And So It Goes - Judy Colella (little red riding hood read aloud txt) 📗

comfortable enough to doze off, part of the ceiling fell in.

For real, folks. Remember all that dark cloudiness I’d been grumpy about when I got up that morning? The clouds, it seems, were doing more than getting ready to release a bunch of rain. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the weather, to be honest, so had missed the swirling going on overhead. However, a second before the ceiling collapsed, a distant claxon went off. Claxon is a totally awesome word, by the way (look it up, please).

Where I live, we have tornadoes. Not tons of them or anything, but they do occur enough for the town to have installed an early warning system, which consisted of several tornado sirens. We’d been having a lot of cold fronts that year that had everything to do with the leaves falling so early, but when I’d gone out to the bus that morning, I’d had to remove my jacket because the day was crazy warm.

Should have known. The rain had started a few minutes after mom had dropped me off in front of the school, but it rained a lot in the autumn anyway. No big deal, right?

So the tornado. It wasn’t there, and then it was, touching down right on top of the school – which explained the roaring noise outside a second before. So back to the ceiling thing. The kids seated in the row near under the falling ceiling were knocked out of their desks – a good thing, too, since the windows shattered at the same time and the glass would have caused horrible damage to their bodies.

See, at first, I thought someone had blown up the science lab, but then realized I was on the same floor as said lab. And then one of the teachers rushed into the classroom shouting something about a tornado warning. Great. Now she tells ups? Another sarcastic moment came and went as we were told to leave the classroom, an order accompanied by the fire alarm.

The kids who had been knocked down by the ceiling had already gotten up, and none of them appeared to be bleeding. Good. I’d already seen enough of that sort of thing for one day. The teachers were shouting for us to stay calm – I almost laughed. For real. Guess they went to the same training seminar as the bus driver. Whatever.

When we were out in the hall, we heard another crash. I have no idea what part of the building got destroyed, and could only hope no one had gotten killed.

“Everyone – head for the closets! They’re the most well-protected areas of the school! Go!” I didn’t know which teacher said that, and didn’t care. In fact, I wasn’t even being given a choice (not that I would have chosen to go outside or anything). As I was rushed along, I heard other teacher-like voices saying something about the basement. Once I found myself squashed into the closet, I told myself I should have broken away and gone with the basement group.

Did I mention there were no lights? We had lost electricity, and I suppose with the threat of the entire building being reduced to rubble, no one had bothered to fire up the back-up generators. If we even had them, that is.

Someone to my left started texting, which provided unexpected illumination, but the looks on everyone’s faces, some of which were smushed against parts of the anatomy of those beside them, was so ridiculous, I burst out laughing.

“Oh my god, does someone think this is funny?”

Aw, jeez. Lacy? How did she get in here?

“I think it’s Shasta. You’re a moron, Darby!”

I wanted to tell…Rachel, was it?...to lighten up, but another girl said something about how I had a concussion from the bus accident, and to give me a break.

That made me laugh harder – I’d already been given a break: my collar bone! Hahahaha! Yep, I was off the rails.

When I sobered, I began to hear sounds outside our sardine can (yes, I know it was a closet, but I wanted to use a different description, okay?), but couldn’t tell if they represented the rest of the building falling down or things being okay again.

Things were okay again, because the door was pulled open and the girls pressed against it tumbled out into the corridor like in a scene in a campy movie.

“You girls all right?” The Vice Principal was helping the embarrassed girls to their feet while nodding at the rest of us. “It’s safe now; you can come out.”

I have no idea why she’d said that. We were already getting out of that cramped hole as fast as we could without trampling each other.

One of the students gasped, then a bunch of others did, and I turned to my left to see why. I gasped. The entire wall and all the classrooms behind it were gone. Wires and demolished light fixtures dangled here and there, huge chunks of plaster making jagged edges where the devastation ended. The rain had stopped, but the sky still looked like it might spit out more destruction if provoked.

My cell phone went off. The towers were working? Huh. Stunned by what I was seeing, it took a second for me to respond. My mom’s Facebook logo was on the small screen. “Hello?”

“Oh, thank goodness! I was so worried!”

Not worried enough to let me stay home, you horrible woman. “I’m fine, mom. Are you and Wade okay? Is the house still standing?”

“Yes to all of that. I heard the hospital got damaged though – you might want to call Gina and make sure she’s got through this in one piece.”

Gina! Crap! Now that would be so wrong if she’d been hurt while trying to get better. I called, but it went right to voice-mail. Great. Before I could start freaking out, though, she called me back.

“Shasta! You’re okay!”

“Gina! I’m fine – how about you?”

“I’m good, but the roof of the cancer pavilion got torn off, and the power was off for about ten minutes. But everything is cool now, they’re saying, and no one got hurt or killed.”

“You sound weird.”

“I have a broken nose, bone-head.”

