I leaned back and glanced into the living room, where the meteorologist was still standing in front of the Doppler photo, still pointing and talking, a sheaf of papers in his right hand. I sighed, looking back at the half-cooked meat. I didn’t want to turn it off, only to have it be another false alarm and have dinner ruined and Mom pissed. But technically, we were under a tornado warning. And even though there was a warning about every third week in Elizabeth, we were supposed to take it seriously each time and go downstairs.
Hardly anyone ever did, though. Midwest weather was crazy, after all, and half the time too crazy to really predict. We’d all learned to ignore the warnings. Most of them never turned out to be anything anyway.
I moved over to the kitchen sink and peered out the window. I could see wind pushing the swings on our neighbors’ swing set. The rings danced merrily, and the slide quivered. Kolby, who’d lived next door to me since we were toddlers, was standing outside on his back porch, hands in his pockets, gazing up into the sky, his hair whipping around so that I could see his scalp with each gust. Kolby always did this when the weather turned bad. A lot of people did, actually. They wanted the chance to see a funnel cloud for themselves, should one ever appear. I reached up and knocked on the window. He didn’t hear me. I knocked again, louder, and he turned, pulled a hand out of his pocket, and waved. I waved back.
He was peering out over Church Street, where plenty of cars were creeping along with their headlights on. Rush hour was starting and everyone was coming home, like normal. It wasn’t even raining.
I went back to the stove, still holding the spatula, and decided to wait until it started to rain or do something more serious than just look nasty.
But I had no more than touched the meat with the spatula when the power went out, bathing me in darkness and that blatting of the emergency sirens, which went on and on, so loud I only barely heard the buzz of the blinds in the laundry room as the wind pressed against the house harder and harder.
“Great,” I said aloud. “I guess we’ll have McDonald’s for dinner, then.”
I put the spatula down and turned off the stove, then grabbed my backpack, stuffing my book inside, and headed for the basement, aka Ronnie’s Room.
The basement wasn’t a terrible place to kill time, especially since Ronnie had put a pool table, a couch, and a mini-fridge down there. Every so often he’d have some friends over and they’d all disappear downstairs, and we could hear pool balls cracking up against one another and smell their cigarette smoke as it drifted up through the living room carpet. He didn’t love us hanging out in his space, but tonight I had no choice.
I rummaged around on Ronnie’s worktable and found a flashlight, then clicked it on; it worked. Giving a quick glance to the one small window—it was still dark and windy—I flopped down on the couch and opened my book.
My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket.
“Hey, Dani, I guess it’s a good time to catch up on some reading for tomorrow’s quiz,” I said in my Miss Sopor impression.
“Are you downstairs?” Dani’s voice was worried, thin.
“Yep. Waste of time, but since the power’s out, I have nothing better to do, I guess.”
“My mom said a tornado touched down on M Highway. She said it’s headed right toward us. She wanted me to make sure you knew.”
M Highway was closer than I wanted it to be, and that news startled me a little, but it was still the country out there. It seemed like tornadoes were touching down on those country highways all the time.
“Yeah, I heard the sirens. I’m good,” I said, though I realized that my voice might have sounded a bit thin, too.
“Is Jane still at school?” Dani asked.
“I haven’t heard from her,” I said. “I can text her.”
“I already did. She didn’t answer.”
“They were probably playing and she didn’t hear her phone.” Plus, I added inside my head, the orchestra room is in the basement anyway. She’s fine. “I’ll try her. Kolby is standing outside right now.”
Dani made a noise into the phone. “I’m not surprised. He’s nuts. He’s not gonna be happy until he gets carried away in a tornado.”
“It’s not even raining out there.”
“Still, he’s crazy. One touched down on M Highway.”
“I know.”
“Call me if you talk to Jane?”
“Okay.”
I hung up and sent Jane a quick text. The sirens stopped for a minute and I would have thought maybe the storm was passing, but it had gotten even darker outside, and then they started up again.
I chewed my lip, held my phone in my lap for a few seconds, then called Mom.
“Jersey?” she shouted into the phone. The noise around her was even louder. Emergency horns, police sirens, and the loud chatter and crying of little girls. “Jersey?”
“Dani’s mom said a tornado was on M Highway,” I said.
“I can’t hear her,” I heard my mom say, and another woman’s voice close by said something about more touchdowns. “Jersey?” Mom repeated.
“I’m here!” I shouted. “Hello! Can you hear me?”
“Jersey? I can’t hear you. If you can hear me, go to the basement, okay?” she yelled.
“I am,” I said, but I knew she couldn’t hear what I was saying, and fear really began to creep into my stomach. She sounded afraid. Mom never sounded afraid. Ever. She never wavered; she was always strong. Even when I fell off the monkey bars in second grade and landed straight on my neck and had to go in an ambulance to the hospital. Mom had simply sat next to me in the ambulance, talking in a low, steady voice, one that calmed me. “Mom? Hello? You there?”
“Everybody this way!” she shouted, her voice sounding farther away from the phone, like maybe she was holding it at her side and had forgotten that it was on. There was a bustling noise, and the crying and talking got louder and more jumbled and then was overtaken by a rumbling sound.
“Mom?” I said.
But she didn’t answer. I could hear her shouting, “Get your heads down! Get your heads down!” and lots of screaming and crying. I thought I might have heard glass breaking.
And then I heard nothing but the drone of the sirens outside my window.
About the Author
Jennifer Brown writes and lives in the Kansas City, Missouri, area with her husband and three children. She is the author of Torn Away; Thousand Words; Perfect Escape; Bitter End, which was named an ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults title; and Hate List, which was selected as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a VOYA Perfect Ten, and a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Her website is jenniferbrownya.com.
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Also by Jennifer Brown
Hate List
Bitter End
Perfect Escape
Thousand Words
Torn Away—Coming Soon!
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
Junior Year
Senior Year
A Sneak Peek of Hate List
A Sneak Peek of Torn Away
About the Author
Also by Jennifer Brown
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coinci
dental.
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Brown
Excerpt from Hate List copyright © 2009 by Jennifer Brown
Excerpt from Torn Away copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Brown
Cover art © Getty/ Eri Morita
Cover design by Erin McMahon
Cover © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: January 2014
ISBN 978-0-316-24555-5
For more about this book and author, visit Bookish.com.
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