Torn Away

by Jennifer Brown

  When I finally made it to the bottom step, I was out of the rain’s reach, so I stood there and stared, squeezing water out of my hair and wiping my cheeks dry with my hands, trying to figure out what to do next.

  Trying to figure out how I would survive until Mom and Ronnie came home.

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  There were a dozen bottles of water in Ronnie’s mini-fridge, along with a few beers, some cheese in a jar, and a package of hot dogs. I’d had to dig through broken boards and rubble with my hands to get to the refrigerator. By the time I unearthed it, I was so thirsty, I downed one of the waters while I sat on a clear spot on the floor in front of it, my fingers torn up and sore.

  My stomach growled heartily as I spotted the cheese, but I was afraid to eat it, unsure what we would do about food once Mom and Ronnie and Marin came home. I wanted to make sure there was enough for all of us. I wondered when we would get help on our street, and if the helpers would have food. I wondered if our real refrigerator was still upstairs somewhere, and if it still had food in it, and tried to bat away a panicked thought that the refrigerator upstairs could at any minute cave in the floor it was sitting on and bury me. I scooted back from the area where the kitchen had spilled into the basement, into the opposite corner. That section of floor had felt solid.

  I sat on the concrete and sipped my water, listening to the thunderstorm, watching as the rain picked up and tapered off, only to do it again, bathing the basement in shadows that got deeper and deeper as night fell full force.

  I didn’t hear anything else outside. No voices, no sirens, no cars. Just the tapping of the raindrops, the clap of the thunder.

  Eventually, I got up and made my way over to the flipped couch; it was wet on the back side, but the cushions underneath were dry. I pulled them out and carried them to the pool table, which I’d pushed closer to my safe corner. I placed the couch cushions under the table and rounded up my backpack, Marin’s purse, the flashlight, and my cell phone. I rummaged through an old dresser that Mom had stuck in the farthest corner of the basement, and found a blanket we used for picnics and on the Fourth of July to watch fireworks at the park, some beach towels, and a deck of playing cards with the date of Mom and Ronnie’s Vegas honeymoon embossed on the box. I took them all, lumping the towels together like a pillow and covering myself with the blanket. I stuffed the playing cards into Marin’s purse, along with the gum and the lipstick, and then clicked on the flashlight and stretched out across the cushions on my stomach, feeling safer, as if I could wait for everyone down here until morning if need be. I didn’t want to, but I’d be okay if I had to.

  The book I’d been reading before the tornado hit—which seemed like forever ago already—was a little damp, and one of the pages had been torn. But for the most part it was all still there, and I decided to finish it to pass the time. I wondered if Miss Sopor’s house had been destroyed, too, and if the high school was still standing.

  Surely it was. It had to be. Jane might have been inside it.

  I imagined everyone going back to school, with stories to tell about how they’d weathered the storm. About how their houses were damaged or their cars were messed up. What about Jersey Cameron and Kolby Combs? I imagined them saying. They aren’t here. I heard they lost everything. I didn’t want them doing that. I didn’t want everyone talking about how Jersey Cameron, the mousy drama club girl, had nothing now. I groaned and rolled to my back, staring up at the bottom of the pool table, the book slack in my hands. With my free hand, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and tried to call Mom again. Still nothing. Where are you, Mom? When will you get to me?

  I pulled up my messaging and thumbed a text to Dani—Am in basement. Ok but everything destroyed. You?—and then typed out a similar text to Jane—Made it thru tornado. U ok? I stared at my phone’s screen, hoping that the messages would go through, but after a few seconds an error message popped up instead.

  My stomach rumbled again and I turned over and opened Marin’s purse. A waft of cinnamon and mint puffed out in my face, along with the familiar scent of my mom’s makeup and my sister’s shampoo. I dug around until I found a full pack of gum, unwrapped a piece, and stuck it into my mouth to quiet my hunger. I chewed, listening to the rain continue, and turned the foil wrapper in my fingers.

