Tornado Brain

by Cat Patrick

  “I don’t know,” I said to her too-many questions, “but those are Colette’s shoes.” I’d never owned a pair of vintage white sneakers because the rubber tops make my toes claustrophobic, and Tess’s feet are too wide for that brand.

  “No, they’re not,” Tess disagreed.

  “Yes, they are,” I said. “I’ll play it again, look.” I started the video over, pausing it when the feet were the closest. “Definitely Colette,” I said. “She had on those sneakers Thursday night.”

  Tess flinched at the mention of the last night we saw Colette. I didn’t say anything about the fact that we both thought that Colette had come to our rooms at the same time—and neither did she.

  “But this was made two years ago, Frankie,” Tess said, pointing at the post’s date. “It must have been one of the last ones we made. We were probably eleven? Anyway, Colette’s taller than her mom now and her feet are huge. She wasn’t wearing the same shoes Thursday night as she wore in fifth grade when we did dare-or-scare. They wouldn’t fit.”

  I shrugged, pretty sure that the dirty white sneakers on-screen were the ones I’d stared at when I hadn’t wanted to look Colette in the eye two nights before—but sometimes I’m wrong about things. The video did say it’d been posted two years ago. Maybe she’d bought a bigger pair of the shoes she’d had in fifth grade.

  Or maybe . . .

  Something felt off. My stomach hurt—and it wasn’t cramps this time. I didn’t remember filming the video, but it reminded me of others we’d made. But there were so many that they were all jumbled up in my brain.

  I went to another video, the next one in line. This time, the camera climbed someone’s porch with whoever was holding it. The person reached out to set down a bunch of flowers in front of the door and I got a glimpse of a dark windbreaker. The person rang the doorbell then turned and ran back down the steps, the camera bouncing and making me feel sick. Then the screen went dark.

  “Whose house is that?” I asked.

  “Do you remember that one?” Tess asked back. “It looks like the ding-dong-ditch dare?”

  I told her I did, but not with flowers, and I couldn’t recognize the house from just the steps, and I started the video again, immediately getting sucked in by the weirdness of it. This one didn’t have sound either.

  “Frankie! Stop ignoring me. Do you remember this video?” Tess asked, sounding annoyed.

  “I answered you.”

  “No, you didn’t!”

  Didn’t I? I wondered at myself. Sometimes I think I’ve said things because I hear them so loudly in my head, in my own voice. But I forget to actually say them out of my mouth. Except then I think I did, and that gets confusing for people. And for me.

  “No, I don’t remember it,” I said . . . out loud . . . for sure.

  I clicked on the next video. This one was, without a doubt, Colette. It was a video of her profile, her hair pulled back in a knot, wearing a white T-shirt. She was just standing there, not moving, for a full minute. She was inside somewhere, and the video was grainy, like the person holding it hadn’t quite focused on Colette’s face when they’d started recording. But then I noticed something.

  “She’s in Marsh’s,” I said. “See?” I pointed at the blurry shape behind Colette: one of the stuffed dead animals that hang from the ceiling of the store.

  “Maybe,” Tess said, leaning in closer. “I guess it’s possible, but—”

  Her phone chimed loudly; it made me jump. I hate phone sounds, so I always keep my phone on silent. Tess leaned away from me so she could get it out of her pocket. The warmth that’d been trapped between our touching arms and legs was released. I shivered.

  I stared at the video and wondered if it was the selfie video Kai had told me about yesterday when we’d texted. The one that Colette had taken Thursday night. Except I didn’t think that Colette was wearing the same T-shirt in the video that she’d worn to my room. In my room, she’d had on . . . I didn’t remember.

  Oh, dolphins.

  There were only four videos on our account. There should have been way more. Had someone deleted the others? Everything felt off.

  “Tess, I really think that Colette might have been doing our dares again.”

  “It’s Mia,” Tess said, ignoring me, eyes on her phone. “She’s upset because someone drew on one of her flyers. She wants to come over.”

