I AM NOT PROUD OF WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
It's like my brain overheats. This single thought jams the cogs and screams so loudly, I don't hear anything else. No other thought, no objection from Anke, no hushing from Mom.
I sit in the car, and I beg: I promise to work. I tell Anke about spending hours helping today, about cleaning goo, about unloading dishes. And then I scream: I say they promised us until tomorrow, that they're murdering us, murdering us. I say it's Mom's fault, I never drank a drop and never took a bite. That I had a chance here, that they should kick her out and let me stay if that's what it takes.
Mom gasps at that. I see it, don't register it.
My brain gets hotter. There are tears on my face. My skin burns. Workers peek at the car to see what's going on but keep moving, busy little bees with jobs and a future.
Someone else shows up. A bearded man. Anke whispers to him, and he tries to drag me from the car, his hands like manacles. I scream at the top of my lungs, flail, catch him in the face. Anke and Mom intervene. They end up letting me stay in the car, and they give me water, and they let me calm down until I'm hunched up, shuddering, and my voice is too dead to keep yelling.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
They guide me to the cabin to dress properly and pack. They give us mouth filters against the dust. They ask us to lean our heads back and widen our eyes for protective drops.
And Mom and I leave, just the same.
I don't look back as I leave the Nassau, as if not acknowledging Mom will make her fade away. With the cold wind searing my cheeks, I can almost believe it might—like I stepped into a different world when I stepped onto the ramp, and Mom is kilometers away.
The truth is, she's right behind me. She's maneuvering the car out of the bay.
I decided to walk. I have my flashlight tight in my hand, but I don't need it yet. The ramp and the area around the ship are lit up so people can work even in the dark of the impact dust blotting out the sky. And it is dark. Away from the ship's immediate surroundings, it's black as anything. I can't tell where the ground ends and the sky begins.
It's the first time I've let myself look outside since the impact. I freeze on the ramp. I clutch the flashlight tighter. The wind tears a curl of hair from where I'd tucked it under my scarf and hood.
When we arrived yesterday afternoon, the asphalt of the lot was so smooth, it would've damn near made me purr if I were biking across it. Now the ground looks like something out of a news report after an earthquake in Turkey, a hurricane in the United States, a tsunami in the Philippines. Scattered across the asphalt is a ragged carpet of leaves and stones and puddles of black mud. Ripped-loose branches gnarl and twist. A lamppost lies flat, snapped at the base. Flecks of broken glass glimmer like water. The lot itself wears dents like pockmarked skin.
I hear the car behind me.
That gets me moving again.
Shaky-legged, I walk farther down the ramp. Farther still. The car headlights light up the ground before me when we leave the safety of the ship's illumination. I click on the flashlight. The air is so thick with dust, it's like sweeping the light beam through a cloud of smoke, but the air I'm breathing is the opposite—thin, like barely enough oxygen is getting through the filter. At least the material is molded to my face so perfectly that I don't even feel it, aside from the initial prickle of energy that repels the dust. I once wore an old-fashioned filter for a school drill and it made me want to claw my face off.
At least I'll breathe clean air when I die out here.
I banish the thought. I aim my flashlight up, but it doesn't stretch far enough. There should be office buildings and control towers in the distance, but all I see is the vague silhouette of what must be a nearby concourse. It looks jagged. When I blink, it's gone, and it might as well have been my imagination.
People have cleared the area near the ship, but the farther away I get, the more I feel leaves gliding underfoot, glass crunching and stabbing the soles of my boots. Sometimes my toes slip into a spiderweb crater where I expected even ground. The flashlight draws twitchy shadows from every pebble. Behind me, the car crunches rubble under its wheels.
And it's so dark.
I feel like I'm walking the plank. Like this illuminated stretch of asphalt will inevitably open up into a black sea.
It doesn't.
The car comes to a shuddering stop under an overhang. When I raise my flashlight, I see it's the only part of the overhang that's still intact. The rest has crumbled. A crack runs through one wall. Dried mud from the day's dirt-heavy rain streaks its surface.
Mom slides down the car window. "Are you sure you don't want to look for …"
If she says my sister's name, I might scream. We could have been out there right now if Mom hadn't screwed up. We'd be on the road with a place to go and a place to return to.
But she's right. We could still go now. Mom's not OK yet, but she's better than she was. And I don't know what else to do. "I … OK. Try to … be alert. For when you drive. Dangerous. The roads."
The words aren't coming. But Mom smiles and nods, and I slide into the passenger seat. I take the seat belt: tzz, tzz, tzz.
We drive.
We fail.
We've barely cleared the lot before something snaps with such force that I scream and grip the dashboard. There's too much glass on the road, blown out from the airport and streetlights. It must have cut into a tire.
"I'm sorry," Mom says, and I don't know if it's for the drugs or the car or Iris or everything else.