Here is post 2!! I hope you liked post 1!!!
The Tornado
Chapter Two
At school the next day, I found Charles so we could have lunch together and then walk to our science class which we both had right after our lunch period. We sat in one of our teacher’s classrooms, where the school was permitting us to eat due to the “tornado weather.” Suddenly, Charles asked my about Nana.
“My Nana?” I asked. “What about her?”
“I’ve handed her things at her house before and she just doesn’t seem to really like anyone. I’ve given her fliers that she’s thrown at me and other times we went around, my dad handed her fliers instead. When he gave her something, she ripped it to pieces in front of him. I wanted to skip her house the next times, but my dad insisted that with a few more words of encouragement, God would accept her. However, I am the one he makes go up to the house.”
I laughed and bunched up my plastic bag that had my sandwich crumbs in it.
“Nana’s like that, but I would skip her next time. I mean, we’re Jewish. She probably doesn’t want paper in her house that’s not of her religion,” I said, swallowing the last of my sandwich.
“I wish I could. So…I’m guessing you think this whole tornado talk is whack,” Charles remarked before taking a sip of his orange soda from the cafeteria.
“Of course I do. This isn’t tornado weather, me and my dad know it for a fact,” I replied, using my sleeve as my napkin.
“Are you sure you know it, Tammy? I mean, are you sure you aren’t just saying that because you love everything? I mean, every time a girl says something bad about a bug in class, you immediately raise your hand to say something good that that bug does for us. Admit it, you love everything, even this tornado weather.”
“Charles, you know this isn’t tornado weather.”
“Tammy, knock, knock, open the door! We’ve been learning about tornado weather since kindergarten and next year, the high school will probably shove the information down our throats again. This weather is tornado weather; the wind is rough and it hasn’t stopped raining for a minute today. I mean, some parents are even mad that the school’s making us be here.”
“We’ll talk when there’s actually a tornado,” I replied. Ever since I was little, my dad and I were able to notice changes in weather and if they were good ones or bad ones. We were always right too. If a storm went by and our gut feeling was that it wouldn’t damage a thing in the city, the next day the newspapers would report back that not a thing was damaged. It was just how it worked and we were always accurate. Charles was right in that I loved a lot of things—well, everything—but when it came to weather, I wouldn’t say tornado weather wasn’t tornado weather if it was just because I didn’t want to hurt it’s feelings. I wasn’t that extreme.
“Fine, we’ll talk when there’s actually a tornado. Anyway, why—“ Charles replied, but another voice overtook his.
“Oh my goodness!” a girl’s voice from across the room shrieked. Everyone turned. “Look at the sky! Look at the sky!” The teacher rushed to the window along with some other students.
The girl yelled, “The sky is green and black! The colors of a tornado!”
“Everyone calm down!” the teacher shouted over everyone’s screaming and chattering. I continued sitting with Charles who I could tell was getting nervous.
“Do you want to look at the sky, Charles? Do you think a little bit of green in the sky will cause a tornado?” I asked condescendingly.
“Tammy, this could be serious. Why don’t you just give in?” Charles got up to look out the window. “Tammy!” Charles called. “It’s really green.”
Suddenly, small debris began to shower down with the eternal rain which got everyone really riled up. Charles came back to me and told me to get up.
“No.”
“Tammy, what if this is real? I mean, never-ending rain, harsh wind, green sky, and falling stuff? How is that not a sign of a tornado?”
“I know when there’s a tornado, Charles. I just know and this isn’t one,” I replied, shrugging it off, and remaining in my seat.
“Everyone to the school cellar!” the teacher yelled and ushered all the kids out of the room.
“Tammy, please!” Charles begged me, looking from the exiting stampede of kids back to me.
“Charles, trust me. This isn’t a tornado that will damage anyone or anything in Luck Mark City,” I replied, sitting back in my chair to show my ease.
“So you admit a tornado is coming though,” Charles asked, his eyes wide and his hands tugging at his sweatshirt anxiously.
“Everyone out!” the teacher shouted
“Well…it might hit us, or it might skip over Luck Mark City and go onto the rest of Kansas City. Since we’re such a small town, the tornado could just bounce right over us.” I said, bouncing my fingers on my desk as a demonstration.
