In the morning, my phone was still in my hand and my body twisted around it, as if I were protecting it in my sleep. I stared at the screen. Miss u, love u, NM4eva. I sat up quickly, my heart leaping to life. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that was my message to Nate. It hadn’t been answered.
I felt a stiffness in my shoulder and back from sleeping in a pretzel shape and a mild ache in my neck. This day was not off to the most promising start.
It didn’t get any better.
At school, it seemed like every teacher had agreed this would be the day to give out massive amounts of work. After ten days of classes, we were slammed with homework assignments and a killer midterm exam schedule. I didn’t foresee a break until almost Thanksgiving.
Haley felt the pinch too. In last-period AP English, our only class together, she slid into the desk beside me and dropped her head on it with a thunk. “Oh my god, Middie. I’m swamped. Literally swamped.”
“Well, not literally.”
She turned her head to the side and stared up at me, one cheek smooshed into her nose. “Yes, literally. There is a swamp of homework around me. Math, history, chemistry. It’s more than a swamp. It’s a sea. An ocean of work.”
I chuckled at her hyperbole even as I reached across the aisle to gently shake her shoulder. “We’ll be okay.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She smiled and pulled herself up off the desk; strands of blond hair clung to her eyelashes, and she blinked them away. “Maybe a little extracurricular activity will help.” She dug her cell phone out of the pocket of her jeans. “Check it out.”
I peeked at the screen as she opened an evite with a photo of an inflatable bounce house. “A kids’ party?”
“No, no. That’s what it looks like, but watch. . . .” She tapped the screen with her finger and the bounce house magically transformed into a backyard pool. “Ta-da! Katrina’s. Saturday. Her parents are going to a wedding or something.” Haley put her finger to her lips and then mine, swearing us both to secrecy. “Very hush.”
“She sent an evite, Hale,” I said with a laugh. “How hush can it be?”
“Hmmm . . . good point.” She paged the screen again. “I’m sending you the link.” After a moment, my phone vibrated in my purse. Haley smiled slyly. “You’re supposed to have that turned off.”
“It is off. Kind of.” I put my hand over my bag. “Just in case. You know.” Nate could call or text at any moment and even if I couldn’t answer it, I wanted to know the message was there, to feel it.
We were interrupted by a sudden commotion in the hallway outside the room. Haley and I glanced up at the door, expecting to see Ms. Templeton shooing in the stragglers before the bell rang, but instead there was a crowd of students hanging around the door.
Haley clucked her tongue when we saw everyone staring at their phones. “Templeton’s not gonna like that,” she said. She waved at a girl standing closest to the door, who was mesmerized by her phone. “Hey, Corey! What’s going on?”
Corey Sanchez turned and froze in place. Her fingers gripped the phone more tightly, and she forced a smile through her braces. “Um, nothing.”
“Nothing?” Haley, who had to know everything that was going on, jumped up from her desk and headed straight for the center of the group. She poked her chin over Corey’s shoulder, keeping her back to me. The girls whispered to each other furiously, but I couldn’t hear a word.
What on earth could be so intriguing? I wondered. Curious, I started to stand, but the ringing bell pushed me back into my seat. I glanced around me. With Haley gone, I was alone in the room. No teacher, no classmates, and everyone still milling about in the hall. Maybe this was a senior ditch and no one told me?
I pulled my phone out too and scrolled through my emails. The only thing that was unread was the evite Haley had just forwarded to me.
“Middie, hey, don’t do that!” Haley called to me, her voice on edge. She hurried toward me and snatched my phone from my hand. “What if Templeton came in? That witch would send you straight to admin, and then where would you be? Your parents would get called and probably it would go on your permanent record, and college, well, you know, forget college.” Her fingers fumbled around the sides of the phone and tapped the screen as if she’d never seen one before in her life.
“What are you doing?”
“You don’t really need to have this on,” she said hurriedly, keeping the cell out of my reach. “I mean, there are studies that say you could get cancer from the battery being on all the time. Damn it, where is the button that shuts this thing off?”
“Haley, keep it on. What are you doing, Haley . . . Haley?” I lunged for the phone, but it was like a game of keep-away with her. “Don’t shut it off. Nate might call.”
I leaned, she dodged. I dove, she weaved. But I was agile too. I faked a move and then plucked it out of her grasp. “Come on, Hale, you know I’m waiting—”
And she grabbed it back. “No! He’s not going to call, Middie.”
“What? Of course he is.”
Haley’s face turned red, and she looked like she might cry.
“Haley?” I put my arm around her shoulder. “What’s going . . .”
“Oh my god, Middie! Are you okay?” Katrina burst through the door with her phone held in front of her. Some students from the hallway poured in behind her.
