“I couldn’t reach Megan,” Moose says.
I see his boots between my legs, standing behind me.
I can’t respond. I close my eyes as the shakes that were contained in my hands stretch up my arms and into my shoulders. I grab a forgotten tablet in front of me and find the San Diego info. I scroll through panicked social media messages and find the clearest video. Screams of terror ring out as the black smoke skews the camera’s view. In between wisps of smoke, you can clearly see it is indeed the food court at the Fashion Valley Mall. I need to see it for myself. I watch it again and again, trying to discern the screams of death and terror. Is it Carina’s cry? I’ve never heard her voice in that particular pitch. It angers me I can’t decipher it. I can’t confirm. Or deny.
“Goddammit, Carina. Be okay,” I whisper. A funny thing happens while I’m worrying about Carina and the state of her being. I contemplate life without her, and the sick feeling in my stomach wreaks havoc on the rest of my body. I let her die in my mind and taste that pain, let it leak out of every single pore on my body. It’s unbearable. Thenithappens. The cruelness of my own reality overrides everything else.
I remember.
I remember Megan.
I remember everything.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Carina
I can’t openmy eyes, but I hear voices. More importantly, above the buzz and chaos, I hearhisvoice. “She’ll be okay then?” he asks. In response, I hear mumbling from someone whom I assume is the person he’s talking to. High-pitched beeping embeds itself into my mind every several seconds. It’s an awful reminder that I’m not completely aware or in control of my own body.
“Take this and assure me she will be okay here and will continue to have a bed,” Smith snarls. What does that mean? “My number. Call me daily. Do you understand?” There is a tension in his tone I can’t comprehend. Mostly because I can’t see the face that goes along with it.
“There’s no need for this. Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” the other man replies. They speak in hushed whispers a while longer, unintelligible words my foggy mind can’tcomprehend. I don’t even know what happened or where I am. I feel his warm lips against my forehead. They linger longer than I think they should for a harmless kiss. I smell him. It’s different. It’s him, but it’s also smoke, sweat, and an indescribable scent I’m not familiar with. I want to reach for him and pull him to me. I need him to tell me what’s going on and why I sense such unease. Also why I feel so much pain deep within my bones.
Somehow I know I won’t get that chance. “I love you, Care. Forever.” His presence disappears from my weak awareness. Even unable to open my eyes, I know for a fact he’s gone. My voice doesn’t work. I can’t call out for him to tell him I love him too. There’s nothing now.
The beeping continues, now at a more hurried pace. It’s incessant and skull piercing. It seems to grow louder and louder, echoing in the empty places Smith created when he left. “There, there,” a male voice soothes in my ear. It’s the wrong voice. My arms are leaden now that I feel them and try to use them. “Calm down.” I must be tied down.
A fire starts in the crook of my arm and spreads. The panic I felt seconds ago vanishes, and I gladly accept the black cloud that spreads over me like a warm blanket. I don’t have to think, or try to think, now. I just have to sleep.
There were signs—foreboding symptoms of a world infiltrated by evil. Mostly they went ignored as isolated threats and sporadic, spur-of-the-moment decisions made by unpredictable enemies. They were unsuspecting war declarations. That’s usually the way until something so damning and heinous happens you can’t ignore it. Our generation’s Pearl Harbor massacred hundreds of thousands. It’s the beginning of World War III.
Martial law is a bitch. Curfew is a bitch. Guards that patrol the streets are a bitch. Well, they’re around to make sure we’re safe, but they’re still a bitch. They represent what’s been taken. Not just from me, but from everyone. The terror attacks on the 9/11 anniversary were so widespread that almost every person on the planet was affected in some way or another. Everyone knows someone who died, was injured, or was friends with someone who knew of someone who is now gone. Weeks have passed, and it still feels like it happened yesterday.
