25. The Group Heart Situation
THE GROUP HEART SITUATION
GRACE
The periwinkle is getting short.
This is a crisis. The periwinkle has been the backbone of every strategic decision we've made since I drew the first wonky version of this park on the back of a brochure in the thinking box, and now it's worn down to a nub the size of my thumbnail.
But the crayon plan needs updating because we keep doing things and things keep happening and the plan has to absorb all of it or the plan isn't the plan anymore, it's just a drawing with feelings.
My phone has been charged twice since Joel got the battery packs working, and has rewarded me with one bar, zero calls, and the reliability of a wet paper straw.
I smooth the brochure flat on the thinking box desk.
The paper has been folded and unfolded so many times that the fold lines are furry.
The bean shark in the fish part section is still my finest artistic achievement.
Joel's handwriting is in the margins where he's added structural notes in pen because Joel doesn't trust crayons.
Joel's wrong but I've chosen to let him be wrong about this because you can't fight every war.
Grant's sitting on the bench with Pepper asleep in his jacket. Beck's on the floor, cross-legged, sharpening something against something else. Joel's standing near the porthole doing his scan thing.
"Okay," I say. "New items."
I pick up the periwinkle. I hold it the way you hold a pencil when you're taking the SATs and everything matters. I write.
Item twenty-three: FIX THE LOUD MACHINE.
I pause. Consider. Add parenthetically: (the thing that talks to other places).
"The communications tower," Joel says, because Joel can read upside down.
Item twenty-four: CALL MOM.
Item twenty-five: FIND OUT IF BISCUIT IS OKAY.
Item twenty-six: ALSO SNACKS.
"Your mother is three hundred miles away," Joel says.
"My mother is three hundred miles away with my cat and inadequate snack provisions for an apocalypse. She has Mrs. Patterson's casserole. One casserole, Joel. One casserole isn't a survival strategy, it's a Tuesday."
"What kind of casserole?" Beck asks from the floor.
"Tuna."
"Tuna casserole is a war crime."
"Don't let my mother hear you say that. She'll defend Mrs. Patterson's tuna casserole with the ferocity of a woman who's never once enjoyed it but respects the gesture."
"So the operations center," I say, tapping the crayon plan. I drew a building near the big middle. A rectangle with a squiggle on top that looks like a rectangle having a bad hair day. "Joel, you said there's a talking system in there."
"Emergency communications system," Joel says. "Shortwave, satellite phone terminal, PA override. If it still has power and the antenna array is aligned, we might be able to reach someone."
"And if it isn't aligned?"
"Someone goes to the roof."
"We climb the sky pole," I say.
They all look at me.
"The tall thing. On the roof. The..." I make a vertical motion that doesn't help. "The metal... reaching... thing that sends the signals up to the..."
"Antenna," Joel says.
"Thank you."
"You want to climb the antenna," Beck says.
"I don't want to climb it. I want to get to it. There's a difference. Climbing implies recreational intent. This is tactical."
"Tactical sky pole climbing," Beck says.
"Beck, I will revoke your dessert armory privileges."
"Couldn't we try your phone again?" Beck asks.
"I've tried my phone. My phone is a rectangle of emotional terrorism."
"Charging the phone isn't the problem. The cell network is," Joel says.
"It keeps showing one bar."
"One bar means it can sometimes detect a tower. It doesn't mean the tower can complete a call."
"So the bar is lying."
"The bar is optimistic."
"I hate optimistic bars."
Joel points to the operations center on the map.
"The emergency system doesn't rely on the public cell network.
If anything can reach outside, it's that.
The comms room is on the ground floor, the antenna array is on the roof.
The problem isn't getting to the building.
The problem is that the rooftop is exposed, elevated, and the antenna realignment involves physical adjustment of the dish, which is loud. Metal on metal. It'll draw attention."
"Wrong people attention," I say.
"Wrong people attention. We secured the big middle but they drift. They come in from outside the perimeter. Solar Plaza is open, hard to defend, and the operations center is right in the middle of it."
"Good thing I have a plan place." I gesture at the brochure. "And a plan crayon."
"The plan crayon is a nub," Joel observes.
"Don't nub-shame the periwinkle, Joel. The periwinkle has carried this team."
Grant clears his throat. "I could take Captain up," he says. "From a high perch, he'll fixate on movement before we can see it. I can read the direction of his attention and identify where something is moving. I won’t get an exact count, but he can give us an early warning."
