But apparently Poblete has radar for that. “Ms. Tenner, give us one new thing we learned about Gatsby.”
Right when I’m about to just bite the big one and admit I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about, I see Ben tap his notebook a few times.
Everything Gatsby’s done has been for Daisy
.
Thankfully, I have read
The Great Gatsby
before. I actually love the tragedy of the story, but I’m not entirely sure how far we’re supposed to be in the book. So I go for Ben’s answer and add my own two cents about Gatsby doing everything from throwing elaborate parties to getting his neighbor’s grass cut, and having a hundred different shirts. Sure enough, after I give my answer, she says, “Thank you, Ms. Tenner.”
“Now Ms. Zhou had previously claimed that Daisy was just an innocent victim of her terrible husband. What do we think of her now, after this chapter?”
I look over at Ben, half-thankful he just saved me, half-mortified he had to. When this is all over, I need to get my priorities straight.
“Now,” Poblete says, “let’s look at some of the language Fitzgerald uses in chapters four and five. What are some quotes you annotated that would point to Fitzgerald using Gatsby as an example of the withering American Dream?”
“Didn’t you read this, like, two years ago?” Ben whispers to me, his breath warm in my ear.
I stiffen and look over at him. I wonder how he knows that—he must read the question on my face, because he leans in again. “Not many people at this school sit out on the quad during lunch and read. Even fewer alternate between
The Great Gatsby
and Harry Potter.”
“Harry Potter is a classic,” I whisper back.
“What’s your favorite book, if you had to pick one?”
“
The Electric Church
by Jeff Somers,” I say without hesitation. “If I had to pick one—it’s this crazy science fiction noir, and the main character is badass. And it’s different, nothing else quite like it.”
“If we get through all this, I want to borrow it.”
I’m about to make that a deal and ask what
his
favorite book is, but Poblete says, “Mr. Michaels, please stop asking Ms. Tenner to marry you and pay attention.”
My face flushes with heat and I look back at my notes, but Ben just laughs. “Why are you bent on ruining all my shots at getting a date?”
I’d love it if the floor could swallow me up right about now. Because I can’t help thinking about our date and how Ben says we can’t be together, which means we won’t ever have another one. It makes me feel a little like someone’s cutting me open.
“Not all your shots, just the ones infringing on my class time,” she says, and then she’s back to Gatsby.
At least for a second. Because the next thing I know, I feel dizzy and nauseous, like I’m about to be sick. And I realize it’s because the ground beneath my feet is moving.
T
he floor shakes, the walls rattle, and the tables and chairs dance around. Everything moves right and then left and right again, and I feel like someone’s jerking me side to side. Poblete stumbles and falls into the wall. For a minute, we all just sit there, shocked that the whole classroom appears as if it might collapse around us.
Someone behind me says, “Holy shit, are we having an earthquake?”
And then Poblete is yelling for everyone to get on the floor under the tables, like we’ve been taught to do every year since we were in preschool. This is California. We knew what to do in an earthquake before we even understood what it was.
I push my chair back and get under my table, trying to focus on the fact that this is okay, this is normal, it’s just an earthquake. Only I look over and this time I’m the one trying to help Ben. He just sits sort of dazed in his seat, and I can picture the windows blowing out and a chunk of glass hurtling at his face. The thought makes me feel even more sick to my stomach, and I reach up and pull him by one of his arms, tugging him out of his chair and onto the floor.
And the ground keeps shaking, harder and faster, like we’re on some kind of crazy theme park ride, and I realize we haven’t hit the worst of it yet. It’s hard to breathe, like air is catching on something in my throat, and I’m starting to feel disoriented, like I don’t know how to keep my head above the rest of my body.
My whole body feels like it’s vibrating, like I have no control over my own skin. Books and backpacks fall off the tables and chairs and bounce around on the floor. I try to grab the leg of the table to steady myself, but that only emphasizes how much it’s jerking around. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster gone wrong—like we’re about to run right off the tracks.
