ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK (18 page)

“How do you make animals
understand what you want?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not
like I do anything special, it’s just some sort of instant rapport. They trust
me. I looked it up one time on the internet. My ancestors called it ‘swishing’.
It means to become one mind.”

“What does it feel
like?”

“Hmmm …” He shifted his
body, wincing from the pain and I started to get up. “No, it’s okay. Are you
uncomfortable?”

“Me? No, I’m fine. You’re
the one who needs to be comfortable. I’m not in any pain.”

“Why do you do that?”
he asked.

“Do what?”

“Make your needs less
important than mine.”

“I don’t. I’m not. You
… you’re injured.”

“You do it all the
time. You did it with Max, making sure he had everything before you settled
down to sleep, and you do it with me. Why should my comfort be any more
important than yours?”

“Oh.” I was suddenly
tongue-tied. I wasn’t used to boys being nice to me. Max was Max and I’d hung
out with him for so long I never really thought about how he treated me.

As if Court had read my
mind he said, “What about Max? Doesn’t he ever worry about how comfortable you
are?”

“Max? Of course he
does.” Why did I feel this sudden need to justify my relationship with Max? “He
just doesn’t always show it around other people.”

Court nodded. “Max is
like that, always has been a selfish S.O.B.

I gave Court an
incredulous look.

“You know it’s true.”

“Maybe,” I admitted,
but didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

“Why do you hang around
with him all the time then?”

“Because.” I was
uncomfortable with the subject so I studied my fingernails as though I was
contemplating when my next manicure would be. I shrugged. “He’s been my friend
forever. His parents are … were friends with mine.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean
to make you self-conscious. It’s just that, in my opinion, friends are supposed
to treat each other as equals.”

“Max and I are equal.”

“Shhhh … stay still,”
Court placed his hand over my wrist.

The ground began to
shake under us. I looked at the shelves as they started swaying and things fell
to the floor. The three remaining cans of soup tumbled out and rolled toward us.

“Quick, help me up,” Court
said.

I grabbed him under the
arm, supporting his huge body with my shoulder. We hobbled to some wine barrels
that were close by and crouched down behind a couple that weren’t stacked.

“It’s happening again.
Another full force earthquake,” I said, my voice shaking as hard as the ground.

“Could be just another
aftershock, a strong one. Keep your arms over your head.”

I did, but I didn’t
think it mattered, considering Court’s entire body shielded mine. The shaking
and rumbling continued. A wine barrel toppled off the one it had been on top of
and landed with a bang, red wine exploding all over the place. The metal shelf
against the wall toppled over, making a huge crash landing as everything on it
scattered about the floor.

All of a sudden, a loud
swooshing sound filled the air along with the smell of dirt, triggering
something important that I just remembered.

“Oh no! The cellar
door. I forgot to close the door.”

I looked through the
crack between the two wine barrels we huddled behind, as the light from the
stairway disappeared.

We were in the dark. The
shaking and rumbling finally stopped and I was crouched on my knees on the cold
cement floor. I tried to get up, but Courtland’s body was still entirely
covering me, so I stayed put for a few more minutes until he stood. Leaning against
one of the barrels, he held out his hand to me.

“Are you all right?”
Courtland asked as I placed my hand in his and stood.

“Yes.” I turned in the
direction of the stairway, but the entire cellar was pitch-black. The
aftershock must have knocked the candle over, but there was no sign of any
fire, thank God. All light coming from the outside was gone. “We need to find
the candles.”

“Do you think you can
find your way back to the blanket?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“The candle should be
close to it.”

I turned toward his
voice, wishing my eyes would adjust to the darkness faster. His fingers found my
face and he held my cheeks in his hands. I instinctively reached up to feel his
face, just to make sure; make sure of what, I didn’t know. “You stay here. I’ll
go find the candle and then come back for you,” I whispered only because my
heart was in my throat and I couldn’t get my vocal cords to work.

