’t care about Lisa!” Jon said. “What about Julie? Can’t we do something?”

“All we can do is make things as easy for her as possible,” Mom said. “You’re not a child anymore, Jon. You know what things are like.”

None of us had stopped working while we talked about Julie. It was early evening, and the pile was down to four feet, so we stood ground level, stooping to pick up the debris. Our backs and arms were screaming in pain. But we kept flinging shingles and siding and pieces of mangled furniture as far from the cellar door as possible.

“I don’t want her to die,” Jon said.

“None of us want her to,” Dad said. “But we don’t want her to suffer, either. At least Charlie died fast. Sometimes I think that’s the only thing we can hope for anymore.”