“I want a kitten,” Marin had screeched when I’d gotten the last one. “I want a real kitten. A gray-and-white one with blue eyes. Can I get a kitten, Mommy?” My mom had rolled her eyes as, for the next two months, Marin had begged and begged for a kitten of her own.
“Ronnie’s allergic,” Mom had always said. “We can’t afford a kitten. And they puke in the house. Who’s gonna clean up the hairballs and the litter box? Not me, and certainly not you girls.”
I could understand why Marin wanted a kitten of her own. I had a whole collection of them.
Carefully, I set the kitten down with the CDs, then used both hands to right the bookshelf it had once been sitting on, hoping to find the others. Instead, all I found was broken porcelain. Shiny pieces of trash. Six was the only survivor.
I heard the wooden clonk of boards being flung on top of boards over where Ronnie was, and decided I’d looked enough. I was tired and thirsty and I wanted out of there. I stumbled over a sneaker, which set me on a frantic search for its twin. I found it a few feet away, under a plastic-coated wire shelf that was normally housed in the hall bathroom. I cradled the shoes in my arms, excited for them to dry out so I could take off Ronnie’s boots. Then I gathered up the clothes and the phone charger, pushed the kitten into my pocket, and headed to Ronnie.
“I’m ready,” I said as I rounded the wall. “I didn’t find much.…”
But I trailed off when I saw my stepdad, who was squatting next to the bed—which, oddly, didn’t appear to have moved an inch—his face pressed into the mattress, his hands holding something on top of it. He was crying, his whole body shaking.
I took a step forward and saw what he was holding—a framed wedding photo of him and Mom.
“Ronnie?” I said, but my heart had shriveled and fallen down into my toes. I knew. Right then I knew that my only miracle had been waking up to the word “Jesus” this morning. I knew there would be no other good news.
I knew that Mom and Marin were gone.
CHAPTER
TEN
On the day of the tornado, Ronnie had been delayed at work by an irate customer who wouldn’t leave until she’d had her say, no matter how ominous the sky looked. Normally, this wouldn’t have bothered Ronnie too much, because he understood that when you managed a hardware chain store, you didn’t ever get out at the time you were supposed to get out. You got angry customers, or guys late in returning the rental flatbeds, or indecisive women who sauntered into the store five minutes before closing and stared at the mailbox display for half an hour.
But with the sky looking so ominous, he was anxious to get the customer out of the store so he could get home. There was a storm coming, and the weather radio had been saying the possibility of tornadoes was high.
Ronnie was like everyone else in Elizabeth—he didn’t get too worked up about storms. But this one felt different somehow. Ronnie said he couldn’t explain it. He felt uneasy, and like he needed to get home to me and Mom and Marin before the bad weather hit.
But he’d gotten delayed. And by the time he’d hit the highway, it was too late.
“I could see it from the road,” he told me, the two of us sitting in shadows in our motel room. Neither of us had bothered to turn on the light. Neither of us would bother to turn it on for the whole next day, either. I think we were each afraid to see the other, afraid that our brokenness would become contagious if we shined light on it. “I’ve seen videos of tornadoes before, but, Jersey, I’ve never seen anything like this. It was huge. Had all these little tornadoes circling it, too. The thing was so big it looked like it could swallow the whole world.”
It did, I thought. It swallowed my whole world. But I didn’t say anything aloud. I sat on my bed, staring at the wallpaper across the room, unsure whether the design was pineapples or diamonds, and listened.
“I tried to beat it home, I really did,” he said. “But it kind of veered off toward me and I had to stop the truck. Everybody was stopping their cars in the middle of the highway and running as fast as they could to the underpass. So that’s where I went, too.” He shifted forward, resting his elbows on his knees so that his words fell directly to the floor. “It never went over us. But I could feel it. The wind, I mean. It was so loud. And it had… I don’t know… a smell to it. Like… electricity or something.”
Immediately I was taken back to my spot under the pool table, the wind roaring around me, tugging at my clothes, my hair. Like it was alive.
“I keep thinking about your mom,” he said. “And Marin.” And once again he was choked with sobs, as he had been off and on since I’d come up behind him in the wreckage of his bedroom. “They must have been so scared.”
Rescuers had found them yesterday, not too far from where Kolby and I had been standing. Apparently, when the storm had started rolling in, Janice had decided that their building was too full of windows to be safe, and since it had no basement, everyone had rushed across the street to Fenderman’s Grocery. Ronnie said he thought maybe they were hoping to get into the milk cooler.
But they didn’t make it in time.
Janice and three others survived. Three of the moms had crawled out of the downed building, crying weakly for help. Janice had not yet regained consciousness. None of the little girls in Marin’s class made it. Not one.
According to Ronnie, rescuers rushed to Fenderman’s Grocery right away, picking through the massive bulk under the curtain of rain, until the one remaining emergency siren—the one too far on the other end of town for us to hear on our end—cranked up another tornado warning and they’d been forced to take cover. In the morning, after the sun came out and only hours before Kolby and I were trekking toward Sixth Street, a crowd of helpers—including my stepdad—fell on Fenderman’s again. They found eleven employees—alive and well—wedged inside one of the walk-ins. And in the aisles heading toward the walk-ins they’d found everyone else. Including Mom and Marin, who were buried under a massive shelf of canned goods.
Marin’s hands were over her ears, Ronnie said. Mom had been lying over her, trying to protect her.
I thought about all the times I’d told Marin that the storm was fine. That it was only noise. That it couldn’t hurt her as long as she was inside.
I wondered if she’d remembered I’d told her those things. I wondered if she’d died feeling like I’d lied to her.
Is the noise fine, Jersey? Is it over?
Yes, Marin, you’ll be fine. It’s just noise.
Dance the East Coast Swing with me, Jersey! Miss Janice taught us. It’s fun!
No! Go away! You’re blocking the TV!
But the noise…
It’s fine! Just go!
Three moms had made it out. But none of them were my mom. It seemed impossible that the same wind that had left my fragile porcelain kitten untouched could have destroyed the flesh and bone of my mother.
“Where are they now?” I asked Ronnie, closing my eyes. The stupid wallpaper design had imprinted itself into my eyelids—purple blobs against the black.
“At the morgue,” he said. “I went to the hospital, but it was chaos in there. So many people. And a lot of people still missing. So I went home and you weren’t there. I had no idea where you were and I thought maybe you’d gone with your mom and sister to dance class, so I went back to Fenderman’s to try and find you. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I was looking for them, too,” I said, a big tear rolling down my cheek. In my mind flashed a thousand images. Images of my mom and me, all the fun things we did, all the times she made me feel special and loved and happy. Images of Marin, who was so sweet and innocent and who I resented for being the baby, even though I knew it wasn’t her fault. She looked up to me and wanted me to accept her as a person. She wanted me to say she was cool. She wanted me to look up to her, too.