by Jenn Bishop
I feel like a little kid, pressing my face against the window as we pass by Avery’s house. Wanting to see how bad it is and not wanting to see at the same time.
The big tree at the edge of his front yard, the one with the tire swing, is split down the middle. I don’t see the tire swing anywhere.
Avery’s voice cracks as he pulls his hand away from mine. “Mom, you said it wasn’t that bad.”
Their roof is gone. The whole upstairs is opened up like a dollhouse. The lawn is covered with stuff: a toilet on its side, broken windows and shutters, and more of that pink fluff.
Seeing that cotton-candyish stuff all over Avery’s yard gives my stomach a sick feeling. Cotton candy is supposed to be a good thing, a fun treat. But there’s too much of it. And it’s not supposed to be on the outside. The outside and the inside are all mixed up. If that’s what Avery’s house looks like and it’s not that bad, what does mine look like?
“It’s fixable,” Mrs. Linden says.
I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands again as the car climbs further up the hill. We’re getting closer to where the center of the tornado came through. I wish I knew the name for it. Maybe kids in the Midwest know about tornadoes, but we barely learn about them in science class. All I know is, each yard we pass is a little bit worse than the one before it.
I always thought a tornado came through and spun things around and then left it all behind. A big jumbled mess. But it’s like it took stuff with it. There’s less there.
Avery’s mom pulls into Greta and the Germ’s driveway. I know it’s their driveway because that’s their mailbox at the end, MANOUKIAN, and that’s their house, still standing, but their yard isn’t even recognizable. All of the trees at the edge of their yard and ours have been flattened, if they’re there at all.
“Thanks for the ride, Naomi,” Dad says.
“You need a place to stay tonight?” Mrs. Linden asks. “We’re going over to the Simpsons’ house.”
“We’ll be all set for the night.”
I fumble with my seat belt.
“Maddie,” Avery says.
My hand trembles as I open the door and step out into the still, humid air. I hold my shoes in my hand, my feet bare.
“It’s gone, isn’t it?” I ask Dad.
“Mom and Cammie are inside, honey. There’s nothing we can do now that it’s getting dark.”
I start walking toward our yard, or where I think it is. My house is—was—set back from the street, so you could barely see it peeking out from behind the trees. But with so many of the trees that were here just hours ago now missing, it’s hard to tell where I am. “I need to see it.”
“Maddie!” Dad yells. “Your feet. There’s broken glass everywhere.”
I slip into my shoes and keep walking, stepping around bits of torn-off branches, shingles that belong to some house down the street. I wobble and almost fall over at one point, but I right myself just in time.
And then I’m standing in front of my house. Where it used to be. Now it’s just some beams sticking up into the sky. A pile of wood and bricks. Our house wasn’t even brick.
The space where my bedroom should be, tucked into the corner upstairs, is just a pocket of air. It’s as dark as midnight. Up ahead, the clouds part, revealing a sky dotted with stars.
My home is gone.
A piece of glass in the yard reflects the moon above. No—not a piece of glass. My handheld mirror.
“You were inside the house—you were in there when…” My voice trembles. They crawled out of that mess. Mom and Dad and Cammie, they were trapped under all of that. When Mom was calling me, again and again, were they under there?
Dad rests his hand on my shoulder. “We’re all safe, Maddie. That’s the only thing that matters.”
I hear a dog barking from up the street. “Is Hank at the Manoukians’, too?”
“Maddie.” Now it’s Dad’s voice that does the breaking.
I clench my hand into a fist. “Where’s Hank?”
“He never came when we called him for supper, honey.”
I start toward the debris. “We need to look for him.” I turn on my phone’s flashlight, but it’s not enough. “Dad, do you have a flashlight?”
I grab at pieces of wood with my bare hands, pushing some aside. I can barely see what’s in front of me, never mind what’s under all the rubble. “Hank?”
Dad pulls me back. “He wasn’t in the house during the storm. He’s not in here, Mads. We already did a sweep when it was still light out.”