“Ha. Forgot in all the excitement. That explains why all your ‘n’s sound like ‘d’s.”

“Lovely, right? And I now have two black eyes.”

“Really? They’re not blue anymore?”

“Heh. Cute. How hard did you hit your head?”

I grinned, relieved beyond reason that my best friend was okay. “Look, I’d better go. I think they’re trying to round us all up and get us outside so we can go home.”

“Mkay. Talk later?”

“Later.”

Now that the scariest part was over, everyone was behaving in a more organized way, and soon we were shuffled out of the building to await our respective rides.

“Aside from the bus that was in the accident this morning, they’re all functioning,” the Guidance Counselor announced as we stood there shivering in the damp air – the cold front had clearly won. “But some of the cars didn’t do so well.” He shrugged. “Those of you who drove to school today should probably go check.”

Lacy and the rest of the seniors with functioning cars took off like a herd of panicking gazelles, and a moment later I heard faint shrieks and shouting coming from the other side of the building. At that moment, I was grateful my car had decided to take a vacation. I mean, sure, the engine was shot, but at least that was fixable. I think. Something told me that tornado damage would have been beyond my family’s financial ability to repair.

Most of the cheer squad returned from the student parking lot, none of them sobbing, but all of them looking disgusted. They probably had great insurance and would be getting shiny new cars out of this disaster. The guys, oddly enough, looked far more upset.

One of them was Steven. Under no other circumstance would I allow myself to feel sorry for him, but I knew how long and hard he’d worked to get his pickup, and that without it, he wouldn’t be able to get to his job after school. I also knew his parents were even poorer than my mom and me. No way did he have the kind of coverage that would enable him to replace his beloved truck. So yes. I felt sorry for him, and when he was passing me – to leave the grounds and walk home, I assumed – I decided to be nice. Only for a second or two, but still.

“Steven!”

He stopped. I winced. His lips were compressed, face pale. Poor guy.

“Hey, um…” I went closer. “I take it your truck got messed up.”

“It’s not even there.”

“What?”

“Must have gotten blown into the next street or something. Probably not worth looking for.”

He had a point. If his truck had been tossed that far, it wouldn’t have survived crashing back to the ground. “I’m so sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“Hey, why don’t you take the bus? You don’t live all that far from me.”

“Yes I do, Shasta. We live out near the river, and that’s at least four miles from your house.”

“Yes, but it’s closer from my bus stop than it is from here.”

He shook his head. “I need to do some thinking and don’t want to deal with the bus right now, but thanks.”

“Sure. See ya.”

He tilted his head and stared at me for a second or two before sliding off, but I had no idea what he was thinking. And then he was gone.

“I hear no one was hurt.”

Jacob. The gift that keeps on giving. “That would explain the lack of emergency vehicles so far.” I gave him a quick, sour smile, and stopped looking at him.

“Seems like you’ve had a pretty messed-up day.”

Bite me. “Yup. Thanks for pointing that out.”

“Look, I – I’m really sorry for what happened yesterday.”

“Are you? Was kissing me that gross?”

“No! I like you, Shasta, and I liked kissing you, too.”

People nearby who had been holding quiet conversations stopped conversating. If that’s even a word. “Don’t start, Jacob. And don’t even think about trying that again.”

Sad eyes. “Fine. Sorry.”

Headlights splashed over the wet pavement. “Looks like the buses are here. With any luck, I won’t be in another accident.” I didn’t even ask how he was getting home, even though his presence on this side of the school was making it clear that his car, too, had been destroyed. Boo-freaking-hoo, Jacob.

“See you tomorrow?”

“Uh, sure, assuming school is open.” I joined the lines forming for the buses, putting Jacob on speed-ignore.

Taking the bus without Gina was bizarre. I sat near the window and stared out, not bothering to check to see who the person sitting beside me was. At some point I nodded off and dreamed about seatbelts…

 

*******

 

…and woke up with my mom hovering over me. Huh?

Wait. Why was my mother on the bus? And my bed – why was my bed on the bus, too? “Mom? What’s going on?”

“Sshh. It’s okay, sweetie. You were right – you should have stayed in the hospital, and I feel just awful about making you go to school with a concussion. Please forgive me.” Tears gleamed in her eyes.

At some point during her bad mom speech, I realized I wasn’t on the bus after all (thank goodness), but in my room. You know, it’s reasonable to tell me to be quiet and that things are okay when I’m having a huge crying fit, but since I wasn’t, and since asking a simple question hadn’t caused the dislocation of all my internal organs – or any external ones, as far as I could tell – I had to conclude that she was afraid to have an actual discussion about whatever had happened between me falling asleep on the bus and waking up in my bedroom.

Too bad. “I forgive you, mom. Please tell me how I got here?”

“Well, when the bus got to your stop, the person sitting next to you tried to wake you up, but couldn’t. The bus driver called an ambulance, and after the