“Okay,” he whispered
back and let out a nervous laugh. “I think I’ll just sit down here for a minute
and wait.”

“Good idea. I’ll be
right back.”

I squinted into the
dark room and allowed my eyes to adjust for a few seconds before taking that
first step. It didn’t help. I walked slowly in the direction of where I thought
the sleeping bags were—my hands out in front, waving through the air. I felt
like a five-year-old playing pin the tail on the donkey. When my hand rubbed
against the wall, I followed the cool surface until my foot touched the lumpy sleeping
bag. I sank down on my knees and searched around the floor for the candle, feeling
along the edge of the bag. No candle. I sat back on my heels and thought about
how we were sitting right before the aftershock. Stretching my hands over the floor
to my left, I spread my fingers onto the cold cement. Finally, the tip of my
index finger brushed against the wax of the candle and I grabbed it. I patted
the floor around me for the matches, wishing I had some super ability to shoot
fire from my hands, because I couldn’t seem to put my fingers on the little
cardboard box.

“Adela, are you okay?”

“Yeah. I found the
candle, but I can’t find the matches.”

“Check on top of the
sleeping bag. I think you had them in your hand right before you changed my
bandages last time. I may have been laying on them.”

I felt all over the
sleeping bag until I finally put my hand on the crushed matchbox right in the
middle of where Court had been sitting. “Got ‘em.”

Luckily, the rough spot
on the box where you strike was still intact enough to ignite the match and I
lit the candle. I held the flame up and looked around the cellar. A mountain of
dirt spilled down the stairs and over the floor in front of me, completely
blocking the exit; we had no way out and I gasped, “No!” In a panic, I ran to
the pile of dirt and soot, set the candle down and began digging with my hands.

“Adela? What’s wrong?
Are you okay?” Court asked.

“We’re trapped,” I
yelled and kept digging, pulling dirt through my legs. “We can’t get out.”

“Adela, stop!”
Surprised at the closeness of his voice, I looked up to find him standing above
me, holding the candle over the area. I ignored him and resumed shoveling dirt
away from the entrance with my hands. I must have looked like a frantic puppy
trying to dig its way out of an impossibly large fenced yard. We had to get out.
Didn’t he understand? Dirt packed under my fingernails as I gouged in the dirt
and shoved it out of the way, scraping my knuckles on rocks and twigs.

“Adela, stop!” His
hands pulled at my shoulders, but I knocked them away.

“No, we have to dig. We’ll
die down here! There’s no other way out. We don’t have enough water or food to
last more than another day. We have to dig!”

“Adela, you’re going to
cut your hands again and make them raw. That’s not the way. We’ll find
something to dig with. You have to stop.” Court placed his hands back on my
shoulders. “Please, Adela. Stop. Everything will be okay.”

I stood, shaking my
head as my legs trembled and turned to rubber, giving out from under me as I
sank down to the floor in front of him.

He got down on his
knees and, placing his hands on my arms, held me still so I faced him. “It will
be all right.”

I stared into his eyes.
They rendered a calm but confident tenderness that I didn’t fully understand
and I sucked in the sob about to explode from my mouth. “But we’re trapped.”

Adela sat on the dirt-covered
cement floor in front of me, staring at the pile of muck blocking our exit.
Hell, it might as well have been Mount Everest. With nothing but our hands to
dig with, she was right, we were trapped. “We’ll get out,” I managed, wanting
to calm her.

She shook her head.
“The stairway is completely buried. We are buried! We can’t get out.”

I wanted to pull her against
me and comfort her, but something told me to back off. She might not want that,
so I sat beside her and struggled to keep my hands still.

I thought it might be
best if we moved away from the dirt. I glanced around in the direction of the
sleeping bags. All but one was completely covered under the dirt along with the
medical kit. As I stood, my vision blurred and my head swam with dizziness from
the sudden movement. “I need to lie down.”

“Okay, here.” She
grabbed the remaining sleeping bag and shimmied her shoulder under my arm.
Dragging the bag along with us, we hobbled back to the wine barrels and sank
down on the cold cement floor.

