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 sweatier 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.