Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (15 page)

“We got some wet weather here, and something about the ash on the lines and cell towers is causing short circuits or something. Your mom could explain it, but she’s at the paper, trying to help get it published before the power goes kaput again. You doing okay? Is the school able to get enough food and everything?”

“Yeah
, except they have less salad and fruit. Is that because of Florida?”

“Well, western produce is
n’t getting through either. Mom went out and bought three bushels of local apples. She’s storing them in the basement.”

“Where did she put the wood stove?” I asked.

Boone smiled. I’d told him about my Mom’s prepping.

“In front of the fireplace. And we’ve got two cords of wood stacked in the garage.”

“Cords?”

“
Picture more firewood than you’ve ever imagined in one stack and multiply it by two.”

“Do you think you’re going to need it? The stove, I mean, and the apples, and everything?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, pumpkin. We’re planning for this winter, at least. You’re sure you’re okay? What have you been doing today?”

“I was on a bike ride.”

“It sounds like you’re in a car.”

“Oh, well, I, umm, I…a guy took me to a rail
trail south of Pittsburgh.” Dang it, I hated when home life infringed on college life.

“A guy? What guy?” Dad
’s tone went from conversational to stern alertness.

“We’re almost back to campus. Gotta go.”

“Wait. What guy?”

I sighed. “Dad,
I’m fine. I’ll text you later. Say hi to Mom and Sara, okay?”

He grumbled
, but hung up. I suspected this wouldn’t be the end of it. As soon as he told mom I’d been out with a boy, my phone would light up big time.

Boone
quirked a brow. “I guess your parents don’t know about me?”

“No,” I admitted. “Do yours?”

“No.” Still smiling, he reached over to put his hand on my leg again as the truck purred up the hill to WCC.

I curled my fingers around his. “My dad said food isn’t getting across the country.”

“Yeah, we were talking about transportation in Econ this morning. Wanna look at a map when we get back?”

He pulled into a parking spot near the dorm. Before he got out
, he handed a road atlas to me from the pocket on his door. “Bring that up to your room. And this, please.” He held out his half-finished soda and, again, warmed me in my silly glow of couplehood.

The glaring compact fluorescent bulbs had already come to life by the Caples entrance. I held the door open while Boone jockeyed my bike through.
Grit scratched underfoot, like stairs at a cheap beach hotel instead of a northeastern college dorm.

Mia greet
ed us exuberantly from her reclined position on her bed. “Felicitations. How was your afternoon in the park? You’ve missed teatime.”

“Hey, M
ia,” Boone said, by now familiar with her forays into Regency England.

She
held a dog-eared novel in her lap.

“What happened to
biology?” I set our drinks on my desk and toed my shoes off.

“I took a study break.” She ruffled the pages of the book. “Two hundred pages ago. I’ve almost given up on this heroine, though. She
’s too stupid to live.”

I tried to help Boone rack my bike
, but he rolled his eyes at me.

“Chivalry is not dead,” Mia observed, twirling a lock of black hair around her forefinger.

“Did you spill some bleach on your head by accident?” Boone asked without looking at her. She’d dyed the bottom layer of her hair platinum blonde last weekend, giving an edgy contrast to her fashion-forward-and-backward appearance.

“You wound me, sir,” she cried, unwinding her hair so her hand could flutter over the
Jimi Hendrix decal on her shirt. “And let me correct myself. Chivalry
is
dead. So, so dead.”

I held up the atlas.

“Roadtrip?” she asked, immediately distracted. “Can I come?”

“No road trip,” Boone said. “Violet’s dad said something to her on the phone that reminded me I wanted to look at a map.”

“You heard from them?” Mia didn’t have much contact with her own family and clung to my supportocating normalcy.

“Yeah. Mom bought firewood and apples this week.
In other news,” I said, mocking the news anchor voice, “Dad says food shipments aren’t making it across the country.”

“It’s not only food. Nothing is making it,” Boone said, opening the atlas to the
U.S. map. Mia and I flanked him. He pointed to a red line that dipped near the dark green square of what used to be Yellowstone National Park. “Route 90 and 94. That’s obviously buried for good. I think it opens up in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. Here’s Route 80,” he said, moving down to the next red vein bisecting the country. “It runs north of my house. A lot of trucks use it, but it’s closed for 1,300 miles, give or take. Route 70 to the south is closed from somewhere in Kansas to its end in Utah.” He slid his finger further southward on the map. “That leaves Route 40 and maybe Route 10.”

“My sociology prof said Route 40 is a mess,” Mia added. “It’s carrying like 400% of its normal traffic. Or it was before it became a traffic jam. There’s no gas, no food, no hotel roo
ms left. Rest stops are becoming tent cities. People are mobbing fuel trucks, thinking they should be able to pull up and pump out fifteen gallons for their minivans.”

Boone nodded. “The National Guard is escort
ing convoys but fuel supplies were already screwed up from the hurricane. With Wyoming production offline….” He shrugged.

My stomach started to knot. “So, my mom isn’t crazy for buying a wood stove and firewood?” My voice sounded tiny and sad. Neither my roommate
nor my maybe-boyfriend hurried to reassure me.

