Susan Pfeffer - This World We Live In

“You have to be careful, honey,” he said. “There’s garbage all around, broken glass. Hold on to me, and we’ll get you outside.”

I followed him blindly, stumbling over the remains of Mrs. Nesbitt’s house, my second home. Slowly I realized there was no house left. It had collapsed all around me, only the staircase keeping me from being crushed to death.

After we made it outside away from the rubble, I held on to Dad and let his strength pass to me. Then I hugged Matt and Syl. Nothing that had been said last night mattered. Nothing mattered anymore except that they were alive.

“Jon?” I asked. “Julie? Alex?”

Dad shook his head. “We don’t know where they are,” he said. “We thought Alex was with you.”

“He went to warn Jon and Julie,” I said. “But Mom’s all right? You said she’s all right.”

“I’ll take you to her,” Syl said. “Come, Miranda, you’ll see she’s fine.”

“Come back as soon as you can,” Matt said. “We’ve got to work on getting Lisa out.”

“I know,” Syl said. “We’ll be back in a few minutes.” She put her arm around my shoulders and led me toward home.

Within seconds I was standing in the sunroom, in Mom’s arms. She held me so tightly I wasn’t sure I could ever move away. I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to. I know she was crying, but that was all right, too.

“Miranda, we need you to help clear out the rubble,” Syl said. “You too, Laura. Come on.”

“No,” Mom said. “I’ll wait for Jon here. He’ll expect to find me here.”

“He’ll find us,” Syl said. “You can’t use him as an excuse, Laura. Lisa’s life depends on you.”

“If Mom wants to stay here, let her,” I said.

“Stop protecting her, Miranda,” Syl said. “Laura, you talk all the time about how the baby is the most important thing. Well, prove it, and come with us.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Mom said. “I know it’s crazy, but I’m so afraid if I leave this house, everything will collapse. I feel like I’m the only person holding things together.”

“Everything has collapsed,” Syl said. “You’ve done a sucky job holding things together, Laura.” She grabbed Mom’s arm and literally pulled her out of the sunroom. “See,” she said. “The world came to an end while you’ve been hiding. Now move!”

I stood absolutely still. But then Mom began running toward Mrs. Nesbitt’s, toward what had been Mrs. Nesbitt’s but was now nothing but a mountain of rubble. Syl and I followed her. I can’t be sure, but I think Syl was smiling.

The debris around the cellar door was much higher than what Dad and I had climbed over. It was taller than we were. And it wasn’t like you could take a piece from the bottom and work your way upward.

“Miranda, get the ladder from the garage,” Matt said.

I ran to the garage, glad to have a job I could handle. The garage looked completely untouched, but when I walked out with the ladder, I looked at our house. There was a tree limb lying across the roof, and I could see windows had blown out and part of the roof was missing.

Even so, we were the lucky ones.

I walked back with the ladder. Matt placed it against the rubble mountain.

“I’ll climb up,” Syl said. “Miranda, are you up to it?”

I nodded. We climbed the ladder until we were on top of the heap and began throwing what we could as far away from the house as possible.

“Shouldn’t one of us go look for the others?” I asked. “What if they need us?”

“They probably do,” Syl said. “But we don’t know where they are, and we do know where Lisa and the baby are. We have to take care of them and hope that the others find their way back home.”

I knew she was right, but I hated hearing her say it. Being outside, surrounded by mountains of debris, made me understand for the first time how devastating this tornado had been. Mrs. Nesbitt’s house had taken the brunt of it, but there was no way of knowing how things were farther downhill, closer to town. I began to shake again.

Syl grabbed my arm and squeezed it tight. “Don’t think,” she said. “Just work.”

There was room for three, and Mom climbed up also. She didn’t say anything, just worked alongside, being careful, as we all were, to toss the shingles and roofing as far as possible from where we thought the cellar door was. The mound felt solid beneath us, which was both a relief and frightening. We weren’t about to fall through, I knew, but it was going to take a very long time to remove enough of it to make a difference.

I don’t know how long we worked, throwing things down, while Matt carefully removed what he could from the outer rim of the pile. Dad worked on the side of the house, by one of the tiny cellar windows, clearing it out, so we could talk with Lisa and get things to her until we could get her out.

The hail had stopped and the thunderstorm had moved away. We could still see flashes of lightning in the distance, but it took several seconds before we heard the thunder. It was still raining, though, and it was hard not to slide as we pushed things off. Matt kept yelling at us to be careful, to Syl mostly because she took the greatest risks, but it didn’t matter. Whatever happened happened. We had to get Lisa and the baby out of the cellar before the cellar roof collapsed. Which we all knew could happen at any time.

It was Syl who spotted Jon first. From her vantage point on the mound of rubble she could see the road and Jon running up it toward us.

“It’s Jon!” she cried. “He’s all right.”

Mom climbed down the ladder so fast she almost fell into Dad’s arms. None of us could stop her as she made her way through the fallen tree branches toward him.

“Do you see Alex?” I asked Syl. “Is Julie there?”

“Just Jon,” Syl said.

I climbed down the ladder, but Syl stayed where she was and continued to work. Matt and Dad stopped, though, and we followed Mom’s path. We watched as she held on to Jon the way she’d held me earlier. Her children had survived.

“Julie,” Jon said. “She’s hurt. Mom, she’s hurt real bad.”

“It’s all right, son,” Dad said. “Show us where she is. We’ll bring her back.”

“How bad?” Matt asked. “Is she bleeding?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. “I don’t think so. But she can’t move her arms or her legs. And she said she can’t feel anything.”

Dad and Mom exchanged looks. Only Matt continued to focus on Jon.

“What exactly happened?” he asked. “How was she hurt? Take a deep breath, Jon, and tell us everything you know.”

“We saw a twister coming this way,” Jon said. “We tried to take cover, but there wasn’t time, so we held on to a tree. I thought I had her covered, but the wind picked her up, and she must have landed wrong because she’s lying there and she can’t move. I didn’t want to leave her, but I couldn’t carry her up the road all by myself, and our bikes are gone.” He looked around. “Everything is gone,” he said, and he began to cry.

Mom took him in her arms. “It’s all right,” she said. “Your father and Matt will get Julie. Our house is still in one piece. We’ll take care of her.”

“What about Alex?” I asked Jon. “Did you see him?”

Jon shook his head. “It was just Julie and me,” he said.

“Come on, son,” Dad said. “Matt, go into the house and get some blankets. We’ll use them as a stretcher.”

Matt ran to our house, and moments later he came out with the blankets.

“Laura, you, Miranda, and Syl keep working,” Dad said. “Jon, show us where Julie is. We’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Be careful,” Mom said.

We watched them make their way down the road. “Mom,” I said. “Should they move Julie? What if she has a spinal injury?”