[we went on our way to work in a downcast mood]

She tasted it at the same time she realized she was bleeding. The wet in her hair wasn’t just rainwater, but blood twining with her blond hair.

“Mom. I think I’m okay, but I’m bleeding, I’m going to go look in the mirror. Hold on.”

“Honey? Bleeding? What’s going on there?”

She wasn’t sure her mother had heard clearly, but she was feeling nauseous so she rushed to the bathroom, climbing over the overturned couch and narrowly avoiding the pile of trinkets strewn across the narrow hallway.

Pictureframes had crashed to the floor, the hardwood strewn with glass, and the bedroom door was gone, replaced with a heap of splinters. The bathroom was oddly fine. She opened the door, and it was sitting there as always. A bar of soap lay on the floor, the only evidence that anything had happened in this room.

She looked in the mirror and gasped. The side of her head was covered in blood, and more was oozing out from where she held her hand. She gingerly peeled her fingers loose and looked closer.

She calmed a little as she realized how minor it was. It bled like crazy for such a tiny wound, but it was just two little slashes, and it was already slowing.

She turned the tap to try and wash her face a little. No water came out. Damn.

She heard her mother’s voice coming from the phone in her hand again.

“Hi, mom. I’m okay. I just got a little cut on my head. I’ll be okay.”

“You’re okay?”

“Yes, mom, I’m okay.” She thought she sounded more like herself again, anyway. She wished that would reassure her mother.

She stepped back out of the bathroom, and the sight jarred her all over again. Couch, overturned. Breakfast nook, everything twisted. That was all that remained of the apartment. The wall was gone, the roof, too, except a little fragment clinging from the box that was the bathroom.

The floor sloped what she hoped wasn’t dangerously, the smooth wood now warped and in a couple places, splintered. 

“I think we had a tornado.” 

“Mary, mother of god, yes there was a tornado. It tore up everything in that corner of town. Holly, child, are you okay?”

“Mom, I’m okay. Stop asking me that!”

She heard her mother’s voice, muffled this time. “She’s okay. She’s back to herself and impatient as always.”

“Gee, thanks, mom. Where are you?”

“I’m in the tornado shelter at the Lutheran Church on Harrison Boulevard, next to the Target. They even made coffee already!”

Holly laughed as she imagined the scene, a hundred little old ladies packed into the basement at the church, fighting over who got to start the coffee and who was going to go get pastries and arguing over whether it was safe to go out there yet.

“So how bad is it? I saw pictures on the TV. Looks like the old Safeway is gone for sure, and those poor people in the trailer park, there’s nothing left. Anything touch down near the apartment?”

She doesn’t know. Oh geez.

“Um. Mom?”

“What is it? The coffee’s almost gone, and the new pot is going to take twenty minutes to perk.”

“I’m in the apartment. I can see the sky.”

“Blue sky already, I know, it’s crazy how fast these storms pass, isn’t...” and her mother stopped short. After a brief pause she started up accusatorily. “You can’t see the sky from the apartment. That damn new apartment building blocks the view.”

“Mom, I can see the sky. And the street. And Jefferson avenue from here.”

“There’s not even a window facing Jefferson...  Honey, WHAT IS GOING ON THERE?” The last words came out with the exact same tone she would have heard “what have you done now?” as a child.