  I thought about my sister. Marin hated storms. She was probably freaking out right now, especially if she was trapped in a dark closet with her dance classmates, smushed together, the skin of their arms sweating up against one another. Mom would be trying to calm her, rubbing her sticky curls and talking to her. Maybe singing to her. Trying to think of a way out.

  I hoped they were okay. I hoped they were in the police station or a grocery store or someplace safe, trying to call me, trying to figure out how to navigate the car to the house. To save me.

  I pulled a pen out of my backpack and bent over the little square of foil. I drew a stick figure on tiptoes, arms out and legs bent, curved lines surrounding the figure to indicate motion. I gave the stick figure big eyes with long eyelashes and a smiling mouth, then added a princess crown to the top of its head just for fun.

  Marin does the East Coast Swing, I wrote under the picture, then held up the foil and gazed at it, a smile curving my lips. Marin would love it when she saw it.

  I folded the picture over itself into tinier and tinier squares, then tucked it in the zippered pocket inside the purse.

  By the time morning came, the rain had stopped, leaving in its wake a sharp light that gave everything a vivid edge. I unwound myself from my blanket and slid out from under the table, blinking, the events of the day before rushing in on me.

  It wasn’t a dream, I thought with disappointment. The tornado really did happen.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. It was 11 AM, and I had no messages. I tried to call Mom’s phone again and wasn’t surprised when my attempt was greeted with an automated message saying my call couldn’t go through.

  It was hot. Already. My hair stuck to my neck, and I could feel a bead of sweat slowly making its way down the small of my back. My legs were goose bumpy where the blanket had wrapped around them and trapped in body heat all night. The wreckage on the open side of the basement had become saturated and was now baking in the May sun. It was already starting to stink.

  I was hungry.

  I was thirsty.

  And, worst of all, I had to go to the bathroom.

  My eyes landed on a paint bucket Ronnie used to store rags. How embarrassing. I would hold it.

  To keep my mind off my bladder, I went to the refrigerator and ate two cold hot dogs, which were starting to not be so cold anymore. I wondered how long they would still be good. After I finished them, I took out a bottle of water, shutting the door as quickly as possible to conserve as much cold air as I could. I leaned back against the refrigerator and listened to the noises outside.

  I heard disjointed words like “in there” and “destroyed” and “keep pressure on it” and “ambulance” and “overwhelmed.” Somewhere in the distance I heard the buzzing of a chain saw.

  I listened for Mom’s voice. For Ronnie’s. Marin’s. I listened for my name, for cries of hope.

  I didn’t hear any of that.

  When the pain in my bladder got to be too much, I finally mustered up my courage and walked over to the bucket, feeling silly and embarrassed, hoping nobody suddenly came down to “rescue” me at that moment.

  Next to the bucket, I spotted an old pair of Ronnie’s work boots. They were filthy and ugly, clumps of dead grass and blots of dried paint crusted on them. But old shoes were better than no shoes.

  One by one, I tipped them upside down and pounded them against the floor in case there were bugs in them, then crammed a rag into the toe of each and slipped them on, lacing them tight around my ankles.

  I felt like Frankenstein stomping across the basement floor, and I tripped over the toes a couple of times. My feet were hot, making me feel sweat
ier than I already was, and I wished I had an air conditioner to sit in front of, or a cold shower to stand under. But instead I had the humid Missouri air pressing in on me, keeping my sweat tight against my skin.

  With the light flooding in, it was easier to see where I was going this time, and I was able to spot some of our things buried under toppled furniture and shingles. I made my way upstairs and stood in what used to be our living room, pulling out items I thought Mom would be interested in keeping. Her bathrobe, dripping and smelly and warm, streaked with mud, which I draped across an overturned table. DVDs, still in their cases, which I stacked neatly on the floor. Bedsheets, which had twined their way around furniture legs and twisted into ropes. I wondered what those must have looked like as the tornado passed over. Did they reach up to the sky, great white flags of surrender?

