It’s hot.
We line the walls, a living, sweating molding.
We’re supposed to be ducking and covering.
We aren’t.
We’re highfiving one another and reveling in our victory;
Our government FRQs will have to be pushed to Thursday.
The teachers are irritated at our blatant disregard for personal safety.
“Stop talking!”
“Face the wall!”
“Cover your head!”
We follow instructions for all of three seconds.
There isn’t enough room to fold our legs up, so we stretch them back into the hall.
A game of bottle cap hockey erupts noisily a few restless, jostling bodies down.
We pull out our phones and start popping bloons.
The tornado is supposedly only a short distance away.
It’s pulling up cows and trailers and tossing them like weeds from a garden.
Outside, the wind is screaming so hard that the doors are rattling.
We cheer as our side of the hall scores a point in the hockey game.
“This is serious business, guys,” a coach informs us sternly.
A few choir kids burst out with Mulan’s “Let’s Get Down to Business.”
The coach stalks away to gripe to his equally exasperated coworkers.
We grin and repeat the coach’s words over and over.
“This is serious business, guys! This is serious business!”
We laugh and laugh.