Kennedy hauls her suitcase inside and drops it on the floor next to the nearest bed. I only have a backpack with me, but I put it on the other bed and sit on the foot of it, not wanting to let my dirty body touch too much of the clean sheets.

Kennedy turns to me. “Are you happy you came?”

“Yeah,” I say honestly. “If I have to be stranded between home and my family, this is better than the parking lot.”

“It was so gross being around all those people,” Kennedy says with a shudder. “I felt like a homeless person.”

Funny how she got that vibe, when I had thought it was cool how all these strangers were being kind and helpful to each other while we were all stranded together.

“I’m taking a shower,” Kennedy says, walking toward the bathroom. “I have to get the stink off me.”

I pull out the chair near the small desk and turn on the TV while Kennedy showers. All the local channels are talking about the pending hurricane and how it’s going to make landfall in the morning. Only now, when I have some time to relax, do I start to wonder about my house back at home. I hope it’ll be okay. I hope everyone I know will be okay. Unfortunately, it’s pretty certain that everything along the coast will get ravaged pretty bad. Hopefully all those people evacuated.

I need to charge my phone since it’s my unreliable lifeline to Ella, and the only outlet I can find is in the corner of the room too far away from the desk. I plug it in and sit on the floor next to it, staring at my empty home screen and wishing I could hear from my girlfriend. She’s probably at her own hotel right now. It’s probably not as nice as this one, since she doesn’t have the kind of money that Kennedy’s dad has, but hopefully it’s safe. Hopefully she can shower and get some rest and be okay.

I lean my head against the wall. The heavy feeling of exhaustion falls over me like a warm blanket. I haven’t had more than an hour or two of sleep since I left my house. And now I can’t seem to fight it off anymore. I close my eyes, and I hold my phone, and I think about Ella as I drift off to sleep.