  I cleaned up as much as I could—which wasn’t much—and then headed outside, searching for Kolby. I found him sitting on a patch of grass eerily close to where I’d seen him standing outside my kitchen window the day before. He was holding a cloth against his arm. I headed over.

  “You made it through the night,” he said when he saw me coming.

  “What happened?” I motioned to his arm as I sat down next to him.

  He shrugged. “Cut it on a window.”

  I could see blood seeping through the makeshift bandage, which appeared to be a damp purple bandanna. “Is it bad?”

  He stared off into the sky, pressing the cloth down harder. “It probably could use some stitches, but how am I gonna manage that?”

  I reached over and picked up a corner of the bandanna and gasped. A deep five-inch gash sliced through his skin and was weeping blood. “That’s really bad. You need…” But I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. He needed a doctor to look at it, yes, but how were we going to get him to one?

  “I’ll be okay,” he said. “I just need to find something that I can use to tie this to my arm.”

  I scanned what would have been our backyards, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, trying to pick out individual items that might be useful. It was hard to see anything but massive piles of trash.

  “There,” I said, and pulled myself up, clunking over some bricks to where Kolby’s mom’s clothesline used to stand. The pole was still there, but the line was snapped and wrapped around the base of it. I unwound it and brought it back to Kolby, then sank down next to him and began wrapping it around the cloth on his arm, trying to get it tight enough to stay, but not too tight.

  “How long have you been up?” I asked.

  “Most of the night, really,” he said, wincing every time I tugged on the line. “We remembered that Mrs. Donnelly had an old cellar. It took us a couple hours to pull everything off the doors. But I don’t think anyone really slept at all. My mom’s down there now. She was up most of the night praying over people. I should have come and gotten you.”

  I shook my head. “I made a bed under the pool table. I was okay.”

  I got to the end of the twine and knotted it, tucking the loose ends under. Kolby smoothed the bandage over his forearm. Already, blood was blooming on the outside of it. I could see darker-purple spots growing under the rope.

  “Some trucks made it through this morning,” he said, looking out at nothing. I followed his gaze. He turned to meet my eyes. “It’s bad, Jersey. They said a lot of people died.”

  I held his gaze for a few seconds, then looked back over the field of fallen houses. A couple of children had appeared and were climbing on top of a car. The car’s nose had been punched in, the windshield caved.

  “I can’t believe we’re all just… homeless now,” I said. “Where are we supposed to go?”

  Kolby picked up a splintered board and tossed it to the side, unearthing an iron. He picked up the iron and studied it idly. “We’re going to Milton to stay with my aunt. I think some people are going over to Prairie Valley to stay in motels. People are going… wherever they can.” He pulled himself up with a grunt and started back toward the rubble of the house. When he reached the edge, he picked up a section of siding and tossed it away. “I’m trying to find my mom’s purse so we at least have some money. Who knows if it’s still here? Could be ten miles away, for all I know.”

  I got up and followed him, clomping over things in Ronnie’s boots, bending to pick up a brick here, a board there, a hill of sopping clothes or a ruined book somewhere else.

  “Careful,” Kolby kept murmuring. “I don’t know how stable everything is.”

  “I’ll be okay,” I repeated over and over again, sweat rolling down my lower back and dripping off my forehead.

  We searched until we were both filthy and thirsty. One of the trucks that came through had deposited a couple of cases of bottled water on the street, and we took a break to get a drink.

  “I don’t think we’re gonna find it,” Kolby said at last.

  “We might,” I said. “Marin’s purse was still by the door.”

  He took a long sip of water and didn’t respond. I watched Mr. Fay toss little bits and pieces of things into a hip-high pile.

  “Where do you think they are?” I said at last, giving voice to the thought that had been running a loop in my head ever since Kolby had told me that trucks had made it through.

  Kolby looked down at his feet. He knew who I was talking about without me even saying it. “I don’t know. Where were they when it hit?”

