"Bri!" Julie shrieked. "Bri, is that really you? I miss you so much. I think about you always. Alex says I can't talk too long, but I want you to know I'm working in this big garden in Central Park. All of us at Holy Angels are, and I wish you were here working with me. Yeah. Really? Goats? Do they kick? And sheep? And breakfast? We don't eat breakfast anymore, but Alex gets us food every week and we eat lunch at school, so it isn't too bad. But sometimes I just hurt because you're not here. I know that's selfish and I pray for forgiveness, because you're happy and there are the goats and all that, but I still wish you were here. Yeah. Well, Alex is gonna kill me if I keep talking. No, we're getting along pretty well, actually. He lets me beat him in chess sometimes. Okay, here he is."

"You're doing all right?" he asked. "You're not hungry or overworked or anything?"

"I'm fine," Bri said. "How's everyone else? How're Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Lorraine? Have you heard from Carlos?"

"We just got a postcard from him," Alex said. "He went to Texas."

"Texas," Bri said. "Well, I guess that's closer than California. Does he sound all right?"

"You know Carlos," Alex said. "He sounds fine. Do you have classes, or is it all farmwork?"

"Oh no, we have classes, too," Bri said. "It's practically tutoring, because there are just us ten girls. We wake up at dawn and do chores, and then we go to chapel, and then we have breakfast and do some more chores. Then after lunch, we study for a couple of hours, and then it's back to working until evening chapel and suppertime. But after supper we talk and play games and have lots of fun. Some nights we sing. I don't know if I have a vocation, but I think I might. I pray for one, because it would make Mami so happy it I did. When she gets home. You haven't heard anything from her or Papi?"

"Nothing," Alex said.

"Well, I still believe in miracles," Bri said. "Talking to you is a miracle. Someday there'll be another miracle and Mami and Papi will come home."

"We tried to call on your birthday," Alex said. "We think about you all the time."

"I think about you, too," she said. "Sister Marie says I have to get off now. I still have to tend the sheep."

"Okay," Alex said, reluctant to hang up. "Bri, just one more thing. What's the weather like up there?"

"It's kind of strange," Bri said. "It was really hot and sunny at first, but a week or so ago, it turned gray and it's been that way ever since. Every night we pray to St. Medard to intercede and bring us sunshine, because without it, the crops will die and we don't know what we'll do if that happens. But it stays gray."

"It's like that here, too," Alex said. "Okay. Bri, we'll talk again soon, I promise. Take care. We love you."

"I love you, too," she said, and hung up.

Alex held on to the phone a second longer. Julie stared at Carlos's postcard.

"I wonder if the sun is shining in Texas," she said. "Maybe when Bri gets back, we should go there."

Monday, August 1

"Watch out for that rat," Alex said to Julie as they walked home from Holy Angels. Every day there were more dead, and the rats were getting larger and more daring.

Julie dodged the rat. "Sister Rita doesn't know what we're going to do if the sun doesn't come out soon," she said.

"She'd better think of something," Alex said. "The sun isn't coming back for a while."

"I really worry about the string beans," she said. "They're my favorites. Lauren likes the tomatoes best, because there are so many of them, but the string beans remind me of summer." She laughed. "I guess it is summer," she said. "Do you think it's cold like this at the convent?"

"Probably," Alex said. "It's probably getting colder all over the world."

"Brittany —she's my new best friend—she says her father says the strong will survive and everyone else will die and the world will be better because everyone'll be strong," Julie said. "Lauren says the meek will inherit the earth, not the strong, and Brittany says who wants the earth anyway, so the strong might as well have it."

"What do you say?" Alex asked.

But before Julie could answer, they both felt a rumbling underfoot, the way it used to feel in subway stations. Only now they were outside, and the subways weren't running anymore.

It lasted for about half a minute. Alex and Julie stood there, frozen. The few other people walking down Broadway had the same shocked looks on their faces.

"Earthquake!" a man shouted.

"You're crazy," another man said. "This is New York, not California."

"I used to live in California," the first man said. "I know what an earthquake feels like and that was an earthquake." He looked thoughtful. "Four point five maybe," he said. "Nothing serious."

"Was it really an earthquake?" Julie asked Alex as they resumed walking.

"I don't know," Alex said. "Does it matter?"

Tuesday, August 2

"Did you feel that earthquake?" Tony Loretto asked Alex and Kevin at lunch. "I was home, and my St. Anthony statue fell off the chest of drawers."

"I was on Broadway," Alex said. "My sister and I both felt it. Someone said it was an earthquake, but I didn't know whether to believe him."

"The quake wasn't too bad," Kevin said. "It's the tsunami that caused the problems."

"Tsunami?" Alex said.

Kevin shook his head. "Sometimes I think you live under a rock, Morales," he said. "The earthquake was in the Atlantic, and lower Manhattan got hit by a tsunami. Big one, too. Like the tidal waves haven't been enough to wash New York clean of sin."

"My mother works for the city," Tony said. "She says there are going to be mandatory evacuations south of Thirty-fourth Street by September. All of lower Manhattan is flooded now, and the water keeps seeping up. Big sewage problem, too. Coffins floating around. Huge health problems."

"From one tsunami?" Alex asked.

"And the tides," he said. "But they think there're going to be more tsunamis. There's a fault line in the Atlantic close to the city, and with the moon changing the gravitational pull, the earthquakes are going to happen pretty regularly, and that means more tsunamis. It isn't like Thirty-fourth Street is under water, but the water keeps moving uptown, pushing the sewage and the coffins, and things keep getting worse."

"Even the rats are drowning," Alex said.

"Nah," Kevin said. "They've been taking swimming lessons at the Y."

Monday, August 8

"So, Morales," Kevin said as they ate their cafeteria lunch of boiled potatoes and canned carrots. "What do you have planned for tomorrow?"

Alex shrugged. "The usual," he said. "Checking on the elderly, studying theology, fighting for survival. Same old, same old."

Kevin laughed. "You need something new and exciting in your life," he said. "Wanna go body shopping? It's my latest hobby."

Alex knew immediately that this would be something gruesome and disgusting, and if not illegal, most certainly immoral. "Sounds great," he said. "Where and when?"

"First thing tomorrow," Kevin said. "I'll meet you in front of your building around seven o'clock, so we can both visit our old folks first and get to school on time. I know' how- you hate to be late for classes."

"It's Father Mulrooney," Alex replied. "He makes St. Augustine come alive."

"Which is more than he can do for himself," Kevin said. "Speak of the devil…"

Father Mulrooney walked up to the two boys and gestured for them to stay seated. "I looked over your list just now, Mr. Morales," he said. "I noticed there were only seven signatures."

"Yes, Father," Alex said. "Only seven people answered when I knocked on their doors."