“Hank!” I yell. He can hear me, right? He always comes when I call. Almost always. “Hank!” I try my best to whistle, but chain saws are still buzzing down the hill and there’s no way he can hear me unless he’s close by. “Hank!” I shout even louder. “Hank, I’m here! Hank, come on. Hank!”
“We need to get inside,” Dad says, “or somebody’s going to get hurt out here.”
“But Hank could be hurt. He’s all alone.” In my head, I picture Hank’s tail sticking out from under a fallen tree. “What if he’s trapped?”
Dad rubs my back. “It’s not going to help to get hysterical about it. For all we know, Hank is in a neighbor’s house up the street. There’s broken glass and power lines down everywhere, hon. It’s not safe to be out here. We can look more in the morning.”
I suck in a deep breath, remembering what Avery said in the car.
“Maddie!”
This time it’s Mom calling out my name. She’s at the edge of the Manoukians’ yard. I run as fast as my fancy shoes will let me until she’s wrapping her arms around me, lifting me onto my tippy-toes, hugging me close to her chest.
“Oh, Maddie.” She doesn’t try to be careful with my hair. It’s all smooshed and messed up now. “We tried calling and calling you.”
“Me too. It kept going to voice mail.”
“We found each other and we’re safe. That’s all that matters.”
“But Hank,” I say.
Mom squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll find him in the morning.”
Together with Dad, we walk back toward the Manoukians’ house. Inside, their mantel is lit up with candles. Every flashlight and camping lantern in the house has been put to use, scattered around the floor or in somebody’s hand, lighting the room.
“That’s only three,” Cammie says. He’s playing Connect Four with Greta and the Germ on the living room floor.
He leaps up when he sees me. “Maddie!” He hugs my legs extra tight. “You missed it, you missed the tornado. It was so scary, Mads. Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t let me go upstairs to go to the bathroom and I had to pee in a bucket. We hid in the basement. And the tornado”—he rolls his hands one over the other—“went right over our house. It was so scary.”
“It sounds scary.”
“So scary,” he says again. And this time I see it in his fingers, the way he taps and taps them against his legs. I want to grab his hand, tell him to stop tapping, but I stop myself.
Maybe I’d be tapping, too, if I’d been here when it happened.
I sit down on the floor with him and the other kids.
“We hid in our basement, too.” Greta twists a strand of hair between her fingers, her eyes still extra wide, like the shock of everything that happened hasn’t worn off for her either.
In the kitchen, Mom and Dad are both talking on their cell phones. I wonder where we’re going to sleep tonight.
Mrs. Manoukian comes into the living room. “Do you want something to eat, Maddie? I’ve got a whole fridge and freezer’s worth of food that’s about to spoil if we don’t get the power back tonight. Ice cream? Glass of milk? Yogurt? You’re not lactose intolerant, right?”
Cammie’s head pops up. “Ice cream?”
“I think you’ve already had enough for tonight, kiddo.”
“Maybe just a glass of milk.” I follow Mrs. Manoukian into the kitchen.
“On hold again? I’ve been on hold for over an hour!” Mom si
ghs as she puts her phone on speaker, allowing staticky elevator music to fill the quiet. “Unbelievable.” She runs her fingers through her hair.
“Who are you calling?” I ask.
“Just the—”
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Dad mouths something to Mom.
Mrs. Manoukian hands me a glass of milk. “Sure you don’t want anything else? I’ve got some leftover tuna salad.”
I take a sip from the glass. “I’m fine.”
Back in the living room, Greta, the Germ, and Cammie keep playing Connect Four like nothing even happened. Like we lost power because of a snowstorm and all we have to do is wait patiently for the electric company to get it back on. Like the snow will melt and everything will return to normal. It’s so dark outside you can’t see anything, but I can’t pretend it’ll look better in the morning.
Greta leans against the side of the couch with her eyes closed and her mouth hanging wide open. She’s probably exhausted from all the excitement.
