Five Seconds

Static

I looked at Andy.

"Do you hear what I'm saying?"

I just stared at her, still getting used to the sounds in my ears.

"Home," she announced.

I looked down. We were standing in a driveway.

"Here she is," Andy breathed. She was on her knees.

I looked up. A ringing in my ears.

"This is your house?" My voice felt weird. Like it wasn't connected to my body.

"Yeah."

"You mean you own the whole thing?" Why were those the first words that came to mind?

"No... just the basement," she said wearily. "The family upstairs has been gone on vacation in Cambodia since July."

"How the hell did you afford it?" Again, not the words that were in my mind.

"Well, you know."

"What do you do for a living?"

Silence.

I finally looked at her. "Andy? What do you do?"

She remained silent.

"What do you do!" I snapped.

"I um." She sat up. "I'm like, a uh, assistant scientist. I research earth science er, I research seismology. I, research plate tectonics and I. . . record, when the earths crust moves."

Eight counts. One... two...

"YOU MEAN YOU KNEW THIS WAS COMING AND YOU DIDN'T WARN ME? YOU DIDN'T WARN ANYONE?"

"No! It, it's not like that."

"Not like what? Just because you knew the end of the world was coming doesn't mean it's your fault that I'm stuck with you?"

"Hey, hey. It's not the end of the world."

I pushed her against her ugly truck. "My girlfriend is dead. My family is dead. All my friends. Dead. And you could've prevented it all."

"Prevented it how?" she yelled back. "I didn't know this was coming I swear!"

"So all that research you do about the earth's... whatever, and you didn't know there was going to be an earthquake here?"

"God Parker, do I have to give you a brief science lesson? We live right on the coast of BC. That's 150,000 km away from the Juan de Fuca plate—you know, one of those things that continents sit on? They make up the crust of Earth. For years and years and years, the North American plate and the Juan de Fuca plate have been stuck against each other. Most plates slide just fine, but these two aren't. It was only a matter of time before all that pressure was released."

She stood there, chest heaving from rage. The silent haven I was in was long gone.

"Yeah. We knew this was coming. We didn't know when. We didn't know how much destruction there would be. It was only supposed to affect Vancouver at the most. Maybe a few taller older buildings in Burnaby. But not this."

"Not one warn—"

"We gave plenty of warnings! Why the hell do you think BC has annual earth quake drills? Why do you think we teach our students what to do in earthquakes? We don't teach them what to do in a tornado, because that's irrelevant. The warnings have been there since the beginning of time. The world's just too ignorant to listen to them."

"I can't believe this. I cannot believe you."

"I didn't do anything wro—"

"Just shut up." I sat down on her lawn defeated.