Susan Pfeffer - Life As We Knew It

“Idiot,” Mom muttered, and she sounded so normal we all laughed.

I got up again and tried the phone with no luck. By the time I got back, Mom had turned the TV off. “We’re fine,” she said. “We’re well inland. I’ll keep the radio on, so if there’s any call for evacuation, I’ll hear it, but I don’t think there will be. And yes, Jonny, you have to go to school tomorrow.”

Only this time we didn’t laugh.

I said good night and went to my bedroom. I’ve kept the clock radio on, and I keep hearing reports. The tides seem to have pulled back from the East Coast, but now they’re saying the Pacific is being affected also. San Francisco, they say, and they’re afraid for LA and San Diego. There was one report that Hawaii is gone and parts of Alaska, but no one knows that for sure yet.

I looked out my window just now. I tried to look at the moon, but it scares me.

I woke up around 6 to the sound of the phone ringing. I threw on my robe and went to Mom’s room.

“It’s your father,” she said, and handed me the phone.

Right after Mom and Dad split up, I got it into my head I’d never see him or hear from him again, and every time he called, I’d get this ridiculous sensation of relief. I felt the exact same way, like a hundred-pound weight had just flown out of my stomach.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “And Lisa? Is she all right?”

“We’re both fine,” he said. “Your mother says everything is fine where you are and that you heard from Matt last night.”

“That’s right,” I said. “We tried and tried to reach you and Grandma last night and the circuits were all busy.”

“I reached her late last night,” Dad said. “She’s fine. A little shaken up, but that’s natural enough. We’re lucky, Miranda. We all seem to have made it, no problem.”

“I feel like it should have been a dream,” I said. “Like maybe I’m still dreaming and when I wake up none of it will have happened.”

“That’s how we all feel,” he said. “Your mother says school hasn’t been canceled. I guess the idea is for us to get on with our lives and be grateful that we can.”

“All right,” I said. “I can take a hint. Give my love to Lisa, okay? Tell her I was thinking about her and the baby.”

“I will,” he said. “I love you, honey.”

“I love you too, Daddy,” I said. I gestured to Mom to see if she wanted the phone back, but she shook her head, so I hung up.

“How late did you stay up?” I asked. “Did anything else happen?”

“I went to bed around the same time you did,” she said. “I saw you turn your light out. I didn’t sleep very well, though, kept waking up and turning the radio on, that kind of thing.”

“Did the tides stop?” I asked. “Did the flooding stop?”

“They stopped, they started,” Mom said. “It’s very bad.” She kind of laughed. “Very bad doesn’t really describe it. Catastrophic. They don’t know how bad the damage is yet, how many countries were affected.”

“Countries?” I said. Somehow I’d forgotten there were other countries, that we shared the moon with other countries.

“I don’t know,” Mom said. “They don’t know. Nobody knows. Holland was decimated; they’re pretty sure about that. Australia: Most of the cities there are on the coast, so it was very badly hit. The tides just went mad. They think the asteroid was denser than they’d assumed it would be, so the collision was bigger. They think the moon got knocked off kilter, got pushed a little closer to the earth. At least that was the theory around five.”

“But it’s not going to crash into earth,” I said. “We’re okay, right? We don’t live that close to the ocean.”

“They’re sure it won’t crash into the earth,” Mom said. “At least not in the foreseeable future. Beyond that, I don’t think anybody’s predicting anything.”

It was funny. I was actually glad school was still on, like that proved we’d be okay. I left Mom and took a shower, and by the time I dressed and went downstairs, Mom had already started breakfast and I could hear Jonny moving around.

Mom made pancakes, which she never does on a school day. I didn’t think I’d have any appetite, but I ate more than my share. So did Jonny. I don’t remember seeing Mom eat any, but there was some batter left, so maybe she made some for herself after we left.

When I went outside to wait for the bus, I looked up, and I could see the moon in the morning sky. It was still bigger than it should have been, and it didn’t seem quite as washed out as it usually looks in the daytime. I stopped looking at it, and concentrated on the dogwoods instead.

On the bus, all anybody talked about was what happened last night. Not that anyone really seemed to know or understand. A couple of the kids seemed to think it was cool, and a couple of girls were crying the whole trip.

I sat next to Sammi, but she didn’t say much. Megan didn’t get on the bus, and neither did her church friends. The bus was only half full.

I hated the kids who were acting like it was all a big joke.

There were a lot of kids missing from homeroom, too, but most of the teachers seemed to have shown up. We’d just started history when the first lightning bolt landed. It flashed so brightly the whole classroom seemed illuminated. The thunder followed, loud enough to shake the building. At least one kid screamed, and I was just glad it wasn’t me.

Ms. Hammish tried to pretend the storm wasn’t happening, but there was no way we could avoid talking about the moon. She asked how many of us knew someone who lived on one of the coasts, who might have been affected.

All our hands went up.

“I don’t actually know someone who lives there,” Michelle Webster said. “But I feel like I do, because all the stars live in Hollywood or in New York, and I know I don’t know them, but I feel like I do.”

A lot of the kids said they felt that way too. I guess Ms. Hammish was going to tell us that was a normal way to feel, but then a lightning bolt hit one of the trees right outside the school grounds. The tree burst into flames, and then we lost our electricity.

A lot of kids started screaming then. Michelle began sobbing, real hysterical sobs, and other kids started crying, too. Sarah pulled out her cell phone to call home maybe or 911 but she couldn’t get a connection and she threw the cell phone across the room. The thunder kept rolling, and the tree began to smolder from the fire and the rain.

It was weird. There was all this craziness going on around me, and Ms. Hammish was trying to calm everybody down, only we could hardly hear her, because the thunder was so loud, and kids all over the school were screaming, so it wasn’t just our classroom, and I didn’t feel anything. I wasn’t screaming or crying. I was just noticing things, how the winds had picked up, and branches were flying around outside, and how the storm didn’t seem to be letting up any.

Ms. Hammish must have decided it was a tornado, because she told all of us to get up and go into the hallway. I don’t know how many of the kids heard her, but I did, and I got up and started walking around the classroom, lifting the other kids out of the seats, until they all figured out what we were supposed to do. By the time we’d evacuated the room, there were lots of kids sitting on the hallway floor, and we joined them.

I kind of missed being able to see the storm. I didn’t feel like it was a tornado. I felt like the world was coming to an end, and I was going to miss all the action, because I was going to be sitting on the hallway floor when it did.

And then I thought, Well, that’s typical, I can’t even get any action when the world’s coming to an end, and I started laughing. It wasn’t hysterical laughing (it really was funny that the world was coming to an end and I still couldn’t get any action), but once I started, I couldn’t stop. Other kids were laughing, too, so the hallway consisted of kids laughing and kids crying and kids screaming and teachers walking around and checking classrooms to make sure they were empty. The hallway was completely dark, except for the flashes of lightning we could see from the classroom windows.