Unbreakable - Elizabeth Norris

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and just not being able to. Kevin’s tried to hook me up with half the guys in his unit, and then of course, there’s Nick. A date or even a little romance would be such a welcome distraction from everything going on, but all I see when I look at another guy is someone who’s not Ben Michaels.

      Since the day he left, I’ve been looking everywhere for Ben. Remembering his dark brown eyes; the way his hair falls in his face; the way he reached out, touched my cheek, and pulled me into one last kiss; the way he took slow steps backward toward the portal, as if he didn’t really want to leave; the way he said my name and told me he loved me.

      The way the portal swallowed him up and he disappeared.

      But mostly I think about how he said, I’ll come back for you.

      “Okay, don’t laugh,” Cecily says suddenly, doing me a favor and pulling me from thoughts I should be able to let go. “But I kind of have a thing for the bad boys, like from afar, but still. Give me a leather jacket, a devilish smile, a guy my parents wouldn’t approve of, and you know, someone who needs to be saved.”

      Ben didn’t have the leather jacket or a devilish smile. But he was definitely the kind of guy my dad would’ve been wary of. And he did need to be saved.

      Only I’d saved him, and now he was gone.

      “It wouldn’t hurt either if he had nice eyes,” Cecily adds.

      I smile, thinking of Ben’s dark, deep-set eyes and the intensity in them when he looked at me.

      Every five or ten minutes, Cecily carts an armload of popcorn bags out to the field. When we finally have them all passed out, we pick through the crowd to find my brother, Jared, and Kevin and his friends. There’s one extra bag of popcorn, and because we’re feeling gluttonous, we keep it.

      I barely watch the movie because I’m more interested in watching Jared, who can’t take his eyes off the screen.

      It doesn’t matter that I’ve missed more than half of the movie. Or that it’s black-and-white and from 1946. It doesn’t matter that the popcorn is too buttery, that the wool blanket itches my skin every chance it gets, or even that I’m tired and sweaty from the stove.

      With about fifteen minutes of the movie left, Struz finds us and sits next to Jared, whose eyes are a little watery.

      And then Struz winks at me.

      I glance at Cecily, who just smiles. It’s a smile I know well. The one that says, So there, or I was right, or any other I told you so type of phrase. I give her the finger, because there’s not much else to do.

      She was right.

      Popcorn and movie night were exactly what we needed.

      Maybe this day was a little magical after all.

      

      

he next morning, the magic has worn off. That tends to happen to me when I have to get out of bed before the sun is up, especially on my day off. The reason I’m up is that Struz is sending Cee and me on a supply run up to Camp Pendleton. He chose us because we’re charming—or, more accurately, Cecily is charming.

      And it works. She manages to sweet talk everyone we run into. I’m just there to help with the heavy lifting.

      We spend the drive home, with Cecily at the wheel, in silence. It’s not because we’re sad or even tired—despite the fact that this day has already been exhausting and it’s not quite noon. This silence weighs down on us because when you do this drive, you can’t deny that the world has changed.

      The coast is the worst. Buildings are collapsed, homes demolished 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

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