Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (16 page)

“I
have images of particles under the microscope.” He paused to plug his laptop into the projector then searched through the computer’s files. Boone turned off the front set of lights in the lecture hall. “Note how porous yet serrated the grains are.” He moved his cursor around to select magnified images of our tiny, nearly invisible enemies, blown up to the size of bed-pillows on the white screen. “Some of them are minuscule shards of glass. You can see why they wreak havoc on anything mechanical. Belts, bearings, water pumps or engines not properly filtered are failing due to constant abrasion. Similar to our power situation, the weak die first. Poorly maintained or heavily used equipment, such as freight locomotives and trucks, or public water supply pumps, or exposed belts at grain elevators, for example, is especially susceptible.”

I glanced over at Boone. He
sat in his forearms-on-thighs posture.

“Refrigeration units,” another student called out. When we all
turned to look at him, he explained, “My dad owns a trucking company. The cooling fins on the reefer units are getting clogged and shredded.”

“Hmm,” our prof mused. “
Radiators on vehicles, anything with unfiltered forced air ventilation would also be at risk.”

“And we
’re breathing this stuff?” the tree-hugger called. “We’re all gonna end up with lung cancer.”

“Doubtful. Past history doesn’t support any sort of black lung response. The
respiratory threat is suffocation—simply being overcome by an unavoidable volume of ash. I would hope anyone who might have been in danger has already evacuated, though there are some foolish journalists and researchers who keep trying to get too close.”

After listening to all this, and getting another dose in my afternoon psychology class, where we talked about how people who were thirsty and starving in the middle part of the U
.S. were already turning into barbarians, Tuesday morning’s school-wide email from Dr. Ellis, WCC president, didn’t surprise me.

Dear students, faculty, and staff,

It is with great regret I announce the unprecedented suspension of normal operation for this term due to the Yellowstone global disaster. The last on-campus classes will be held on Wednesday, October 9. Professors will continue instruction via the Internet with the hope students will successfully complete the requirements for their courses.

On-campus residents are required to
vacate residence halls, remove all personal possessions, and return keys prior to departure. Details will be posted on the college website and at each dormitory. All library items should be returned immediately.

To the extent possible
in this unusual circumstance, Western Case College will assist students in reaching regional public transportation. Shuttle schedules and sign-ups will be located in Snokes Hall.

We realize this unexpected suspension is inconvenient for many students and families
, but we must put the continued safety of our population at the forefront. It is my fondest hope we will find a new normal in the near future so we can continue our academic endeavors together.

Regards,

Dr. Warren Ellis

President, Western Case College

I stared at my laptop screen. Denial. That was the word my psychology professor used to describe the mental state of people we assumed sat in their trailers in South Dakota and Kansas as ash slowly suffocated them.

I was in denial. I couldn’t go home. I
would be buried and suffocated by parental attention. The thought of returning there for the duration of the Yellowstone global disaster (!) made me feel like puking.

Yellowstone global disaster. The words settled like jagged shards of glass in the fragile workings of my brain. Global. I tried to think past the interruption of this semester. Global implied a permanent effect. Disaster implied bad.

Bad permanent effect on not only me, but everybody.

Would I ever come back to college? Would anyone in North America ever
finish college? What about my dad’s job? What about all that firewood? Would we end up barricaded in our house while crazy freezing people on the outside scratched at our windows, trying to get in?

Would I ever see Boone again after October 9?

I shut the lid of my computer hard enough to disturb Mia’s sleep. “What’s up?” she groaned.

“Time’s up,” I answered. “School is closing next week.”

She tugged her pillow over her head. “Camden during a volcano.” I barely understood the muffled words. “This is going to rock so hard.”

 

While the school population flew into a frenzy of unexpected exodus, I watched as if from the sidelines. At first, I assumed my parents would call me about President Ellis’s email. Days passed without contact. Perhaps they didn’t have Internet, or power. I worried, but also felt relieved because, if they asked when to pick me up, my knee-jerk answer would be, “Never.”

