—
A few years before, a man was driving his minivan onto the ferry when the ramp suddenly went up and he drove right over the edge and into the water. He got out because he wasn’t wearing his seat belt, but his two children, his wife, and his mother all drowned, buckled securely into their seats. That’s why I never wore a seat belt when we drove onto the ferry. And I made everyone else take their seat belts off too. Because it would be way worse to be the only survivor than to die like that. They never protested. Maybe because they secretly agreed with me. Or maybe because it wasn’t a big deal to them and they’d rather just do it than have me nag them about it. Which I would. Because I wouldn’t want to be the sole survivor of an accident that left them trapped in the van underwater, slowly drowning, looking around through the churned-up murk and thinking they should’ve done what I said.
This time we were walk-ons, but that just meant different things to worry about. Up in the waiting room I was going through all the things that could go wrong. Malfunctioning ramps. Or computer error, like when that ferry rammed into the dock last year. Or operator error, which happened more than anyone would admit. Up north, for example, when a ferry actually sank and everyone ended up in the water until they were rescued, except for the two people they never found. All because the captain was having sex with one of the stewards on the control deck while the ferry sailed straight into a big rock.
Walk-on passengers could slip on the outside deck in winter, if someone forgot to ice it. They could press the wrong button and retract the walkway and people would just topple overboard, smashing into the water or catching the edge of the ferry, bones cracking and heads nearly getting knocked off. Being crushed between the ferry and the dock.
An earthquake.
The whole terminal would crumble, concrete and metal and cars and people and the wharf and the boats all thrown together into the deep harbor, shoved down by a gigantic overturned ferry.
No. Don’t think about that. Rewind. Reverse. Refuse. Nancy’s advice: If you get too far, stop in your tracks and rewind. Reverse the road to disaster. Refuse to go there.
Focus on the boys.
Stop thinking about catastrophic outcomes.
Think about something else.
I took out my book and sketched an old woman with a straw hat and bright blue eyeliner. Then a little girl playing with a yo-yo. A purple suitcase with the Eiffel Tower on it. The vending machine and Corbin standing in front of it, staring at all the things he would buy if he had any money.
Owen’s red-and-white sneakers with the sparkly laces. He was sitting beside me, reading out loud to Hibou from Owls in the Family.
Right that very moment, there was nothing to worry about other than how to make Owen’s laces look real. But I didn’t want to draw anymore. I pulled Mom’s scarf from my backpack and started worrying it, like it was some kind of silken rosary.
Don’t think about Haiti.
Don’t think about Raymond.
Don’t think about dead babies.
Don’t think about earthquakes.
Earthquakes. The Cascadia subduction zone was right underneath us, waiting to wreak havoc. Fifteen thousand people would die. We’d have fifteen minutes to get up to higher ground before the tsunami hit the shore.
Climb down, Maeve. Maybe it would be a small one, or medium.
Say it knocked the power out and the roads were jammed and the buses weren’t running. How would I get the boys home? We could walk, but it’d take so long. Did we have enough food and water? Or maybe we could beg someone to take us to Grandma’s in a boat. That might be easier than trying to walk back to the city from the ferry terminal. But what if there was a tsunami? Then we should run to high ground. Up to the highway. And start walking.
We should have a plan. A meeting place. Enough food and water for seventy-two hours.
I could smash the vending machine and take the contents for food. The drinks machine looked unbreakable, though. We’d have to find water somewhere else. Maybe we’d have to steal. But that would be okay, because life over death. Life wins.
Unless death gets you first. Unless we all died. Me, the boys. The old lady with the blue eye shadow. The little girl and her yo-yo.
The worst earthquake in recorded history claimed the lives of nearly twenty thousand people today, among them a teenage girl and her little brothers, innocently waiting for a ferry, which the resulting tsunami hurled up on the cracked and broken highway far above the terminal.
Heart pounding. Hands getting sweaty. I clutched Mom’s scarf until my fingers went numb.
Count, Maeve.
Slowly.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5—
What if there was another earthquake in Haiti? I pulled out my phone.
Likelihood of earthquakes in Haiti? Do you have a safety plan?
Extra food and water?
No reply.
Tell me that I’m fine and to take a deep breath.
Tell me to take a sip of water.
Tell me to think about something pleasant.
Still no reply.
Staying in touch by text will not work if you NEVER TEXT ME BACK.
But if I was about to die in an earthquake, that would be the last text my mom ever got from me.
I love you, Mom. I’m just being stupid. You’re probably on the plane.
And then I looked up information about earthquakes, because I just could not help myself.
“Oh, God.”
Owen stopped reading. “What?”
I shoved the phone into my pocket. “Nothing.”
“Here.” He sat Hibou in my lap. “You can hold her. Sometimes that helps.”
“Thank you.” I clutched the stuffed owl tight. Like, white-knuckle tight. “Hey, Owen…do you have any of those little chew candies?”
“Yup.” He fished in his backpack and found the tin. “Blackberry.”
Stupid little herbal candies that were supposed to make you relax. Which was ever so slightly an improvement over the stupid herbal tincture that was supposed to do the same thing. Ruthie laughed at them. Bach Flower Remedies? They’re not even pretending to be something real, Maeve. Flowers? Where is the empirical evidence? How can they make these claims? Drug trials. Those are for real.