  “Mom and Marin were at dance. I don’t know where Ronnie was. But…” I trailed off, unable to say what had been weighing on my mind. If they could have gotten through, they would have. Mom would have come to get me. She’d have been scared out of her mind for me.

  If they weren’t here, it was because something was keeping them from coming.

  “We can go there,” Kolby said. “It’s not that far.”

  My hand shook, the water inside the bottle rippling with the motion. “It’s a couple miles, at least.”

  He motioned toward our houses. “It’s not like there’s anything good on TV right now,” he said, and though he was joking, neither one of us laughed. Nothing about any of this was funny. “Let me tell Tracy, so my mom won’t worry when she wakes up,” he said.

  And before I could say anything in protest, he loped off toward Mrs. Donnelly’s cellar.

  Part of me was definitely ready to do this. To go out and find my mom and Marin and Ronnie. If they couldn’t get to me, I’d get to them.

  But part of me was scared.

  What if I didn’t find them?

  What if they weren’t there to be found?

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  More and more vehicles were creeping down Church Street by the time we got to it, some of them stopping to pick up people who were still walking toward town, still hoping to find help. Some passengers offered bottles of water and first-aid kits. Others rolled by with cameras, taking photos and gabbing about the devastation as if it were there for their entertainment.

  By comparison, all the people who were walking looked filthy and grim. Some wore stony, distant expressions, as if they had no idea where they were or where they were going. Some were carrying children. Some were covered in dried blood. Some were telling stories, and all of the stories were similar—the house fell apart, the wind tugged at us, we got hit with something, our houses are gone, our cars are gone, our streets are gone, our lives, as we knew them, are gone.

  “About a half mile that direction will get you out of the storm’s path,” one woman told Kolby, pointing to the east. “It ran north and south, so if you go east, before long you’ll come to regular pavement.”

  So we walked east on Kentucky, taking in the devastation there as we headed toward normalcy.

  “You smell that?” Kolby said, wrinkling his nose. “Stinks.”

  I thought about the hamburger I’d crumbled up in the skillet right before the storm hit. Who knew where it had been flung, but wherever it was, it was rotting in the sun now, along with dinners and the
refrigerator guts of hundreds of other houses.

  “Smells like the washing machine when I forget to take the wet clothes out,” I said.

  “It’s only gonna get worse, you know,” he said. “That smell. All that wet stuff and the heat.”

  “Food rotting,” I added.

  “And people,” Kolby said, and he said it so matter-of-factly, I stopped walking and stared at him.

  “What?” he asked, turning to face me and shrugging. “There are dead people under some of this stuff. And dead animals, too. It’s reality.”

  I started walking again. “Yeah, but you don’t have to say it like that. Like it’s no big deal.”

  “I don’t like it, either,” he mumbled, following me.

  We came up over a hill and could see where the destruction stopped, not too many yards ahead of us. It was strange, seeing how the houses went from totally razed to beat up and broken to lightly damaged to completely fine. Literally, where one house was gone, the neighbor three houses down would only need to replace some shingles.

  It was at that end of the street where most of the people were congregating. Chain saws buzzed and whole crowds sifted through rubble, people calling out to one another, offering help and drinks, the effort much more concerted than on our street. Someone had set up a few tents and folding tables covered with food and drinks and tools and supplies. Two of the tents shaded an assortment of lawn chairs, and some women sat there with babies. Little kids squatted on the ground and munched on grapes, watching as Kolby and I scuffed by.

  “You all right?” a woman hollered to us from one of the chairs. “You need help?”

  “We’re fine,” I yelled back, smiling as if we were simply out on a midday stroll.

  “You need something to eat?” she called. “There’s plenty. None of us has power, so we’ve got to eat it while it’s still good.”

  My stomach growled, and Kolby and I looked at each other. We diverted to the tent, where I immediately grabbed a banana and Kolby palmed a sandwich, taking a huge bite out of it and closing his eyes while he chewed.