“Well, it’s not only that.”
“Really?” I stood up. He did too. “What, you’re in love with me? I’m fat, I’m a big mouth, a smartass—”
“You’re plain old smart! And brave, and Aim thinks you’re the closest thing to a goddess who ever walked the earth.”
“What if I am?” I wanted to leave. But this was where she would come. I had to be here. I wrapped the blanket around me and tucked my arms tight.
“Yeah. What if you are? What if she’s right? I kinda think—” He quit talking a minute and looked over his shoulder at the beach. “I kinda think she is. You are.”
If he had tried to touch me then I would have knocked the fool unconscious.
Instead, he turned around and looked at the beach again. “That’s him,” he said. “Captain Lee.” He pointed and I saw a bright yellow triangle sailing toward us out of the west. “Our ride’s here ahead of time. I have to go meet him and tell him we need to wait for Aim.” He left me alone with my wet blanket.
It was almost dark by the time he came back, carrying a bucket. “Here you go. Supper.” I was ready to eat, no doubt. Inside was a hot baked yam and some greens with greasy pink fish mixed in. I washed it all down with more of Rob’s water.
We took turns hanging out at the statue. Rob had connections with the locals, the Hammerheads and this other group, the Twisters. He stayed with them, and I bunked on Lee’s boat.
Three days dragged past. I got used to a certain idea. I let him put his arm around me once when we met on the stairs. And another time when he introduced me to a dude he brought to pick some herbs in the garden—they were for medicines, not that nice to eat.
And another time. We were there together, but with my binoculars I saw her first. I shouted and he hugged me. Both arms. I broke away and ran and ran and yes, it was Aim! And Dwayne, which explained a lot when I thought about it afterwards, but I didn’t care right then.
“Aim! Aim!” I lifted her in the air and whirled us around and we kissed each other long and hard. I was with her and it was this reality, hers and mine and everybody else’s, not one I created just for me. I cried and laughed and yelled at the blue sky, so glad. Oh so freakin glad.
Of course I had known all along she’d make it.
And then Rob caught up with me and he kissed her too. She held my hand the whole time. So how could I feel jealous and left out?
Well, I could. But that might change, someday. Someday, it might be otherwise.
AND THE REST OF US WAIT
CORINNE DUYVIS
Corinne Duyvis is the award-winning, critically acclaimed author of young-adult novels Otherbound, which Kirkus called “original and compelling; a stunning debut,” and On the Edge of Gone, which Publishers Weekly called “a riveting apocalyptic thriller with substantial depth,” and which was declared a Best Book of 2016 by Kirkus and Paste Magazine. She is also the author of Guardians of the Galaxy: Collect Them All, which The Mary Sue called “a joy to read from start to finish,” and the forthcoming The Art of Saving the World. Corinne is a co-founder and editor of Disability in Kidlit as well as the originator of the #ownvoices hashtag. She was born and raised in the Netherlands.
We were among the earliest to arrive at the shelter—a day and a half before impact—and it still took two hours for the volunteers to process us. My parents and I stood on one side of a long desk in a low-ceilinged office, the muffled noise from the shelter hallway outside growing louder the more people joined the line behind us.
They scanned us for contaminants. They scanned our bags. They double- and triple-checked our blood, our IDs, and our shelter assignment letters. They squinted at our faces to match the photos, and I waited for a glimpse of recognition as they placed my face and accent, but nothing came. They asked me to explain my cathing equipment and leg braces. They asked where we were from (Riga, Latvia), how long we’d been in the Netherlands (seven weeks), where we’d stayed (twenty minutes outside Amsterdam); I couldn’t tell if they were verifying their information or making small talk. Right when I thought they were ready to let us go, they went through our bags again, which contained spare clothes and little else.
“No food?” the shelter volunteer asked in thickly accented English.
Mum shook her head. “We spent the last five weeks in a refugee centre.”
“Should’ve saved food.”
Mum opened her mouth and shut it again.
“There’s food here. Right?” Dad’s lips twitched. “They said…”
The woman shrugged. “We have food, but it’s tight. Better if people bring their own.”
“We’ll remember that for the next apocalypse,” I said.
Afterwards, as we sat down on the creaky beds we’d been assigned in a sea of camping beds, bedrolls, and stretchers, Mum leaned in. “Careful, Iveta,” she whispered. “Don’t stand out.”
Dad scanned the hall, as though the other families hesitantly testing their beds would descend on us at any moment. We weren’t the only ones who’d arrived early. I recognised others from our refugee centre: from Finns to Belarusians, from Ukrainians to Romanians, even a stray Bulgarian and Turkish family, although most people that far south had fled to Africa rather than Western Europe.
People looked up as I stalked through the narrow aisle between beds. During my few weeks in the country, the only Dutch people I’d interacted with were the refugee centre volunteers. Still, I could recognise the language, and the moment I heard an older couple talk in hushed Dutch, I stopped by their cots. They’d seen me coming. Mum could warn me not to stand out all she wanted, but I was hard to miss: I walked with a waddling limp, my hips seesawing fiercely.
“Question,” I said in English. “Did you bring any instruments?”
They gave me a confused look.
“For music.” I mimicked playing the piano.
“No, we… of course not. We only brought the supplies we needed. Why?”
I swept an arm at the hall, which was three or four times the size of my high school gym. They couldn’t have designed it any plainer if they’d tried: nothing but pillars and beds and cold lighting, and the pale green walls were bare aside from the occasional water fountain and posters displaying shelter rules in a dozen languages.
“What else is there to do while we wait?”
Cot by cot, the shelter filled up.
People arrived by the busload that day and the day after. I trailed the aisles, hitting up other Dutch families I found. I didn’t need to identify them by their speech anymore. They were the ones with the bulging backpacks, the uncertain look about them, while those of us from the refugee centres carried narrow sacks and looked weary more than anything else.
I explored the rest of the shelter and found myself lingering outside the main halls, glad for the relative silence. It was too easy to get a headache in the murmur and anxiety permeating the shelter, and the last thing I needed was to worry about minor headaches.
Aside from the five sleeping halls, there were two smaller halls, the walls soft blue and every inch filled with mismatched chairs and tables instead of beds. Packets of playing cards and old books were strewn around the tables. Some of the kids’ tables had crayons, pencils, paper.
No instruments.
“Not impressed?” a voice behind me said. “It’s only for three days.”
I turned, facing a girl a few years older than me—early twenties, probably—with a prettily patterned hijab framing a narrow face.
“And afterwards we can all go home, right?” I said, sceptical.