Don’t Make Me Turn This Life Around by Pagán, Camille (top novels of all time txt) 📗

of us. “My cell’s still down and I can’t check the weather, but I spoke with a guy who just came from the beach. He said the waves are lower now, and the wind is letting up.”

My eyes widened. “So it’s the eye of the hurricane?”

He cocked his head and gave me a funny smile. “I said good news—not bad, cutie. The guy I chatted with has lived here for seventy years, and he said that in his experience, that means it’s passing. I can’t say for certain, but I’m willing to bet this is just a tropical storm and it’s blowing over.”

“How soon until we know for sure?” I asked.

“Next couple hours, most likely. If for some reason it’s been upgraded to a hurricane and we don’t know, the eye still wouldn’t last more than two hours.” His eyes flitted to Charlotte before meeting me again. “Want to go talk?”

“Yes,” I said, already starting for the door.

In the few seconds it took to get out of the classroom and into the hall, his face had shifted from calm to deeply concerned. “What is it?” I said.

He sighed deeply. “Even if the storm does pass—and I do think it will—we’re not out of the woods yet. I’m worried about Charlotte.”

As much as I wished he’d just told me she was going to be fine, I was relieved to hear I wasn’t alone in my concern. “Her insulin seems okay so far, but there’s no way to know if her test strips will hold up,” I said. “Remember when I left the extras in the car too long last August, right after she was diagnosed?” They’d baked in our ancient SUV for the entire weekend. After we’d finally retrieved them, her meter couldn’t read the strip at all. We thought we’d learned everything there was to know about diabetes then, but no one had mentioned that the strips disintegrated in heat, too; it had taken three more tries and a distraught Google search for us to figure out that was the problem.

“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “There’s no way the electricity is coming back anytime soon, either.”

I grimaced. “Did you know there’s no hospital here? And the emergency coordinator said we shouldn’t count on the clinics being able to help.”

He looked so stricken I almost wished I hadn’t said it. “I should have checked before we came.”

“No, I should have.” After all, I was the girls’ mother. Protecting my children wasn’t just my job; it was literally my purpose in life. “This whole stupid trip was my idea.”

“Hey,” he said, reaching for my arm. “It’s not a stupid trip at all. I know it wasn’t what you had planned—or what any of us had planned—but at least we have each other, right?”

We really did, and though I was still convinced I was on my way to winning a Darwin Award, hearing him say that eased my shame a little. “We do,” I agreed. “But how soon do you think we can get off the island?”

“Well, the ferries aren’t going to be running until the skies clear, and that’s assuming they aren’t damaged. Same with planes. We’re stuck here for a while.”

“Then I’d better start figuring out a way to keep Charlotte’s supplies cold,” I said.

“Absolutely,” he said. He smiled softly. “Team?”

Tears pricked my eyelids as I smiled back. “Team.”

After checking on Milagros and the girls, we spent the next half hour circling the school to see if anyone had a cooler that was actually cool. Nearly everyone we encountered was eager to help—but couldn’t. Like ours, their ice packs had thawed, and their coolers were warm; no one had the faintest idea where we could find a functioning generator.

“Crap,” Shiloh said to me as we made our way back to the classroom.

The relief I’d felt had already gone up in flames. “We’re going to have to find a plan C,” I said.

“Maybe I can find a plane and fly us back to the mainland,” he said, stepping around a woman lying listless on the floor beside her children.

“You know how crazy that sounds, right?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. He paused just inside the doorway. “But Libby?”

“What is it?”

“Crazy or not, we’re going to have to do something.”

“I know,” I whispered. “But what?”

“I have no idea,” he whispered back. “But between the two of us, we’ll figure it out.”

“Okay,” I agreed, because hadn’t we tackled myriad other problems—from the mundane to the truly life-threatening—side by side for thirteen years?

Which is why it was so strange that I couldn’t seem to believe we were ever going to find our way out of this one.

TWENTY-TWO

The afternoon stretched endlessly before us. The emergency coordinator passed out cheese sandwiches, which provided all of five minutes of distraction; Hector found a set of dominos in the classroom and managed to engage the girls for another ten. But they’d since abandoned him, as well as the rug where we’d been stationed, and were sprawled out on the tile floor, which they claimed was the coolest place in the school. I didn’t even bother warning them about germs, because bacteria and viruses had nothing on the heat. Although—or maybe because—the wind had begun to die down and the rain had slowed to a steady patter, the school felt even more stifling than it had before. I’d sweated through my T-shirt while we were searching for ice packs, and Shiloh’s clothes, damp from the rain, had yet to dry. But I was most worried about Milagros, who had given up mopping her forehead with one of Hector’s handkerchiefs and was murmuring to herself on the ground.

“How are you holding up?” I said, squatting beside her.

She tried to smile, but it came out like a grimace. “I’ve had worse days, but not many,” she said.

My stomach sank. “The heat?”

“Eh, I’m used to that. Maybe it’s having to sit in the same place too long. That’s my secret to living so long—I don’t stop moving. Except now,” she said,