Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands by Chris Bohjalian Read Free Book Online Page A

everyone was talkingmeltdown. Everyone—in the news and in the cafeteria—was talking about plumes of radioactive fallout and the rain and the direction of the wind. And so I realized there was a chance that my mom and dad were injured or possibly dead—and a lot of folks in the cafeteria probably knew this but hadn’t figured out how to tell me. I mean, seriously? Was no teacher willing to man up and break the news? Were none of my friends—not even Ethan or Lisa—willing to drop the bomb? I get it, I really do. They were all worried that they were now homeless. Or at least a lot of them were. And they were all worried about their own loved ones. Their moms, their dads, their dogs. Who knew how bad it really was, despite what Mr. Brodard had said in chemistry? People panic.
    And, just so you don’t think that I’m some kind of whack-job paranoid, I don’t believe there was a conspiracy not to tell me my parents might be dead. I think, to be honest, everyone figured someone else would tell me. I’m sure Ethan and Lisa figured that one of the teachers would tell me—one of the “people in authority.” In my mind, I can almost see Mr. Adams, who worked with Ms. Francis in the guidance department, whispering with my English teacher, Ms. Gagne, beside the water fountain against the brick wall. I can almost hear Mr. Adams saying, “You know her best. I’ll come with you. But you know her best.” Ms. Gagne was only about ten or twelve years older than me and liked me to call her Cecile. She worried about my behavioral issues and my underachieving, but I think she figured I’d pull myself together and be fine in the end. Maybe she thought I was a good writer. Maybe not. Maybe she thought I was a good writer but eventually I’d just put my head in the oven and there was nothing she could do. Anyway, I think a lot about that moment in the cafeteria. Maybe, if they did speak, it was more like Ms. Gagne saying, “Yes, I’ll tell her. Let me just take a minute to figure out how to break the news.” Then one minute became ten, and then ten became an hour, and then I knew. I knew.
    Here’s how I found out. A girl named Dina Ramsey whose mom was a technician at the plant asked to borrow my phone. Shesaid hers was out of power and her charger was in her backpack at school. So I handed her mine, even though I only had, like, 10 percent power left. (I had, as a matter of fact, gotten a warning that I was down to 10 percent power a few minutes before Dina came over to me. Power figures a lot in my story, doesn’t it?) But then I saw her talking on her phone—not my phone. And I knew it was her phone because she had one of those cases with plastic studs that were silver and gold. My case was straight-up black. I watched her for a while, figuring at first that she must have had a little bit of juice left after all, and some call had come in and she’d taken it. Not a big deal. But it was one freaking long conversation. After she hung up, she said something to a kid named Katina and then made another call—on her phone. That’s when it clicked that something was up. She’d been talking with a bunch of kids and Mr. Adams before she had come over to me to get my phone. Why did she need to walk over to me to get mine? There were like five other phones right there with her. And hers sure seemed to have beaucoup battery left.
    So, I went over to her and asked if she was done with my phone. I said I wanted to try my parents again. She said she had one more call. But she knew something; she looked seriously stricken. (Yes, I learned that word from the Dickinson poem.) I stood there and waited like a totally passive-aggressive asshole for her to dial someone—anyone—and for, like, thirty seconds she just stood there, fighting back tears. The file cards behind her eyes were flipping as she tried to think of someone to call, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She froze. And, meanwhile, I could feel everyone was watching