“I guess so.”
“Well, there’s no one telling you not to eat a cookie, is there? Your folks will show up soon, I think. But in the meantime have a cookie, then come down to the plaza.”
“That’s your solution? Have a cookie?” Astrid asked.
“No, my solution is to run down to the beach and hide out until this is all over,” Sam said. “But a cookie never hurts.”
They kept moving, Sam and Quinn and Astrid. Sam’s home was east of downtown. He and his mom shared a small, squashed-looking one-story house with a tiny, fenced backyard and no real front yard, just a sidewalk. Sam’s mother didn’t make much money working as a night nurse up at Coates Academy. Sam’s dad was out of the picture, always had been. He was a mystery in Sam’s life. And last year his stepfather had left, too.
“This is it,” Sam said. “We don’t believe in showing off with a big house and all.”
“Well, you live near Town Beach,” Astrid said, pointing to the only advantage of this house or this neighborhood.
“Yeah. Two-minute walk. Less if I cut through the yard of the house where the biker gang lives.”
“Biker gang?” Astrid said.
“Not the whole gang, really, just Killer and his girlfriend Accomplice.” Astrid frowned, and Sam said, “Sorry. Bad joke. It’s not a great neighborhood.”
Now that he was here, Sam didn’t want to go in. His mother would not be there.
And there was something in his house maybe Quinn, and especially Astrid, shouldn’t see.
He led the way up the three sun-faded, gray-painted wooden steps that creaked when you stepped on them. The porch was narrow, and a couple of months ago someone had stolen the rocking chair his mom had put out there so she could sit and rock in the evening before she went to work. Now they just had to drag out kitchen chairs.
That was always the best time of day for them, the beginning of his mother’s workday, the end of Sam’s. Sam would be home from school, and his mom would be awake, having slept most of the day. She would have a cup of tea, and Sam would have a soda or maybe a juice. She would ask him how school had gone that day, and he wouldn’t really tell her very much, but it was nice to think about how he could tell her if he wanted to.
Sam opened the door. It was quiet inside, except for the refrigerator. The compressor on it was old and noisy. The last time they’d talked out on the porch, feet up on the railing, his mom had wondered whether they should get the compressor fixed, or whether it would be cheaper just to get a secondhand refrigerator. And how would they get it home without a truck.
“Mom?” Sam said to the emptiness of the family room.
There was no answer.
“Maybe she’s up the hill,” Quinn said. “Up the hill” was the townie phrase for Coates Academy, the private boarding school. The hill was more like a mountain.
“No,” Sam said. “She’s gone like all the others.”
The stove was on. A frying pan had burned black. There was nothing in the pan. Sam turned off the cooktop.
“This is going to be a problem all over town,” he said.
Astrid said, “Yeah, stoves left on, cars running. Somebody needs to go around and make sure things are off and the little kids are with someone. And there’s pills, and alcohol, and some people probably have guns.”
“In this neighborhood some people have artillery,” Sam said.
“It has to be God,” Quinn said. “I mean, how else, right? No one else could do this. Just make all the adults disappear?”
“Everyone fifteen or over,” Astrid corrected. “Fifteen isn’t an adult. Trust me, I was in class with them.” She wandered tentatively through the living room, like she was looking for something. “Can I use the bathroom, Sam?”
He nodded reluctantly. He was mortified to have her here. Neither Sam nor his mother was really into housekeeping. The place was more or less clean, but not like Astrid’s house.
Astrid closed the bathroom door. Sam heard the sound of running water.
“What did we do?” Quinn asked. “That’s what I don’t get. What did we do to piss God off?”
Sam opened the refrigerator. He stared at the food there. Milk. A couple of sodas. Half of a small watermelon placed cut side down on a plate. Eggs. Apples. And lemons for his mom’s tea. The usual.
“I mean, we did something to deserve this, right?” Quinn said. “God doesn’t do things like this for no reason.”
“I don’t think it was God,” Sam said.
“Dude. Had to be.”
Astrid was back. “Maybe Quinn’s right. There’s nothing, you know, normal, that can do this,” she said. “Is there? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not possible and yet it happened.”
“Sometimes impossible things happen,” Sam said.
“No, they don’t,” Astrid argued. “The universe has laws. All the stuff we learn in science class. You know, like the laws of motion, or that nothing can go as fast as the speed of light. Or gravity. Impossible things don’t happen. That’s what impossible means.” Astrid bit her lip. “Sorry. It’s not really the time for me to be lecturing, is it?”
Sam hesitated. If he showed them, crossed this line, he wouldn’t be able to make them forget it. They would keep at him till he told them everything.
They would look at him differently. They would be freaked, like he was.