The Gold Locket

Mila’s eyes itched. The dust didn’t affect her brother. He played in the stuff, covering the overalls Mama had fished out of the trash in the alley behind Benny’s Tacos. People collected children’s clothes and left them there, while household items were in the dumpster behind Sushi Shack. Both restaurants were long-closed, but their unlit neon signs were landmarks. Mama had washed the overalls out in the pond behind their home. Everything she washed there smelled like seaweed and lollipops, which was a little sickening, but better than the sewage smell from the pond behind Dino’s house. Mila rubbed her eyes, then regretted it. Nothing helped except the cool compress Mama made for her at night.

“Fight me!” Felix held up a piece of wood in front of Mila like a sword.

“Felix, Mama is going to be so mad! You’re covered in dust. And be careful of splinters.” Mila took the piece of wood from his hand and threw it over his shoulder.

Dust covered his six-year-old body. His overalls and dark, spiky hair were completely white. He must have been climbing in one of the dried-out heaps. The debris had been pushed into twenty-foot piles. The last wave was three weeks ago. Mr. DeWitt, previously a high school principal, invented a tool – a kind of super snow-plow. He had help, Mama said, from an engineer. But he was proud of it. Mama didn’t like it. She said they needed something that would sort out the sharp stuff so the children didn’t get hurt playing. I thought that was pretty farfetched. There were hazards everywhere.

Felix tried wiping his overalls off and clouds of dust billowed everywhere.

Mila covered her face. “Stop it, Felix!” The sun was hot, and the air had a dry, cracked quality, partially due to the field of dust particles floating around. Felix was hopeless. The first wave happened when he was three years old, and Mila guessed he didn’t even remember what it was like before. She decided to leave him with his friends. Simone, Felicia’s Aunt, was nearby. In her twenties – definitely an adult. Mama had said as long as there was an adult present, Mila didn’t have to watch Felix non-stop, just check on him once in a while. “Simone! I’m going to the quarry!”

Simone squinted, looking bothered by the dust too. Everyone was, except for Felix. “Okay, be safe!” Simone shouted, and returned to rooting through things. It was the same work everyone was doing at least half the time – looking for something lost, something important they didn’t want to live without. It was an endless job, and one with rare-to-nonexistent results. One time, Dennis Fleehopper found a family heirloom – a silver dollar from 1796, in a pile two miles from his house. News of this incredible find spread like fire through town and gave everyone a glimmer of unfortunate hope. After that the searching ramped up, people digging for hours, looking for things they would never find.

Mila kicked a random shoe down the street as she walked. She loved the quarry. It was actually the old bank, which became a tourist museum in the 1950’s, but got its top blown off by the third wave, including the main floor, which somehow crumbled half up and half down. Water was a weird thing. There were six different staircases that led down to the basement. Two of them were a bit ram shackled, but still usable. There were tons of things down there that had flowed in from the eastern side of the building. Seashells, rocks, dead sea-animals (Mila’s favorite – a large stingray skeleton, even though it stank), and the occasional live one. Mila had rescued fifteen crabs so far, carrying them to the edge of the water, watching them scurry away, their legs sinking softly into the sand.

Someone rode by loudly on a bicycle, junk trailing behind them. It was Larry, the trash collector. He was probably in his late thirties, married with two children, but his children and wife had disappeared in the second wave. He made sculptures out of found objects, using glue to stack things into tower-like structures, so they looked like they defied the laws of gravity. Mila liked helping him, mostly by holding things in place while they dried, her elbows resting on cinderblocks covered with cloth. Larry told stories while he worked, about growing up in the Outer Banks, and moving inland, or what used to be inland. “Beach front property!” He often said, one hand extended toward the water, like he was a real estate salesman, with an odd cheeriness, referring to some previous age where such a thing was good.

There was a boy already climbing in the quarry, light-footed. He had a handful of shells and was using the back of his hand to brace himself. (Mila wore pants with big pockets so she could have both hands free while scavenging.) She had seen the boy before. He had the look of someone abandoned. It was in his face, and his eyes in particular – a kind of sallow, internal look, like he didn’t talk to people enough – and Mila wondered who was looking out for him. He was probably twelve or thirteen, same as Mila, skinny but with strong muscles, and didn’t look famished. The last time Mila saw him, she had thought about inviting him to dinner, but her mother didn’t like “strays” as she called them, and said often that they barely had enough for themselves. Mila figured the boy wouldn’t eat too much, but what if he attached himself to them and then they always had to feed him? Mama would be stressed.

The boy looked up at Mila, his face unchanged by the sight of her.

“Hey,” yelled Mila. Her voice echoed against the opposite wall. She was halfway down one of the staircases.

He looked surprised. “Hey,” he said, so quietly Mila almost missed it. She kept climbing down, wanting to get to the bottom where the good stuff was. The boy turned with his back to Mila, and she found herself climbing toward where he was standing.

“What did you find?”

He whipped around, opening his mouth, then closing it again. He stared at her, and Mila, startled by his quick movements, stared back, forgetting to not be rude.

