“Why are you always so angry?” asked the voice struggling to keep up with me.

In response, I opened my locker and showed my younger brother the picture. I then watched in smug satisfaction as his face fell.

“Look, I miss her too. But you can’t blame that on me. Sometimes, things just happen. You told me the doctors did all they could. It’s been ten years. You need to move on,” my brother pleaded in a high-pitched voice as I got out my books.

I turned toward him and sneered, “How can you say that? You didn’t know her like I did.” I pocketed the picture and stormed away, not even bothering to close my locker. My brother Adam shouted back, “Well, at least you knew her, Brian!”

I paused for a moment, then continued down the hall.  I heard my locker shut behind me, and I pictured Adam trudging to the fourth grade pod with a sad look on his face. It made me feel a little guilty, but I couldn’t forgive him for what he did. For taking her, I thought as I took out the picture of my mother, away from me.

I entered my third hour classroom and let out a loud groan as I realized my science teacher, Mr. Wentworth, was back from vacation. The room was much neater than it had been the previous day. The books were perfectly stacked on the bookshelf, papers were straightened, and the desks were perfectly aligned in their usual Mr. Wentworth fashion.  I started toward my seat, but my teacher waved me over.

“What  is it?” I asked.

“Well, as you must know your grades aren’t exactly great, and you seemed to have failed the test yesterday when I was gone,” he replied.

I cursed silently.  I knew I should have studied more.  It’s just that nothing makes sense. The definitions and the numbers all blur together in my head and I can’t seem to separate them.

“I suggest you study more, unless you want a hard first year of high school in a few months,” he continued. I looked out the window to avoid his gaze and saw dark clouds steadily moving across our dusty field in Ponca City, Oklahoma.

No sooner had I realized this, the the shrill sound of alarms filled the school.

“That’s odd. I didn’t realize there was a drill today,” Mr. Wentworth muttered as I joined the class lining up to to follow the procedure we had practiced over and over.  I left my classroom and sat in front of a locker, where I put my arms over my head. Students all around me mirrored the action.

A few minutes had passed when a loud crash filled the school. Slowly, I lifted my head up and looked around the hallway. Boom! A large crash, closer this time, knocked me into the person sitting next to me. I noticed dust falling from the ceiling, and I began to worry.

Some of the teachers started talking amongst themselves, and I could see the uneasiness in their faces. Tensions reached a peak when the loudest crash yet slammed into the wall across the hall from me, shattering the nearby windows. Screams rang out from all over the school as powerful winds blew through the school, taking loose papers with them. Teachers tried frantically to calm the students, but with no avail.

It was then that I finally realized what was happening.

“Tornado,” I muttered as I filled with panic.

I turned around to see the principal talking to Mr. Wentworth.

“It’s not safe here,” my principal said.

“I know. We should move to the cafeteria. It’s at the center of the school and the safest place,” Mr Wentworth hastily replied.

He then shouted to the students, “We need to go! Follow me!” I rushed forward, eager to leave.

Suddenly, I stopped. Adam, I thought. He could be in danger. With the tornado on the loose, the principal might not be able to reach the other teachers. Besides, Dad will kill me if I let something happen to him. Sighing, I slipped out of the group and headed for the third fourth grade hall.
   

As I bolted toward the opposite side of the school, I heard the walls groaning in protest to the storm. Soon, I thought, they will yield. The thought made me quicken my pace.

My school is huge, as it has to hold fourth through eighth graders, so I was out of breath by the time I reached the fourth grade hall. The students and teachers were still there, as I expected. The principal must not have been able to get through to them.  I skidded to a halt in front of the first teacher I could find and explained the situation to her.

“The principal is moving all the students to the cafeteria,” I said between breaths. “We need to get down there before this side of the building collapses.” The teachers eyes widened, and she nodded. She then motioned for the students to follow her, replaying my story to the other teachers along the way.

