Hannah didn’t move.
“What’s wrong?”
“My daddy wants me to wait right here.”
“Yeah?” Kaitlyn said. “So?”
“So, if we leave, he won’t be able to find us and we’ll get lost.”
Kaitlyn grimaced, looked away from this nuisance, and saw the backs of her friends walking away. She sighed heavily. “Fine. I guess we’re staying here.” She flashed a big, fake smile at Hannah.
“Yup!”
“Great.” Kaitlyn searched the crowd for any sign of her mom or Hannah’s dad. Then an idea occurred to her: this could be her chance. She would prove that she could handle babysitting in a stressful situation—far more stressful than what had happened with Patrick Taylor. She would be the number one sitter in town after she turned this crisis to her advantage!
“Hey,” she said, crouching down to the girl, just like Hannah’s dad had done, “do you have a regular babysitter?”
DAY 1 - THE NIGHT
NICOLE
Burgers and fries ran out quickly, so for a late supper they had what was available in the school—hotdogs, buns, and milk—plus food people brought from home. Nicole had microwaved chicken strips and David had his favourite: boiled hot dogs. People still paced the gym, looked for loved ones or yelled about use of the phones. In classrooms, people sat with their friends and family, ate their food, chatted, and joked as if nothing at all was wrong.
David and Nicole sat at a table set up in what was usually a Grade 2 classroom, surrounded by other kids, some younger, some older. Some had probably been using the room just before the evacuation happened. They talked about the things that kids normally talk about: movies, music, other kids. David and Nicole tried to hear adults talking. They wanted to know what was happening outside, and what would happen in the school.
“No one here knows anything,” Nicole complained after eavesdropping on several conversations. “Everyone is just guessing!”
“Someone must know something,” David said with a shrug, as he pushed around the uneaten end of a hotdog. “They’re keeping us here for some reason. And keeping people in St. Joe’s, probably for the same reason.”
Nicole smirked at her brother, an idea forming. The type of idea that had kept her from being skipped ahead in school. She got up and headed into the hallway, away from the gym toward the far end of the school. The St. Joseph’s end.
The stream of people coming in had almost completely dropped off. Now the only people who arrived came in pairs or small groups with emergency teams. Some were taken to St. Joseph’s, which Nicole had figured out was a makeshift medical centre on the other side of the plastic tunnel. The Colby end was guarded by a hospital orderly who would not let anyone past, even those who were desperate to see loved ones they knew were in St. Joe’s.
At first, Nicole wondered why they weren’t just taken to the city hospital just a few blocks away. She assumed one of two things: volunteers were available and here, so why not put them to good use; or, the much less pleasant thought, that this was overflow from a hospital already at capacity.
Occasionally people were released and sent through the tunnel to the Colby side. They came wrapped in splints, or with fresh stitches, or just bandaged and were sent to the sleeping areas that, earlier that day, had been elementary classrooms.
“I bet if I could get in there,” Nicole said, motioning to the guarded door to St. Joseph’s, “I could find out whatever we wanted to know.”
“Wow,” David said flatly. “You are really going to figure this all out for us, huh? My hero.”
“Shut up, spaz,” Nicole said. “I just know this is another example of people overreacting to something stupid. I bet if we got over there, it’d be just like a regular hospital. People love blowing stuff like this out of proportion, David, because people—”
“People are idiots,” her brother cut her off, repeating what had become her mantra over the past few months. “Yeah, I know. You’re the genius, everyone else is an idiot.”
DAVID
For a moment David thought she was going to say something back—something really mean, like when she tried to tell him, very convincingly, that he was adopted. Or maybe just punch him. He was relieved when she just walked past with a slight shoulder check. David followed with a smile, happy that he had bothered her so much, happy that she seemed to drop the idea of clearly breaking the rules, and happy that it had resulted in minimal damage to himself.
They were almost back to the gym when the front doors burst open with a roar. Paramedics tried cutting through the crowd as they pushed stretchers with injured people in.
“You can’t take these people in here! Go to the other building!” a sergeant yelled.
“Can’t do that!” one of the paramedics shouted back. “Street’s blocked on that end. These people need to get in there now!” They continued pushing the gurneys with their injured passengers through the building toward the tunnel.
People were shouting; so many voices, all at once:
“What happened to them?”
“What is that?”
“They were everywhere!”
“Can you tell me—”
“How many fingers am I—”
“What’s the last thing you—”
“They were everywhere!”
“Can someone get me some blankets?!”
“I need bandages!”
“Can we get another stretcher out here?”
“Out of the way!”
“They were everywhere!”
One panicked woman kept calling out, “They were everywhere.”
David recognized the voice: Aunt Carol! His parents had asked Carol to look after them because she was always so calm, cool, and in control of things. She could handle any situation, let alone two kids like David and Nicole. Now she sounded lost and out of control.
Nicole and David ran toward her voice. Red lights splashed through the lobby from the ambulance outside. Closer to Aunt Carol, David could
