Chapter 35
Chapter Thirty-Five
Clementine
I don’t know how long I sit there. It feels like time has stopped, like I somehow escaped reality and this dark, cold stairwell is the only place where none of this is happening. My eyes adjust and the darkness sharpens into shadows.
I count my breaths and force my mind blank. I have the feeling that I’m supposed to be upstairs, gathered around the radio, letting my coworkers and strangers hug me and reassure me that everything is going to be fine, that Hunter’s going to be fine, but I can’t.
I can’t. If I could find a smaller, darker place I’d be in it.
After five minutes or five hours, I hear voices above, echoing through the hall. Slowly, they separate, two people calling to each other.
One is Jennifer.
No: one is Jennifer, talking about me.
“Have you seen Clementine?” she asks. “The truck is still here, so she hasn’t left, but I can’t find her and I’m getting worried.”
“Sorry,” calls the other voice, one I don’t recognize.
I clear my throat and take a shaky breath.
“Jen,” I call.
Silence, then footsteps on the stairs. She rounds the landing in a whirl, calling my name, and then the lights go on and I squeeze my eyes shut, shielding them with my hand.
“There you are,” she says.
I open one eye and look up at her, afraid to speak. Jennifer holds out one hand.
“They made it,” she says softly.
I lean my head back against the wall and take a deep breath.
It’s okay, I think over and over. It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay. It’s okay.
“C’mon,” Jennifer says. “They’re in a helicopter, heading to Ashlake General.”
I grab her hand and let her pull me up, and before I can stop her she’s pulling me in, wrapping her arms around me.
“There’s a football trophy with Cute Butt’s name on it by the principal’s office,” she says softly. “You never said you’d known each other since high school.”
That does it.
The dam breaks and I start sobbing into Jennifer’s shoulder, and it’s a loud, messy, snot-filled ugly cry but I don’t care because I feel limp and spent like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far and snapped back.
Jennifer just strokes my hair and makes soothing noises as I babble, shit like I thought he was gonna die and I couldn’t fucking do anything and Jesus I’m a mess I’m sorry.
Eventually, the waterworks are over and I’ve just got the hiccups. Jennifer reaches into a pocket and hands me half a brown paper towel from one of the school bathrooms.
I clear my throat and blow my nose, then wish I’d dried my eyes before blowing my nose, and Jennifer guides me upstairs to the girl’s bathroom where there are as many paper towels as I need. I splash my face, and as I dry it on more scratchy paper towels, Jennifer’s radio says her name.
“Yeah,” she says.
“Did you find Clementine?”
She looks at me.
“Yeah, I got her,” she says.
“Can she talk?”
I nod.
“Sure,” she says, and hands me the radio.
There’s another lump in my throat, and I try to clear it. The radio is quiet for a long time, and I just watch it, waiting.
Then there’s a quick burst of static.
“Clem?” Hunter’s voice says.
“Hey,” I say, and I grin despite myself, my eyes filling up again.
Jennifer turns and leaves the girls’ bathroom.
“I told you I’d be fine,” he says.
“I believed you,” I say, my voice a little shaky.
“I’ve still got your rock,” he says. “I had to fight the paramedics for it when they cut my pants off, though.”
“You could have replaced it with another one and I’d never have figured it out,” I say.
“Yeah, but I’d have known,” he says.
I look at myself in the mirror. I’m a mess, but I’m grinning like an idiot.
“Are you really okay?” I ask.
“I will be,” he says, and then the radio goes quiet for a moment. “Listen, Clem, they gotta do some hospital stuff because I guess I inhaled a lot of smoke. And I’m not really supposed to be using the radio for personal shit, anyway, but they said I could.”
“Hunter, I think you could ask for a pony right now and get it,” I say.
“That’s not a bad idea,” he says.
“When can I come see you?”
More silence. Then a sigh. Then a deep, wracking cough, and I cringe.
“They said tomorrow,” he says, his voice raspy.
“Tomorrow?” I ask, my heart sinking.
“I guess they don’t want visitors for the first couple of hours because of, uh, stuff, and then visiting hours are gonna be over...”
Visiting hours? Fuck visiting hours.
“I gotta go,” he says. “But Clem, I, uh...”
He trails off, my heart suddenly in my throat.
“I’ll see you soon?” he finishes.
“I’ll see you soon,” I say.
The radio clicks off, and I put it down on a sink. I grab the ugly, hard water-stained porcelain in both hands and lean my forehead against the scratched mirror.
He’s okay, I tell myself. He’s okay, he’s okay.
It still takes me a little while to pull myself together. I feel like an asshole that he called me after nearly dying and what I said was you could ask for a pony. A good girlfriend would have said oh my God, I’m so glad you’re okay, I was so scared, I don’t know what I’d do without you.
And I am, I was, and I don’t. But somehow it came out of my mouth as are you really okay?
I quit thinking about it. I stand up straight, wipe the smudge off the mirror with another paper towel, compose myself, and leave the bathroom.
Right away, someone needs something: blankets, cots, food, phone numbers. Someone else is finding Delilah for her mother, but I get yanked in a hundred directions instantly.
The second I can sneak off again, I call my mother.
“Minty!” she says. “I was just about to call you, because you heard that two of the hotshots had to deploy their fire shelters? I mean, my God, I can’t imagine.”
“I did hear,” I say. “And—”
“You’re never going to guess who one of them was,” she goes on.
“My high school boyfriend Hunter Casden?”
She laughs.
“Darn it, Minty, I thought I was the first one with the news for once,” she says. “He’s fine, but I couldn’t believe it when I saw his name on the charts as I was leaving. You know, I had to throw out that couch in the basement after you two broke up.”
I push my bangs off my forehead, thinking I may as well tell her.
“Actually, mom, I—”
I pause, frowning.
“Why’d you have to throw out the couch?”
“It was disgusting,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Minty, there was practically a crust on it.”
I can feel myself turn beet red, and I take a deep breath.
“Hunter and I are dating again and I need your help busting in to see him after visiting hours are over,” I say, the words rocketing out of my mouth.
There’s a pause.
“Hunter Casden?” she says, sounding a little incredulous.
“What? Yes,” I say. It’s not like we were talking about a different Hunter.
There’s a long pause on the other end.
“Please?” I say.
My mom sighs.
“All right,” she says.