Okay. I’m likely overreacting, and it’s probably nothing. A couple days from now, things will be fine, and I’ll feel stupid for even doing this, I know. But I’m too anxious right now not to do something.

I don’t even know how to start writing this, but I’ll begin with what happened.

This past Sunday evening, I got a really uncomfortable voicemail from my little sister, Samantha. Even though I’ve been at college for nearly two years, she still calls me every weekend to tell me what’s going on back home in Piedmont, despite the fact that there’s almost never anything going on. Except now, it sounds like there is.

I don’t really know what I’m supposed to say about the voicemail. Just listen to it.

I’d be worried about this either way, but at least there’s a possible explanation. For all of my life, my mother has had a health condition called cardioneurogenic syncope, which is basically an occasional, brief loss of consciousness due to a decrease in blood flow to the brain. Sometimes she faints or falls down, and a couple times we had to take her to the doctor after she hit her head. But it’s not the end of the world.

The weirder part is what’s happened since then… or to be more precise, what hasn’t happened: I can’t get anyone to answer the phone. I tried calling Sam back as soon as I got the message, but she didn’t answer. Neither did our neighbors. I tried all of the other numbers I had – Uncle Kyle, Al’s, the diner, even the police – and not a single answer. There’s probably a good explanation, like phone or electric outages, and I’m just upset over nothing. Kristen says everything is fine.

But the fact is, it’s been more than 24 hours, and I haven’t been able to reach anyone in the entire town, or to make sure that Mom is okay. And while I wish I could just go home and check, I don’t have the money for that sort of thing…and even if I did, I’d have no way to get out to Piedmont unless someone picked me up at the nearest bus stop. And I guess this is kind of stupid, but we’ve been talking about blogs in civic journalism, and I thought maybe if I started one, someone might know something.

So if anyone has any idea why I can’t get in touch with a single person in the town of Piedmont, Utah, can you let me know?