The Day the Wi-Fi Stopped

📴 The Day the Wi-Fi Stopped — by Zoe, Grade 7

It started on a Tuesday night in January. The wind was howling like a wolf, and the rain hit the windows so hard that I couldn’t sleep. In the morning, the storm had gone, but so had the internet.
At first, everyone thought it was their own router. Dad switched ours off and on about fifteen times. Then Mrs Okafor next door knocked and asked, “Is yours down too?” It was down everywhere. The storm had broken the big cable under the sea, and engineers needed three days to fix it.
The first day was chaos. Shops couldn’t take cards, so there were long queues at the bank. My brother wandered around the house holding his phone in the air, looking for a signal, like a lost zombie.
On the second day, something changed. Mr Ali brought his old board games out into the street. Then Max’s mum came out with her guitar. Soon there were twenty people sitting on blankets, playing games and singing. I found out that Mrs Okafor was a dancer when she was young. She taught us a dance from Nigeria.
On Friday morning, the internet came back. Everyone’s phones buzzed at the same time, with three days of messages. We all went inside.
But that evening, there was a knock at the door. It was Mr Ali. “Board games, Friday night, my house,” he said. “No phones.” We’ve played every Friday since.