Unbreakable. Elizabeth Norris

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СКАЧАТЬ or just gone. The roof on my favorite restaurant, Roberto’s, caved in, and the patio cracked and split open, putting an end to my burritos-after-the-beach tradition. Trees have been uprooted, and they lie on their sides as if they’ve been discarded like weeds. In my old neighborhood, the trees took out any houses that hadn’t already collapsed from the quake itself. Debris is everywhere, littered across the grass and piled up on the side of the road.

      But what’s worst is how it feels. Before the quakes, San Diego was the kind of place that felt alive. The sun, the ocean waves, the crowds of tourists—it had personality. Now it feels empty, destroyed. Dead.

      This silence is one of respect, the kind that you observe.

      Because it’s been a hundred and forty days since an old pickup truck hit me, and the warmth of the engine, the smell of locking brakes, and someone shouting my name were the last things I remembered. A hundred and forty days since I died.

      Since my whole world changed.

      Because I didn’t stay dead. Ben Michaels healed me and brought me back. Because of him, I had a second chance. I don’t know how it happened, but Ben changed my class schedule, argued with me in English, took me to Sunset Cliffs, and made me love him.

      And then he left.

      Now the whole world has changed—for everyone.

      My dad died because he didn’t know what kind of case he stumbled on. I solved his murder, saved the world, lost my best friend, and watched Ben walk through a portal and leave this universe.

      I stopped Wave Function Collapse, but the damage was already done.

      All of the natural disasters hit at the same time—and no corner of the globe was spared. Tornadoes took out the Midwest. Earthquakes leveled cities close to fault lines and also ones that weren’t, like Dallas and Vegas. Tsunamis blanketed and sank low-level areas like Coronado Island, New Orleans, Manhattan, and parts of the California coast. Wildfires swept the nation in all different directions, reducing land, trees, houses—even people—to ashes.

      And we weren’t alone. Other countries had been hit just as hard. Some of them were just gone.

      Millions of people died.

      Millions more went missing.

      Modern life took the biggest hit. Satellites were knocked out of position, telephone lines went dead, electricity flickered out, and running water went dry. Aftershocks took out most of the buildings that were still standing. Hospitals overflowed with people injured and dying. Medicine and medical supplies were used up. We started running out of food and water. Almost nothing survived the looting.

      As Cecily drives, I lean my forehead against the window and feel the warmth of the sun against the glass. I almost close my eyes to block out the reminders, but it’s pointless. I can’t forget what’s happened here.

      “Don’t do that!” Cecily says, snapping her fingers at me as we go over a bump on the uneven road. “And by that, I mean that weird sad thing where you go all quiet and depressed.”

      “I thought you knew I was lame like that,” I say, but I pull my head back and sit up straight. She’s bossy, but right.

      Cecily smiles. “I know you better than you think, J.”

      “Didn’t you know cheerleading is sort of a dead sport?” I ask. “I’m not sure you need to stay so peppy.”

      She gasps and pretends to be offended, but I know she’s not. We both had a first-class ticket to seeing the world change. Well, maybe that was just me, but Cecily has seen the aftereffects up close and personal even if she doesn’t know the actual cause.

      I’m about to say something else when I see it.

      Ahead there’s a house, half standing with a sunken roof, and in front of it a few people are milling around, looking at an assortment of stuff laid out on the dead grass.

      Cecily sees it too. “Oh, a yard sale! We have to check it out.”

      It’s not that they’re likely to have anything we want. These yard sales are for trades. People need supplies—usually medicine or food—and they’re willing to give up other material possessions in order to get it.

      Of course, not many people have medicine or food to spare. But we do. Between my connection to the FBI and Cecily’s family running one of the largest evacuation shelters in the area, we have access that normal people don’t. There’s a case of water and an economy-size bottle of aspirin in the back of the truck. I can’t give it all away, but I can give these people something.

      “It looks like they have books,” Cecily adds as we crawl to a stop. “Maybe they’ll have something for Jared.”

      He needs a new book. We can only reread Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix so many times. As he’s pointed out, it’s the middle of the story.

      I get out of the truck. A man wearing broken glasses approaches us, but I let Cecily talk to him. She’s the friendly one, after all.

      There are some old clothes and blankets off to the side, and then a row of DVDs. I look at them just in case there’s something X-Files. We lost our collector’s edition box set when our house collapsed. Electricity is too spotty still to play DVDs, but once it comes back, my brother will miss them.

      The collection is mostly indie movies, so I head for the books. It’s a lot of literary stuff, a lot of classics, and not necessarily the good stuff, in my opinion. I know I should want to preserve Moby Dick or Great Expectations, but I just can’t make myself do it. Then I see a flash of a red-and-black book cover.

      I reach for it, excitement making me feel giddy and light-headed. I turn, ready to call out to Cee to tell her what I’ve found, but I’m not looking, so I walk straight into some random guy.

      He’s taller than me, and my face plows into his shoulder. The soft cotton of his shirt rubs against my cheek as I stumble against him. He grunts and drops all of the books in his hands. I pause, taking a minute to make sure I have my balance before I look up. Even though it wasn’t really my fault, I’m about to apologize.

      Only the words get stuck in my throat.

      “Sorry about that. The danger of picking up too many mass-markets,” he says with a tentative smile, a smile that says he’s a little embarrassed.

      And suddenly everything around me stops. The sounds of the other people, the wind in the trees—it fades away, and all I see is the guy in front of me. Everything about him is the same. The wavy hair, the dark eyes, the self-conscious half smile.

      I close my eyes, sure that I’m imagining this, that too much sun and not enough sleep have finally gotten to me, but when I open them again, he’s still there.

      It’s like I’ve conjured him out of thin air.

      “Ben?” I whisper, because my whole body feels like it’s frozen, like I’m worried he’ll disappear.

      

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