Pictures fall off the walls, sparks fly from Poblete’s computer, the lights go out, the windows break, glass rains down on the tabletops, and someone screams.
And then it takes me a second to realize it’s over—that my hands and body are still shaking, but the ground has in fact stopped.
It’s only when it’s quiet that I realize how loud the earthquake was—like thunder, only coming from beneath the earth, like the earth was screaming, letting loose some kind of roar.
Now I can hear my own heart beating, and I reach over to grab Ben’s wrist, listening to the steady thrum of his pulse against my fingers. I can hear all forty of us breathing and the quiet sobs of someone behind me. And then the PA system crackles and I hear Mauro’s voice. “This is a Code White,” she says.
Earthquake
. “Lock down your classrooms, this is a Code White.”
And then it’s quiet again, and we’re left with the sounds of our breathing and the smell of fried circuits.
“Is everyone okay?” Poblete asks. A chorus of shaky affirmative replies echoes through the room. “Ms. Crowley, you okay back there?”
“Just dandy. I banged the shit out of my knee, but I’ll live.”
“Please do. Any blood?”
“Nope, just hurts like a bitch.”
“Well, that is at least promising. Ms. Desjardins, are you hurt?” Poblete asks.
It’s Alex who answers for her—she’s crying too hard. “Maddy’s fine. Just scared, but she’s starting to calm down.”
“Good. Good.” Poblete gets up and moves to her desk. “Stay where you are, in case there are any aftershocks. I’m going to try to check in with admin.”
Murmurs move through the room, everyone asking one another, “Are you okay?” or giving some brief description of what they thought was happening when it first started, or even telling stories about other earthquakes they lived through.
“I hit Poblete in the face freshman year,” Ben says out of the blue.
“What?” He can’t possibly be serious.
But he nods. “It was still, like, the first or second month of school, and I was dealing with a lot of anger issues. We’d figured out what happened, and I knew what we had to do in order to get back home, but I couldn’t figure out
how
to do it. And the whole thing was my fault. I was the one who tripped.”
“Please, it didn’t sound like it was anyone’s fault.”
He shakes his head. “No, it was my fault. But school seemed like such a waste then. I was spending every waking moment reading about what people here considered pseudoscience, and no one would teach me the things I wanted to know. Plus, the home I was in then was pretty bad, and Reid and I were going through a phase where we hated each other.”
“Reid?” I ask with a laugh. Elijah seems more hateable to me.
Ben nods and offers me a small half smile. “I never actually liked him much—as a kid, I mean. Our parents were friends, so we had to be friends. Then we got here and we became close, you know, but he adjusted so easily. I hated him a little because of it.
“So I acted like a jackass a lot. I didn’t get into that many fights, that was always Elijah’s thing, but I talked out in class, corrected teachers when they messed up, just made myself a general nuisance. I pissed Poblete off daily. I’d come into homeroom late, no one would ever excuse my absences, I’d swear for no reason, move her shit around, whatever. One time I even lifted her classroom keys so I could check out the faculty bathrooms.”
“Why were you so lame?” I laugh.
Ben shrugs. “I could tell she’d get pissed at me. But then the next day when I’d come in, it was like a clean slate. She never stayed mad.”
“Not even after you hit her in the face?”
He shakes his head. “I was being an idiot, and I had grabbed her yardstick and was carrying it around. Twice she told me to put it away, but I swung it at someone’s water bottle cap, like it was a baseball bat. And the cap nailed her right in the face, like, an inch under her eye.”
I bite my lip to keep from laughing, and Ben smiles.
“She told me not to let the door hit me on the way out and kicked me out of class, and I stood outside, sure that I was done. She was going to tell admin, and since I’d already been in trouble plenty I’d get suspended or expelled. My foster parents at the time were already threatening to send me to a group home. So after homeroom ended, I went back into class and apologized, and I meant it. She had this red welt on her face from where the cap had hit her. I felt terrible. But after my apology, she just looked at me and asked what I wanted.