“Me? Yeah, why?”
I was surrounded by classmates. Katrina and Debra and Corey, among the girls, and a dozen more who weren’t in my classes but whom I recognized. And then, in a blink, it seemed, there was Ms. Templeton in her teacher attire—a simple blouse and matching skirt. Her tight black curls fell over her tortoiseshell frames. Her hand fell gently onto my shoulders. “Meredith, I think you should come with—”
But it was too late.
I had already seen the screen of Katrina’s phone.
Video from a news channel. Words in white block letters in a crawl under a reporter’s face.
ATTACK ON HONDURAN VILLAGE.
AID WORKERS MISSING.
ALL FEARED DEAD.
A wall of shock and fear and anger hit me. It washed over me, knocking me back into my seat.
I sucked in a breath. No. No. No.
“That’s not Nate,” I choked out. “It’s not him. He’s—”
“Honey. Come with me,” Ms. Templeton repeated, more softly this time.
I allowed myself to be helped up from the desk, felt a hand at each elbow guiding me from the classroom and into the hallway, felt a palm pat my shoulder and rub my back and touch my hair. Voices called to me, voices of friends, classmates, acquaintances. Teachers, staff, students shrank as I walked the gauntlet of bodies pressed tightly against the lockers.
“—so sorry, Middie—”
“—be all right, I’m sure—”
“—here for you, okay?”
Mr. Z’s office door opened. “Come in” was murmured by someone. Mr. Z? Ms. Templeton? I wasn’t sure.
A corduroy-covered sofa magically appeared, having been liberated from beneath piles of papers and books and trinkets by my guidance counselor. The door closed on the clamor in the hallway, on the voices of my friends, who called my name.
The principal sat on the small couch beside me, a woman named Ms. McMahon who was new to the school. She wore her hair in a chin-length bob and favored black and gray. Her frightened eyes mirrored my own. “We’re calling your mom now,” she said softly. “You can wait here until she comes.”
I felt my chin nod.
On the right side of the office a television was showing the same footage I had seen on Katrina’s phone. Principal McMahon flicked through the channels. CNN, Fox, MSNBC. Every news outlet was showing the same images of a destroyed village: trees down, buildings on fire, bodies littering the ground.
67 KILLED IN VILLAGE ATTACK.
SPLINTER GROUP OF LOCAL MILITARY SUSPECTED.
VILLAGERS AND MEDICAL VOLUNTEERS KILLED WHILE FLEEING.
No! The tiny hairs on my arms rose up and my skin went cold. I shut my eyes and felt tears fall down my cheeks and drip off my chin. This couldn’t be. It couldn’t. It was a terrible, horrible nightmare.
It was nerves and anxiety over school and personal essays and Nate being gone and somehow Emma’s inspirational Brownie troop story got mixed up in my dreams and . . .
. . . this is not real. Not real. This is a mistake. This is someone else’s village, not Nate’s.
I felt my throat tighten and my breath choke—every ounce of air was gone from my lungs and I couldn’t inhale, couldn’t stop my heart from thumping against my ribs.
“We shouldn’t have this on.” Mr. Z shut off the television. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said.
Is he serious?
“We don’t know anything for sure yet.” Mr. Z spoke carefully, like some kind of hostage negotiator. “Meredith, talk to me.”
“Talk?” I choked out the word. I could barely form a sentence in my brain, let alone hold a conversation with another human being. What the hell would I talk about?
My phone buzzed in my purse: Haley. I tapped the screen to send it to voice mail. Then it buzzed again. Katrina. And again. Debra. Each time I glanced at the ID in vain. Finally, Ms. McMahon took the phone from me and shut it off completely.
“No!” I cried, grabbing it from her and turning it back on. “He might call!”
Our eyes met and I had to glance away. Because in them, I saw the truth as Ms. McMahon saw it. Nate wouldn’t ever call. Ever.
My skin was clammy and moist. The air was stale and everyone was too close. Too close. I could feel Ms. McMahon’s leg against mine on the too-small couch. I clutched my purse and phone tightly and lurched from the sofa to the door. “I have to go.”
“But your mother isn’t here yet—”
“I’ll wait outside.” I flung open the door and ran straight into Ms. Templeton, who was consoling Haley.
She reached for me, but I couldn’t spare her more than a glance.
I tore down the hallway and burst through the doors.
“Meredith!” I heard. I turned and spotted the Vespa. Lee waved at me and I ran, away from school, away from everything. I sat on the back of the scooter, tucked my purse between my knees, and grabbed the chrome handle that wrapped around the back of the leather seat. Lee motored away from the curb.