When we entered history class one day, Mrs. Haskins was back. She looked up from an article she was reading and nodded at us.

After the accident at the power plant, Mrs. Haskins had taken a leave of absence. A lot of teachers had. So far, only a few had come back.

She was a good teacher, Mrs. Haskins. She made history interesting.

The bell rang for class to start and Mrs. Haskins stood up, holding the newspaper she’d been reading.

Walking around to the front of her desk, she half-sat, half-leaned on the wooden edge.

Mrs. Haskins came from Boston originally. She talked with a Boston accent. In her mind, the Globe was the final word on everything. But the paper she held today wasn’t the Globe. She couldn’t possibly read to us from the Globe today, because the Boston Globe had ceased to exist. Boston had ceased to exist. The buildings still stood, the houses, the traffic lights, the shops, the parks. The offices of the Boston Globe still existed. But no people remained, no people at all.

What if some of her family or friends hadn’t made it out all right?

“We’re going to let Chester Arthur rest a little longer,” Mrs. Haskins said. “I want to talk about something else today.”

I ran my finger back and forth across the sharp corner of my history book.

“Just capping the leak doesn’t end this emergency, you know,” Mrs. Haskins began.

A familiar knot tightened in my stomach.

Mrs. Haskins said, “You’ve been talking about nuclear issues in your science class.”

Dan Taylor leaned forward, took off his hat, set it on his desk. Dan always wore that fedora hat, his father’s suit jacket, and blue jeans. It surprised me Dan’s family had stayed through the accident. They seemed the kind to leave.

Mrs. Haskins took a deep breath and let it back out again. “Millions of people are homeless, jobless, separated from loved ones. Hundreds died trying to get away, thousands will die later, from cancer.”

Ripley said, “Boston was too crowded anyway.”

A few kids snickered.

“Using radioactive fallout as a form of population control is a pretty frightening concept,” Mrs. Haskins said.

Ripley Powers glared at Mrs. Haskins with his good eye.

I raised my hand, my finger pressed over a bloody spot where I’d picked a hangnail. “Will we be part of the thousands with cancer?”

I tried to keep breathing. Both my mother and Gramp had died of cancer.

The kids in the class looked at Mrs. Haskins.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It really is only a matter of which way the wind blew, where the rain fell. The accident will touch each of us in some way.”

Was she thinking about her family from Boston?

“Those of you whose folks farm, or garden, or raise livestock—how safe will it be to use your land over the next years? No one knows.”

My stomach twisted, thinking about it all. Our sheep, and our woodlot, Aunt May and Uncle Lemmy, Bethany, and Ezra.