“No one had ever asked me that,” Ben whispers. “So I told her about metaverse theory and everything I wanted to learn. She went to college at Duke, and they used to have a parapsychology department. She got me in touch with a retired professor who got me in touch with a couple other people, and that’s how I started to put it together.”
“So Poblete is one of the reasons you ultimately figured it out?”
“Yeah,” Ben says, but the laugh that comes out is bitter. “She’d just love to know that she’s one of the reasons I’ve been opening portals to another universe, one of the reasons people are dead, one of the reasons we just got hit with probably the worst earthquake San Diego has ever seen.”
My throat tightens. I hadn’t thought of all that. “You can’t know—”
“Have you ever felt an earthquake like that?” he asks, and then he shakes his head. “It’s not a coincidence. When we were sitting there, I thought that was it, it was over.”
Which explains why he didn’t move to get under the table.
I feel sick to my stomach, like I might not be able to stop my body from spasming and expelling the lunch I just had. Because the enormity of it feels like it’s squeezing my insides—my heart, my lungs, my stomach, my
soul
.
Because Ben is right. I’ve never felt an earthquake like that. And I’ve lived here my whole life.
T
he earthquake was an 8.1 on the Richter scale.
The biggest earthquake to hit San Diego. Ever. In fact, it’s the biggest to ever hit California.
The known death toll is already at least two hundred people. And rising.
My cell phone service is out, and I can’t call Jared to make sure he’s okay, but according to the PA announcements, there’s been nothing but a few minor injuries from broken glass or things falling on people.
They start evacuating the school by classroom, and when we’re finally allowed to get up and leave, I grab my stuff and bolt out the door, relieved to finally get some air. Only when I get outside, I’m struck by how serious this is. There are downed palm trees everywhere, and the quad is covered with palm fronds. The front of the library has cracks going up the walls, and the fountain at the front of school is just a pile of broken stones.
I don’t stop moving until I’m in the girls’ bathroom, standing over a toilet. I haven’t even caught my breath, and I’m bracing myself with a hand on the stall and vomiting.
Until there’s nothing left, and I’m just dry heaving.
My eyes water and tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, my nose is running, and drops of sweat slide down my side, even though I’m freezing cold.
This is real. Alternate universes. Portals to other worlds. Universes colliding and destroying each other.
My shoulders shake, and I feel myself starting to lose it.
“Janelle?” Ben’s voice calls. “Are you in here?”
I don’t answer. Instead I hold a hand over my face and try to smother the crying.
“Are you okay?” Ben asks, and this time his voice is closer. I’m pretty sure he’s actually in the bathroom with me.
I hold my breath and wipe at my face with the back of my hand, before opening the bathroom stall.
“I just need a minute,” I say to him. “I’ll meet you outside.”
“Hey,” he says, reaching out to me. “Don’t be upset.”
But he doesn’t tell me it will all be okay. Because he can’t. And apparently Ben Michaels isn’t the kind of guy who lies to people. Even if it’s just to make them feel better.
“How can you say that when the world might end in eight days?” I ask, wiping my eyes one more time.
“We just need to focus on what we can do,” Ben says. “We have to find out who’s opening the portals and stop them. Then we’ll have more time, and we can go from there.”
“Oh, piece of cake,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Maybe we should give up, just recognize that the next eight days will be our last, and I don’t know, live them to the fullest or something.”
He gives me a half smile and pulls me into him. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
I lean into his arms and wonder why nothing has ever felt this good before. Which is my only excuse for the words that come out of my mouth next. “If all we have is eight days, why can’t we be together, even if it’s just for a few days?”
“It would be too hard. I wouldn’t be able to handle leaving you.” His breath tickles my hair, and I wrap my arms tighter around him and try to memorize the exact feel of his body against mine.
“If our worlds collide, that will be the least of your problems.”
He nods against me. “I just can’t.”
“But why?” I need him. I need this. I need something good in my life, something worth holding on to, worth fighting for, some reason not to lie down and say, “Wave Function Collapse, come get me.”