Cammie sticks another black piece through the slot. It clinks when it hits the bottom. “One, two, three, four. I win!” He looks up at me. “Maddie, I won!”
“You did,” I say. “Good job.”
He’s smiling so wide. He can’t tell that Jeremy let him win, scattering reds all over the board on purpose. Cammie’s only six, and when you’re six, winning is everything.
“You want to play, Maddie?”
“Sure.” I stretch my legs out on the floor, since that’s the only way to sit in a dress this short.
“Black or red?”
“I don’t care. Whichever color you don’t want.”
The music coming from Mom’s cell phone stops playing in the other room. I try to listen to what she’s saying.
“Maddie, it’s your turn!”
I plink a black piece through the slot.
“I wanted to put mine there,” Cammie says.
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Everyone makes mistakes.”
He thinks extra hard about where to put his red piece and chews on his bottom lip. This one time, Dad and I were playing Connect Four when Hank was still a puppy. It was my job to pick up all the pieces and put the game away, but somehow I left out a piece and Hank ate it. We didn’t know until later that day when he started acting all funny. It turns out you can’t digest Connect Four pieces.
It was a red piece, the one he ate.
I run my fingers over the ridges of the black piece in my hand.
My mistakes. It was my turn to feed Hank tonight and I didn’t. The only thing on my mind was Avery and the dance, not feeding Hank his supper. I should have kept looking for him.
“Maddie. Come on, it’s your turn.”
I put my piece in.
“Three in a row. Oh no! Oh no, oh no.”
I glance at the board. Cammie’s right. Without trying, I have three black pieces all in a row, with open slots on either side, and he only gets one turn before my next one. No matter what he does, I’m going to win.
He slides his red piece in with a quiet sigh, and I pop in my final black piece.
Cammie counts them out. “One, two, three, four. Maddie wins!”
I reach over to slide the bottom of the board and let the pieces all come crashing out.
I wake up in darkness, roll onto my stomach, and listen to the breathing. Slow, even breaths with a bit of snore. Dad. That’s when I remember where I am: on the floor of the Manoukians’ living room. Cammie is asleep upstairs in the trundle bed in the Germ’s room. Down here it’s just me and Mom and Dad.
A red light glows from the corner across the room. The power must have come back on while we were sleeping. The fridge hums in the kitchen. The light must be from their DVR.
Now everything that was on our DVR—all the shows I was going to catch up on this weekend—is gone.
I flip onto my other side so I can’t see that little red light anymore. But when I close my eyes, it’s still there. I can see it inside my head, taunting me.
How could a tornado hit one house but then leave the one next door untouched?
Why did it have to hit ours?
I hear Mom roll over, and I wonder if she’s awake, too. Slowly the red light behind my eyelids fades away, until it’s just me and the darkness and Dad’s little snores.
—
I wake up to the buzzing chain saws, the hiss of the Manoukians’ espresso machine, and helicopters. There are no shades in the living room, and the bright sunshine is as harsh as the noise outside.
Mom and Dad are already up and dressed and in the kitchen. Mrs. Manoukian’s clothes are so baggy on Mom, but Mr. Manoukian and Dad are about the same size.
“You ready to help?” Dad asks me as he finishes off his piece of toast. “It’s going to be an all-hands-on-deck kind of morning.”
“Do you have your phone charger? I need to charge mine and then I can start calling around about Hank.” I pour some milk in my bowl of Cocoa Krispies.
Dad points to a phone charger on the wall. “Mads, we’re going to need your help today. We need everyone busting their butts outside with cleanup. There’s a lot of work to do. Folks are still assessing the damage.”
“But—”
“I want to find Hank every bit as much as you do, honey. It’s early still. I’m hopeful we’ll hear something by the end of the day.” Dad takes a sip of his coffee. “Hank’s got his tag on, so whoever finds him will know to call us.”
The chop-chop-chop of the helicopters overhead makes it hard for me to think.
“What’s up with the helicopters?”
