Tornado Brain

by Cat Patrick

  Also by Cat Patrick

  Just Like Fate, with Suzanne Young

  The Originals

  Revived

  Forgotten

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2020 by Cat Patrick

  Emoji images courtesy of Shutterstock

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Patrick, Cat, author.

  Title: Tornado brain / Cat Patrick.

  Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020] | Summary: “A neurodivergent 7th grader is determined to find her missing best friend before it’s too late”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019048583 (print) | LCCN 2019048584 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984815316 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984815323 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Missing children—Fiction. | Best friends—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Asperger’s syndrome—Fiction. | Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder—Fiction. | Sensory disorders—Fiction. | Family life—Washington (State)—Fiction. | Washington (State)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.P2746 Tor 2020 (print) | LCC PZ7.P2746 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048583

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048584

  Ebook ISBN 9781984815323

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket art © 2020 by Eiko Ojala

  Image of paper courtesy of Shutterstock

  Jacket design by Eileen Savage

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  For the remarkable Adiline M.

  What a force of nature you are.

  Contents

  Also by Cat Patrick

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part 1: Fri-YayChapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part 2: A Bad SaturdayChapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 3: The RestChapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  prologue

  Myth: Tornadoes only move northeast.

  PEOPLE USED TO believe that tornadoes only move in one direction—to the northeast—but that’s not true. Sometimes they go southwest. Sometimes they touch down and don’t go anywhere, getting sucked right back up into the sky. That’s disappointing. Sometimes they zig and sometimes they zag. Tornadoes are unpredictable.

  If a tornado was in middle school, it might get a lot of weird looks from other kids. Its counselor might call its behavior “unexpected.” Its mom might try to get it to move in the same direction as the other tornadoes just to fit in. But maybe the tornado doesn’t care about fitting in—even if it means not having a lot of friends.

  I can relate because I used to have one friend but now I don’t. It’s complicated.

  I met her during a tornado.

  It was the first week of kindergarten. My memories from back then are foggy because I was just a little kid and also my memory is weird, but here’s how I think it went. Everyone was at recess and I was circling the outside of the play area alone, thinking of roller coasters because I was obsessed with them then, feeling my way along the chain link because I liked the way my fingers dropped into the spaces between the links and the way my hand smelled like metal afterward. Not a lot of people like that smell.

  Sometimes I don’t notice things at all and sometimes I notice things too much. That day, I noticed when the wind turbine at the far end of the playground stopped turning. I live in Long Beach, Washington, and it’s known for being windy—so windy that there’s an international kite festival every August—so when the turbine stopped, it was different. I notice things that are different. The creepy green-gray circular clouds behind the unmoving turbine were different, too. That’s called a mesocyclone, which is a word I like.

  I don’t know if any other kid on the playground saw the twister fall from the funnel cloud that day. I was probably the only one who was looking up instead of playing tetherball or hanging upside down from the monkey bars or something. Being upside down makes my head feel funny.

  I watched as the tornado hit the ground and started bumping toward us, tossing things that looked like bugs but were really recycling bins. The emergency system was loud, so I covered my ears. Kids ran inside but I didn’t run; I walked . . . in the direction of the tornado. I took my hands off my ears and heard the train sound, far away at first, then louder and louder. The tiny bottom of the tornado got bigger as it collected stuff, pulling up and tossing small trees and even sucking up a utility pole, sending sparks into the sky like fireworks.

  I was sucked up, too—by an adult. He grabbed me and started running toward the school. I watched the tornado rip out the far part of the playground fence, which is probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “What is wrong with you?” the adult shouted, too close to my ear.

  An audiologist once told me that I have better-than-average hearing, so it hurt. If you don’t know what an audiologist is, it’s a doctor who studies hearing loss and balance issues related to the ears. I don’t have either of those things, but still I went to one—along with many other doctors that have ologist at the end of their titles.

  I cupped my hands over my ears, but I could still hear him shouting: “You need to listen to directions! You could have been killed!”

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “No one told me any directions.”

