'The Next Step' by Lisa Thornton

 

I will have shoes stored in the cellar for when the tornadoes come. Because that’s what the news reporters on television say people are missing. When survivors unhuddle and climb out of the holes their homes used to cover, they are barefoot and step on broken glass and boards with nails in them. Because when you’re in your house, stirring mac and cheese or typing a lesson for your art students or using your 12-year-old thumbs to leap your avatar from floating platform to castle to cloud you are in socks or bare skin on wood planks. And then there is a sound. A loud roaring or if you’re lucky an alarm first and you run downstairs without grabbing anything first.  

 

I will pack my son’s new red Adidas that cost half my paycheck, the smelly black lace ups my husband wears to mow the lawn, and my old Birkenstocks. The ones with the tread gone under the right toe which shows how I walk, apparently, dragging my right foot along the ground, left tread intact. I will set all three pairs in the corner furthest from the window. I will make sure our backs are to the old wall and we are facing north, so that when we climb out safely with our shoes on into the impossibly sunny and still day to view the wreckage of our town, we can stand on the rubble of our old lives and see Interstate 55. The eighteen wheelers whizzing down from Chicago on their way to Los Angeles. The train tracks cutting in front of the John Deere place. I will make sure we can safely access the future.