Silence for a few seconds while the anchorwoman paused, then her voice returned. “Okay, we've just received word that an emergency press conference is starting. We're taking you live to that conference now.”
The view on the TV screen changed again. This time a man in a black military uniform with a lot of colorful badges on the left side of his chest stood before the White House seal, which hung against a wall of navy-colored curtains. At the bottom of the screen the news station listed the man's name as General Bridley.
He cleared his throat then began. “Ladies and gentlemen, the initial reports have been confirmed. At one thirty-two p.m. today an explosion from an as yet undetermined cause occurred outside the perimeter of the White House fence. The blast extended to the Rose Garden where the president was fatally injured.”
In the silence of my classroom, someone’s stylus fell with a sharp crack onto their desktop then rolled off onto the floor. Two rows away to my right, someone else whispered, “holy crap.”
The general continued. “President McFadden was determined as fatally injured beyond all possible resuscitation at the scene of the incident. As the rescue efforts continue, we still do not have an exact count of how many others were also injured or killed—”
“They didn't even try to save him?” some girl whimpered. “Why wouldn't they at least try to save the president?”
“The blast must have blown off his head or something,” Kyle muttered.
It was as if Kyle's comment slapped the entire room back into consciousness again. All around me, the class exploded in complete mayhem. Girls burst into tears and covered their faces, many reaching across seat backs or aisles to hug each other. Most of the guys sat frozen in their desks, some shaking their heads in disbelief.
“It’s another 9/11!” Kyle said, looking ready to tear off the wooden top from his desk with his bare hands. “I can't believe this. The terrorists got us again! We ought to nuke them. Nuke them now and show them what happens when you mess with us.”
Mr. Sherman yelled at us all to quiet down. It took a couple of minutes till everybody finally settled down enough so we could hear the general as he went on to outline how the vice president, cabinet, and the speaker of the house had all been taken to a secure location during this emergency transition of national leadership.
Suddenly, the screen's view split again, the general muted on the right as the news anchorwoman broke in on the left.
“Viewers, we apologize for the interruption, but we've just received more alarming news. Flight 3233, an airbus coming in on approach to Ronald Reagan National Airport just miles from the White House, has also exploded. The explosion occurred approximately three minutes ago while the plane was preparing to land at the airport. We do not yet know if these two incidents are related.”
The news station switched her side of the screen to a view of a huge passenger jet as it exploded in a fiery ball in mid air.
Several students gasped again, and the room broke out into more chaos.
But like the silent protester on TV, I sat frozen in my chair, unable to speak or breathe deeply as the rage and tears flowed all around me.
My dad, Senator Shepherd, was in D.C. today in session with the rest of Congress. If this was all some kind of attack on Washington D.C....
Screw the rules against cell phone use during class. This was a family emergency.
My desk rocked hard as I fumbled for my cell phone in my pocket. Kyle stopped yelling with the others long enough to notice my desk's weird movement. He scowled at me with an eyebrow raised as if to ask “what's up with your desk?” I ignored him, searching my phone's Contacts folder for my dad's work numbers instead.
While I waited for the call to go through to my dad's office, Tarah twisted in her seat to watch me. As usual, the contrast of her dark eyes in that thin, too pale face surrounded by all that long, thick black hair managed to hit me in the gut. And right now, stuck here a thousand miles from D.C. with no news about my dad, I really needed the distraction.
Nothing about Tarah made sense to me lately. Like now...of all the girls in our class, she was the only one who wasn't falling apart, in spite of how breakable her long, skinny arms and legs always made her seem. While those watchful eyes of hers were as wide with shock as everyone else's, hers were still dry. And she only watched me, making no move to reach out to me or anyone else around her for emotional support.
She was a mystery I'd spent years trying to understand. And I was running out of time to figure out the answer before graduation.
The answering machine in Dad's office finally picked up. I ended the call without bothering to leave a message.
In the background, I heard the anchorwoman on TV continue. “Okay, they're telling me that we now have a cell phone video taken by one of Flight 3233's passengers minutes before the plane's demise. Apparently the person who recorded this was also streaming it live to the internet at the time it was taken.”
The teacher and several students shushed everyone else so we could hear, a few girls’ quiet sobs in the background around us adding to the nightmarish feel that this couldn’t really be happening.
The new video showed an airplane cabin filled with passengers. A high pitched female voice, coming from what sounded like inches behind the cell phone, said, “Oh my God. I hope I'm getting this. I'm on a plane flying over Washington D.C. right now, and if you can see this, there's a huge fire in the city. It...it looks like part of the White House just blew up!”
The girl holding the cell phone pushed it closer to a nearby window, where way off in the distance you could just make out a huge rolling ball of black smoke rising up from the ground, partially blocking out the familiar dome and columns of the White House across the Potomac River.
Someone else in the background of the video said, “Everyone, please, for your own safety turn off all electronic devices.” The flight attendant apparently.
Distracted, I looked down at my own phone again. Where was the number for Frank, Dad's aide? Wait, there it was. I hit the Send button to make the call, held the phone to my ear, then glanced back up at the TV.
“Hey, mister, are you okay?” Cell phone girl asked someone not yet visible in the video.
She turned the phone's camera to show a man seated between her and the window. The camera was shaky at first, making it hard to see a lot of detail. Then her hand steadied so we could see how the man's face was beet red all over as he turned away towards the window, his breathing fast and harsh as his upper body rocked forward and back.