“I’m out, Tammy! Please move!” Charles screamed, edging toward the door.
“Kids, get out!” the teacher repeated at the door. Everyone else was out of the classroom and it was just me, Charles, and the screaming teacher.
“Tammy!” Charles hollered at me as the teacher grabbed Charles’ wrist and dragged him to the door.
All of a sudden, my gut feeling did a flip-flop. The tornado was starting to feel like a real bad one. Increasingly I began to feel worse and worse about the weather situation. Why had my bad gut predictions been so late? I bolted out of my seat, grabbed Charles, and yelled, “Out! Out! Out!” The two of us darted down the halls which were completely empty since all the students had already reached the school cellar and turned toward the gym. In the center of the floor of the basketball gym was the trapdoor, leading to the cellar. Reaching the door, the teacher right behind us, I yanked at it handle, but the others had already locked it down. Charles and I banged ferociously on its surface, but the rumbling and roaring of the churning tornado made it impossibly to differentiate the sounds.
“No!” I yelled, continuously banging at the cellar door. There was no way it would open. The teacher stood there, panic in her eyes.
“What do we do?!” Charles shouted at the teacher, but all she did was faint, the thud of her head hitting the floor echoing throughout the gym.
“Tammy!” Charles yelled over the thundering of the tornado, coming nearer and nearer. “What are the chances of the tornado bouncing over us?”
“Not at all!” I screamed and grabbed Charles’ wrist once more. I led him to the sixth grade hall where I had been over two years ago and found my old English teacher’s classroom. The door was locked, so Charles and I rammed into it at full speed, crashing through it and falling over. No time to groan about the bruising, Charles and I jolted up and ran to the door on the other side of the room where a door rested, leading to a storage basement. The sound of the tornado could not have been louder. It was collecting dust and houses and trees and life as it passed through. As I yanked open the door to the storage room, I caught a glance of the outside.
Whirring dust and dirt was literally one foot from the school’s window. I pushed Charles ahead of me, closed the door behind us, and we raced as fast as we could down the flight of stairs that led us to the basement. The basement was not as far down, below ground as the cellar, but it was better than being on ground level. We ducked under the center tables, far from the windows, and held our breath. As if it were all in slow motion, I watched as the windows gave in, showering glass all over the room, letting in loads of dirt and bits and parts of picked up objects. Picket fence tops sliced through the air, flinging across the room and hitting the back wall with a tremendous thump. What looked like outside benches and window panes flew round and round the room, dirt caking the surface of every item in the basement.
Thinking the assault was over, was just when the spinning started. My head felt heavy, dizzy, nauseous. The dirt moved so fast I couldn’t feel my thumbs. I couldn’t even get a good look at Charles, dirt was everywhere and we were moving too fast around in a circle to make out what anything was. Finally, I felt like I was dropping, falling. The spinning stopped and my head had an immediate release of tension. Dirt slowly removed itself from my line of vision and blinking like there was no tomorrow, I tried to see if Charles was next to me. I saw the faint twitch of human skin and breathed. At least Charles was there. Landing on the other side of the basement, back first, I grunted with the impact. I heard Charles moan when he hit the floor, as well.
We hadn’t been that high in the tornado eye since we weren’t knocked unconscious, but I still wasn’t feeling my tops. I needed a few moments to align the world with my interior and get the feeling back into my body before I could get up, let alone look over to Charles.
Dozens of minutes passed, me and Charles just lying there, side by side, hoping that our backs would start feeling normal again. When the numbness from my forehead to my back to my toes ceased and the cricks in my back unknotted themselves slowly but surely, I flopped my lazy head to the side, opening my eyes to get a good look at Charles. His head was flopped towards me, too, his eyes barely open, but his mouth in a twitchy smile.
“Are you okay?” Charles breathed, his mouth moving at a centimeter apart at most.
“Fine,” I replied, wiggling my fingers and toes to make sure they still worked. I bent my elbows and knees and pulled myself up from the ground. My ankles didn’t feel so great, not quite broken, but more than sprained. I rolled my neck, and swayed my back. When all was well, I got to my feet, taking a moment to gather my alignment. I helped Charles up who seemed generally fine.
