INSTINCTIVELY, I WIDEN MY STANCE, AND—
Another shake.
I steady myself against the sofa seat. My backpack falls onto its side, then rattle-shake-slides half under the bed, like something left on the washing machine as it runs.
"Impact!" I say, as though Mom and Anke haven't already figured that out.
Through the open door, I distantly hear people calling to each other, alarmed but not panicked. Something falls. Aside from that, it's quieter than I expected.
We wait it out.
It lasts a few minutes, on and off. Only after it's been still for thirty seconds do I dare let go of the seat. My hands drop to my sides again. I move them back and forth, my fingertips pressing into my thighs each time.
"That—that wasn't so bad." Mom clears her throat. "My first earthquake."
"We don't know about the damage outside," I reply. Outside. Our apartment. Iris. "And this is only the beginning."
I focus on the way my fingers feel against my thighs, a fraction of a second each time, and the feel of my wrists making those tiny motions. I don't want to think about outside. Just as I've been doing research about generation ships, I've been doing research about comet impacts, and I know what's coming. The tremors are only the first step.
Stop.
My fingers are touching my thighs faster and faster until it's a frantic tapping I can almost lose myself in. My wrists feel hot. A good kind of hot.
"Denise?"
Mom is standing right in front of me. I breathe sharply. "What?"
They were talking, I realize. Something about damage. I don't know.
"I'm sorry. What?" I repeat.
Anke stands near the doorway. "I just said that at least they must've been right about the possible impact locations. Eastern Europe–ish. Any closer and—well, you know. We would've felt worse." She breathes a shuddering breath. I can't tell if it's relief or lingering anxiety.
It takes a few moments for her words to register.
"You OK?" Anke searches my face.
"OK," I repeat, and want to bite my tongue because nothing more sensible comes from my mouth. I'll show her, though. The impact is over. I can ask those questions I wanted to ask. We can even take that tour. I step toward the door, then pause when I envision myself walking through it, following Anke around the rest of the ship with its high ceilings and her voice droning on and …
I hesitate.
"It's OK, honey." Mom steps closer. I mirror her movement and step back. I look at the floor. In my peripheral vision, Mom gives Anke the same look she gave Ms. Maasland.
My cheeks blaze, and not from the lingering cold.
"Denise is autistic." Mom lingers on the last word. As though she revels in this. The explaining, the confiding. "I think it's too much for her. Our plans changed at the last moment, and this is such a new environment … and the impact itself …"
She's probably right. It is too much. It would've been nice if she'd realized that while she was scuttling around the apartment saying, Ten more minutes, honey.
"The world is ending." I'm surprised at the spite in my voice. I'm surprised at having said anything at all. "I think I'm doing pretty well."
"You are, honey," Mom says. "Do you want us to leave you for a while? To recharge?"
I want with all my heart to argue or say something snide. Instead, I nod, deflating as I always do. I want this over with.
"Anke? Is it OK if I come … ?" Mom asks.
As they leave, I hear Mom talking about recognizing the signs of a potential meltdown, and it's a challenge, but …
I'm glad when the door cuts off her voice.
I stand in the center of the room and close my eyes. I don't tap my thighs; I don't stim at all. I only breathe. I imagine the tension sliding off me. Nothing happened. There's no comet. Iris isn't missing. Dad isn't in a permanent shelter, forever out of reach. It's just me in this room, and nothing beyond it.
I'm not sure how long I stand there.
Then I pull my backpack out from under the bed, sit cross-legged on the floor, and start to repack my things.
"Denise," Iris said one morning in late September. "Are you going to the Way Station?"
"Of course. I have to be there at nine." I sat on the hallway bench to pull on my shoes.
"Isn't it …" She sucked in her cheeks. "Isn't the Way Station different lately?"
"It's busier. A lot of people are abandoning their pets."
"It's been a difficult few months."
"Duh." Even if it hadn't been for all the talk on the Internet and the nonstop informational messages from the government, it'd still have been impossible to miss the changes happening on the streets. Stores and businesses abandoned, houses locked up tight, police presence tripled. Public transport got cut down by more than half. The crashed economy turned the money in my bank account near useless.
