Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (10 page)

Dad worked as a sales rep for a dental supplies company. It sounds lame, like he sells little spools of dental floss or something. But he also sells expensive, complicated equipment like x-ray machines, and with everything going digital,
he’d had to learn a ton of stuff since I started high school. The worst part is travel. He covers parts of Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois, since we live in the southwest corner of Indiana where those states come together. He’s gone most days, and spends at least one night a week away from home, sometimes more.

Ever-present
Mom always took care of us, but I liked my house better when easygoing Dad lightened the mood.

Text from Dad:

 

I managed to buckle down on homework after hanging up with Mom. It paid off. I actually understood most of what the calculus prof said after he got us to stop talking about the volcano. I went straight to the library to work the next set of problems. No way would the knowledge stick until Monday if I didn’t practice.

Long after dinn
er, Mia and I sat in the dorm lounge, forgoing our planned late-night trip to an off-campus party, drawn to the news like teenagers to a
Hunger Games
flick. Even on a Friday night, we weren’t the only ones. Nobody yelled at the TV, although all the major programming had been cancelled so the anchor people could demonstrate how little anyone knew about the eruption.

Male anchor:
Based on the magnitude of prior eruptions of the Yellowstone super volcano, estimates of immediate casualties are about 80,000 people. It is believed the cities of Bozeman, Montana, and Cody, Wyoming, were the largest in the immediate blast area. We do not have any reliable information on Billings, Montana, which alone would more than double that casualty number. Damaging earthquakes are also affecting much of the region.

A girl on a couch behind me sniffle
d. “This is terrible,” she said, with a quivering voice. “Can you imagine getting leveled, with no warning?”

“Or having family there and not knowing…” Mia said.

“Like Dr. Potter.” I rubbed my hands over my arms as I wondered where he was and what he may or may not have found.

The feed changed to a blurred and wobbling video obviously taken through a car wi
ndshield. Female anchor:
As the nation mourns, we can’t forget there are people still fighting for their lives. What you’re seeing now is video from a storm chaser on the ground in southern Wyoming. This was shot earlier today, and we apologize for the quality of the video. At his location, about two hundred miles from Yellowstone, the ash is falling, not moving in a big wall like you might imagine. You can hear the pebbles—called pumice, I’m told—hitting the roof of his vehicle. We have no information…we’re not sure where this videographer is now but we’d welcome a call or a text from him.

I’d left a note on the dry-erase board on our door, just in cas
e, and my heart skipped a beat when Boone’s frame filled the doorway of the lounge. Mia scooted over on the vinyl sectional couch so he could slide between us. He looped his arm around my shoulders. “Trust the guys at Cramer’s to turn a national disaster into a drinking game. We were watching the same channel.”

I
smelled beer as I snuggled into his side. He wasn’t drunk or anything, but I wasn’t used to the added scent over his normal scrumptiousness.

A satellite loop several hours old played in the background while a picture of the President popped up to one side of the screen.
Female anchor:
At the White House today, the President promised to meet with the Director of the U.S. Geological Survey where he expects to review their processes for sharing information with the public who would certainly have benefitted from some earlier warning of this eruption. He also promises FEMA is deploying and reallocating resources from the gulf hurricane as quickly as possible.

Mia shook her head at the TV.
“Where will they start?” she asked quietly.

“
I know,” I said. “It’s already so much bigger than this morning.”

“This is surreal,” the girl behind us said. “I feel like I’m watching a movie
. Like it’s all pretend.”

Male anchor:
This released from NOAA, an infrared image of the western US, compiled today.

Everyone i
n the room sat forward. The new footage showed thousands of miles of peaceful blue and green burned by a red center with orange flaring into an eastern-reaching plume. A flaming finger of heat pointed in our direction.

J
oining us is our guest geologist, Stan Westenhold, to explain what we are seeing here.

Stan the geologist:
Thank you for having me. I see this as the classic heat signature of an active eruption. And this is really our first view of what might be happening down there. This red area is quite extensive, you know. On smaller volcanoes, it might be a pinpoint at this scale, but, uh, this is quite a large area here, with several extended dark maroon patches there that might indicate more than one vent.

“Did you hear from you
r parents?” I whispered.

