“But I’m afraid of tornados!” Julieta also began to cry, refusing to budge as Manuel opened the door and held it for the others.
“We’ll be safer in the hall!” I herded them toward the door. “Just go! This is exactly what we’ve practiced for!” I grabbed the whistle and emergency clipboard from the teacher’s supply wardrobe on the way out. Then I stood at the door, relieving Manuel of his duty, counting heads as fast as I could.
“Twenty-one, twenty-two…” I paused. Someone was missing. Who was missing? I ran through my roll sheet again and compared it to the children sitting against the wall, the ones the office staff were ordering and pleading with to crouch into little balls and cover their heads with their hands.
Jade. I was missing Jade.
Darting back in the classroom, it took me three seconds that might as well have been three years to locate her, hiding beneath her favorite computer, curled up in a beanbag.
“Come on, Jade! We don’t have time for this! We’ll be safer in the hall!” I ran over and had started to pull her out from beneath the desk when something crashed through the window. Glass sprayed the room, and I stumbled. The wind roared outside, and rain began to soak the room. I felt something sharp slide across my arm, but I didn’t stop to look. Snatching Jade up, thanking the Lord she was tiny, I turned and ran back to the hall, shutting the door behind us until I heard the click. Then I put Jade down, who looked ready to bolt again, and I laid myself on top of her. The last thing we needed was for her to run.
Chugging sounded through the walls and distant windows, which were thankfully far down the hall, away from us. Why did they even bother adding windows to schools in tornado country, I couldn’t help wondering even as the chugging grew louder. It sounded like a train was right outside the building. I looked over my shoulder and shouted for several of the curious ones to keep their heads down and covered. Remorse and shame filled me as I wished I could cover them all. Jade was a must because she liked to run when she was frightened, as she had in the classroom. But the others were just as little and vulnerable as she was.
Only when I looked down again did I realize I was bleeding. The chugging grew louder as I tried to squeeze my arm to stop the flow with my other hand while leaning over Jade.
God, help us!Ear-splitting thunder rocked the world. And the sound of breaking glass served as the amen to my prayer.
44
Them
Derrick
We waited until the sirens and our phone apps had stopped screaming before we ventured out of the SIP room.
I was in the housing office for the base neighborhood, I’d been told while sheltering with the staff and a few of the local residents. This was good, as I’d nearly made it to the Harris Road exit, which put me less than a mile from Jade’s school. But that mile felt like a million the moment we stepped outside.
The sun was out again, making the rain-soaked world sparkle and shine, which was odd, considering the wake of destruction all around us. Trees had been uprooted and tossed like sticks. They seemed to cover everything, from the parking lot to the public pool behind the housing office to the roads. Or rather, what you could see of the roads.
The silence was nearly deafening, punctured only by the sirens in the distance. And even though the wind had died down to what was no more than a gentle breeze, debris still fluttered down, as though the clouds had released little bits of wood and metal, rather than water, from the sky.
“How did we survive that?” one of the men whispered to his coworker. She could only shake her head, her mouth still open.
“It didn’t hit the building,” a woman said, turning to examine the brick structure. Tiles were missing from the roof, and one of the windows had been punched out, but just as she’d said, the building had been spared.
But the gate hadn’t. Mechanically, I said a prayer for whoever had been manning the Harris Road gate. The guard box, thankfully, was still in one piece, but the gate itself was gone. Ripped clean off its hinges.
Then it hit me.
The tornado had taken out the gate because the tornado had ripped right up the road. The same road Jade’s school lay on. Something clicked on inside me.
“Check the guard box!” I shouted, pointing at the guard’s booth by the nonexistent gate as I broke into a run.
“Where are you going?” one of the women shouted.
But I didn’t answer. It was obvious from the condition of the road that I wouldn’t be able to drive. Trees from both sides of the road covered it, and even if they hadn’t, debris of every kind filled in the spaces. And since I couldn’t drive, the only thing left to do was run.
The closer I got to the school, the harder I pushed. The debris began to resemble things that were eerily familiar. A pink backpack. Lunchboxes. Small plastic chairs and even tables were strewn out on the asphalt.
Please, was the only prayer I could get out, pushing myself even harder.Please let them be all right.
Them. The prayer was supposed to be her. At least, that’s what I had meant it to be. But with each passing second, as mental images of all the possible horrors awaiting me continued to plant themselves in my mind, I knew it was them.
It would always be them.
Because Jessie wasn’t just Jade’s teacher, the way I’d been trying to treat her in my thoughts. She wasn’t an old flame. She wasn’t even the cute girl on whom I had a crush.
She was the woman I wanted to marry. Present tense. The one I wanted to come home to and sleep beside at night. I wanted to fight and make up with her over stupid things like facing the toilet paper the wrong way and getting mud in my truck. I wanted her to have my children and to be the one who listened when work was hard. I wanted her.