I stood and put on my coat, then realized I didn't need it with the way the weather had been and took it off again. Iris never interrupted me while I was getting ready. I tossed the coat back onto the rack, irritated, though more with myself than her.
"Do you still want to keep working?"
"They need the help. Lots of volunteers have left."
Iris carefully retied her bathrobe sash. "Tonight, after dinner, I'd like us to do some research on the comet impact together."
"I've researched it," I said automatically.
"I just want to make sure we're on the same page. Not just about the impact. About what happens after as well."
"I'm going to be late," I said, and Iris let me go.
Something yanks me out of bed.
I awake with a start right before I roll off. I catch myself, flailing in the sheets, then sit upright with my breath snagged in my throat. It's dark. The pillow smells like home, feels like familiar satin, and for a second I think I'm in my own bedroom. Then I feel the rough sheets rubbing against my skin, the smell that's not quite right.
I'm on the Nassau. I brought my own pillowcase. That's all.
Unsettled, I clap my hands to turn on the light. The room is as I left it, except the backpacks have fallen over again. Another quake.
I check the time on my tab. I've been asleep for an hour. So much for briefly curling up. And—wait. The pieces in my sleep-sluggish brain click together. It wasn't a quake that woke me up.
It was the air blast.
I've done the research. The right amount of time has passed. The air blast is supposed to be stronger than the quakes. It'll blow down trees, blast through windows. It might even knock down buildings.
I press my fist tightly against my mouth. I push away images of my apartment building, destroyed. "I'm fine," I whisper, like I'm talking to a skittish cat at the shelter. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm safe."
It doesn't matter.
In two days I won't be either of those.
Mom comes in later, and we eat crackers and dried fruit from our backpacks for dinner.
"Anke showed me some of the dining halls," Mom says, chewing. "Even if we can't eat their food, we can sit there for company."
She tosses me a bag of raisins, which I eagerly tear open. I'm feeling … not great, but better, to the point where the memory of freezing up or crying my eyes out in bed makes me uneasy with embarrassment.
We're alive. We have shelter. It's better than the shelter we would've had otherwise. Instead of being squished together, we have a park—we have all the room we want. And that's exactly what's been making me think.
"Did you see a lot of people?" I ask.
"A handful. They were pretty freaked out."
Only a handful? I think.
"Have you talked to Ms. Maasland and Leyla at all?" It bothers me saying it that way—uneven—but I don't know Leyla's last name, and I don't know if I can call Ms. Maasland by her first name. She's more than three times my age and was my teacher for years.
Mom shakes her head. "I asked Anke about Leyla, though. They set her leg. She'll use a wheelchair for a while, but she'll be fine."
I feel a pang of guilt. I haven't spared Leyla's leg a single thought since we parted ways in the loading bay.
"What do you want to do when we're back outside?" I glance at Mom through my eyelashes as I eat.
"That's days away. Let's explore first. Who knows, maybe we can find a hiding place. If people can get across the Atlantic as stowaways …"
"We should find passengers to bribe. And something to bribe them with. Think they like raisins?" I jiggle the bag.
Mom smiles at this. A normal smile, like any other mother might smile at any other daughter. For a fleeting moment, I think this might be it—this is where she feels a rush of affection white looking at me and decides she's flaked out for long enough. She'll quit the drugs. She'll think ahead. She'll be a mother again. And all it took was the end of the world.
I pick another raisin. I thought the same thing when the announcement first happened, and when we learned we hadn't won any of the lotteries to get on a ship or into a permanent shelter. Then I thought she might stay clean the day Iris was supposed to come home and didn't; instead, Mom was gone all evening and half the night and came home glassy-eyed and slurring her speech.
"We'll find Iris," Mom says. "Then we'll figure something out."
She's still answering my question about what comes next. I muster up a smile, but it's the same kind I saw on Anke: there and gone.
"Yeah," I say. "We will."
But we won't.
I will.
And I know where to start.