He had dark, smooth skin, and thick eyelashes. His hair was thick too, long enough to tuck behind his ears. It was uneven, and Mila guessed he cut it himself. His clothes looked too big for him, probably salvaged, and he had a heart-shaped, gold locket hanging loosely around his neck, glinting in the sun, the gold starkly offset by the grayness of his clothes. Mila liked the boy’s face. Close up, he looked innocent and friendly.

He held out his hand, and showed her a white rock that sparkled.

“Wow, pretty,” said Mila, taking it and holding it up. She gave it back to him after a minute. “I’ve seen you before.”

The boy nodded.

“I’m Mila. What’s your name?”

“Sanjay,” he said, his voice croaking.

“Nice to meet you,” said Mila. “I’m looking for crabs, they get stuck down here.”

“I’ve seen that,” Sanjay said, jumping to another concrete step.

“Where do you live?” asked Mila, jumping after him.

Sanjay squatted down. “Not in one place.”

Mila nodded. Some people moved around. Her family had set up in a place with a couple of walls and a partial roof. They had a sleeping area and a fire pit. “Are you by yourself?”

Sanjay nodded. They both knew what that meant. The only question was, which tsunami had killed his family? There had been twenty in the past three years, with the coastline having disappeared up to Clinton. A hurricane last summer had flattened the region, but killed way fewer people than the waves had. Mila’s dad left early on to try to secure a place in the mountains. It was dangerous up there, with people fighting over land. They hadn’t seen or heard from him since.

“That sucks,” said Mila.

Sanjay didn’t respond. Mila sat down. Sometimes she liked to just sit in the quarry. It had a quietness to it unlike anywhere else. And it felt old, like a cave where you would see hieroglyphics on the walls.

Suddenly, a rock jumped off of the concrete where Mila sat. She watched it hit the concrete slab opposite and fall. The ground was shaking.

Instinctively, Mila grabbed Sanjay’s hand and started up the stairs. His hand was limp, and then, as though he awoke to a muscle memory, he grasped hers tightly. They reached the top and stood together, listening to the familiar rumbling sound. They couldn’t see the tsunami, but they knew it was coming.

“C’mon!” yelled Mila, taking off with Sanjay in tow. Mila watched the ground, saying a prayer that Mama and Felix would survive. She had thought many times that dying would be okay as long as they were all together. It was being separated from them that seemed too terrible to imagine. Mila’s pink sneakers hopped and dogged debris, and Sanjay easily kept up, clinging tightly to her. People were running alongside them, and Mila looked at someone, seeing the fear in their eyes, the race against the speed of the wave clearly written there.

They ran until it hit them – the sickeningly familiar smell of fish, salt, and trash – and Mila, too scared to look, changed course quickly, heading toward a dogwood tree, flanked by Sanjay. They climbed the tree and sat on a lower branch, hugging each other and watched the massive flow of water rush in. Seconds later, and they would have been swept away.

Sanjay’s head was tucked into a crook of the tree. Mila nudged him awake.

“It’s over,” she said.

He stretched, looking around. He didn’t look too disturbed. Mila wondered if the loss of his family had taken the surprise out of him. Mila, on the other hand, was so worried she felt sick.

“I need to go look for my family. Want to come?”

Sanjay nodded.

They climbed down, carefully avoiding the debris that littered the ground and the water pooled everywhere.

“Mila!” someone called. It was Larry, the trash-man-turned-sculpture. He ran toward them, climbing over things. “Are you okay?”

Mila nodded, distracted. She was surveying the scene, hoping to see her family.

“Mila,” Larry stared at her, his eyes big.

Mila looked at him, unsure. He shook his head ever so slightly. Mila shook her head in return. “No,” she said, beginning to cry. “They could be here.”

“I saw them, Mila. Your Mama, and the little guy. They were together. I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for her hand. She pulled away and started walking back toward her house, wanting to ignore Larry.

“Mila, there’s a truck leaving for the mountains. It’s dangerous, but there’s almost no food or water here.”

Mila turned around, still crying. Sanjay looked small, squinting at Mila, sober and still.

She said, “Will you go?” It was directed at Sanjay.

He nodded.

She walked toward them, defeated.

Three females, and seven males in the truck. Mila planned to come back. Someday she would ask Larry for the details of what he saw, but she wasn’t ready yet.

They took off toward Winston-Salem, the driver swerving around everything that littered the road.

Sanjay seemed lighter, less introspective. Suddenly Mila noticed, his gold locket was gone.

“Where’s your necklace?”

“It fell off,” he said.

“Aren’t you upset?”

Sanjay thought, then looked at Mila. “It was my mother’s. But, maybe it’s okay. I don’t need the locket to remember her. And we’ve lost so much. Maybe now it’s time to discover something new, something different,” he said.

Mila felt tears in her eyes. She wasn’t ready to let go like Sanjay, but she was glad he was there. She took his hand and squeezed it, the way her Mama used to squeeze hers.

Sanjay smiled.