“Yeah, my mom called while I was at Cramer’s. Th
ey’re doing okay. They’ve heard there’s ash west of them already, but none is falling at the ranch yet. Dad had some of the hands working overtime, checking watering areas and stuff. Mom picked a ton of vegetables out of the garden to can tomorrow.” He glanced toward the TV when the talking heads mentioned the ash then checked my reaction. “Does anyone outside of Nebraska still can?”

“My grandma used to
. I always had to snap beans for her.” I’d hated it, with the choice of sitting on the porch in the sweltering heat or in the kitchen with the steaming canning kettle. “They got too old for the garden a few years ago.”

His attention returne
d to the TV as the ash discussion narrowed.

Male anchor:
How far can the ash travel?

Stan the geologist:
It depends on the size of the particle and the energy in the atmosphere. The ash column has already reached, uh, tens of thousands of feet into the sky. I believe visible ash is falling in eleven states as of midnight, eastern time. Smaller particles will almost certainly circumnavigate the globe.

Boone rubbed his eyes.
The crowd in the lounge thinned, though I couldn’t imagine sleeping, like dozing while video of a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center towers played in super-slow-mo right in front of you.

Mia yawned. “I think I’ll head to bed,” she said. “Though I’d thought about stopping ove
r at Christine’s.”

I
smirked at her. “No, you weren’t,” I said. “I’ll see you in awhile.”

She waggled her fingers over her shoulder as she left.

“Subtle,” Boone said with a laugh. He pointed at my water bottle. “Is that your drink? Can I have a slug?”

I handed him my pink WCC bottle.
We’d kissed a bunch in the last few weeks, yet there was something nice about sharing a drink, like my germs were already his germs. Most girls wouldn’t be excited by such a mundane event. Many girls would have leapt at Mia’s offer to clear out of our room for the night.

Well, n
o one would ever accuse me of being easy, and that seemed to be okay with Boone. I sat with my head against his shoulder. His thumb rubbed my collarbone. We shared my H2O while the newscasters repeated stories of devastation and offered new prophesies of doom.

Surreal didn’t start to cover it.

I woke up late on Saturday. Rain splattered against the window. Mia snored lightly with her mouth hanging open. Her eyelashes made dark crescents against her pale cheeks, even without mascara.

I tugged the sheet over my head
, wondered why I wore yesterday’s T-shirt. Something important to remember…. Mmm, my shoulder smelled of Boone’s deodorant because—I smiled sleepily—I’d been tucked under his armpit for hours on the lounge sofa. I stretched like a satisfied cat until I remembered we’d been watching the ever-spreading ash cloud that, by two a.m., had insinuated into the jet stream and gained momentum in its aggressive eastern movement.

Maybe the eruption stopped
while I slept.

I shoved my feet into
dollar store flip-flops for the walk to the bathroom. I heard the TV in the lounge blare the phrase “ongoing eruption” and decided ignorance would be bliss this morning.

Mia yawned
when I returned to the room. “Yuck. Rain,” she complained, her face much more innocent and ordinary without makeup. “I wanted to walk down to the vintage store.” She peered out the water-streaked window. “It doesn’t look too bad. Wanna come?”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. I definitely didn’t feel like studying
, but I also couldn’t sit still. The Copperheads football team played somewhere in Ohio today. All the hungover misfits might already be on their way, riding with Boone as usual. I opened my laptop to check the school website. “They’re still having the game, and the president of the college issued a special message reassuring parents the administration is monitoring the local situation closely.”

Mia staggered out the door to go to the bathroom.

I pulled on a pair of shorts and my red floral rain boots. My North Face rain jacket covered me almost to my knees. Mia went the umbrella route, shielding herself with a huge green and white cone adorned with an ornate country club logo.

We splashed over to breakfast then hoof
ed it downtown. “So,” Mia said as she skirted a puddle deep enough to swamp her high-top Converses, “Sir Hotness seems to be developing quite the
tendre
for you, my dear.” She looked at me from eyes freshly rimmed in her casual Saturday liner, one-eighth inch wide, flared at the outer corner.

I didn’t say anything. Not
’cuz I didn’t trust Mia with my deepest secrets. I did. I simply didn’t know what to say.

“You should have seen the other girls when he walked in last night and
put his arm around you. The two of you are a brilliant match. You’ll be the toast of the season.”

I kept my head down so the hood of my coat protected my face from the drizzle.

“What is it?” Mia asked. I could tell from the way her voice lowered she wasn’t teasing me anymore. “Aren’t you as into him as you thought you’d be?”