Mia pointed at the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania wh
ere we stood at this moment. “I heard they might close the school. That they might need places like this to house people, like they’re doing out west.”

I took a deep breath and held it. I’d avert
ed my eyes from TVs, Internet news sites, and bulletin boards for the last week, hoping the hotspot for this volcano would sink back into the earth’s mantle, and all the people in refugee shelters could go home, and I could stay here.

Boone
added, “A few more professors from western states have left.”

“And some international students
flew home while they still could. Remember Diya? She had to get a ride all the way to New York City to get out,” Mia said. “She was crying all over her boyfriend on the sidewalk while she waited for the car. Somebody-get-that-girl-a-valium sobbing. It was sad.”

“She’ll probably never see him again,” I said, remembering her arranged marriage.
Without thought, I twined my fingers with Boone’s, seeking a connection for as long as possible.

He pulled my hand up so the knuckles rubbed his lips
while he closed the atlas with his other hand. The shadow of Yellowblown ash filled the room.

“I guess I’d better get caught up on my
history reading,” he said. “I knew I avoided the Western Civilization requirement for a reason.”

“You
could bring it back here. Sit in the lounge, see if there’s any more good news on TV.”

“Sorry
. I have to spend a few hours on the floor tonight, with my peeps. And I need a shower.” He gave me a wink, reminding me of my sweat comment. “I’ll see you in geology tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk down with you
.” We reluctantly descended, me still in my socks. “Thanks for today. I like riding on trails.”
Especially with you.

“Me
, too.”

“If we go again, you’ll have to let me buy dinner, okay?”

We stopped on the small front stoop. “Maybe we should go on Sunday?”

I saw in his face the reality I tr
ied hard to ignore.
We might not have many more afternoons together.
After a quick peck on the lips, he reached up to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. “See you tomorrow, Biker-girl.”

A faint beam
of happiness cut through the gloom of Yellowblown as I padded back upstairs. “He calls me Biker-girl,” I sighed to Mia.

She lowered her book enough to see my face. “Wow, you got it bad.”

“Yep.”

“I’ve never seen anything cuter than him asking what kind of sandwich you like. I told him to hold the mayo,
take it through the garden with Italian dressing, and throw in a side of condom.”

I stared for a second or two. “You did not.”

“You need to get some salami in your diet, girl!”

“Mia,” I sighed.

“If you’re holding out for someone nicer or better looking, you might want to reset your expectations. That’s all I’m saying.”

“For someone who doesn’t even date, you’re sure eager for everybody else to get busy.”

“Hey, when a man treats me the way he doe
s you—opening doors and thinking ahead to buy a hoagie just the way I like it—I’ll sneak out of the ball, ready to be compromised.”

My head spun as she swerved from profane diner speak back to her romance novels.

“You’re right,” she conceded. “You gotta move at your own speed. Hey, there’s a volcano party over at the Sigs tonight,” she said, shifting gears again. “The drinks have to be either red or hot.”

The bed protested as I flopped on
my back. “I don’t wanna go out.” I pouted for half a minute. “I feel so bad for Diya. She and Bruce were inseparable. I wonder how her parents got her to leave?”

“That’s how things are over there.”

We were both silent again.”

I pulled Gloria to my chest.
“What if we have to go home?” I finally asked, addressing the hippo in the room.

Mia threw her book to the floor.
“This whole thing blows.”

“Yeah.
Yellow
blows.”

 

Drizzly weather over the weekend brought short-lived power outages. The sporadic, intermittent darkness, evidence of the eastward march of the disaster, sobered the campus.

On Monday morning, the subst
itute geology prof explained the wet ash particles created alternative paths for electricity. It bridged gaps over insulators and mucked up the insides of transformers. Even a fine layer exploited weaknesses.

Though the moisture cause
d power problems, rain could be good, too, he explained. Eventually, it would wash the ash away and work it down into the soil.

A guy
whose T-shirts regularly advertised his tree-hugger status raised his hand. “The major networks say the ash isn’t dangerous, that it doesn’t leach any chemicals. Do you believe that?”

The professor nodded. “Based on early sampling, the ash
—and we assume the lava spreading around Yellowstone—is rhyolitic. None of you have had mineralogy, but it’s composed mainly of quartz, with lesser percentages of feldspars.” He held up a softball-sized chunk of black glass, its edges curved and cupped in the way a hard candy breaks. “Near the eruption we would probably find pieces of obsidian like this. If given time to cool in the crust, the same magma would make granite like this.” He showed us a piece of salt-and-pepper rock like the rough edge of a headstone in a graveyard. “These rocks, and the ash, are essentially no more reactive or dangerous than sand on the beach. Its physical properties are much more problematic than its chemistry.

“It
’s lightweight, at least this far from the volcano, though, as we all know from carrying sand buckets at the beach, quantities of it will have significant mass, especially when wet. There are areas in the west where I’m certain roofs are collapsing, though we hope those locations have been evacuated. The weight also creates problems with moving and removing the ash. This isn’t like plowing snow, both in the sense of clearing areas and disposal.