title: Eyes in a Storm: How One Community Weathered Life After a Deadly Tornado
author:  Jessica McNew 
description: Jessica Gregg McNew is a graduate of the University of Maryland journalism school and has spent more than a decade working as a reporter and freelance writer. She lives in Montana with her husband and two children.
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   **ONE----------------------------------**
  
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  > >  _I should never have gone on vacation in Europe, Jessica Hart thought.
  > After climbing the Matterhorn, starting high school again feels ridiculous._
  
  > > The day was a Friday, the last day of the first week of school, but
  > Jessica's first glimpse of Tabb High. Less than twenty hours earlier she had
  > been enjoying the crisp, cool air of Switzerland's Alps. Now she had
  > Southern California's worst to breathe; the morning was as smoggy as it was
  > hot. Plus she had a terrible case of jet lag. She probably should have
  > skipped what was left of the school week and rested up over Saturday and
  > Sunday, but she had been anxious to see her friends and to check out the
  > place where she was doomed to spend her one and only senior year. So far it
  > had not impr