“I’m grateful that I have my favorite person in the world,” he says.
I’m not sure if it’s the kiss or just the way he’s looking at me—or maybe this really is working—but my heart feels lighter. Like there isn’t a billion pounds of emotional weight shoved into every muscle in my body.
“I’m grateful that you know how to make me feel grateful again,” I tell him.
He kisses me. “C’mon. Let’s get cleaned up.”
We leave our dirty, sweaty clothes on the shore and wade into the surf. As we use sand and salt water to scrub our bodies, we continue the game. And it does help. By the time we’ve washed and laid our clothes out to dry, I am very glad we’re safe and still here.
It reminds me why I love Jamie.
And that makes me feel pretty damn grateful.
Jamison
WE LEFT THE SCHOOL THE NEXT MORNING,but by then there were so many rumors swirling it was like its own secondary storm. I heard that there was a revolt against the Committee members at the naval base in Key West, which was why none of them had shown up. Another rumor was that their shelter was destroyed and everyone was dead. Either way, there hasn’t been radio contact with them. We heard from Key Largo, but they had losses as well. Theirs plus ours came to 656 people dead in the storm.
The fact that we haven’t heard from the southern Keys isn’t a good sign.
People who lived in Marathon said their homes are gone, some flooded so badly they’ll never be able to fix them.
The Key Committee members who survived told us the only plan they had: Go to Key Largo and regroup. Once there, we’d figure things out and wait until the folks down in Key West are able to contact us. I don’t think they have any reason for this other than to get a total head count and reallocate the remaining supplies. Some people stayed at the school and started inventorying the supplies left over,getting them ready to be moved up to Key Largo. We set off with the rest of the crowd for Islamorada again. Me, Andrew, Cara, Amy, Henri-Two, Daphne, Kelly, and the seven remaining orphans. There we’ll camp and rest until we set out to join the rest of the settlement in Key Largo.
Andrew held tight to the Kid’s hand, but the Kid didn’t seem like he wanted to let go either. It was a long walk, made even longer by the orphans’ tiny steps. Thankfully a group of older folks didn’t mind the slower pace, so we all stopped to rest overnight. It took a while to get a fire going, but when it did it was a big bonfire that kept everyone warm and comfortable. And with all the fallen trees, it wasn’t hard to find fuel.
We got back to Islamorada today, in the late afternoon. But it looked a lot like the rest of the Keys we crossed along the way. The motel the kids lived in is still standing, but all the rooms on the first floor have been destroyed. We left Daphne and the kids and walked to our house, promising to come back.
Not that we have a choice.
The house we were living in is destroyed, the second floor crumpled atop the first.
Andrew looks at me. “I was thinking of renovating anyway.”
I don’t laugh. It’s not our house anymore. And it never really felt like a home to me.
Andrew picks up a splintered palm trunk and throws it through the half-broken window of our bedroom. I follow with a smaller stick to break apart the remaining glass, then we both climb in. Everything is wet and already smells like mildew. Our bed, sheets, towels, the clothes we left.
Andrew pulls open the closet and the door falls right out of the soaking drywall around it, so he pushes it away. He squeezes salt water from some of the shirts hanging inside. “Maybe we can salvage some of this?”
He points to the collapsible hamper across the room, and I hand it to him so he can throw our clothes into it. I try to think if there’s anything else we might need. And of course there is. I right the side table next to our bed and pull open the drawer. Water sloshes out.
Inside is the leather-bound notebook my mother left me when the superflu killed her. All the medical and general survival information she thought I could use for the apocalypse—and diary entries from before that I read sometimes, just to remember her voice.
“Ready?” Andrew asks, picking up the dripping-wet hamper.
“Are you okay?”
He gives me something halfway between a scoff and a laugh. “The best. I genuinely couldn’t be any better. You?”
Point taken. But I knew that; I just wanted him to talk to me. Because maybe I want to say all the things I’m worried about, too. All the people who could be dead, how we might not be able to survive without the comforts we’ve had for the past few months. How it might not even be feasible to stay here anymore.
“You ready?” he asks again.
I am.
The following morning Cara and I sit quietly in the shade of the motel while Amy and Henri-Two nap upstairs, and Andrew and Daphne keep the kids occupied with playing a four-on-four game of steal the bacon—the Kid is sitting out by choice. We all stayed in two adjoiningrooms last night. Daphne and Amy took the beds with a couple of the smaller kids—Henri-Two in a crib that had been on the second floor and so escaped the flooding—while the others just scattered around the floor alongside Andrew, Cara, and me. A couple of the kids had nightmares, and each time Andrew leaped up quickly to check on them, as though he had already been awake.
I can’t stop watching Andrew. How he puts on this face for the kids, pretending he’s okay when I know he isn’t, because they need some sense of safety after everything that happened to them. I know how they feel.