I thought about options
to returning to Indiana, though it didn’t take long to realize I didn’t have any. I couldn’t exactly relocate and apply for a job in this Yellowblown global disaster market, which brought a whole new definition to the word recession. Unemployment rates climbed about as fast as the value of the dollar plummeted.

Mia went online to buy a bus ticket to Camden for the last day we were allowed in the dorm. We half-heartedly attended classes, clinging to normalcy as abandoned furniture on the sidewalks collected autumn leaves. Boone was scarce, consumed by his horde of panicked freshman who
’d never been through a normal clean-out week, much less an unscheduled one. At least that’s what I told myself. I’d stopped by his room on Thursday. Unoccupied. I left a coded message on his dry erase board. I drew a bike and nothing else.

He didn’t respond. No texts, no nothing.

On Saturday afternoon at the library door, I struggled with an armload of reference materials for a paper I wouldn’t get to write—I hoped the school scrapped this whole online learning idea as a bad experiment—and, as I grappled to get hold of the door handle without dropping a stack of books that weighed as much as ten phone directories, none other than Boone Ramer held the adjacent door open for the empty handed Twyla Krappa Gamma.

“Boonie, don’t forget about tomorrow,” she cooed
. A manicured fingernail raked his chin.

I averted my
heated face as I struggled through the door. My payload thumped on the research desk, further irritating a harried librarian who fixed me with a long-suffering glare. I scurried away. A set of stairs and maze of musty stacks led me to a basement study carrel so ancient it didn’t have a power outlet for portable devices. The wood borders of the desk broadcasted decades’ worth of math formulas and lovers’ laments, barely decipherable without the light of the short fluorescent tube mounted under the head height bookshelf.

I sagge
d in the creaky chair, confronted by the crux of my own lament, the knife-edge of my own anguish. And it wasn’t all about a boy.

I
’d been living the perfect semester. My GPA held strong in spite of challenging classes. I adored my quirky roommate, and Mia and I managed a fun social life without risking addiction or a felony record.

And then there was Boone, the freshman dream
teetering on the edge of becoming a sophomore reality. I liked him in a way I hadn’t ever liked anyone. We were comfortable together, yet every minute carried underlying excitement and attraction. I
wanted
him, all to myself, in every sense of the word, in a visceral way I’d never felt for a guy before.

Even in
an uninterrupted perfect semester, the sight of Twyla and him together would have thrown me. With the clock ticking, with something so much bigger than the end of school looming, the added penalty of our separation
really
bummed me out. Even so, if it wasn’t for
Boonie, don’t forget about tomorrow
, I might have been able to float along, continuing to fake it.

Bad permanent effects. Boone permanently absent.

Time was up, and if school never started again, I might never see him again. I might never see Mia. I faced an abrupt, unscheduled, painful, permanent close to this chapter of my life. The new chapter would be…what?

Whatever it was going to be, it wasn’t going to be perfect.
The Perch, kale, firewood, ashfall. So, so imperfect.

No amount of denial could insulate me from that. I sat for a few more minutes, letting cold reality seep over me
. I needed to cowboy up instead of sitting in a trailer waiting for the ash to make my decisions for me. At least I had a home to go to, after all.

I stopped by the desk to apologize to the librarian in the process of checking in my books. She
waved me away. I wondered what would happen to her. I was getting kicked out of my dorm while she was probably getting kicked out of her job. How many reference librarians would be needed in post-Yellowblown America? Maybe she should embezzle books to burn this winter.

I paused in front of the library to drink in the
collegiate view. Yellow-crowned maple trees encircled the quad’s expanse of manicured grass. Buildings of brick and stone squatted at the perimeter, some filled with empty classrooms, some emptying of their student residents. I tipped my face up to capture sunlight dimmed by microscopic minerals high in the atmosphere.

Scientists discussed v
olcanic winter as a fact of our future.

No one mentioned global warming
anymore.

Bad permanent effects.

My phone dinged with a bicycle bell sound. Boone’s text tone. I considered ignoring it for about 0.12 of a second. Then I dug the phone out. He’d sent the message twenty minutes ago, probably right after he left the library, while I hyperventilated in the basement with zero bars.

Text from Boone:

(I was sort of glad he’d been simmering for a while.)