“I’ll go get those shirts,” he says. I can still hear the occasional chuckle as he heads up the stairs.
I make my way to the small utility room with the washer and dryer and close the door behind me. Peeling off my wet shirt and jeans is like peeling off a second skin. My bra and underwear are damp, too, but I can live with that. I toss my things into the dryer. They land on top of Quint’s shirt and pants. Criminy, this is weird. I start blushing all over again.
I grab a new towel from the shelf and wrap it around my body sarong-style. Then I start the dryer and stand there, listening to it rumble and thud, wondering what to do now. I am not going to go strutting around Quint in nothing but a towel, but it will be at least half an hour before our clothes are dry.
The second I have this thought, the lights flicker.
I glance up.
They flicker again—then go out.
I’m plunged into darkness so thick, it feels like I’ve been sucked into a black hole. The dryer whines to a stop. Our heavy, damp clothes thud down one last time. An eerie silence falls over the center, broken only by the torrential rains that continue to pound against the side of the building and the occasional unhappy barks of the animals.
“Prudence?”
Gripping the towel, I open the door and peek my head out into the corridor. Quint is moving toward me, illuminated by the flashlight feature on his cell phone. He’s put on a shirt, thankfully, but still has the towel around his waist.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. The power…”
“I know. Here.” He hands me a yellow T-shirt.
“Is there a generator?”
“I don’t think so.”
I duck back into the room and turn on the flashlight on my phone, too. It casts the small room in a faint white glow as I pull on the T-shirt and tie the towel skirtlike around my waist.
I grimace. I can secure the towel around my hips, but it leaves a gap across one thigh. I cannot go out there like this.
Then I remember that there’s a stack of blankets next to the washer. I take off the towel and grab a blanket instead. I feel better immediately, with the fabric more than covering my hips and falling all the way past my ankles. It smells like fish and seawater, given that it usually lives in the pens with the animals. Not all that long ago I would have been completely grossed out by this, but now I’m just grateful. Besides, I’m often the person doing the laundry at the end of the day, so I know the towels and blankets are regularly washed.
I grab my phone and open the door.
“Now what?” I ask, before realizing that Quint is holding my backpack.
He holds it out, gripping the handles. “You dropped this in the lobby,” he says. “I didn’t know if you needed it.”
“Thanks.” I take it from him, but he looks troubled.
“What’s wrong?”
He clears his throat and holds out something else. Two things, actually. A pale yellow envelope that’s been ripped open, and a white envelope, thick with dollar bills. “These spilled out.”
“Oh.” I swallow. “The money is for my parents…” I feel like I should say more. It’s weird to be carrying around all that money. But—I don’t want to tell him about the pawnshop. I don’t want him to know that my parents have resorted to selling off our possessions. I’ve done a good job not thinking about it all day today, but whenever it does crop up in my thoughts, my stomach twists. With worry. With guilt. I’ve spent my whole summer so focused on trying to help the center. Should I have been trying to help my own family instead?
In the end, I don’t tell Quint anything, just tuck the money back into my bag and zip it into one of the side pockets, which I probably should have done from the beginning. It’s really none of his business, anyway.
But I’m still holding the yellow envelope, and his eyes are on it, his brow tense. “My mom wrote a bunch of thank-you notes to some of our donors last month,” he says, “just like you suggested. I helped her put stamps on them…”
I know he’s telling me this to clue me in that he knows what this is. Almost like he’s trying to get a confession out of me.