Specifically, she’d forgotten that she hadn’t told Jess anything about … well, anything. She realized that when they were opening their lunch bags on Wednesday. Skylarstillhadn’t done her meal prep, since she’d spent too long last night talking to Zane’s whanau and then to her own kids—who hadn’t been all that surprisedto hear about the relationship idea, so she and Zane probably hadn’t been as sneaky as they’d thought—but at least she wasn’t eating a meat pie today. She was eating hummus, pita, and carrots. She’d only cut wedges off half a pita, though, and she wished she’d done the whole thing. She alwaystriedto think carrots were more delicious, but …
“I think I’m a bread-itarian,” she told Jess. “Is there such a thing? When I think about doing one of those keto diets with no carbs, my whole body screams in protest and I go into proactive withdrawal. On the other hand, carbs are soothing. They stimulate your brain to produce serotonin. So there you are. Excuse.” She dipped a pita wedge into the hummus and tried it. Oh, yeh, that was good.
It wasn’t a whole-wheat pita, either. Well, she’d been in an earthquake. Her life was being upended. She needed all the serotonin she could get.
“I don’t care,” Jess said. “What did Monica want yesterday? Never tell me you’ve put a foot wrong, because I won’t believe it. Oh. Wait.” She sat back and pointed a finger at Skylar, and Skylar thought,Busted. But how can she tell? I’m wearing long sleeves!
What Jess said, though, was, “You were Head Girl, weren’t you?”
“No,” Skylar said. “Prefect, that’s all. I wasn’t nearly firm enough to be Head Girl. Goody-Two-Shoes, yes. Head Girl material, no. Zane Mahuta was Head Boy, though. Iguessed that one, because heisfirm enough.”
“Ah-ha,”Jess said. “Wait, though. Monica?”
Skylar sighed. “All part of the same story, I’m afraid. Well, notafraid,exactly, but?—”
“You told me you were in the earthquake,” Jess said. “You distinctly said ‘earthquake’ yesterday, before the Monica thing. You weren’t in the earthquake? You were canoodling with Zane Mahuta instead? With your combined eleven children presumably about the place? Didn’t he have a match, though? I saw him. Well, I sawabouthim. About him and the rest of the All Blacks rescuing heaps of people from the tsunami. Wait, that was before the match. Instead of the match. Whatever. He carried a fella on his back up a sheer cliff, to hear the fella tell it. Of course, that’s not as good as that madwoman who ran out of Te Papa to rescue dozens of people and barely made it back before the first wave hit. Did you see that? Probably not, if you didn’t have electric down there. It was impressive. You alwaysthinkyou’d be that person if it happened, but are you? No. Generally, you’re curled into the fetal position sucking your thumb. Well, I am. You’d take care of your kids, obviously.”
On the plus side, Skylar’d had a chance to eat all the pita during that recital. On the minus side …
“It’s a bit of a long story,” she said. “And I’m telling you, because I may need advice. In the future, anyway, when it all goes pear-shaped.”
“Ooh,” Jess said. “This is sounding good.” Her eyes widened. “Wait. They said that woman in Te Papa had a bunch of kids. They said she was a ginger, too. This old man—hogged the camera, is what he did, because hardly anyone else could get a word in edgewise—said, ‘She was a very pretty girl. Like an angel. But she shoved us up those steps smartly enough.’ Tell me it wasn’t you, because it soundsexactlylike you.”
“It was me,” Skylar said, ungrammatically. “And less about that, please. I’m trying to tell you!”
“You’re trying to tell me,” Jess said, “that your heroism isn’t as interesting as the rest of the story. Now Ireallywant to know. So. Zane?”
“Well, yeh. I was there with all six kids before Zane’s match. Honestly, it was a bit too much of the nanny business after all down there. My granddad wants nothing more than to kick over the traces, and Zane’s Nan isn’t much better. In fact, I had seven kids with me, because there was a little boy on his own in Te Papa. Zane came into the CBD from where he’d been stuck, up on the coast, and met us, and we walked home. After the earthquake, that is.”
“Oh.” Jess said. “Not that exciting. Oh, well. How did he get there, though?”
“He ran.”
“Heran?Wasn’t it dark? Ripped up? And kilometers and kilometers? What I saw on TV looked awful. You never know whether they’re just showing you the same pile of rubble over and over, but?—”
“No, it’s awful.” Skylar didn’t want to talk about this part. “As bad as they showed. Please don’t tell anybody about the tsunami and the museum. It really wasn’t—” She had to take a breath, and then she had to grip the edge of the table, because she was going a bit cold and wonky. “It wasn’t good. I’ve had trouble sleeping, to be honest. I can’t …” She forced herself to go on. “It’s odd, because I thought the kids would have a hard time, but they seem OK. It was … it was hard, though. Especially out there in the dark, before Zane found us. My phone had died, and there were aftershocks, and I was trying to keep them all together and safe and sort out what to do. Where to go. When he came, I … I cried.” Her hands were shaking. Why were her hands shaking? She was safe. They were all safe. Safe, and at the other end of the North Island!
Jess had her hands now, was gripping them, for once not laughing. “Because the kids felt safe, that’s why. They aren’t having as hard a time because they were with you, and they trusted you. But you know how scared you were. How dangerous it was.”
“Yes.”Skylar touched her eyes with her paper napkin and tried to laugh. “It was such areliefwhen Zane came. He somehow found the way home in the black dark, in all the messof it. It wasn’t that he took care of me, not exactly, but he waswithme. We were together, and that was such a relief.”
“You bonded,” Jess said. “Pretty natural. And then you went home and … How many people were there, exactly?”
“I can’t count,” Skylar said. “Us and the kids, including the extra one. His parents. Our grandparents. His sister. Fourteen, I guess. Full house.”
“Oh. But your granddadwasthere. Comforting, presumably.”
“Y-yes. Except that he’d been so worried himself, and I was still worried about the kids, so …”
“Skylar.” Jess fixed her with that stare. “What actually happened? Anything? Other than that you need to talk to somebody about this before you end up with PTSD. Did you fall a bit in love with him, though? Zane? Well, that’s natural. Him finding you in the quake and all. As long as you don’t take it too seriously.”
“Well, no. Or yes. Yes and no. I … well, we had sex.”
Jess let out a startled whoop. Everybody turned and stared, and now, Skylar was grabbingherarm, hissing, “Shhh! What did Isay?”
“I can’t believe it,” Jess said. “In a house with fourteen people in it? How?”
Skylar had her hands over her eyes now. “On the couch,” she moaned. “And the floor.”
