Page 109 of When We Believed in Mermaids

My head hurt loudly, with a noise to it, and the blood dripped to the ground from my elbow. A woman hurried over and tugged off her sweater. “Sit down before you faint,” she ordered, and pressed the sweater to my head. “Mom, you need to sit down too.”

“Oh my God!” my mom cried, and she was literally crying, shaking so hard that when she reached for me, it made me think of the shivering of the earth, and I moaned, ducking away. She sank down beside me. “You need to go to the hospital.”

“We need to call Kit!” I cried. If it was this bad here, what happened at Eden? Panic squeezed my lungs so hard that I couldn’t catch my breath, and I grabbed my mom’s wrist hard. “Kit!”

“I will; I will.” Mom stood up, stared around her, looked at me. “You’re bleeding so badly, I don’t want to leave you.”

The woman lifted the sweater. “Yep, you’re going to need a bunch of stitches. Can you walk?”

I tried to stand up, but another wave of noise and shaking overtook us, knocking me down. Someone started screaming again, in little bursts. My mom was on her hands and knees. “The hospital is too far away. We need to call an ambulance.”

“Every ambulance within a hundred miles is going to be busy.”

“Let’s just stay here. They’ll be down here soon enough.”

The woman had the air of someone who was used to getting things done. She hesitated, looking around us, then sank down beside me. “You’re right.”

A roar filled my head. “Kit and Dad! We need to call them!”

“Yes. Right. I need to call home,” Mom said. “I’m going to try to find a phone.”

I nodded, but I was feeling dizzy and sick, and only lolled against the planter. I was covered in blood, and my gut was cramping in rhythmic waves that mimicked the earthquake or maybe the ocean.

My mom came back, looking sick. “No answer.”

And there was nothing to do but wait. Wait while people staggered by, while they tried to drive cars that couldn’t go anywhere because the streets were broken into waves, while little kids screamed at the top of their lungs. While the smell of smoke filled the air and increased the darkness, and sirens finally wailed into the space, carrying police and EMTs who assessed the injuries of the people scattered like more litter around the area.

We leaned into each other. I wondered how we’d even get home.

It was hours before anyone could clean and stitch up my still-bleeding cut. By then I was incoherent with pain and terror, and to this day, I don’t remember getting to Eden. A stranger in a Jeep helped us, our Good Samaritan.

There were no lights as we drove up, only blackness and emptiness where the buildings had once stood. After the long trauma of the day, I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

And then I did. My heart shattered a thousand times, over and over and over. I jumped out of the car and screamed, “Kit!”

She ran into the light of the headlights, her face a mess of tears and dirt. I hugged her so hard it made my head ache.

“Where’s your father?” my mother asked.

Kit shook her head. Pointed.

On the beach of the cove were the remains of our house and the restaurant, a wreck of lumber that looked as incoherent as my mother became in seconds. She screamed and then screamed again, falling to her knees on the rocky ground.

Chapter Thirty

Kit

Mari picks me up right on the dot of six. She looks exhausted. “Hey. I brought you coffee.”

“Oh my God, it smells so good.”

“I didn’t know how you took it, so I figured milk, and you can add sugar if you like.” She points to a thick stack of sugar packets in one of the cup holders.

I laugh. “I’m not eight anymore, you know.”

“Once an addict, always an addict.”

“Takes one to know one.” I realize too late that it sounds mean. “Sugar addict, I mean.”