  I bounced along in the teacher’s arms, watching the turbine pick up speed until I couldn’t see it anymore because it had a tornado wrapped around it like a big tornado hug. The teacher banged through the doors and we were inside the school, running down the hall toward the cafeteria. Without the distraction of the tornado, I noticed his painful grip around my thighs and back. I stiffened and started to slip from his grasp. By the time we made it to the cafeteria, where all
the other kids and teachers were hiding under tables, he was holding me only under the arms, my board-straight legs swinging like a pendulum in my flowered capris. My armpits hurt when he finally set me down next to a table in the middle of the room.

  “Found her,” he said to my teacher. I don’t remember her name. I didn’t like her very much.

  “Come under, Frances,” she said. “Sit next to me. It’s going to be okay.”

  “My name is Frankie,” I said, crawling under the table. “And I know.”

  “You gave us a scare, Frankie,” she said, stroking my hair. I honestly don’t know why people think that’s comforting.

  “Don’t touch me,” I snapped, scooting as far away from her as I could get. She looked surprised at first, then frowned and turned to talk to the man who’d carried me.

  “I was just watching,” I said softly to myself.

  “Watching what?” a girl on my right asked. She had braided orange hair with red bows tied at the ends, too many freckles all over her cheeks and forehead, and a terrified expression.

  “I saw the tornado!” I said.

  “I want my mommy,” she said before putting her thumb in her mouth. Now she looked like a baby. “Is it going to get us?” she asked around her thumb, making it harder to understand her. “Will we die? I don’t want to die, I want to be a singer. Do you want to hold hands?”

  I definitely did not want to touch the hand that she had in her mouth, and I was overwhelmed by her questions.

  “What?” I asked, blinking.

  “My name is Colette,” she answered.

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Frankie.”

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  I wasn’t feeling scared until the train sound got loud enough to rattle the windows. Then Colette hugged me, and I let her without thinking. Predictably unpredictable, the tornado would turn southwest at the last minute and just miss our school before being whooshed back into the clouds, but of course we didn’t know that at the time. I found out later that it was an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which is classified as “intense.” I didn’t know that then either.

  Then I just knew that I was scared, too. I squashed my cheek against Colette’s, my arms around her. She was probably the first person other than my family members I’d ever hugged.

  “If we don’t die, let’s be friends,” Colette said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  We didn’t die, so we were friends.

  PART 1

  Fri-yay

  chapter 1

  Fact: In some parts of the country, middle schools have built-in tornado shelters.

  COLETTE WENT MISSING on the second Friday in April, almost at the end of seventh grade. It was seven and a half years after the tornado in kindergarten, and Colette and I hadn’t been friends anymore for two months.

  Before any of us knew she was missing, it was a normal morning. My mom appeared in my doorway at six thirty. Opening my eyes and seeing a person in the doorway made my heart jump.

  “I hate it when you do that!” I complained.

  “Good morning, Frankie,” Mom said in a soothing voice. “Time to get ready for school.”

  I closed my eyes again.

  I’d had trouble falling asleep the night before because I’d been playing something over in my head and when I’m thinking too much at bedtime, my brain doesn’t turn off and go to sleep. Plus, I’d forgotten to take the vitamin that helps me sleep. And then I’d woken up twice during the night for no reason, once at two thirty and once at five. It’s hard for me to get back to sleep when that happens. Adding it all together, I’d probably had about four hours of sleep.

  I rubbed my eyes with my fists, then scooted deeper under the covers, wishing my mom would go away. But I could still smell the scents she’d brought in with her: nice shampoo and disgusting coffee. I pictured a cartoon drawing of coffee-smell pouncing on a cartoon drawing of nice-shampoo-smell. The nice-shampoo-smell fought back and shoved the coffee-smell off, then . . .

  “Are you awake, Frankie?” my mom said.

  I am now.

  Lately, I’d been concentrating on using manners, so I focused on not yelling that I wanted her to leave so I could wake up in peace. Do not yell, I told myself, my voice loud in my head. Do not tell her to get out. Make your voice match hers.

  I opened my eyes and looked at her sideways because I was on my side.

  “Hi,” I groaned, my tired, grumpy, scratchy voice not sounding like hers at all. She ignored it.

  “It’s Friday!” Mom said. “Or, since it’s your early-release day, should I say, Fri-yay?”

  We got out of school at 11:25 a.m. on Fridays, so we were only there for three hours and five minutes, or three class periods—and one of them was homeroom—unless you were an overachiever who’d chosen to take zero period. Zero period is the optional period before homeroom and it’s way too early for me.

