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“Is it?”
“Better than the alternative.”
“How high do you think the water will get?” I ask. I know he doesn’t have any real answers for me, but talking helps, so I’ll keep talking. As long as I can focus on something other than the dark pit in my stomach, maybe I won’t give myself an ulcer. Again.
“Depends on how much longer it rains,” Cree replies with a shrug. “Also depends on how long it takes for someone to realize we have a problem here.”
“The power company knows when one of its lines goes down,” I say. “They’ll send a crew out to fix it, and they’ll find us.”
“Yeah, but when?”
“I don’t know. It seems like news crews are always on the scenes of natural disasters pretty quickly though, right?”
“Even with the rain still coming down?”
As if answering, the rain pounds harder on the roof, and the wind whips around the building in great gusts.
“What do we do?” I ask in a low voice.
I’m terrified, and I don’t want him to know how scared I really am. Social anxiety has always plagued me, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew it was my own doing. That didn’t make it any easier, but ultimately, I knew I wasn’t in any real danger. That’s all out the window now, and my brain doesn’t seem to be able to process what’s going on.
“Hang tight.” Cree gives me a big smile, and despite the situation, my stomach does a flip-flop. “Your co-worker knows you’re here. A friend of mine knows I’m here. Eventually, they’ll send someone to find us, but we might be here a while. You hungry?”
Cree sits down on the rug and opens his backpack. He produces two energy bars and smiles as he holds one out to me.
I feel the effect of his calm demeanor and stop counting long enough to take his offering.
“Boy Scouts?” I ask as I take a bite. “You’re prepared for anything?”
“Lots of late-night studying,” he replies. “These are much cheaper meals than eating out and better for you than hitting the vending machines.”
It makes sense. Cree’s family lived in the trailer park just outside of our hometown, and he has to be struggling financially. I have to stop myself from offering him whatever cash is in my purse.
“Shit!”
“What?” Cree asks.
“My purse,” I say. “It still down there.”
“That sucks.”
I feel intense pressure around my heart at the very thought of losing my purse. Aside from the usual ID and credit cards, my purse contains a very pricy Hermès clutch. Inside the front pocket of the clutch are my
anxiety pills which I desperately need right now.
“I need it!” I look down over the edge to try to locate the seat where I had been studying.
“The water is still coming in,” Cree says. “You shouldn’t go back down there. Whatever is in your purse isn’t going to do much good right now, and it can all be replaced.”
His logic is flawless, but it’s my purse. Medication, money, house keys, and one of the very few pictures of my brother I still have—they’re all in my purse. Of course it can all be replaced, but not easily, and he doesn’t know about the pills or the pictures. I can’t let them get wet and destroyed.
“It will only take me a minute.”
I rush down the dark staircase, trying to remember exactly where I had left my treasured purse. I’m pretty sure it’s on the chair next to where I had been studying. When the library is busy, I’ll put it behind the counter, but tonight there was no one around to bother with it.
I make my way to the study desks near the anatomy books. Relief washes over me when I see I left it on the chair, not on the floor where it would have gotten soaked. I grab it from the chair and look up at the open balcony where Cree is watching me. I hold the purse up high, and Cree gives me a thumbs-up.
A rumble of thunder is followed by a completely different rumble.