Now I could focus on my real mission: finding Adam. I looked for his distinctive blond hair in the crowd. Finally, at the end of the constant stream of ten-year olds, I spotted him. I ran toward him.

“Brian!” he exclaimed as he noticed me.

“Hey, kid.” I replied, grabbing his hand. “We need to go. Like right now.” He nodded and we were off. I realized we had gotten behind the group when we exchanged our greetings and it wasn’t long before I lost them.

“Did, you see where they went?” I asked my brother.

“What?” he screamed back. I hadn’t noticed how much the wind was getting louder and faster. Behind us, I heard a crash and turned around to see debris littering the hall. The roof had just collapsed. “What’s the fastest way to the cafeteria?” I asked him. It had been a while since I had been in this part of the school.

“That way,” he pointed to the hall to our left. We started running down it, but then I noticed the cracks appearing on the ceiling.

“Adam!” I yelled, pulling him into a classroom science lab. Then I noticed a small piece of paper fluttering in the air. My picture, I thought, realizing it had blown out of my pocket. I began to go after it, but a hand on my shirt pulled me back.

“No!” he shouted. “We need to take cover!”

“I can’t just leave it out there!’” I yelled back. “It’s all I have left of her!”

“You’ll die if you go out there!” he pleaded. “Please! Don’t leave me!”

I looked from Adam to the picture to the cracks getting larger on the ceiling. With a great deal of effort, I turned away from the hallway and pulled Adam deeper into the classroom.

“Under here!” I screamed, pointing to the largest desk of the classroom. We ducked under it just in time and tried to block out the sound of the ceiling falling on top of us.

“Thank you,” Adam whispered in my ear as we crouched down together.  I gave his hand a squeeze. The noise soon lessened, and I felt confident enough to move out from underneath the desk. The damage wasn’t as bad as I thought. Since the classroom was closer to the center of the school then the hallway was, only the area by the door collapsed.

“Are you okay?” I asked Adam.

“Yes,” he replied, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “You aren’t, though.” He pointed to my foot, where a broken piece of glass from a test tube was embedded in it. I hadn’t even felt it until Adam pointed it out. Pain suddenly flooded through it, but I clenched my teeth.

“I’m fine,” I replied. “But it looks like we aren't going the way we came.” I gestured to the second door. “Let’s go.” He nodded and we began to navigate the school, avoiding halls with crumbling ceilings. The pain in my foot steadily increased, and it was all I could do to keep limping forward. The wind became quieter, until it was almost nonexistent

“I think the tornado has moved on,” I suggested.

“Looks like it,” Adam replied. I realized that Adam had gone through the same experience as I, and he is four years younger. He must be terrified. I grabbed his hand again, and he didn’t flinch or try to let go.

It seemed to take forever, but we finally made it to the cafeteria. By then, I was leaning on Adam for support, my foot feeling like it was on fire. The injured were on tables, with the worst wounded people being taken away on stretchers. The tornado had blown papers, books, and notebooks into the cafeteria and a layer of dust, probably from drywall plaster, seemed to cover everything. Paramedics and firefighters were on the scene, and a few people were also arriving, having been separated from the group like we were.

As we entered the lunchroom in silence, a group of paramedics ran up to me and pulled me towards a table. They explained something about how they couldn’t remove the shard from my foot until we got into the ambulance, but at this point I was so out of it I couldn’t really understand. Then the paramedic ran off to find a stretcher.

After a few minutes, Adam said, “This is what you get for living in Tornado Alley.”

“I guess so,” I replied. I watched as relief workers found a stretcher and hoisted me up onto it. Laying on the stretcher, I quietly said to my brother, “Remember when I lost the picture of Mom, and I said that was all I had left of her?”

“Yes,” he replied, his gaze dropping.

“That’s not true. I have you.” He broke out a huge smile and I gave him a weak punch on the arm. The paramedics began to take me away, and darkness started to cloud my vision.

I turned my head back just before I passed out to see my brother still smiling. That made me happier than I had been in a very, very long time.