The basement, however, was in ruins. All the windows were shattered, each chair and table, broken into bits. Massive rocks clogged up the back wall, the white walls now a nice tan color. The chairs and tables, completely crushed, a nice gaping hole cut out of the left wall where we were taken up and thrown back into.
Charles and I looked at each other.
“It took us in,” I commented, brushing chipped ceiling paint from my shoulder. Charles stepped over the piles of table legs, chair backs, cracked window glass, and blinds pieces to look out another hole that use to be a window. I followed him best I could, watching my feet.
“It’s a fast one,” Charles remarked, poking his head out the hole. The brown, spinning monster was spiraling away, down into the distance. It would be some other person’s doom soon. And I felt bad for them. The wind settled a little, the sky still green as emeralds and dark as the night. It didn’t look as bad as it did the moment my gut started feeling out of place, but it definitely didn’t seem finished. The tornado was finished with Luck Mark City, though. And hopefully, no one was hurt. Hopefully, our teacher was all right, too.
“Do you think everyone’s getting out?” I asked, wanting to see what the rest of the damage looked like. I started for the stair case, cautiously looking up the steps to see if we’d be able to get through to the classroom door. Debris barely scattered the red steps, but not enough to block our path. Charles and I headed up the stairs, taking them slow and steady.
Tornados were always a rush of adrenaline empowered shock, but that one hit harder than usual. More debris rained down, everything seemed weighted down, heavy and achy.
“Charles, I can’t get this door open,” I said, pushing with all my might on the classroom door, my head twisting the knob hard. I winced at the pressure I was putting on my ankles. Panic in his eyes, Charles moved me aside to try himself. He pushed and pressed, kicking and banging with all his strength.
“There’s too much…stuff,” Charles panted, giving up on the door.
“We can go out the hole, I guess,” I suggested and seeing that we weren’t going to get out through the classroom door, Charles and I headed back down the staircase and to the window hole.
“Be careful,” Charles said softly, stepping outside, the crunch of glass echoing in the distance. All the damage. So much damage. Why had my gut not seen that earlier? What had happened? What had gone wrong? What had been different?
“Where you do think everyone is?” I asked, wondering if Charles would bother to answer that time.
“I bet they aren’t out of the cellar yet,” Charles responded, pushing through a tangle of trees that usually stood outside the basement, but were now a twisted, deteriorating mess of jungle. The leaves and stems were still a deep, gorgeous green, the petals of flowers, no matter how torn up, still vibrantly red and pink and white. Nature was still beautiful, no matter what form it took. I still loved it no matter how shattered.
“Should we go find them?” Charles asked, following behind me. We pushed our way through the mess of brush and shrubs, warning each other of roots and branches ahead.
“I guess, but—oh no,” I said, once I had emerged from the pile of greenery. Charles came up beside me and we both stood silent. We were standing where the patio for lunch usually was, but instead what we stood to see was surreal. A wasteland of nothingness lay out in front of us, only bits and pieces of little things filled tiny parts of the empty space. The tornado was long gone then, done with Luck Mark City, finished with it, but it definitely had left it’s mark.
The next day, the news stations would give it a name, count the number of deaths and injuries. They would report how many houses had been demolished, how many cars, and how many people were missing. They would interview those how had seen it up close, those who had been twisted up inside it, and finally the scientists who would say how big it had been and since what year a tornado like that had been. It would be known all over the country, possibly the world. Money would be sent, crews would come in, and things would start to be rebuilt. Charles and I and our families would be shoved into shelter homes somewhere far away if our houses hadn’t been destroyed, if our houses hadn’t been spiraled around like our school.
“Where are the lunch benches?” Charles questioned, shifting from foot to foot.
“Ate up by the…tornado,” I answered, shocked. Luck Mark City had had tornados before, they had been big, too, but none had been like that one. None had taken down our school, left us without any lunch tables. None of them had left our city looking like a vacant lot. All the past tornados had been thrilling, exciting. Some small ones were even fun to play chicken with, see how close it could get to you before you had to go in the cellar. One tornado was so little, my dad and I put on swimming goggles and bicycle helmets, stood outside, and hugged each other, waiting to be picked up by the tornado. I remember squealing when the twister picked us up, spiraling us a little before throwing us back down and prancing off to another city.
Tornados had always been an Earth game, never a natural disaster.
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