Page 136 of Chaos

He jerks his face toward me, blood seeping across his shoulder, staining his shirt, face gray, reminding me of a hundred murder podcasts in which people survive incredible things.

A gust of icy, intensifying wind sucks my hair back toward the building behind me.

And then the clock tower crumbles behind me, not like a jenga tower, but one block at a time, melting, like a sand castle falling all at once, or an avalanche where the collapse starts somewhere in the middle. Balconies sink, my balcony too, and columns wobble like they’re falling off cliffs, bricks crumbling down like grains of sand.

Everything rumbles.

“Get down!” I shout at the kids, and don’t have time to do anything else, but lift my arms up and turn my back away before the lobby explodes.

34 |A square-shaped slip

FRANKIE

IFAILED OUT OF COLLEGE.

Quickly.

It would have been embarrassing if I’d had anyone to see it. But without my dad or mom, no aunts or uncles or cousins, it was just me. Well, Jee saw, but she always seemed to understand.

I barely managed to show up to class, partied all night, made a million mistakes that nearly got me killed. My failure surprised not one professor.

I do remember one thing though—an art history class in which we studied postmodern art, there’s an artist who carved sculptures that, at first glance, looked like nothing.

At least nothing overt or obvious.

They were rounded kidney shapes, sort of oblong, one might think it was a fat leaf curled around a pea, or a rising wave.

But that wasn’t it.

His name was Henry Moore.

He’d been in England during the second world war, when civilians retreated into the underground during German bomb raids, and he saw the same thing over and over and over again, something that imprinted in his consciousness, something he couldn’t shake.

When the earth all around them shook, and they had to think it might be the end, when there was nothing more they could do to protect their children, the mothers curled their bodies around them.

Fetal position, a shell, a protective husk wrapped around their offspring.

I always did have a soft spot for moms. Never met aMadonna and Childthat didn’t make me ache for a time-turner and a chance to hug my mom one last time, tell her I love her, tell her it wasn’t her fault she was leaving, tell her I’d be okay someday.

I’m not aware of falling.

I’m not aware of hitting the ground.

I’m aware of finding myself lying with my back to the destruction of what was Thornwood, my knees curled tight to my chest, my necklace twined through my fingers, my hands curled protectively around my low belly. Around Maybe.

Instinct took over.

Like my body knew all along and has been waiting for my brain to catch up:welcome to motherhood.

My fingers and toes work. I can breathe. Nothing feels too sticky. Though my arm hurts. And my back is burning, searing actually. Something isn’t right there.

And I can’t see anything.

But I’m not buried. I’m not stuck.

Dust and smoke are so thick I can’t tell what’s rubble and what’s air as I sit up.

“Shane?” It comes out a whisper. I cough. Try again. Call it louder. “Shane! Shane? Are you okay?”

---