Move like the earth in case there's another earthquake

“Move like the earth in case there's another earthquake” is an expression of bodily adaptation to fear: a child rocks and sways after an earthquake, then his father remembers that gesture as he moves through life expecting another crisis. The image links a physical response to the quake with the narrator’s later vigilance as he prepares to call Z. and speak with Nic Sheff.

Origin in the Earthquake

After school was canceled, the family stayed in Inverness for a few days before returning home. Teachers invited the children to write about their experiences of the earthquake and other frightening things. Nic Sheff described being at the beach, looking into a sand pit, and hearing that a person had been thrown from a swimming pool; he wrote that the earthquake had made him feel dizzy.

At recess, another boy stood on the playground rocking and swaying. Asked by the principal if he was all right, he explained, “I am moving like the earth, so if there's another earthquake I won't feel it.” His words give the expression its original, childlike logic: movement becomes an attempt to anticipate the next shock by making the body move with the ground.

The Father’s Recollection

The narrator later recalls the boy while walking around a block crowded with people on a Saturday night. He recognizes in the child’s gesture a way of navigating his own days: guarded and wary of the next upheaval, protecting himself as best he can. The original statement becomes his own image of bracing for what may come, rather than a claim that danger can actually be prevented.

That remembered movement returns at a specific moment: the narrator flips open his cell phone and calls Z., prepared for whatever the call may bring. The expression thus connects the earlier earthquake to the family’s continuing uncertainty about Nic Sheff. Its significance lies in that recurrence: a child’s attempt to accommodate a physical shock becomes the father’s shorthand for living on alert through an ongoing emotional one.