“If this were a movie,” I murmured, “some terrible thing would happen right now, just as my lips were moving toward yours.”

Her eyes widened, incredulous. “Jordan, I’m not in a movie. I’m right here. Do you need an engraved invitation?”

I smiled, inhaled her fresh scent through my nose, and moved in for what we’d forever tell our kids and grandkids was our First Kiss.

Then …

Boom!

CHAPTER 16

Jordan

I FLEW OUT of my chair and crashed onto the brick patio, then felt like I was being sucked up by a tornado. Everything was illuminated as if it were noon. The flash was bright, continuous.

I looked for a mushroom cloud.

Maggie was tumbling, as if in slow motion, off the patio and onto the lawn.

Glass was flying everywhere, sparkling in the yellow-orange light like a million diamonds.

Everything paused, as if the whole world were heaving a deep breath, and then the sky filled up with burning debris.

I was moving, running, grabbing Maggie off the grass, lifting her in a fireman’s carry. A burning tire bounced onto the garden and toward the woods, leaving a trail of flaming prints. Then came a two-by-four, followed by a hundred more flaming meteors of various sizes.

A wall of heat hit me like a football helmet to the chest and sucked the oxygen from my lungs. I stumbled and tried to breathe but felt like I was swallowing fire.

I set Maggie down in the safest place I could see: a window well outside our basement. The army’s emergency-survival handbook, which I read at the evacuation camp, said that if there was a nuclear blast, you needed to get underground. The glass was already blown out of the basement window.

“Climb inside,” I shouted, and realized I couldn’t hear anything.

She sat up, saying something to me that I couldn’t understand. She was bleeding from the back of her head. I took her hand and placed it on the wound, yelling at her to keep pressure on it. She gestured that she couldn’t hear, and I took her hand and put it back on her head.

“Stay here,” I shouted, and held out my palms to her, trying to make her understand.

I planted a quick kiss on her lips.

Then I ran—into the house through a door that was broken off its hinges. The brightest light was gone, but everything glowed orange.

“Mom! Charlie!” I screamed, but the words sounded hollow in my ears. I doubted I would hear their answers.

Every cupboard in the kitchen was open, broken dishes scattered everywhere. My mom lay on the floor. Not moving.

Oh, God.

Shuddering, I dropped to my knees and felt her neck for a pulse.

There it was, beating softly. She took a breath.

She had a piece of glass—a ten-inch-long sharp dagger—plunged into her shoulder.

I pondered whether to pull it out or leave it in. Sometimes in the movies they leave it in because removing it will open the bloody floodgates. But this didn’t look too deep, and I didn’t want her to roll over onto it. I yanked it out, and she didn’t even stir. I patted her face, softly, then a bit harder.