  “Uh-huh,” I growled, rolling away and pulling the covers over my shoulder. “I’m awake, you can leave now.”

  “You know the rule,” Mom said. “I can’t leave until you’re upright.”

  That is the stupidest rule ever! I shouted in my head. It was almost painful not to say it out loud, but I thought about manners and counted to ten and managed not to yell. I threw off my covers and got out of bed, hunched forward, my fists clenched, frowning. But upright.

  “There,” I said.

  “Thank you,” my mom said, which bugged me.

  I guess I should say right now that I love my mom, so you don’t get the wrong idea. She’s not mean or anything. I just . . . Things bother me really easily. Or they don’t bother me at all. I tend to have extreme feelings one way or the other, not usually in the middle. Maybe that’s why I’m sometimes unhappy. I don’t know. Anyway.

  When my mom finally left, I put on my softest skinny jeans, the ones that I wore at least twice a week. Today, I noticed the seams digging against the sides of my thighs and I hated it, so I changed into a different pair. I pulled on my black hoodie with the thumbholes, testing out the feeling of that for a second, deciding it was okay. The seams of the new pants bugged me, too, so I changed into leggings. They had a hole in the knee but felt okay. I stuck my long fingernail in the hole and made it bigger.

  I shoved my unfinished homework into my backpack, then went to brush my teeth. In the mirror, a girl with messy, chin-length hair and too-long bangs, bloodshot brown eyes with dark circles under them, and cracked lips stared back at me. I looked down at my toothbrush: there was a hair on it. I threw it away and leaned over to get a new one out of the cabinet. While I was searching, I found a headband I used to wear all the time when I was younger. I’d never wear it now, but I tried it on, wishing I could text a picture of myself to Colette because I looked hilarious, but I couldn’t because we weren’t friends anymore. I left the bathroom, dropping the headband on the floor.

  I pulled my hood up over my bedhead. From the mini-fridge in my room, I got out the milk, then made myself a bowl of the single brand of cereal I like in the world. I checked my TwisterLvr feed and read about an EF2-category tornado that’d happened in Birmingham, Alabama, the night before. I didn’t check my other social media anymore because I didn’t want to see all the pictures of Colette and her other friends.

  I got my jacket and left. I wanted to ride my favorite yellow beach cruiser to school, but it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, so I had to walk. Only a minute or two into the walk, my phone buzzed in my pocket.

  MOM

  Do you have your backpack?

  I turned around to get it. At the door, Mom held out the pack in one hand and a protein bar in the other. Her dark hair was in a tight bun that looked uncomfortable. I patted the top of my head.

  “Don’t forget to eat it, please.”


  “I won’t,” I said, turning to leave again. She was always reminding me to eat. She didn’t remind other people to eat—just me. I guess maybe I needed to be reminded sometimes, but it was still annoying.

  “I don’t want you to get hangry,” she said.

  Did you know that the word hangry is officially in the dictionary now? It is. I looked it up.

  “I’m old enough to know when I need to eat,” I complained.

  “Yes, at thirteen, you are old enough,” she said in a way that made me think she was trying to make a point. “Did you brush your teeth?”

  “Yes,” I said, not totally sure whether I had or not. “Bye.”

  “Have a great day, Frankie! I love you!”

  I made a sound and left again, taking the beach path so I could shout into the wind if I felt like it. I didn’t this morning, but I like having options. I like choosing what I get to do because it feels like people are always bossing me around. The only thing is, the beach path takes longer than just walking straight to school. It’s like turning the route into an obtuse triangle instead of a line from point A to point B.

  Do you know what that is? It’s geometry, which I like.

  I was late to school so often that the hall monitor didn’t blink. I left some books and the uneaten protein bar in my locker, which I don’t share with anyone because I don’t like when their books touch mine, and left a trail of sand like bread crumbs as I walked down the carpeted hallway to homeroom. The bell rang when I was about halfway to class, and Ms. Garrett didn’t say anything when I walked in.

  All the other kids were already at their desks, most of them socializing. That’s a thing I’m not good at, probably because I don’t like chitchat—the word itself or the act of doing it.

  I sat down at my own private desk island by the window and checked my TwisterLvr account again. Nothing new had happened since the last time I’d checked, which was disappointing.