  “Fine,” I said, standing up abruptly, blazing mad. Sometimes I wish my anger would have an emergency system, but it doesn’t. Like a tornado showing up without any warning at all, I went from calm to completely annoyed that Tess wasn’t listening to me because my gut told me that we should be paying attention to these old videos and she clearly didn’t have the same feeling. No one ever listened to what I had to say. “Whatever.”

  “What’s wrong?” Tess asked without looking up from her phone, her dark hair covering half her face, her thumbs flying over the keys.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m leaving.”

  “Okay, bye,” Tess said softly, which sucked. I slammed the door to her room, wishing she had told me to stick around. Wishing she’d have a gut feeling, too; that she’d get obsessed with the missing dare-or-scare page and the videos with me. There were only four videos instead of what should have been about a million. Or at least twenty. I needed to know where the others were—and I wished Tess needed to know, too.

  But, as usual, she had better things to do.

  chapter 11

  Fact: Even though it feels like longer, the average tornado is on the ground for less than ten minutes.

  “IS OFFICER ROLLINS here?” I asked the lady at the front desk of the police station. I leaned my elbow on the high counter and squashed my cheek against my fist. “I have something to tell him.”

  It was twelve thirty on Saturday. After I’d left Tess’s room, I’d eaten lunch at the cottage with my mom—but I’d pretty much run away after inhaling a sandwich so I wouldn’t have to hear more questions about my first period. Didn’t she remember her own?

  “I’m sorry, Officer Rollins is out, honey,” the front desk lady said, her eyes on something behind me.

  I turned around to see what she was looking at. As far as I could tell, it was nothing. I hate when people do that. “Made you look” is the worst game ever.

  “I can call him for you, if you like?” the lady asked. I didn’t answer, so she went ahead and dialed on a black phone on her desk. She talked for a few seconds, then held out the receiver. “Here you go, honey.”

  I took it and put it to my face, feeling awkward being tethered by a cord to a phone that was tethered to the wall, wondering how many germs might be transferring themselves from the receiver to my cheek right now.

  “Hello, Frankie,” Officer Rollins said. “Mary says you have something to tell me?”

  I felt self-conscious. “Yeah . . . uh . . . so there’s a page missing from that notebook you copied for me and Tess, did you notice that?”

  “Sorry, Frankie, I can’t hear you,” Officer Rollins said. There were other voices in the background. “Will you please speak up a little?”

  I tried again at volume three. That’s more like the volume you need for presenting a report in class, but it was loud wherever Officer Rollins was. Except it sounded like I was yelling in the quiet police station. “The notebook you copied has a page missing from it—unless you didn’t give me all of them.”

  “We gave you all of them,” Officer Rollins said. “What was on the missing page?”

  “It’s a list of dares,” I said. “It was part of this game we made up in fifth grade called dare-or-scare.”

  “I see,” Officer Rollins said. “And?”

  “And we made videos of us playing the game and put them on a Viewer account and I watched them—well, not those that we made but other ones, maybe newer ones?—because I think Colette was wearin
g the same shoes in videos that she had on when she came over Thursday night. I mean, I’m not positive, but I think so. They look the same.”

  The front desk lady was typing something but glancing at me every so often. I turned so my back was to her.

  “I see,” Officer Rollins said again, his voice sounding like he didn’t see.

  I thought maybe I hadn’t said it right. “The videos say they were added to the account two years ago, but I think they were the same shoes she had on when I saw her, so maybe you could investigate or whatever . . .”

  I paused, wondering what I’d hoped he could do with the videos. Now this trip seemed silly and I wondered if Tess had been right not to get obsessed with the videos like I had.

  Officer Rollins was quiet, so my brain wandered off like it does sometimes.

  I wonder if he’s quiet because he’s reading my mind, I thought. That would be a cool superpower. What would I choose as my top five superhero powers? Flying, teleportation—

  “What shoes was she wearing in the videos?” Officer Rollins interrupted my list.