I cursed to myself. We
were buried and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do at the moment to help.
Dirt and debris covered the entire stairway, which was about six feet high. Adela
spread the sleeping bag out and I pulled myself on top of it. Leaning back
against the wall, I said, “This gives new meaning to the term ‘six feet under.’”

“You’re joking? How can
you joke? Our only way out is completely blocked.”

“Just trying to lighten
the situation.”

“Oh. Sorry, but what
are we going to do now?”

“I don’t know. We’ll
find a way.” I wanted to close my eyes, but Adela was panicking and I had no
clue how we were going to get out.

“Court, do you remember
seeing any shovels down here?” She stood up and paced in front of me. I reached
out, grabbed her arm, and gently tugged her down to the floor next to me.

“Adela, look at me.”
She stared at the unattainable stairway. “Adela! Look at me.”

She turned toward me
and our eyes met. “Adela, we are okay. You’re not hurt. I’m not hurt, at least
not any more than before. We will get out. Please, calm down. I can’t think
when you’re pacing.”

She lowered her head.
“I’m scared.”

“I know. Come here.” I
took a chance and placed my arm around her and she leaned into me as I held her
against my chest.

We sat close together
for a while. Neither of us spoke. I stroked her hair and listened to her
breathe. Maybe she fell asleep, I wasn’t sure, but having her body pressed
against mine was almost enough to make me forget about the burns and sprained
ankle I had. We were just two people who had lost everything—our families, our homes,
and now quite possibly our own futures. I wondered how long we would survive.
The food would run out first, then the water. I decided right then not to let
her put any more fresh wet bandages on my burns. They still stung a bit, but
they were healing. We would need all the water for drinking.

Adela stirred under my
arm still draped around her.

“You should have gone
with Max,” I whispered.

She straightened and gazed
at me with those soft brown eyes, the golden specks in them dancing with the
flame of the candle light. She shook her head. “No. I wanted to stay here with
you.”

My heart did a triple
Salchow, making my pulse race, and I’m sure Adela had to notice the rise in my
heartbeat as she placed her head back against my chest.

I couldn’t believe what
I just said to Courtland, but it was the truth. I did want to stay with him. He
was intriguing and I struggled to figure out exactly what propelled my
wonderment, but something about Courtland Reese kept drawing me in like a magic
spell. There was a side of him I wanted to know better, a side of him I needed
to know. If I was going to die, I wanted to die here with him. All this time, I’d
thought I was in love with Max, but after being in the cellar with both of them
I realized, yeah, I did love Max, but not the way a woman was supposed to love
a man. Not the way my mom loved my dad. She would get a sparkle in her eyes
when my dad walked into the breakfast nook, smelling of hay and horses, not a
smell most women would get all hot and bothered by, but she liked it. There was
the smile she’d give him when he’d make a fool of himself playing with Ambie
and Aaron, the gentle kiss they’d share that always made my mom’s cheeks flush.
Maybe that’s what Max and my mom knew I was missing. Maybe that’s why Max
always went out with those other girls. Maybe that’s why Max never kissed me.
He knew. How could he know when I didn’t?

I dried my eyes with
the sleeve of my sweater and pulled back from Court. “I’m okay now.”

I stared at the pile of
dirt blocking our way out but didn’t get all hysterical this time. I shook my
head, took a deep breath, and gathered my inner calm. “What are we going to
do?”

Court had his head
leaning against the wall and his eyes closed. “We’ll figure something out. But
right now, I could use some more ibuprofen. I’ll be able to think better if I’m
not in so much pain. And I think nature is calling.”

I smiled. “Hey, I have
just the thing for you. That is if something didn’t fall on it during that last
round of shaking. Come with me.” I stood up in front of him with my hand
stretched out for his. His brows furrowed and he looked a bit puzzled but took my
hand and stood. I positioned my shoulder under his arm and we hobbled behind
the wine barrels.