"You can really do that?" I ask.
"I've been working with raptors for nine years. Their spatial communication is remarkably nuanced."
"Grant reads bird." I look at the others. "Grant reads bird and we've been raw-dogging strategy without bird subtitles?"
"I've been using it. You just weren't watching."
"I was watching! I watch Captain all the time! He screams at things and sits on your arm and once he ate a lizard in front of me while maintaining direct eye contact and it was the most aggressive lunch I've ever witnessed."
"That's his way of showing trust."
"That's his way of showing me a lizard's internal organs, Grant."
Beck snorts.
I look at the crayon plan. I look at the three men in the thinking box and I think about the thing I'm not ready to think about.
"So," I say.
The tone shift is instant. Beck stops grinning. Joel's scan goes still. Grant's hand on Pepper goes motionless.
"So we're all doing the feeling thing?" I say. "Together? Like a team feeling? A group..." I make a gesture that's supposed to encompass the enormity of what I'm trying to say and instead encompasses approximately the space of a medium pizza. "Heart situation?"
"Nailed it," Beck says quietly.
Joel opens his mouth. "She means..."
"They know what I mean, Joel."
"I'm just trying to..."
"Everyone in this room knows what I mean. Even Pepper knows what I mean and Pepper is a marsupial infant."
Grant's hand moves gently over Pepper's back. "She's actually quite perceptive for her age."
"Grant, I adore you, but I'm not workshopping wallaby intelligence right now, I'm trying to have a..." I wave my hands again. The pizza gesture expands. It's a large pizza now. Family size. "A conversation about the... us... the group... the..."
"Group heart situation," Beck supplies.
"Thank you. The group heart situation. Which is a thing that exists. That we're all participating in. Individually and also together in a way that I haven't seen a pamphlet for."
I'm standing now. My body made the executive decision that this conversation required verticality, which is bold given my body's history, but here we are. Upright for now.
"Look," I say, and I grab the crayon plan and hold it up.
"This plan has gotten us through everything.
It got us through clearing the parts and Kevin and Gregory and approximately forty-seven wrong people and the time Beck's fish vest got stuck in the log flume grate and the time Joel electrified a fence and the time Grant's bird ate a rat on my shoe while I was still wearing the shoe.
The crayon plan works because we put everything on it.
Everything real. Everything that matters.
And this..." I gesture between the four of us.
The gesture is generous. The gesture includes the bench and the floor and the porthole and the entire thinking box.
"This matters. This is a real thing. And it's not on the plan. "
I pick up the periwinkle and write, in the margin, in letters so small they're practically a secret:
Item twenty-seven: THE GROUP HEART SITUATION.
I underline it. The periwinkle protests. I underline it anyway.
"There," I say. "Now it's on the plan. Now it's official.
We are four people who have feelings about each other in a combination that I'm pretty sure doesn't have a section in the greeting card aisle but that's fine because Hallmark wasn't prepared for this and frankly neither was I but here we are. "
My hands are shaking a little.I put the crayon down.
"I've been calling this a relationship in my head for a while," Beck says. "So. Glad we're catching up."
Joel's the kind of quiet that has texture, like denim. He's looking at the porthole but he's not scanning.
"Joel," I say.
He turns. His face is doing the novel thing, the small-font thing, every micro-expression a sentence I have to squint to read. And what I read is: he wants this and it terrifies him.
"I'm not good at this," he says.
"I called it a group heart situation. Do I seem good at this?"
His mouth moves. The actual smile. It's there for maybe two seconds and it rewrites his entire face and then it's gone. I'm going to think about it for the rest of my life.
"If we can survive a zombie apocalypse together," I say, "we can survive having feelings about it. The feelings aren't harder than the zombies. The feelings don't try to eat us."
"Some feelings try to eat you," Beck says.
"Beck."
"Just saying. Some feelings are very bitey."
"I'm in," Grant says.
My eyes are doing a wet, traitorous, inconvenient, deeply poorly timed something that I'm going to ignore with the full force of my personality.
Joel takes a step away from the porthole. "We should discuss the operations center," he says.
And that's is Joel's version of Grant's two words and Beck's week-long head start.
"The operations center," I repeat. "Yes. The plan. The tactical sky pole situation."
I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of the Wondie hoodie.