It had been a few weeks since the storm, less than that since the night Lux disappeared. We’d been ready for the storm. The moment we heard it was coming, we raided the richest neighborhoods only, dumpstering outside the best grocery stores until we had enough food to last us for months. Good food, too, cans that were maybe a little dented, boxes that were just a little raggedy-ass, but good stuff. We got a stack of five-gallon bottles of water. We took the money that Lux had made dumpstering and reselling the barely used electronics that people in this town are always tossing out and bought her enough hormones to get through a while and the rest of us enough Olde English 40s to last a week. Or a couple of days. Or maybe two really wild nights. In any case, we were toasting with the booze and congratulating ourselves when the storm came.

It was more novocaine than hurricane. A lot of water blew in the open end of the station and pooled in the gully where the tracks used to be, but we were far back and stayed mostly dry. There was no power in the station, so we couldn’t freak ourselves out watching the news or anything. Lux kept bugging out because she was worried that her pile of Mixplayers and wristscreens were going to get ruined, which was later kind of funny, but not in a laughing kind of way, because they stayed dry and the whole city got ruined. But we hung out and drank malt liquor, and I tried to play guitar and sing this really old song by this guy who’s been dead forever, Woody Guthrie. I learned it from some traveler kid when I was moving around more. But I kept fucking it up because I was drunk and José yelled at me the third time I tried to sing it, said I had a shit voice, and I couldn’t play guitar. So Lux glared at him and picked up the guitar and said, “I dare you, you piece of shit, to make fun of my voice.” And then she sang it, and I sang along. Her voice sounded fucking great. I knew her when it was different. She’d worked a lot to change it, to make it more what she wanted it to be. We sang together, and laughed, and José and Sebastian laughed, too; we weren’t really mad at José anyway.

Sitting in the station, I remembered her voice singing. Breathy and soft and beautiful. “My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road, a hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod; Rich man took my home and drove me from my door, and I ain’t got no home in this world anymore.” I missed her voice singing and laughing and echoing through the station.

Lux. Fuck. Where were those fucking Xanax?