Last November, after watching The Day After, I called 1-800-NUCLEAR with the rest of the poor saps. I was afraid that my parents would be killed and I would survive. I was afraid that I would die and my parents would survive. I once had to make Mrs. Martin a list of everything I was afraid of:
My parents will die
I’ll get sick
I’ll die
Bad grades
People won’t like me
I’m not pretty
I won’t ever have a boyfriend
Nuclear war
Whenever I tried to talk about my feelings on nuclear war, what actually happened was silence. I couldn’t. If I talked about it, then that meant it was on the horizon. A nuclear payload heading down on us, down on me.
Yeah, we did drills where we hid under our desks. You know, those were some badass desks. Immune to an ICBM, or what you probably would see in your underpants right after. And we had a fallout shelter in our basement at school, but it was locked after too many students found that to be the perfect make-out spot.
On a scale of one—does not bother me—to five—very disturbing—I was on a ten going on eleven.
Mrs. Martin looked at her watch. “We should continue this conversation,” she said. “I’ll schedule you in for a weekly session.”
I was defeated. But nodded anyway.
“Does this count as my punishment for pulling the safety shower in chemistry?” I asked.
She shook her head and smiled. “No, you’re suspended for one day. You got off easy.”
Worth it.
I leaned over the desk to grab a handful of Snickers from the bowl she purposely put out of reach. I took a glance at my folder, which was flipped open, and died a little inside.
Laura Ratliff is afraid of not having a future. She is afraid of dying in a nuclear blast. She comes from a broken family, which isn’t that uncommon, but it was done in such a way that it became town gossip.
Mrs. Martin, I thought, you’re going to miss me when I’m gone.
Chapter Three
I was sent home—and by home I mean the Flat Inn. My mom was the general manager of the only decent (or so she claimed) hotel in the town. Helping was my after-school job. Folding towels, emptying the trash, stocking the sweets shop. That afternoon, I grabbed an orange soda from the cooler, found a comfy seat in the lobby and watched as my mom dealt with crisis after crisis.
“What’s leaking from the ceiling from the fourth floor?” a guest asked.
Um. Rain? I didn’t say it out loud. That would be rude to the guests. End of the world to some of these people. The customer wasn’t always right. Sometimes they were downright stupid.
“I’m sorry, sir. Let me see if we have any available rooms I can move you to,” Mom said.
The phone didn’t stop ringing, and Mom didn’t stop trying to explain why they were sold out. She hung up the phone. “Why don’t you take your little hammer and nails and build you one,” she said to no one as the phone rang again. “Flat Inn, this is Edna. How may I help you? No, I’m sorry. We are all sold out for that week. What’s going on? Well, ma’am, they’re shooting a movie—”
Some of the crew and a few of the actors were staying here, and Mom was going insane. Some of the older actors were renting houses. I guess they were too old for the hotel lifestyle. I didn’t blame them. After the “secret” came out about my mom and Terrence’s dad, Mom and I pretty much moved into room 104. Next to the kitchen. Noisy. And you could smell the free continental breakfast at five-thirty in the morning. Dad escaped to Little Rock Air Force Base’s barracks.
“Welcome to Flat Inn. Checking in?” she asked a man with a suitcase.
Paula walked over and sat down a stack of brown and green folders and a stack of paper. “Put a copy of this letter in each one.”
The letter. Mom worked hard on that letter. The owner, Paul Passoni, wanted to make sure he had all his bases covered when it came to the possibility of a nuke attack. I mean, Griffin Flat might be smallish, a little over eight thousand people, but we were on the nukemap.[13] There were eighteen possible targets, not to mention the Little Rock Air Force Base, and Nuclear One.[14] We were pretty much right smack dab in the vicinity of a ground zero situation.
“Your mom wants this done ASAP,” Paula said.
“And let me guess: She wanted you to do it?”
Paula always was a slow learner. She was hired because she was the owner’s sister. Nepotism and all. She blew her gum into a bubble and walked away. No matter how incompetent, you didn’t fire family.
I started stuffing and occasionally reading the letter.
Dear Guest,
I hope your stay will be comfortable and enjoyable.
As you may know, our country is in tense relations with the Soviet Union. We may have to face the threat of rising tensions, which may escalate to a full-out nuclear strike.
Whilst Arkansas has not yet been affected, we request that you follow the instructions below, should there be an air raid in the vicinity of the hotel.
1. If you hear a siren while in the hotel, please go down the staircase to the lobby, which is the lowest floor of the hotel.
2. Please do not use the elevators.
3. Disabled guests or guests who might have difficulties reaching the lobby are requested to inform our front desk at check-in.
4. Staff will direct you to the shelter area.
5. Please stay in the designated area until it is safe to leave.
For any other assistance, please feel free to contact the Front Desk or the Manager on Duty.
I am sure you will join me in hoping a quick end to the Cold War.
No matter how insane—I mean insane—this thing was, I felt like I was living in a movie. We were on the eve of destruction. (Laugh-out-loud funny here. I get the title of the movie. What do they say? Roll credits.)
When Mom had a moment’s peace, she came over and sat down at my small table in the breakfast area. “You shouldn’t have to do that,” she said.
“Paula—”
“But thank you.”
Before she could lecture me about my one-day suspension, I told her about the radio contest and how I won. “They were chanting my name in the locker room.” I raised my right arm and started chanting, “Laura! Laura! Laura!”
“And then—”
“And then I get to bring a friend with me to the set.”
She smiled, sort of. “So I guess you’re going to be bringing”—she sighed—“Dana.”
Dana. The bane of her existence. I am not going to use the word hate because that might not be the type of word Mom would use. No, slash that. She hated Dana. A lot of parents did. Dana was the type of friend who would barge into family situations without asking. One time she just showed up after Mom was going to take me on a special trip to Little Rock and thought she was going, too. Once my dad sent me flowers to my school for Valentine’s Day, and she got mad. Her mom did too. (Her dad didn’t send her any.) Her mom called my mom at work and complained. Like, who did that? I wasn’t exactly friends with Dana. Never really had been. She was just there. And I told Mom that repeatedly, but she didn’t believe me.
14
A pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant on Lake Dardanelle in Russellville, Arkansas. There is only one power plant in Arkansas, and we also have a silo. That means we’re a military target—a