"I couldn't check the mail. Everything's blocked off."

"What do you mean? Why?" I thought she meant there had been road construction or an accident. That was it: She must have seen a terrible accident. Such things had disturbed her before. Once we passed a bad wreck while riding the bus, and she covered her eyes and moaned, "Oh, oh, oh," for long minutes, while the other passengers stared at us, and I tried to reassure her that the body under the bloody sheet was only covered up "to keep the sun off him" and that "I swore I saw him move."

Creepily blank, she said, "There's nobody out there. I couldn't even get to the highway. Traffic was all jammed up."

"I don't get it. There's nobody where?"

"Anywhere."

Growing impatient, I said, "You just said there was a lot of traffic."

"Yes." She looked at me, slowly nodding. I could see that she was vibrating like a scared kitten. As if correcting a preschooler, she said, "The cars are all abandoned, sweetie. They were all just left in the road."

I felt a twinge. "Give me a break," I said, annoyed by my own reaction. "You're just having an anxiety attack."

She seemed to catch her breath and get centered. Focusing on me in the hyperearnest way she knew I disliked, she said, "Lulu, honey, I don't mean to scare you. Dammit, sometimes I forget you're only seventeen. But I promise you I won't let anything happen to you. I know the last couple of years have been difficult, but this is different. This is not a hot flash."

I was completely lost, could only shrug helplessly.

"I stopped at the gas station on Route 1," she said. "There was no one there, but I found this." She set down her big Gua temalan bag and pulled out a Hello Kitty portable radio. "I also found cartons of army rations, MREs-they're in the trunk. All kinds of things were just lying around loose, and I started wandering the street trying to find someone. All I could think was terrorists, you know, maybe a bomb scare or something, and I thought we should know what to do. I couldn't find a soul. Then I got the bright idea to try the radio"-she shook her head, chewing on air for a second-"and, and I thought it was a prank or something. April Fools' Day. Only it's not." Her teeth had started chattering.