  “White sneakers,” I said confidently.

  “Hmm,” Officer Rollins said. I could hear pages turning. “Her parents told us she left the house in flip-flops Thursday night.” He paused. “You said the videos are two years old?”

  “Well, I mean, that’s what the account says,” I said, “but I think it’s wrong.”

  “But that’s what the account says,” he repeated.

  My face felt hot and I knew it was red; the more people told me I was wrong, the more positive I was that Colette had been wearing white sneakers the night she’d come to ask for Fred and that she’d been wearing the exact same shoes in the videos on Viewer. And that the videos were new and not two years old!

  “Maybe her parents remembered wrong,” I said.

  “Maybe,” Officer Rollins said. “People can do that in stressful times like this.” Then he added slowly, “They can also make connections that may not be there.” I wondered what he meant by that as he kept talking. “Thank you for calling, Frankie. Every tip helps, and I’ve written down this information and will keep it in mind. Please call me if you think of anything else.”

  “Okay,” I said quietly, feeling like I’d screwed something up, but not knowing what. “Bye.”

  I handed the receiver back to Mary, the front desk lady, and turned to leave. I watched my shoes as I walked across the lobby toward the door, spinning about Colette’s sneakers, knowing I was right—just knowing it. Tess doesn’t think so, I thought, and neither does Officer Rollins. But does Kai? He saw Colette that night, too. I have to go find him and as—

  I slammed right into a wall.

  “Ouch!” I shouted, my eyes stinging and watering; I’d hit my nose. Covering my face, I looked up and realized I hadn’t hit a wall. Instead, I’d hit a person: the very worst person in town. She’s the grouchy old lady who yells at everyone, both people who live in Long Beach and the tourists.

  I had run into the Sea Witch.

  “Pest!” she snapped in her Russian or Polish or whatever accent, glaring down at me with her glassy gray eyes.

  She may have been old, but with a square jaw, shoulders almost as wide as a man’s, and a biting tone, she was terrifying. I probably would have yelled at anyone else to watch out! but not the Sea Witch.

  Stepping away from her, I muttered, “Excuse me,” as quietly as Tess talks sometimes, so quietly I don’t know if the Sea Witch heard me. We were in the doorway to the police station: her in and me out. My bike was leaning against a planter only a few feet away. I plotted making a run for it.

  That’s when she grabbed my wrist with her bony fingers. My heart felt like it would jump out of my chest because being touched by her was both scary and terrible at the same time. “You children with no supervision! Running around like you own this place!”

  “Let go of me!” I shouted. Mary stood up from her desk and hurried toward us.

  The Sea Witch leaned so close to my face that I could smell her sour breath. In a low voice, she said, “You never know what may happen to bad children running around with no parents.” She let go of my wrist. “Be careful, you.”

  I ran to my bike, my heart pounding, breathing hard. It felt like I’d been through something terrifying, like a tornado had ripped through the police station. It was hard to calm down. Checking my phone, I realized I’d only been at the station for ten minutes. When bad things happen, I guess ten minutes can feel like much longer.

  * * *

  —

  “FRANKIE, ARE YOU okay?” Kai asked from behind the smaller checkout counter at Marsh’s. He had on a navy-blue T-shirt and a yellow beanie pushed back on his head, his wild hair sticking out in front. He was looking at me funny. “You look crazy-pale.”

  “Oh,” I said, sinking my hands into a bin of polished sea glass to try to calm my racing heart. Walking my bike slowly across the street from the police station hadn’t helped. I was sweating, too. It was always so hot in Marsh’s. “Yeah, I just . . . Never mind.” I didn’t want to relive it. I reminded myself why I’d wanted to find Kai in the first place: the videos. “Can we go outside for a minute?”

  “Sure,” Kai said, nodding. “Gotta tell my mom first. I’ll meet you out there.”