The television in my living room is on nonstop. In this state of emergency, the news plays twenty-four hours a day. The worn-out news anchors feed us information directly from the president. He himself will give news conferences from the Oval Office once a week. I think it’s supposed to boost morale or to let us know he’s working on the problem. How are we ever supposed to feel safe again? That’s what I want to ask him. That’s the issue I want to address. I’ve never had safety until veryrecently. It was snatched away, in all forms, in mere seconds.
When I finally got out of the hospital, the city was in complete melee. I was battered and bruised, but I would heal. The world? It will never be the same. I shuttered myself in my perfect little house after a terrifying ride home from the hospital. Jasmine stayed a few days, but eventually she returned to her house. Cell phones work sporadically. I blame the fact I haven’t heard from Smith on that.
And the fact that he’s off saving the world. The note stuck to the fridge with a cat magnet said, “Chicago. Then NYC. Call when I can. I love you. Be safe.” The yellow sticky note is now taped to my laptop—the only reminder I have of our relationship that is tangible at this point. It seems like a whirlwind. A dream. Something that happened to someone else. Something that ended so brutally and quickly that I’m unsure how to feel.
So I don’t feel. Anything.
We’re supposed to carry on our everyday life like nothing happened. That’s what they keep telling us, their voices monotone and robotic. Like it’s even possible to consider that for even a second. My heart pounds out of my chest anytime I open the front door.
The sun still has a murky haze in front of it. If I were a more religious person, I would think this is the rapture. The apocalypse. The end of times. Earth going to hell in a handbasket, wrapped neatly for the devil himself. Theimage reflected on the TV presently is that of our planet from space. Earth is crying in the form of thick, black smoke.
It makes my stomach pang with unease. Turning up the volume, I retreat to the bedroom to work. Smith’s novel is finished. I haven’t given it a title, and I’m not sure about the ending I’ve written. But given the circumstances and the fact that I’m not sure where we stand in our relationship, it’s poignant at the very least. Jaz will hate it. Even though she’s asked to read it a dozen times, I’ve told her it’s not ready. I’ve edited it more times than I care to admit, and I can’t put my finger on what needs to happen for me to call itdone.
Reading it is the only thing that takes my mind off reality. I lose myself in a love story so swift and so simple that it blocks everything else out entirely. Because if I remember Megan the way I portray her in my story, I can forget how the blast that gave me a scar on my right ankle disfigured most of her face and half of her body.
Tears come, and the well of guilt that resides in my chest forces labored breaths. I picture her with her long, silken, blond hair and her pageant-ready features. Her petite, toned body and her flawless skin. Her smile. Her laugh. Her perfection. The vomit rises when her new reality, her new, destroyed body and face, comes to mind.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I’m happy for Smith. And you. After talking to you this morning and hangingwith you one on one, I can call Smith and Megan done,”Megan said.“He was mine for so long I forgot what life was like without him. But when I stopped to think about it, after he healed from his accident, he wasn’t my Smith. I’ve been living without him for a while now, Carina. That man is so obviously yours it’s embarrassing.”She smiled at me and took my hand in hers. She swallowed, and it looked like it was difficult. She had to work hard to get those words out. The emotion reflecting in her eyes was almost too much to bear, so I looked down at our joined hands.
Her long fingers folded around mine, and her nails were so perfect, so goddamn perfect, that I couldn’t look away. The French manicure. The perfectly filed natural nails. The moisturized skin. I was thinking,My god. What if he remembers this beautiful, kind woman?when the bomb went off. I didn’t know it was a bomb at the time because I was knocked unconscious right away. I think it was the blowback that took me out. Megan, seated mere feet from me, got the bad end of the stick.
After I finish today’s crying jag, the sun is setting. US residents aren’t permitted to be outside after dark. A facet of Martial law I find odd because terrorists don’t require dark. They relish in the light—in taking it—in snuffing it out completely.
I get out of bed when I hear a knock at the door. Sean, Jaz’s brother, is bringing me groceries. I don’t bother putting pants on underneath Smith’s oversized T-shirt. It hits right above my kneeanyway. I shrug and open the door a crack to peer outside.