“News coverage,” Dad says. “We made the Today show this morning, and I think I saw a CNN van drive up the street.”
“We’re on TV?” I wish my phone were still working so I could text Kiersten. She’s always wanted to be on TV. Not like this, though.
I hurry to finish up my cereal, then change into a pair of shorts and T-shirt Mrs. Manoukian lent me and head outside. I wiggle my toes in my borrowed sneakers. There’s an extra inch beyond where my toes end, but they’re still better than the shoes I wore to the dance. One, two, three, four helicopters fly overhead. Two of them stay in the same place, straight up in the air from a few houses past ours. The other two roam the sky.
“Oh my God.”
When you see disasters on the news, they always throw a splashy headline at what happened, like DEVASTATION IN THE MIDWEST. I wonder what they’ve chosen for this news story. The only words I can come up with are the kinds of words Mom and Dad don’t want to hear me say. But I can get away with “Oh my God.”
It’s not just our house that’s gone. With all the trees, you used to be able to see only one house at a time as you drove up my street. But not anymore. I can see past my yard to our other next-door neighbors, the McKinstrys. The top half of their house is gone, along with all the trees. Across the street, the Garcias’ house is totally flattened.
With all the trees down, I can see forever in the direction the tornado went. Right across our street and down the hill behind our house.
There’s a part of me that wants to cry, but the rest of me doesn’t know what to do. Mr. and Mrs. Garcia are as old as my grandparents. What if they didn’t get to the basement in time? The helicopters overhead—are they looking for survivors?
“Maddie!” Mom yells from over by our house—no, our yard. It doesn’t feel right to say “house” anymore.
I run to her. “Did you check on the Garcias?”
“Everyone in our neighborhood is accounted for.” She speaks so calmly.
Our neighborhood. That’s all she said.
“How far did it go? The tornado? Did everyone make it?”
Mom sighs. “You know the campground, over by the lake?”
There’s nowhere to hide in the campground. No basements. Just trailers and tents.
“Oh no, Mom…”
“I know, honey. I know. Everyone we know is okay. We need to focus on that for right now
. You’re okay, your friends are okay, our family is okay. We have to take things one step at a time for the next few days.” She’s using that tone she probably uses with patients all the time when she has to tell them something they don’t want to hear.
I’ve been holding my breath in again. “Okay,” I say, letting it out.
“First things first.” Mom hands me a pair of gardening gloves. “Let’s see what we can recover.” I stare at the wreckage of our house strewn all over the yard. Recover what?
I slip my hands into the too-big gloves—they must be Mr. Manoukian’s—and follow Mom over to our garage, which has collapsed in on itself.
“Where are the cars?”
Mom shrugs. “Somewhere under here, I’m afraid. Don’t tell your dad, but if one good thing comes out of this tornado, it’s the fact that I’m finally getting a new car.”
“Mom!”
She turns around, holding her index finger to her lips. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
—
Dad passes me an open bag of chips he snagged from the Manoukians’ while we break for lunch. “Find anything worth holding on to?”
“Not really, but I did find this.” I pick up the painted clay elephant that I made in Mrs. Stokey’s third-grade art class. “It must have been in my closet, on that shelf that was too high for me to reach.” Kiersten made one, too, that day. Does she still have hers?
Dad takes it from my hand. “I always loved that guy. Mrs. Stokey sure knows how to bring out the inner artist in everyone. Anything else?”
“A lot of what I found wasn’t even ours.” I hand him a pile of papers, with an envelope on top. The person it was addressed to lives two towns away.
“Jeez,” he says. “You know what this means?”
I shake my head.
“Your diary’s going to end up in somebody else’s yard. Hope you didn’t write anything in it you don’t want the whole world to know.” Dad raises his eyebrows.
“Good thing I don’t keep a diary,” I lie. My palms begin to sweat a little. I kept mine tucked under my mattress, which used to be a pretty reliable hiding spot. Well, not anymore! If someone’s mail from two towns over ended up in my yard, that thing could be anywhere.
