“How long have you been up?” I asked.

“Most of the night, really,” he said, wincing every time I tugged on the line. “We remembered that Mrs. Donnelly had an old cellar. It took us a couple hours to pull everything off the doors. But I don’t think anyone really slept at all. My mom’s down there now. She was up most of the night praying over people. I should have come and gotten you.”

I shook my head. “I made a bed under the pool table. I was okay.”

I got to the end of the twine and knotted it, tucking the loose ends under. Kolby smoothed the bandage over his forearm. Already, blood was blooming on the outside of it. I could see darker-purple spots growing under the rope.

“Some trucks made it through this morning,” he said, looking out at nothing. I followed his gaze. He turned to meet my eyes. “It’s bad, Jersey. They said a lot of people died.”

I held his gaze for a few seconds, then looked back over the field of fallen houses. A couple of children had appeared and were climbing on top of a car. The car’s nose had been punched in, the windshield caved.

“I can’t believe we’re all just… homeless now,” I said. “Where are we supposed to go?”

Kolby picked up a splintered board and tossed it to the side, unearthing an iron. He picked up the iron and studied it idly. “We’re going to Milton to stay with my aunt. I think some people are going over to Prairie Valley to stay in motels. People are going… wherever they can.” He pulled himself up with a grunt and started back toward the rubble of the house. When he reached the edge, he picked up a section of siding and tossed it away. “I’m trying to find my mom’s purse so we at least have some money. Who knows if it’s still here? Could be ten miles away, for all I know.”

I got up and followed him, clomping over things in Ronnie’s boots, bending to pick up a brick here, a board there, a hill of sopping clothes or a ruined book somewhere else.

“Careful,” Kolby kept murmuring. “I don’t know how stable everything is.”

“I’ll be okay,” I repeated over and over again, sweat rolling down my lower back and dripping off my forehead.

We searched until we were both filthy and thirsty. One of the trucks that came through had deposited a couple of cases of bottled water on the street, and we took a break to get a drink.

“I don’t think we’re gonna find it,” Kolby said at last.

“We might,” I said. “Marin’s purse was still by the door.”

He took a long sip of water and didn’t respond. I watched Mr. Fay toss little bits and pieces of things into a hip-high pile.

“Where do you think they are?” I said at last, giving voice to the thought that had been running a loop in my head ever since Kolby had told me that trucks had made it through.

Kolby looked down at his feet. He knew who I was talking about without me even saying it. “I don’t know. Where were they when it hit?”

“Mom and Marin were at dance. I don’t know where Ronnie was. But…” I trailed off, unable to say what had been weighing on my mind. If they could have gotten through, they would have. Mom would have come to get me. She’d have been scared out of her mind for me.

If they weren’t here, it was because something was keeping them from coming.

“We can go there,” Kolby said. “It’s not that far.”

My hand shook, the water inside the bottle rippling with the motion. “It’s a couple miles, at least.”

He motioned toward our houses. “It’s not like there’s anything good on TV right now,” he said, and though he was joking, neither one of us laughed. Nothing about any of this was funny. “Let me tell Tracy, so my mom won’t worry when she wakes up,” he said.

And before I could say anything in protest, he loped off toward Mrs. Donnelly’s cellar.

Part of me was definitely ready to do this. To go out and find my mom and Marin and Ronnie. If they couldn’t get to me, I’d get to them.

But part of me was scared.

What if I didn’t find them?

What if they weren’t there to be found?

More and more vehicles were creeping down Church Street by the time we got to it, some of them stopping to pick up people who were still walking toward town, still hoping to find help. Some passengers offered bottles of water and first-aid kits. Others rolled by with cameras, taking photos and gabbing about the devastation as if it were there for their entertainment.

By comparison, all the people who were walking looked filthy and grim. Some wore stony, distant expressions, as if they had no idea where they were or where they were going. Some were carrying children. Some were covered in dried blood. Some were telling stories, and all of the stories were similar—the house fell apart, the wind tugged at us, we got hit with something, our houses are gone, our cars are gone, our streets are gone, our lives, as we knew them, are gone.

“About a half mile that direction will get you out of the storm’s path,” one woman told Kolby, pointing to the east. “It ran north and south, so if you go east, before long you’ll come to regular pavement.”

So we walked east on Kentucky, taking in the devastation there as we headed toward normalcy.

“You smell that?” Kolby said, wrinkling his nose. “Stinks.”

I thought about the hamburger I’d crumbled up in the skillet right before the storm hit. Who knew where it had been flung, but wherever it was, it was rotting in the sun now, along with dinners and the refrigerator guts of hundreds of other houses.

“Smells like the washing machine when I forget to take the wet clothes out,” I said.

“It’s only gonna get worse, you know,” he said. “That smell. All that wet stuff and the heat.”

“Food rotting,” I added.

“And people,” Kolby said, and he said it so matter-of-factly, I stopped walking and stared at him.

“What?” he asked, turning to face me and shrugging. “There are dead people under some of this stuff. And dead animals, too. It’s reality.”

I started walking again. “Yeah, but you don’t have to say it like that. Like it’s no big deal.”

“I don’t like it, either,” he mumbled, following me.

We came up over a hill and could see where the destruction stopped, not too many yards ahead of us. It was strange, seeing how the houses went from totally razed to beat up and broken to lightly damaged to completely fine. Literally, where one house was gone, the neighbor three houses down would only need to replace some shingles.

It was at that end of the street where most of the people were congregating. Chain saws buzzed and whole crowds sifted through rubble, people calling out to one another, offering help and drinks, the effort much more concerted than on our street. Someone had set up a few tents and folding tables covered with food and drinks and tools and supplies. Two of the tents shaded an assortment of lawn chairs, and some women sat there with babies. Little kids squatted on the ground and munched on grapes, watching as Kolby and I scuffed by.

“You all right?” a woman hollered to us from one of the chairs. “You need help?”

“We’re fine,” I yelled back, smiling as if we were simply out on a midday stroll.

“You need something to eat?” she called. “There’s plenty. None of us has power, so we’ve got to eat it while it’s still good.”

My stomach growled, and Kolby and I looked at each other. We diverted to the tent, where I immediately grabbed a banana and Kolby palmed a sandwich, taking a huge bite out of it and closing his eyes while he chewed.

“You’re hurt,” the woman said, softer now as she approached us. “We’ve got bandages. Is it bad?”

“It’s okay,” Kolby said, but I overrode him.

“It’s pretty bad. How big are your bandages?”

The woman rifled through the first-aid kits, then disappeared into her house. Kolby and I snacked while we waited, shoving crackers and cheese cubes into our mouths greedily. She came back out with a roll of gauze and some tape.