Page 140 of Instant Karma

Rosa looks like she’s trying not to laugh at me. “Yes, honey. Landline phones still work, even when the power goes out.”

“What?How?” My mouth drops open and I turn to Quint. “Did you know that?”

He shakes his head, looking as bewildered as I am. “I had no idea. It seems like—”

“Sorcery!”

He throws his arms into the air, howling, “Sorcery!”

I burst into giggles again.

Rosa clears her throat. “All right. Prudence, you go call your parents. Quint… why are you wearing a towel?”

“Our clothes were drenched from the storm. They’re down in the dryer, but it’s not working.”

“Unless!” I gasp. “Can dryers work without power, too?”

“No,” says Rosa.

I snap my fingers, bummed.

I go down to the lobby and call my parents to let them know I’m all right and will be heading home soon, and that my phone is dead. Mom reminds me to be careful riding my bike—there’s standing water all over the roads—but beyond that, they don’t sound too concerned. I sometimes think this is the plight of the oldest child, or children, in the case of twins like me and Jude. There’s no babying, no helicopter parenting, no late-night pacing after curfew. We’re the ones who can take care of ourselves. I’m extra grateful for that autonomy now. If Mom had insisted that she come get me last night, when the storm was raging, I would have missed out on the most amazing night of my life.

As I hang up the phone, I hear clumsy footsteps on the stairs. Quint is hauling our massive pile of blankets back to the laundry room. He pauses when he sees me. His hair mussed, his face a little puffy from our sleepless night.

I smile at him, suddenly bashful. He smiles back, just as shy, just as eager.

It takes everything in me not to grab one of those blankets, throw it over both our heads, and…

His eyes darken, like maybe he knows what I’m thinking. Like maybe he’d be okay with it.

But then I hear Rosa coming down the steps behind him and we both shrink away from each other.

“Want help?” I ask.

“There were a couple more blankets up there still.”

I’m passing Rosa on the stairs when the lights suddenly flicker on above us, and the perpetual hum of technology returns to the walls, the air conditioner, the refrigerator in the break room.

“Ah,” says Rosa, smiling brightly. “That’s better.”

No,I want to tell her.This isn’t better at all.

But I just return her smile and go to collect the blankets. When I catch up with Quint in the laundry room, the dryer is running again, and he’s busying his hands by folding all the blankets we used. They’re not really dirty, so there’s no need to wash them. I drop my blankets into a pile on the floor and start helping him, all while our eyes perform a complicated tango I didn’t know they knew. I look up, he looks away. He looks up. Our eyes meet. We both scurry back.

He swallows. “So. Any plans for today?”

I want to say:I plan to spend the rest of my day going over last night with a fine-tooth comb, analyzing every word you said, remembering every touch, swooning over every kiss, until I’ve melted into a pile of Prudence-shaped goo.

What I actually say is “Go home and take a shower, then probably try to get a few hours of sleep.”

“Good plan,” he replies, even though he’s looking at me like he knows the truth. I don’t want to sleep. I never want to sleep again. What if sleep washes away every blissful thing that’s happened between us?

Once we’ve put the blankets away, we head out to the yard to see how the animals fared last night. It’s still early enough that none of the volunteers have started to arrive for their shifts, so it’s just us and Rosa. She’s already hard at work, using a push broom to shove puddles of water into the in-ground pools.

The yard is a mess, especially where the concrete flooded. The seals could be swimming laps in all this water, if it wasn’t for the debris floating around. Sticks and tree branches and leaves and palm fronds, and even some trash fromone of the garbage cans that got blown over by the wind. One section of the chain-link fence has been squashed by a particularly huge branch.

“This will take a few days to clean up,” says Rosa, pausing to lean against the broom handle. “And that fence… hopefully insurance will pay to have it fixed.”

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