Chapter 7
Brocc clambered up the stairs, yelling for Oleara. He fell over the top step and face-planted, then put his palms on the cool ginger hardwood floor and pushed himself up. A Brussels sprout sitting on the floor outside the children’s room laughed at him.
“Hey, hey, we have to get to the shelter!”
“We already did a drill,” the kid said.
Brocc grabbed the boy by the hand and continued hurrying toward the children’s room. The door was cracked open, and he pushed it wider as he entered, seeing the smaller children sitting up in a long row of bunk beds. The lights in the gabled ceiling were dim, and a cluster of crayoned pictures of the house made splotches of color against the blue walls. From the lavender smell in the room, Brocc knew that his mother had prepared the children for