  The fresh air was the best after being inside stuffy Marsh’s. I sat on a bench facing the parking lot and the street beyond, my eyes watching the police station like a hawk. What are you doing there? I wondered at the Sea Witch. Did you do something wrong? I shook my head at myself, thinking that people didn’t just walk into the police station if they were the ones who had done something wrong—they were escorted. At least on TV. But then what were you—

  “I have five minutes,” Kai said, making me jump. “Geez, Frankie, is everything all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I snapped before taking a deep breath and pulling my phone from my pocket. “Anyway, the reason I’m here is . . .” I turned toward him, quickly scrolling to Viewer on my phone. I shoved it in his direction. “Is this the video Colette made when she was here Thursday night?”

  Kai took the phone and his eyes widened. “Frankenstein!” I frowned at Kai’s latest nickname for me but let him talk. “I totally think it is! Where’d you get this?”

  “That’s not important.” I brushed off his question. “The important thing is that you think it’s the video she took.”

  “Yeah, her hair was pulled back like that.”

  “Did you notice her shoes?” I asked, hopeful. He shook his head.

  “Naw, but that’s right where she was standing when she came in,” he said, pointing to a black curtain in the background of the video. “She’s behind the fortune-teller.” He paused, then added, “It’s weird, but I think she might have stolen my jacket.”

  “What?” I asked, looking at him funny.

  “Nothing.”

  I didn’t care about Kai’s jacket. I thought he’d probably left it at the boardwalk or something. “You’re sure about where she was standing?”

  “I think so?” Kai said, shrugging.

  “No one believes me about Colette making that video on Thursday night,” I said.

  “Huh,” Kai said. “Sorry.” He waited a second and then said, “It was weird. Like I said, I wasn’t really paying attention because my mom was making me haul boxes around in back when Colette was here. I need to join a club or something so she’ll stop making me help out all the time.”

  As he went on, the Sea Witch popped back into my head. I was bugged by how she’d grabbed my wrist. How she’d told me to be careful. Be careful of what?

  I forced myself to refocus on the video. It wasn’t well-lit or flattering, and it didn’t have anything interesting in it. Just Colette. Staring.

  Kai’s mom popped her head out and told him to please hurry up, the register lines were
getting long, then disappeared again.

  Kai stood, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I guess it’s been five minutes already.”

  “Hey, will you show me where Colette was standing?”

  He looked over his shoulder at the door.

  “Really quick?” I pleaded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Come on.”

  Kai turned, and I followed him back inside, a double ding-ding sounding as we walked through the door. We snaked past the taffy and the ornate collectible dragons, the aisles of plastic toys for kids, and the racks of T-shirts and sweatshirts in every color of the rainbow. On the wood-paneled walls there were heads of dead animals, feathers from dead animals, and framed pictures—of dead animals. They were all for sale, but I didn’t know why anyone would ever want to buy them. Marsh’s is the weirdest “museum” I’ve ever seen.

  I smeared sweat into my bangs, probably making them look really bad, but I didn’t care. I was so focused on stuffed dead animals that I almost ran into Kai when he stopped abruptly. There was a stuffed spider monkey overhead and it looked like it was laughing at me.

  “See?” he said, pointing at the back of the fortune-teller machine. He glanced at my bangs but didn’t say anything.

  “Colette took a selfie video while looking at these tiny license plates with people’s names on them?” I asked, more confused than ever. “Why’s it always so hot in here?”

  Kai wasn’t sweating despite his beanie. He answered my first question, but not my second.

  “Oh, wait. No, she was facing this way,” he said, turning around. I copied him, turning around kind of slowly, trying to imagine Colette standing right here.

  Then I saw what she’d been looking at and gasped. Kai looked at me, confused. I didn’t explain, though; my wheels were spinning faster than anything I could put into words. In five seconds, I’d be back on the beach cruiser, racing toward the inn. All that I said to Kai before bolting out of the store was:

  “I know how to find Colette.”