“Holy shit, I’ve got a bar,” Zola said.
“Language, young lady,” their mother said, but everyone else stopped chewing and turned to look at her. She held her phone in the air, tilted the screen down and peered up at it. She spun in place, as if trying to divine the pocket of most reception. Hunter and Chen both began digging their phones out of their pockets.
“It’s gone,” Zola said. She walked down the steps between Daniel and Anna, waving the phone in the air. “Come back,” she called after the ephemeral bar.
“I’ve got signal,” Hunter said. He pressed some buttons.
“Who’re you calling?” Chen asked.
“You,” he said. Everyone sat breathless. He lowered the phone and looked at it. “It says the network is full.”
“Me too,” Zola said, holding the phone to her ear.
“I bet everyone is trying to use them,” Daniel pointed out.
“There might be signal but no service for quite some time,” Edward said.
“Honey, don’t just keep redialing.” Their mother snapped her fingers in Zola’s direction. “Just try once an hour. Don’t waste your battery.”
Anna seemed like she was going to say something about the batteries—maybe remind them of her charging station—but chose not to.
“Let’s not get all worked up,” their father said. “These things will come back in time, but trying to rush them won’t make it happen any faster.” He gathered plates from the table and stacked them together. Daniel watched his mom as she studied his actions. She handed her own empty plate to him, her eyes darting from him to Carlton.
“Thanks for cooking,” their father said, nodding to Carlton. “I’m going to get out of ya’lls hair for a while. Tomorrow, though, I’m gonna want to borrow that saw.” He turned and looked to Edward, who seemed to have bonded with their father during the day’s ride. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to head over and get that rope we talked about, so I’ll have it in the morning.”
“What’re you gonna do in the morning?” Daniel asked.
“We,” his father said. He glanced up. “We’re gonna get that tree off this house I built. We’re not gonna wait around for someone else to come and do it for us.”
His father gave him a most sober stare. He stepped between Daniel and Anna and strolled purposefully toward Edward’s house.
Edward thanked Carlton and his mom for their hospitality and hurried off as well. Daniel’s mom stood still, an empty plate in her hand. She looked up at the broken bough of the massive tree hanging over the top of the roof.
“I guess I’d better go,” Anna told Daniel, the lilt of her voice seeming to complain at having to do so. She stood up and brushed the back of her shorts with her hands. Daniel stood as well and took her plate, stacking it under his own.
“Maybe I should come over and help Dad carry whatever he’s borrowing.” He knew it was a transparent excuse to stay near her, but he didn’t care. If he could be so bold in the back of the Bronco, he could let someone know he’d rather not see them go.
Anna smiled. She bit her lip and nodded. Daniel threw the plates in a trash bag Hunter was using to gather dishes. He mumbled to his mom that he’d be right back, then chased Anna off the deck and around the house toward the street.
••••
“That was an amazing meal,” Daniel said, making small talk while they walked the short trip between their houses.
“Yeah.” Anna turned her head to follow the flight of a startled blue jay. “Your brother seems like a cool guy. And your sister’s sweet.”
Daniel refrained from arguing the points. “Do you miss your brother?” he asked.
Anna nodded. She kicked a small limb off the street. “A lot. It was cool for a while to have the house to myself, but now it’s just boring.”
“How do you like being home schooled? And why did your parents choose to do that?”
“They didn’t. I did.” Anna tucked her hands into her back pocket. She veered to the side and nudged Daniel with her shoulder. “After middle school, I told them I was either gonna home school or just drop out and wait until I could take my GED. I couldn’t handle it.”
“Couldn’t handle what?”
She looked away. “Just stuff. Girls. Meanness.” She tried to smile at Daniel, but her eyes were shining wet. “I was always sort of this tomgirl. I enjoyed tinkering with my dad in the garage. I liked playing whatever my brother was playing. I mean, I loved my mom and all, but she was always the one working long hours and away on business. There was a lot of role reversal in my house, and it didn’t match what my peers were going through.”
“You and I have a lot in common, then,” Daniel said. “Girls have a long history of being mean to me as well.” He laughed, hoping she’d take the admission as a joke.
“Maybe they hate us for being cooler than them,” Anna offered.
“I’m sure that’s it.”
They stopped in front of Anna’s driveway and looked up at the house. Daniel nearly asked her if she wanted to keep walking some more, maybe to Georgia and back, but her father waved from the open garage, so they trudged up toward the house.
Daniel’s dad was coiling a long length of rope when they joined them. Another neat loop of rope lay at his feet. “You don’t have any webbing by any chance, do you?” he asked Anna’s father.
“I’ve got these tow straps,” he said, digging them out of a box and holding them up.
“Perfect.”
“I came over to see if you needed help carrying this stuff back,” Daniel said.
His father flashed him a knowing smile, his eyes darting happily between him and Anna.
“Hey,” Anna said, “I never showed you how that water flows down to our sink.”
“Oh, yeah, I meant to ask you about that.”
“Hey Dad, I’m gonna take Daniel up to see our cistern.”
Edward laughed and worked to unknot lengths of flat yellow webbing. “Go right ahead,” he said.
“I’ll wait for you,” his father said, “so don’t be too long.”
Daniel waved and followed Anna into the house. She checked over her shoulder with a smile before turning a corner and padding up the stairs. Daniel hurried after her.
At the top of the stairs, she rounded a banister, her hand squeaking on the wood, and paced toward one of the bedrooms. She stood outside the door, looking in and waiting for Daniel.
“We were filling up the bathtubs before the storm,” she said. “Dad and I were trying to think of ways to store up even more.”
Daniel joined her and looked inside. There was a kiddie pool in the middle of the bedroom, sitting on top of a bed frame and box spring. The mattress was leaning on its side against a wall, out of the way.
“What in the world?” Daniel asked.
“Come look.” Anna walked around the pool to the bedroom window. She stuck a finger against the glass, pointing to a hose outside. “We set it up in a hurry, but it works great. Once we got the pool up here, Dad reached out the window and popped the downspout off the gutter. He held me while I taped that hose to where the downspout was.”
Daniel looked up through the window to see a length of garden hose duct-taped to the short drop of spout leading off the gutter. The hose came through the top part of the window, which was cracked open, and led to the pool.
“Mom would’ve killed us,” Anna said. She laughed.