Page 13

But this is different.

This is my hometown, and as important as escaping it is to me, Henley is still my origin. And seeing it in shambles rocks me in a way I didn’t expect. Old brick buildings from the 1800s are torn in half, exposing beams that have real hatchet marks in them, a reminder that human hands milled these logs, and the descendants of those humans are wandering the streets, dazed. Cars are buried under rubble, an entire bedstead—mattress intact and pillows in place—is perched in a tree, seemingly undisturbed despite the fact it’s been elevated forty feet.

Beside me, Bristal draws in a breath. “Shit, dude.”

The cross from the Methodist church has been driven clean through the post office, the one apartment building in town is destroyed, the belongings of the residents strewn through the streets, hanging from the single stoplight, or twisting in the trees as the breeze toys with them. In one picture, a little girl stands, holding her mother’s hand, the fingers of her other hand gripping a sippy cup as she stares at a mannequin that has been decapitated by a stop sign.

Though there are captions, I don’t have to look at them to identify most of the people. A strong Hemming chin is hard to miss, as is the sharpness of a Beckley nose. A man wearing a Gold’s Gym T-shirt and covering his mouth while he looks at his mobile home—now resting on top of the laundromat—is definitely a Richardson.

Through the chaos I can spot some landmarks. The bank is still standing today, as is the water tower and the legion hall. I flick through for more shots and find a picture titled A view down South Lincoln Street. My street. Trees are uprooted and lying across the road, electric lines are down, and broken glass covers the pavement while clothes dangle from the tops of trees like scarecrows arrived too late for the job.

Peeking through the branches, I can just see the stone cornices of my house. The shiver down my spine returns, running a quick route from my brain stem to my coccyx. I shake it off and turn the dial back to the front page so that I can read the article.

“Why isn’t there an emoji for pee?” Bristal suddenly asks.

“What?” I spin in my chair to find her lost in her phone, scrolling through texts.

“It doesn’t make sense,” she says, shaking her head. “We pee way more than we poop. I probably peed three times today, and I don’t think I’ve pooped all week.”

“You probably need to see a doctor,” I tell her. “Also—the whole focus thing?”

Bristal glances up from her phone. “Aw, you’re cute. You’ve got things like health insurance, don’t you?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal not to have health insurance,” I tell her.

“I do a lot of things that are illegal,” she admits.

I give up on trying to read the article and instead opt for printing it out, making sure I get a copy for Bristal, too, since she’s clearly not sticking like the condom she had promised to be. I retrieve our still-warm copies from the printer only to come back to Bristal pumping her fist.

“Found it!” she tells me.

“Something about the long stretch?” I ask, leaning over her phone.

“No, a pee emoji,” she says triumphantly. “See, my research skills are rock-solid. You were right to want me on this project.”

“Was I?” I ask tightly, dropping her pages onto her lap. “There’s your homework.”

“Is this my murder stuff?” she asks.

“No,” I tell her. “It’s the first day of tornado coverage, and I’m not entirely sure about giving you the Randall Boggs episode.”

“Pause,” Bristal declares, and puts her phone facedown on her chest. “I’ll give you the tornado episode and the flash flood if I can have the murder. Also . . .” She drops her voice, her eyes cutting around the dark interior of the historical society. “I’ve got some dirt for other episodes.”

“What?” I ask, dropping into my chair. I don’t trust Bristal as far as I can throw her, but I can read people, and she went from purposefully casual to dead serious real fast.

“About fifteen years ago somebody tagged all the government buildings in town,” she whispers.

“Yeah?” I ask, leaning in.

“Totally my dad,” she says with pride.

“Should we really have him admitting to vandalism?” I ask. “That probably cost a few thousand dollars to clean up. Spray paint doesn’t come off easy.”

“Neither does anyone who crosses a Jamison,” Bristal says. “The post office told him he couldn’t use an old microwave as his mailbox. He said he could. It escalated.”

I don’t have a response for that so I flick to the June 15 issue, where the front-page headline states “HOPE SURVIVES IN HENLEY!” as Bristal continues to scroll through her phone. I’m scanning grainy shots of bulldozers and the serious faces of National Guardsmen who had been called in overnight when Bristal announces, “I also want the ODOT roadkill crew episode.”

I pull my eyes from the screen. “Is that a thing?”